All language subtitles for Ancient.Gods.of.Egypt.2017.1080p.WEBRip.x264-RARBG

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- [Girl] Reality films.

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- [Narrator] Ancient
and mysterious.

Powerful and deadly.

All knowing and generous.

The gods of Egypt
were many things.

They originated many
thousands of years ago

in a land faraway from Egypt.

Over time they evolved, changed,
adapted and grew in mystery.

Their stories are filled with
great battles and vengeance,

of cycles of nature and the
balance of the very universe.

Their tales, a real
game of thrones.

From the gods of the underworld
such as Osiris and Anubis

to the gods of light
such as Amun-Ra and Horus

the lives and actions of
the gods of ancient Egypt

explain our very existence
and our place in the universe.

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The mysteries of all
that is and ever shall be

were explored in their lives.

Their influence has
traveled across continents

and across time.

Our own so called
religions are full of them

under different names.

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This is the fascinating story
of the real gods of Egypt.

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The ancient Egyptian
religions were very complex.

Polytheistic beliefs and
multiple rituals formed integral

parts of their society.

The gods were believed to
be in control of and present

within the very forces which
controlled nature itself.

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The rituals and practices of
the ancient Egyptians were

created to gain the favor of
the various deities of the

various forces of nature in
order to control the outcome.

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Most of the formal practices
centered around the Pharaoh

who was believed
to be God on earth

and possess his
divine power or force.

He was the man between
them and the gods.

And it was his role to
sustain the gods with rituals

and offerings so that
they could maintain

order in the universe.

To make sure this worked huge
efforts were made to provide

the Pharaoh with what he needed
and the thousands of priests

did very well out of the deal.

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Massive constructions across
ancient Egypt were testament

to the importance placed
upon appeasing and gaining

the favor of the gods of force.

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An individual could pray
to a particular deity

and ask for help, or he could
compel them to do his bidding

through magic, one is
asking, one is telling.

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There is a direct correlation
between the rise of religious

institutions in Egypt
with the decline in power

of the Pharaoh.

Death was of major importance
with Egyptians going to great

lengths to ensure a safe
journey through the underworld

for their loved ones.

Funerary practices were
expensive and often complicated.

Tombs, grave goods,
mummification,
offerings and more

all made it a rich man's game

but the poor did
what they could.

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Over time the battle
of the gods evolved,

some rose high in
prominence, others fell.

It was all about the
battles between the priests

of the competing temples.

Ra, Amun and Isis were
pushed aside when Akhenaten

decided that the temple
system would be moved to a new

location and the
Aten or sun disk

would now hold
the greatest slot.

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It did not last and his new
temple city disappeared beneath

the sand, it would be some time
before a truly monotheistic

religion would rise again.

The gods of Egypt arise
in a collection of myths

from ancient Egypt
which describe their
actions as a method

of understanding the
world around them.

Understanding the gods of Egypt
and their myths is crucial

to understanding
ancient Egypt itself.

There is no separation
of church and state,

of life and religion
because all are intertwined.

From farming to pharmacy,
from politics to play

all things involve the gods
for the gods are all things.

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The myths are inspired by
the cycles of nature itself.

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Life is a series of patterns,
repeating again and again.

This is the present age to
them, before their time things

were linear and events unfolded
to create the patterns.

Maat is the fundamental
order of the universe

and the most important myths
are those of creation itself.

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Here the gods formed
existence from chaos

creating the patterns.

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The rise of the sun god
Ra, the myths of Osiris,

Isis and Horus against
this chaotic god, Set.

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Ra rises in the sky
and continues the
pattern of existence.

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He goes down each night
into the underworld or duat.

The struggle is
constant against chaos.

Life and death were simply
part of this continued pattern

rising like Ra and setting.

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Mythology inspired and
influenced Egyptian culture,

religious rituals and royal
leaders, life and death,

food, sex, education,
art, culture and more

were all part and parcel
of the greater living myth

of the life of the gods.

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In a mirror of human dynasties,

the gods themselves
altered in power,

the priests of each deity
would use their influence

and there are hundreds of
cases of one God usurping

a special location and claiming
dominance over another.

A battle of the gods
was truly at work.

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And so we must begin our journey
into the gods themselves.

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We begin with Amun,

who has been around ever
since the old kingdom

and the earliest days.

Known as Amun and Amen,
by the 11th dynasty

he had become the
patron deity of thieves,

the holiest of holy
places for the gods.

Following a rebellion in the
rise of Harmost the first

Amun became nationally
important and was fused with the

sun god Ra to become Amun-Ra.

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Across time Amun-Ra
maintained his chief post,

the only time this slipped
was under the king Akhenaten

who raised Aten to
the highest position.

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Amun-Ra was self created,
champion of the poor and weary,

everybody loved
and worshiped him,

he was the king of all gods
and almost became monotheistic

when other gods were said to
be mere manifestations of him.

