Egypt is rife with terrifying mythologies -- stories of deformed beasts who judge your
soul and eat your heart.
The stories are endless, and plentiful in pop culture today, particularly in films such
as The Mummy.
So today on Top 5 Scary Videos, I’m going to be counting down our list of the Top 5
Scariest Egyptian Myths.
Before we begin, be sure to stick around until the end of the video where I’ll be responding
to some of your comments.
Let’s jump in.
5 The Seven Year Famine The Seven Year Famine is a narrative from
the famous inscription discovered on a rock on the Island of Sahal in 1890 by Charles
Wilbour.
The Story goes that in the eighteenth year of the KIng Tchese, the whole region of the
South, the Island of Elephantine, and the district of Nubia were ruled by the high official
Mater.
The King sent a dispatch to Mater informing him that he was in great grief by reason of
the reports which were brought to him into the palace as he at upon his throne, and because
for seven years there had been no satisfactory inundation of the Nile.
As the result of this grain of every king was very scarce, vegetables and garden produce
of every king could not be found, and in fact the people had very little food to eat, which
in turn resulted in men robbing their neighbors.
In the midst of this terrible trouble, King Tscheser remembered the god Imhotep, the son
of Ptah of the South Wall who had once delivered Egypt from a similar calamity.
However, his help was no longer forthcoming, which resulted in Tcheser asking his governor
Mater to tell him where the Nile rose, and what God or Goddess was it duty.
Mater compiled the information and delivered it to the King, informing him the Nile flood
came forth from the Island of Elephantine whereon stood the first city that ever existed,
and out of it rose the Sun when he went forth to bestow life upon man, and therefore it
is also called, “Doubly Sweet Life.”
The Guardians of the flood was Khnemu, and it was he who kept the doors that held it
in, and who drew back the bolts at the proper time.
The King in turn was forced to make offerings to Khnemu, who finally appeared before him,
stating, “I am Khnemu the creator.
My hands rest upon thee to protect thy person, and to make sound thy body.
I gave thee thing heart.
I am he who created himself.
I am the primeval watery abyss, and I am the Nile who riseth at his will to give health
for me to those who toil.
I am the guide and director of all men, the Almighty, the father of the gods, Shy, the
mighty possessor of the earth.”
Following this speech, the God promised the Nile would rise every year, and described
the good which would come upon the land when he would end the famine.
4 Isis and the Seven Scorpions One popular story from Egyptian Mythology
discusses Isis and the Seven Scorpions.
It goes like this.
Whenever Isis left Horus in the evening while they were hiding in the papyrus swamps near
Buto, she was accompanied by seven scorpions.
Three of the scorpions precede her, Petet, Tjetet, and Matet, and made sure that the
path ahead was safe.
At her side were the Scorpions, Mesetet and Mesetetef, and behind was Tefen and Befen.
Every night, Isis warned her friend to be extremely cautious as to avoid altering Seth
as to where she was.
One night, Isis was traveling to the Town of the Two Sisters in the Nile Delta.
A Noblewoman saw the strange group arrive and quickly closer her door.
The scorpions were enraged by this act of rudeness and decided to teach the woman a
lesson.
Six of the scorpions gave their individuals poisons to Tefen who loaded his stinger with
it, during which time a young peasant had offered her home to Isis and her group as
refuge.
However, this still did not please the scorpions, and Tefen snuck out of the house.
He crawled under the door of the woman and stung her son.
Obviously distraught, the woman wandered through the town seeking help for her child.
Isis heard the woman’s cries and aided the woman.
Isis held the boy in her arms and spoke words of magic.
She named each other scorpions and thereby dominated them; rendering their combined poison
to be harmless in the child.
The woman became humbled by Isis’ act of kindness and in turn offered her all of her
worldly wealth and the peasant girl who had shown hospitality to a stranger.
So Sweet.
3 Ammit Ammit (a-mitt), also known as the “devourer
of the dead” was a demoness and goddess in ancient Egyptian religion with a body that
was part lion, hippoptamus, and crocodile, aka, the three largest man-eating animals
known to ancient Egyptians.
This terrifying beats other titles include “Devourer of the Dead”, “Eater of Hearts”,
and “Great of Death”, and lived near the scales of justice in Duat, the Egyptian Underworld.
Now, in the Hall of Two Truth, Anubis weighed the heart of a person against the feather
of Ma’at, the goddess of truth, which was depicted as an ostrich feather.
