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Mythology
Gods and Goddesses
Many were named after Gods and Goddesses because they believed that their child would
come like that God/Goddess.
The following chart are the ten main Gods and Goddesses:
Gods:
Amun- he was one of the most dominan Gods
Anubis- he was the God of preserving and the departed
Aten- he was a form of the Sun God, Ra
Atum- he was a creator God
Bes- he was the guardian of those who were expecting, newborns, and families
Geb- he was the God of the Earth
Hapy- he was the God of the flooding of the Nile
Horus- he was the God of the Sky
Khepri- he was the God of creation, the rising of the sun, and recreation
Khnum- he was a creator God and the God of the flooding of the Nile
Ptah- he was the God of craftsmanship
Ra- he was the Sun God and he was the most significant God
Ra-Horakhty- he was a mixture of the Gods Ra and Horus
Seth- he was the god of chaos
Shu- he was the god of the air
Sobek- he was the God of the Nile
Thoth- he was the god of knowledge
Goddesses:
Amenti- she was the goddess of the gates
Ammit- she devoured people’s souls
Bast- she was a sacred cat
Bastet- she was a protective Goddess
Hathor- she was a caring goddess and a goddess that represents love and happiness
Isis- she was a protective goddess who used supernatural spells to assist folks who were in need
Ma’at- she was the goddess of truth, righteousness, and harmony; she balanced out all on the Earth
Neith, Lady Supreme
Nephthys- she was the goddess who protected the dead
Nun- he was the water of chaos
Nut- she was the sky goddess whose body sheltered the Earth
Osiris- she was the goddess of the departed and she ruled the underworld
Sekhmet- she was the goddess of battle
Seshat- she was the goddess of originality
Taueret- she was the goddess of fertility
Tawaret- she was the goddess who protected women who were pregnant and those who were going through childbirth
Uadjet- she was the goddess of serpents
Food
The Egyptians mainly grew wheat and barley. There water source was the Nile. From
there the wheat and barley
would turn into bread, soup and all sorts of basic foods. They
used to turn barley into beer. It has been said
that the Ancient Egyptians used to only
grow the barley so that they could turn it into beer. They ate mutton,
beef, duck, and
goose. The Egyptians would eat no form of a pig because they believed that a pig carried
leprosy. As for dessert Egyptians ate dates.
Hieroglyphics
What are hieroglyphics? Hieroglyph means ‘sacred writing’ in Greek. It is a symbol used
to represent a sound in hieroglyphics. A hieroglyph is the way that the ancient Egyptians
and others cultures used to write in. It was mainly used for important or religious
documents. The priests used them more than anyone else. It was called ‘the words of
God’. They were used to decorate temples and monuments back then. This language has
been dated back to over 5,000 years ago. It was used until the Roman age. People have
said that our language that we use today was derived from one of the ancient Egyptian
languages.
It was their version of an alphabet and numbers. We use only 26 letters in our alphabet
but they, the ancient Egyptians, have over 2,000 characters. There are still many yet to be
discovered.
Egyptians never wrote the word the way we would today. They would write the word the
way it sounds. Not by the way that it is spelled. For example: we say ‘where’ but we
pronounce it ‘wear’. So they would have written it as ‘wear’.
Hieroglyphs were either written in columns or in rows. You could write hieroglyph rows
from left to right or from right to left unlike English where we only read it from left to
right. You could also write the hieroglyph columns from top down, not bottom up. You
would always know which direction the hieroglyphic scripts were starting because the
pictographs would be facing of the beginning of the sentence.
We still use hieroglyphs today. Our whole entire alphabet has 26 hieroglyphs in it. Each
letter represents a sound. Same goes for our numbers. Each number represents a numeral
. Today the pictures that we use, instead of words, it is called a rebus. A rebus is a picture
which is used to represent a word.
Vowels weren’t usually put into a word when written out. They would be put into a word
only if the reader was going to misinterpret what is being said or if there was a name or if
a word started with a vowel. Nowadays we do the same thing. Ever seen road signs?
They don’t write Drive, Avenue, Road, Boulevard, Crescent, etc. They write dr, ave, rd
, blvd, crest, etc.
There are bilaterals. A bilateral is a hieroglyph which replaces two other alphabetical
characters. There are also determinatives. A determinative is a symbol which replaces a
set of hieroglyphs which may be misinterpreted for another phrase.
It can mean a set of phrases. But if you have a heart with an arrow through it, that would
mean I love you.
They only had 7 main numbers represented by 7 different symbols. The six main
numbers were 1, 10, 100, 1000, 10000, 100000, 1000000. A 1 was represented by a
straight line. A 10 was represented by an upside down u. A 100 was represented by a gust
of wind/swirl. A 1000 was represented by a flower. A 10000 was represented by a finger
. A 100000 was represented by a frog. A 1000000 was represented by a man kneeling
down on one knee with his arms up in the air. A number would be shown as many times
as required to show the number.
A fraction was much harder to make. 1/2 would be represented by a mouth like shape
above or beside the two straight lines. 2/3 is just like 4/6. So you would first have 3/6
(which is the same as 1/2) represented by the mouth like shape above or beside two
straight lines, and then you would represent 1/6 with the mouth like shape above or
beside six straight lines.
How is it that we know about this wonderful language?
Well we discovered what most hieroglyphs meant once the Rosetta Stone was
discovered. That is our version of the hieroglyphic dictionary.