His influence grew so large
that nations outside of Egypt

began worshiping him and there
are good reasons to suggest

that the Islamic,
Jewish and Christian God

is based upon him and his myths.

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In Greece, Amun-Ra
became known as Zeus.

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Originally Amun was the god of
the wind until he merged with

Ra and also Min, the god
of fertility or creation.

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These newfound powers made
him the greatest of the deitys

from the Nubian sun god he
adopted the symbol of the ram.

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He was the god people came
to when they wanted mercy

for their own wrong doing or
if they felt wrong done to.

He was the god who
hears the prayers,

who comes at the cry of
the poor and distressed

beware of him they said,
the people were to repeat him

to their sons and daughters.

To speak his name far and wide,

he was big and small, he
was all things yet to come,

fishes in the deep,
birds in heaven.

He never spends an entire day
angry and he was merciful.

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For many years the priests
of Amun at Thebes were so

powerful that they
were effectively

the leaders of the nation and
held power over the economy.

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They owned two thirds
of all the temples

and 90% of Egypt's ships.

The son of one high priest
was actually manipulated

onto the throne itself,

and one high priest himself
actually became Pharaoh

and ruler of the 21st dynasty.

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By the 10th century BC this
dominance began to decline

but his worship maintained.

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His influence upon the wider
world is actually massive,

he's even mentioned
in the Bible.

In Greece he became Zeus-Amon,

after the battle of Issus
Alexander the Great was declared

the son of Amun and
considered himself divine.

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The words ammonia and
ammonite are derived from Amun

because certain properties
were said to be from Amon.

We turn now to one of the
most mysterious of Egyptian

deities seen in copious movies
and works of fiction, Anubis.

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In truth the word Anubis is
the Greek name of an Egyptian

deity associated
with mummification
and the after life.

He was depicted as a canine
or a man with a canine head

and was known at the time,
as the golden jackal

or the African golden wolf.

Just like other Egyptian
deities Anubis had many roles.

He was the protector of
graves, embalmer and was later

replaced by Osiris as the
lord of the underworld.

He ushered souls into the
after life and attended the

weighing of their souls,
this act would decide whether

the dead would be allowed to
enter the realm of the dead.

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His color is black
which symbolized
rebirth from the color

of fertile silt of the Nile
and also the color of a corpse

which turns after embalming.

In the old kingdom Anubis
was the most important god

of the dead, he was replaced
in that role by Osiris

during the middle kingdom.

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It is because of
this association
with the mysteries of

death and the afterlife that
Anubis has crept strongly

into popular culture
today, in a scary way.

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In fact he was not at all
scary and helped people who had

suffered the loss of life
to go to a better place.

Our next deity is the Goddess
of warfare in lower Egypt.

In Greece she's known as Aloros,

in Egypt she was known as
Bastet and her worship began

in the second dynasty.

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In upper Egypt they worship
Sekhmet the lioness Goddess

in the same role.

And normally at the unification
of upper and lower Egypt

deities were merged but in
this case Sekhmet and Bastet

maintained their own identities.

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During the 22nd dynasty Bastet
transformed from lioness

warrior deity into a protector
deity represented as a cat.

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During later dynasty's
the deity remained

but was assigned a lesser
role in the pantheon

by bearing the name Bastet
instead of the earlier Bast.

This happened after Thebes
became the capital of ancient

Egypt during the 18th dynasty.

As they rose to great power
the priests of the temple of

Amun shifted the other
deities down the league

as their own Amun-Ra rose.

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Bastet was originally a lioness
warrior Goddess of the sun

throughout most of
ancient Egyptian history.

But later she was changed
into the cat Goddess

which is familiar today.

Greeks occupying ancient
Egypt towards the end of it's

civilization changed her
into a Goddess of the moon.

In lower Egypt she was
defender of the Pharaoh

and the later deity Ra.

Her name was associated with
the jars in which Egyptians

stored their ointment and
used as perfume, Bastet thus

gradually became regarded
as the Goddess of perfumes.

Because of this she was
regarded as the wife of Anubis

the god of embalming.

Our next deity was the most
important of all the sacred

animals in ancient Egypt.

He was worshiped in Memphis
and served as a go between

for humans and Ptah,
Osiris and Atum.

He is the bull god Apis.

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His worship is there right at
the start of Egyptian history

connected with fertility.

Archeology reveals burials
of bulls indicating that the

bull was divine long before
and possibly represented

the king himself.

His worship continued after
the Egyptians with the Greeks

and even the Romans and lasted
until the fifth century AD.

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The bull was chosen because
of its strength and virility.

It was the manifestation
of the Pharaoh.

Apis was one of the Egyptian
gods for which Alexander the

Great performed a
sacrifice during his

seizure of the country
from the Persians.