If the heart was judged to be not pure, Ammit would devour it, and the person undergoing
judgement would not be allowed to head towards Osiris and immortality.
Now, I don’t want to delve too much into that because, hint hint, it might be our next
number.
Now, Ammit was not whatsoever worshipped in Egyptian Mythology, but instead she embodied
all that the Egyptians feared, threatening to bind them to eternal restlessness if they
did not follow the principle of Ma’at.
Now, Ammit has had a huge influence on popular culture, appearing as a recurring character
in the cartoon Mummies Alive!, as well as intermittently in The Kane Chronicles, a trilogy
based on Egyptian Myths.
However, more famously, she also appeared in video games she has Lara Croft, Yu-Gi-Og
and Palladium RPG.
2 Anubis and Afterlife Anubis is the Greek name of the God of death,
mummification, embalming, the afterlife, cemeteries, tombs, and the Underworld in ancient Egyptian
religion.
It is usually depicted as a canine or a man with a canine head.
However, like many Egyptians Gods, Anubis assumed different roles in mythology.
Often depicted as a protector of graves as early as the First Dynasty.
Most famously, his prominent role was as a god who ushered souls into the afterlife.
He attended the weighing scale during the “Weighing of the Heart”, in which it was
determined whether a soul would be allowed to enter the realm of the dead.
The critical scene depicting the weighing of the heart appears in the Book of the Dead,
and shows Anubis performing a measurement that determined whether a person was worthy
to pass on.
By weighing the heart of a deceased person against Ma’at, aka “Truth”, who was
often represented as an ostrich feather, Anubis dictated the fate of souls.
Souls that were heavier that the feather would be devoured by our previous number Ammit,
and souls lighter than the feather would ascend to a heavenly existence.
Anubis was depicted in black, a color that symbolizes regeneration, life, the soil of
the Nile River, and the discoloration of the corpse after embalming.
More interesting still, Anubis was one of the most frequently represented deities in
Ancient Egyptian Art.
With the God being depicted on royal tombs from the First Dynasty.
In funerary contexts, Anubis is shown either attending to a deceased person’s mummy or
sitting atop a tomb protecting it.
New Kingdom tomb-seal depict Anubis sitting atop the nine bows that symbolize his domination
over the enemies of Egypt.
1 The Creation of the World To the Egyptians, the journey began with the
creation of the world and the universe out of the darkness and swirling chaos.
They believed that at the beginning there was nothing but endless dark water without
form or purpose.
Supposedly, existing within the void was Heka, god of magic, who awaited the moment of creation,
and out of the watery silence rose the primordial hill, known as the Ben-Ben, upon which stood
Atum, the Great God.
Atum looked upon the nothingess and recognized his aloneness and so, through magic, he mated
with his own shadow to give birth to two children.
Shu, the god of air, and Tefnut, goddess of moisture.
The children then left their father on Ben-Ben and set out to establish the world.
During his children’s absence, Atum became so concerned about them he removed his eye
and sent it in search of them, during which time he sat alone on the hill in the midst
of chaos and contemplated eternity.
Later, Shu and Tefnut would return with their fathers’ eye, and their father, grateful
for their return, shed tears of joy.
Those tears, dropping onto the darkness, gave birth to men and women.
Well, there we have it!
Do you guys agree with our list?
Were there any Egyptian Myths that we missed?
Leave us all your thoughts and feelings in the comments down below and perhaps we can
do a part 2.
Before I go though, I just want to respond to a few comments from one of our last videos,
Top 5 Scary Churches Where Praying Won't Help You.
Joboyogi said, “Aw, don’t worry about it Lucy, you’re the Queen.
We’ll just change the pronunciations to whatever you say it is.”
--Bless.
I hope you feel that way about this video as well.
And the next dozen I do.
MamaBear said “I just love watching you Lucy.
You are def my favorite...shhhh don’t tell Jack lol” -- I mean, I knew this already,
and I will definitely tell him.
He deserves to know that I’m the favorite.
Colleen Posley said “Do the scariest churches in fiction.
That post gothic monstrosity from In The Mouth of Madness leaps nimbly to mind.”
-- I like where your head's at, Colleen.
I’ll get on that immediately.
And on that note, if you haven’t already, be sure to give this video a big thumbs up,
subscribe, and turn on notifications so you never miss another Scary vid, and until next
time, see ya later.