Poison Seed (A Lady Serpent Egyptian Murder Story)

He then spent a year plotting how to kill the girls without getting caught and had even tried earlier snakes which proved ineffective, until he finally succeeded. We never thought that these understandings that existed in pagan [ jahiliyya ] times concerning female infanticide would ever return, but they have returned.

While this was a positive step, unfortunately, it is only half the picture. Indeed, this brutal filicide is a reminder of an often overlooked phenomenon of the Muslim world: Consider the issue of forced conversion. Because while the average Muslim may not know the letter of the law, based on the culture they grow up in, they are taught that being a non-Muslim is a terrible thing. In this context, while Islam did not cause this man to murder his daughters, it certainly helped mold his low opinion of females, which was the seed of his misogynistic bloodlust.

Strabo, Geography Text scanned and modernized by J.

Deities of the Afterlife

Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature , Vol. Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature , Vol 3, p. Printing using the browser's print function is not recommended. They populate all possible environments, from the sandy desert to the marshy Nile delta.

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The attitude of the Egyptians towards them has always been ambivalent. On the one hand many snakes were perceived to be beneficial, ridding the country of mice and rats , which caused great damage to stored food, on the other hand many deaths were the consequence of snake bites, and the physicians were unable to do much more than invoke the assistance of the gods, known physical remedies being almost worthless.

Egyptian Father Kills Three Daughters with Snake

Another is the Spitting Cobra which defends itself by spraying poison in the eyes of any animal threatening it. Another family of poisonous snakes is that of the vipers.

The horned viper , Cerastes cornutus , the image of which was used as the hieroglyph representing the f-sound, was also much feared, the report of Herodotus about its innocuousness notwithstanding: In the neighbourhood of Thebes there are some sacred serpents which are perfectly harmless. They are of small size, and have two horns growing out of the top of the head. These snakes, when they die, are buried in the temple of Jupiter, the god to whom they are sacred.

Herodotus, Euterpe , The animals peculiar to the country i. Egypt are the ichneumon and the Egyptian asp, having some properties which those in other places do not possess. There are two kinds, one a span in length, whose bite is more suddenly mortal than that of the other; the second is nearly an orguia [six feet] in size, according to Nicander, the author of the Theriaca. He spends time cultivating, and the snake is after him.

It finishes off the seed as it is cast to the ground. He does not see a green blade. Both perspectives appear as early as the Pyramid Texts , the earliest source of the myth.

Osiris myth

In some spells from these texts, Horus is the son of Osiris and nephew of Set, and the murder of Osiris is the major impetus for the conflict. The other tradition depicts Horus and Set as brothers. The divine struggle involves many episodes. In this account, Horus repeatedly defeats Set and is supported by most of the other deities. At one point Isis attempts to harpoon Set as he is locked in combat with her son, but she strikes Horus instead, who then cuts off her head in a fit of rage.

In a key episode in the conflict, Set sexually abuses Horus.

Set's violation is partly meant to degrade his rival, but it also involves homosexual desire, in keeping with one of Set's major characteristics, his forceful, potent, and indiscriminate sexuality. According to some texts, Set's semen enters Horus's body and makes him ill, but in "Contendings", Horus thwarts Set by catching Set's semen in his hands.

Isis retaliates by putting Horus's semen on lettuce-leaves that Set eats. Set's defeat becomes apparent when this semen appears on his forehead as a golden disk.

In mythology

He has been impregnated with his rival's seed and as a result "gives birth" to the disk. In "Contendings", Thoth takes the disk and places it on his own head; in earlier accounts, it is Thoth who is produced by this anomalous birth. Another important episode concerns mutilations that the combatants inflict upon each other: Horus injures or steals Set's testicles and Set damages or tears out one, or occasionally both, of Horus's eyes. Sometimes the eye is torn into pieces. One of Horus's major roles is as a sky deity, and for this reason his right eye was said to be the sun and his left eye the moon.

The theft or destruction of the Eye of Horus is therefore equated with the darkening of the moon in the course of its cycle of phases, or during eclipses. Horus may take back his lost Eye, or other deities, including Isis, Thoth, and Hathor, may retrieve or heal it for him. If so, the episodes of mutilation and sexual abuse would form a single story, in which Set assaults Horus and loses semen to him, Horus retaliates and impregnates Set, and Set comes into possession of Horus's Eye when it appears on Set's head.

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Because Thoth is a moon deity in addition to his other functions, it would make sense, according to te Velde, for Thoth to emerge in the form of the Eye and step in to mediate between the feuding deities. In any case, the restoration of the Eye of Horus to wholeness represents the return of the moon to full brightness, [25] the return of the kingship to Horus, [26] and many other aspects of maat. Set was depicted standing on the prow of Ra 's barge defeating the dark serpent Apep.

In some Late Period representations, such as in the Persian Period Temple of Hibis at Khargah , Set was represented in this role with a falcon 's head, taking on the guise of Horus. In the Amduat Set is described as having a key role in overcoming Apep. During the Second Intermediate Period — BC , a group of Asiatic foreign chiefs known as the Hyksos literally, "rulers of foreign lands" gained the rulership of Egypt, and ruled the Nile Delta , from Avaris.

They chose Set, originally Upper Egypt's chief god, the god of foreigners and the god they found most similar to their own chief god, as their patron. Set then became worshiped as the chief god once again.

The Hyksos King Apophis is recorded as worshiping Set exclusively , as described in the following passage:. He did not worship any other deity in the whole land except Seth. Jan Assmann argues that because the ancient Egyptians could never conceive of a "lonely" god lacking personality, Seth the desert god, who was worshiped on his own, represented a manifestation of evil.