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We turn now to one of the very
earliest of Egyptian deities.

Khnum the god of the
source of the Nile.

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This was an important position
for all life along the

river relied upon
the annual flooding

to bring fertility to the land.

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He was the god who created
human children at his potter's

wheel and placed them
within the mother's womb,

he was the divine potter.

In fact he was the
third aspect of Ra,

the god of rebirth creation
and the evening sun.

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Now one of the most
significant deities in Egyptian

mythology, the god Horus.

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There are many depictions
of Horus and Egyptologists

treat them all as separate
deities although it is possible

they were all just
different manifestations

of the same deity.

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He is mostly depicted as a
falcon or falcon headed man.

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Commonly Horus is the son of
Isis and Osiris and is a rival

to Set although in the earliest
form he was their brother.

However, there is another
tradition that Hathor was

his mother and wife.

He was the god of the sky,
war and hunting.

Horus means falcon and
also the distant one

and the one who is above.

In life the Pharaoh was Horus,
in death he became Osiris,

two aspects of the same soul.

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But new Horus appeared as
a new Pharaoh appeared.

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As the representation
or embodiment of Horus

Pharaoh was divine,
a god on earth

and because Horus was produced
by Atum, the greatest,

he was part of Atum and so
therefore was the Pharaoh.

Eventually this simply
evolved into Pharaoh

becoming the son of Ra.

The myth of Horus
is very interesting

and parallels the
Christian myth.

He was born to the virgin
Goddess Isis after she collected

the dismembered parts of her
murdered husband Osiris, only

his penis was missing which
had been thrown into the Nile.

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The myths vary
but she eventually
managed to get herself

pregnant by magic.

She fled to escape her
jealous brother Set,

then gave birth to Horus.

Horus as the sky had two eyes,

his right eye was the sun
and his left the moon.

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As a falcon he flew
across the sky.

The moon was not as
bright as the sun

because he had battled with
Set who gouged out his left eye

and a new one created
to replace it.

The eye of Horus is an
ancient Egyptian symbol

of protection and royal
power from deities

in this case from Horus or Ra.

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The word for the
symbol as wadjet.

It was the eye of the one
of the earliest of Egyptian

deities, Wadjet who later
became associated with Bast,

Mut and Hathor as well.

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Wadjet was a solo deity and
this symbol began as an eye,

an all seeing eye, it was
adopted by Horus and Ra.

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Horus was a god
of war and hunting

thus he became a symbol
of majesty and power

as well as the model
of the Pharaohs.

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The Pharaohs were said to
be Horus in human form.

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Horus was given the role of
protecting humans from his

brother Set by his mother Isis.

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Set was the god of the desert

who had killed
his father Osiris.

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Over time Horus battled
many times with Set

to avenge his father and
to choose the next Pharaoh.

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The mother of Horus
is the great Isis.

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She was so widely worshiped
that her influence spread

to Greece and Rome and
indeed she is associated

with Mary the mother of Jesus.

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She's seen as the
ideal mother and wife,

she's the patron of
nature and magic,

a friend of slaves,
sinners, artists

and yet she also hears
the prayers of the rich,

maidens and rulers.

She is the protector of the dead

and Goddess of children.

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Her name means throne
and her headdress

is often depicted as a throne.

She represented the
Pharaohs power on earth

and he was her child,
he was Horus on earth,

god on earth like Jesus.

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Her parents were Geb,
the god of the earth

and Nut, the Goddess of the sky.

She married her brother Osiris.

The Nile flooded each year
from the tears of sorrow

issued forth from Isis.

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She first appears in the
fifth dynasty on a sun temple

although it is believed she
was originally a separate

deity from predynastic Egypt.

She's often depicted as
the wife or assistant of a

deceased Pharaoh and the mother
of the four sons of Horus.

These four sons protected
the canopic jars

that contained the organs
of the deceased Pharaoh.

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Her worship was carried out
in a temple known as the Isium

with daily offerings from
priests and priestesses.

These generally had a
reputation of being wise

with great healing powers, they
could also interpret dreams

and control the weather.

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Isis was associated
with the star Sirius

and its appearance was
a sign of the new year.

She was therefore associated
with rebirth and reincarnation.

One myth reveals a
slightly darker side,

here she tricks Ra into
revealing his secret name

by getting a snake to bite him.

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Only she has the antidote and
because she had his real name

she had power over him.

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Having a secret name was
important for magic spells.

Because of this she became
highly important to magicians

and magic is central
to the myth of Isis.

After the conquest of
Egypt Isis became known

as the queen of Heaven and
she merged with other mother

Goddesses, Demeter,
Astarte and Aphrodite.

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Isis spread throughout
the Roman empire

and is one reason that
the Christian Isis,

known as Mary was
accepted so easily.

