Whether they're risqué, morally complex, or just plain creepy,
not every Egyptian myth is cool for the classroom.
Because ancient Egypt encompasses many centuries and quite a few distinct city settlements,
the mythology of this time and place gets pretty diverse, too. Even creation myths,
which you might think would be pretty standard, varied greatly. Ask someone in Hermopolis,
and they might tell you that a group of snake- and frog-headed deities got everything started
with a cosmic egg. Others might say that the egg actually came from a semi-divine goose,
or that the god Atum arose out of chaos and spat the next couple of gods into existence.
"What did you say?"
Yes, spit — if you were lucky. Some versions of the Atum creation myth say he created a son,
Shu, god of the air, and a daughter, Tefnut, goddess of moisture, by hocking a presumably
pretty large loogie into the increasingly less chaotic void. Other versions get more explicit
and claim that Atum engaged in some self-pleasure and produced them in that manner. Either way,
the idea is that he gave up some of his vital essences to create some more gods, which makes
it one ancient myth that grade school teachers are likely to skip during lesson planning.
"Moving on."
With practically no other options in the roiling, semi-chaotic beginnings of existence,
Tefnut and Shu turned to each other. From their union came Nut, the sky goddess, and the earth god
Geb. According to some regional myths, both were members of the nine-deity group called the Ennead.
But that didn't mean everyone got along. Geb and Nut were apparently very into each other — another
reason your teachers may have passed this myth over. They were so enmeshed that sky and earth
were right next to each other, making life on the growing plane of creation pretty difficult.
To keep things moving, Shu intervened and separated his two children. That
space between sky and earth became vitally important, creating space for the air that
we breathe and allowing celestial bodies like the sun to make their way through the
sky unimpeded. It also allowed space for the next round of gods to come into existence,
including some of the most famous names in the ancient Egyptian pantheon: Isis, Osiris, Seth,
and Nephthys, with the falcon-headed Horus sometimes also joining in.
In many ancient Egyptian pantheons, Sekhmet was a terrifying presence. The lion-headed goddess was
closely associated with heat, illness, and war, but she was also a powerful protector
of the pharaohs and a patron deity of doctors. It paid to keep her happy.
"Great Sekhmet, Pharoah drinks in your name and prays for victory over the Hittites at Kadesh."
But humans weren't always so wise to the nature of the fearsome Sekhmet. Way back in times that
were ancient even to the ancient Egyptians, it was said that humanity tried to rebel against
the sun god Re, who lived on Earth to rule them. Re took the uprising poorly. He took his daughter,
the goddess of love and fertility, Hathor, and transformed her into the warlike Sekhmet. She
went out and slaughtered the rebels, but her insatiable bloodlust — not to mention
the actual rivers and lakes of blood that polluted the land — made even Re step back.
"Blood!"
Realizing he'd gotten himself and the rest of existence in way over their heads,
he directed his people to brew thousands of jars of beer dyed red.
When it was poured over the land, Sekhmet saw it, and, thinking the stuff was more of
that tasty blood, guzzled it all down. The drunk goddess stumbled home and,
when she sobered up, was the peace-loving Hathor again. Re, for his part, decided
it was time to rule from the safe distance of another realm and left Earth entirely.
Lots of kids like bugs, but, even for the beetle-obsessed child in your life,
the mythology of Khepri may be a bit much.
First, Khepri looks weird, at least to people who aren't hip to ancient Egyptian gods and
goddesses. He's got a giant beetle for a head, complete with mandibles and segmented legs. Even
if the teacher patiently explains that Khepri is meant to represent a sacred scarab beetle
that will roll the sun through the sky like his earthly cousins do balls of dung. Well,
by that point, even seasoned teachers might lose control of the classroom.
"What do you mean bugs? I hate bugs!"
It's too bad, though, because Khepri deserves our respect. He's one of the key Egyptian sun gods,
and anyone who keeps the sun moving is kind of a big deal. And just look at
the abundance of scarab amulets and other decorations that can be found in Egyptian
archaeological sites. Even pharaohs sometimes incorporated Khepri's name into their own,
speaking to the ancient people's love for this bug-headed deity.
In Egypt, Isis was an immensely popular goddess
who could be seen almost everywhere. But there are parts of her core myth that,
while they would have seemed normal to the ancients, are often passed over today.
First, there's the matter of her spouse. That would be Osiris,
the eventual lord of the dead, who, even while fully alive, was also Isis' brother.
"Incest."
"Yes!"
That's normal enough for Egyptian gods and royalty back in the day, though some adaptations of this
myth conveniently forget to mention this particular aspect of their relationship.
When their brother Seth gets jealous of the popular Osiris, he tears the other god to bits
and scatters his parts across the land, leaving a grieving Isis to reassemble her husband. That
episode gets mentioned plenty, but what follows may be edited depending on the audience. Once
he's more or less put back together, it's clear that Osiris is missing a key component:
his privates. Some versions say this body part was eaten by a fish, but whatever happened,
the result is that Isis — who's apparently on a quest to conceive a child, dismembered
husband notwithstanding — has to figure out a workaround. A model replacement suffices somehow,
and she becomes pregnant with her son, Horus. Osiris, who can only be quasi-alive for so long,
eventually makes his way to the underworld, where he presides as the ultimate judge of the dead.
