Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [48]
Why are there so many animals—real and imaginary—in Egypt’s myths?
Maybe you’ve heard the riddle of the sphinx? It was once popular fifth-grade humor.
“Which lion doesn’t roar?”
Answer: “The Sphinx—it’s made of stone.”
In ancient Egypt, animals played a prominent role in myth and religion, apparently from prehistoric times, judging from early art and burial practices. Images and references to hawks, falcons, lions, serpents, crocodiles, and bulls fill the pantheon of Egypt and are vividly illustrated in Egyptian art. While that idea was not unique to Egypt, animal worship may have been more significant in Egypt than almost any other ancient civilization. Springing from the belief that animals were manifestations of the gods—vehicles through which the gods could be worshipped—the Egyptians often buried animals in ritual graves, mummified them, provided them with food on their journeys to the afterlife, and used them in worship ceremonies at temples.
The Apis bull of Memphis, for instance, was considered a manifestation of the creator god Ptah and was used to make divinations. Worshippers could ask “yes” or “no” question of the oracle bull, which provided an answer to the petitioner by moving into one sacred corral or another. Other major religious centers, such as Heliopolis and Elephantine, had stables of sacred bulls and rams, respectively, while flocks of ibises and falcons, and thousands of cats—considered manifestations of Thoth, Horus, and Bastet—were maintained throughout Egypt, vast menageries that were used to make sacrifices by pilgrims seeking a favor from the gods.
Not only did the Egyptians represent their gods in animal forms, they also used a combined animal-human form, of which the Sphinx is the most famous example. A Greek word that is derived from Egyptian words meaning “living statue,” a sphinx in ancient times was believed to be a mythical beast with the body of a lion or lioness and the head of a ram, hawk, or reigning king or queen. Sphinxes, which were reported by ancient Greek travelers to have been located all across Egypt, were thought to embody the power of the ruler to defend Egypt and served as visible symbols of the strength and power of the pharaoh.
Located near the pyramids at Giza, the Great Sphinx is one of the most instantly recognizable pieces of art in the world as well as the largest statue in the ancient world. Measuring 240 feet (73 meters) long and about 66 feet (20 meters) high, and carved from an outcropping of limestone, the Great Sphinx at Giza was sculpted with the body of a lion and the head of Khafra, son of Khufu the Great. The Sphinx’s head, which served as the guardian of the royal cemeteries outside Memphis, seems to have been positioned so that the setting sun would stream through the temple on the days of the two equinoxes, capturing the moment when day and night were in perfect harmony.
MYTHIC VOICES
But no crime was too great for Cheops: when he was short of money, he sent his daughter to a brothel with instructions to charge a certain sum—they didn’t say how much. This she actually did, adding to it a further transaction of her own; for with the intention of leaving something to be remembered by after her death, she asked each of her customers to give her a block of stone, and of these stones (the story goes) was built the middle pyramid of the three which stand in front of the great pyramid.
—HERODOTUS, The Histories (Book Two)
What did the pyramids have to do with the gods?
No doubt it was repeating stories like this—about a king forcing his daughter to become a prostitute to pay for a pyramid—that made people wonder whether Herodotus was a reliable source. What the first Greek historian might have been passing on as “history” sounds suspiciously like the kind of story disgruntled commoners might tell if they don’t like the king. Since Cheops—or more accurately Khufu—lived some two thousand years before Herodotus was in Egypt, the story of the daughter in the brothel has the ring of legend, not history. In fact,