Even if all you know about Isis is that she has Dr. Frankenstein-like powers of resurrection,
it's clear she's got a tremendous amount of power. And, as if that weren't enough,
some myths claim she also has some utterly terrifying scorpion friends.
"Scorpions! Ah! Ah! Ah!"
According to one tale, Isis went out into the land accompanied by seven scorpions.
She approached a woman's home, hoping to rest, but the other woman shut the door in her face
because she was frightened of the goddess' freaky friends. It didn't help that Isis,
dressed like a beggar, was looking pretty rough herself.
Isis moved on to find a warmer reception in the hut of a poor woman. But one of the scorpions
returned to the first woman's home, fatally stung her son, and burned down her house. Then
it started to rain, just to make things worse. But Isis felt bad, so she resurrected the child,
put out the fire, and told the heavens to dry up. She then accepted all of the woman's fine
jewelry as an apology. The moral here is admittedly fuzzy. The other poorer woman's
reward seems to be not having her home burned down or having a close encounter with scorpion venom.
Few myths illustrate the differences between ancient Egypt and modern Western culture more
starkly than the tale of Horus and Seth. As the uncle of the younger god, Seth was often in
opposition to Horus. Tearing his father to bits and dooming him to the underworld didn't start
things off on a great footing. Then Seth stole or damaged Horus' eye, which didn't help things.
But in one myth that's all but impossible to teach to schoolchildren, things get even more x-rated.
Here, Horus tells his mother, Isis, that Seth is attempting to assault him. To get the upper hand,
Horus places a very particular bodily fluid of his on lettuce plants in Seth's garden. To
the ancient Egyptians, lettuce was a fertility-boosting aphrodisiac,
perhaps because its leaves produce a milky fluid when cut.
Seth wanders by, eats the Horus-basted leaves,
and becomes pregnant. "Lettuce? Lettuce!"
Instead of giving birth in the standard way,
he produces a sun disk via the crown of his head. Horus claims it and wears the disk as
proof that he's the rightful god of the sun. No wonder teachers are more likely to skip
over this episode and focus on the contest in which the two gods fight as hippopotami.
If Isis has the power to give life, then it stands to reason that she also has the
power to end it. Easy enough if her target is a standard mortal human. But another god?
Sure, why not? Of course, that's assuming the other god is standing
in the way of what she wants. Even Re, one of the biggest gods of all,
wasn't immune from Isis' machinations. In one myth, she decides to learn the god's sacred name,
the knowledge of which will grant her immense power. To achieve her ends,
she makes a venomous snake using the drool of the elder god, who's getting on in years.
The snake then bites Re. Feeling the life leeching out of him, he begs the
other gods for help. Isis feigns surprise at the completely unforeseeable snake incident.
"Wasn't me."
Coincidentally, Isis has just the power needed to banish the venom. However, she asks a serious
price: Re's true name, a name that's so secret and powerful no other god has ever heard it. With no
other choice but death, he gives it up, and Isis heals him. Now, with the knowledge of his name,
she has also achieved her goal of gaining power over all other gods, including Re himself.
You can't talk about ancient Egypt without discussing mummies, so, of course, there was
always going to be a god of mummification. For much of Egyptian history, that deity was the
jackal-headed Anubis, who tended to the bodies of the dead and also guided their souls to final
judgment in the underworld. In the earliest depictions of him, Anubis acted as a judge for
the dead until Osiris came in to replace him.
"The god Anubis is both a guardian and a guide
for the deceased. It's his job to be sure that you get to judgment safely."
But where exactly did Anubis come from? That gets pretty tricky. In the first appearances
of Anubis in Egyptian myth, he just shows up as a fully-formed adult god. Later tales explore his
convoluted parentage. Some claim he's the son of the chaotic god Seth and his wife,
Nephthys. Others have Nephthys becoming so taken with Osiris' beauty that she not only
steps out on her husband but takes on the image of Isis. And don't forget: these four
are all siblings. Disguised as another goddess, Nephthys tricks Osiris into sleeping with her,
becomes pregnant, and then ditches the kid in fear of the affair being discovered. Isis does
figure it out, in fact, but instead of indulging in some righteous rage,
she adopted the infant god and raised him herself. Some tales go a step
further and use this messy incident as the motivation for Seth's later murder of Osiris.
Egyptian mythology hinges on the afterlife, although the ancient Egyptians loved life,
with plenty of artwork, texts, and stories showing them ready to seize the day,
every day. But preparing for the journey to the afterlife,
immediately after one's earthly body gave out, was also important. Part of that meant being
a decent person while alive. If being good for goodness' sake wasn't enough motivation,
thoughts of the terrifying demon ready to eat one's soul was extra incentive.
The supernatural creature in question is Ammit, also known as Ammut, whose name translates to
"Devourer of the Dead." Her other titles — including "Eater of Hearts" and "Great of Death"
— make at least part of her purpose pretty darn clear. Ammit is also something to behold. Most
depictions show her with a crocodile's head, a big cat's front, and the hindquarters of a hippo. She
stands by as the deceased's heart is weighed on a scale meant to judge whether or not they were
good in life. If their heart is too heavy, Ammit gobbles it up and the dead person is out of luck.
The ancient Egyptians appear to have been somewhat wary of the devourer,
as she never appears to have been worshiped in the same way other gods
were and may have been considered more as a supernatural creature than a full-on deity.