The Greek antiquarian Plutarch
describes Isis as a Goddess,

exceptionally wise
and a lover of wisdom

to who as her name at
least seems to indicate

knowledge and understanding

are in the highest
degree appropriate.

Of course her husband
suffered a pretty bad fate.

Osiris was usually depicted
as the god of the underworld.

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He was also the
god of transition,

resurrection and regeneration.

He is given green skin,
a Pharaoh's beard,

mummy wrapped legs, a crown
of two large ostrich feathers,

a crook and a flail.

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He was once believed to be the
eldest son of the earth god

Geb or the son god Ra and
the earth Goddess Nut.

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He was the brother
and husband of Isis,

and his son was Horus.

Because he ruled over the dead

and because the dead were
considered to be the ones

truly living he as called
the King of the living.

He was the judge of the
dead in the afterlife

and from his place
in the underworld

he granted life to
all those things

such as vegetation
rising upwards.

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He was the lord of love,
permanently youthful,

lord of silence, and when a
Pharaoh died he became Osiris

who rose from the dead himself.

In this way they
inherited eternal life.

This was later mirrored
in the Christian myths.

Eternal life through the slain
god who rose from the dead

who was the son of Mary or Isis.

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The three aspects of Isis are
clearly laid out in the Bible

as the three Mary's and this
is why she is the mother

and lover of Jesus.

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His name probably means
powerful one or God almighty

although nobody is certain.

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His crook signifies his
role as the shepherd god,

the flail is unknown but
maybe a shepherd's whip,

pull and push.

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His green color
symbolizes rebirth.

The soul or ba of Osiris
was sometimes worshiped as a

separate deity and was known
as the soul of the lord

of the pillar of continuity.

This was the backbone of
Osiris and the Nile itself

the backbone of Egypt.

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It therefore supplied
the water, fertile silt

and vegetation for survival.

He died only to be
resurrected again each year.

This ba of Osiris was power
and also part of the word

for ram and so he is
depicted as a ram headed god.

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The living sacred ram
was in fact worshiped

and mummified as holy.

With the fall of
Egypt to the Greeks

Osiris was merged
with the Apis bull

and became Serapis and depicted
as a standard Greek god.

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His cult continued on the
island of Philae in upper Egypt

until the sixth century AD
until the Romans destroyed

the sanctuaries,
arrested the priests

and seized the divine images.

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And now for the deity
who slew Osiris, Set.

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He is the god of the desert,
storms, disaster, violence,

chaos and foreigners.

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Ra employs Set on his
solar boat to repel

the serpent of chaos, Apep.

He was a balance to Horus as
the lord of the Red Desert,

where as Horus was the lord

of the black land
or fertile soil.

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The opposites of
barren and fertility.

He killed and mutilated
his brother Osiris

Isis put him back together
and had Horus as a child.

Horus and Set did
battle many times.

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Set is the father of Anubis
and the meaning of his name

is unknown, it is likely
that it gave rise to Satan

in later Christian myth.

He's often depicted as a
strange and unknown beast.

In human form he has
a distinctive head

and sometimes with
the head of a donkey.

In the mythology of Heliopolis
like Osiris and Isis

Set was born of the sky Goddess
Nut and the earth god Geb.

Myths show Osiris
was as wise and happy

Set as the jealous brother.

His cult continued for sometime

and influenced Christian
and other religions.

We turn now to the
wise god Thoth.

He is depicted with the head
of an Ibis bird or a baboon.

He maintained the universe and
stood beside the boat of Ra.

He would later arbitrate between
the disputes of the gods.

He is associated with art,

writing,

magic,

science,

and the judgement of the dead.

His name simply means
he who is like the Ibis.

In Greece Thoth was seen
as their own god Hermes

and later his title became
the thrice great Hermes

or Hermes Trismegistus.

For hundreds of years he was
the wisest and greatest of gods

for magicians and alchemists.

As the Ibis headed
human form he represents

the reckoner of time and season.

He did however have a great
many roles in Egyptian society.

He was the mediator between
the powers of good and evil

and ensured balance.

He was the scribe of the
gods and is credited with

inventing writing and alphabets.

He reported on the weighing of
the scales in the underworld.

He was self created and master
of physical and moral law.

He calculated the
mathematics for the structure

of the motions of the heavens.

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The Egyptians believed
that without his words

the gods themselves
could not have existed.

Indeed, in the underworld
his power was equal

to that of Ra and Osiris.

He was the author of
all science, religion,

philosophy and magic.

And the Greeks said he
invented astronomy, astrology,

mathematics, geometry,
medicine, theology,

government and much more.

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In fact to them
he was the author

of all works of knowledge.

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Originally Thoth was a
moon god providing light

in the darkness and standing
beside Ra the sun god.

The myths of Egypt serve
to explain and justify

the observable world
and its many cycles,

patterns and mysteries.

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The nature of order and chaos.

The cycles of life
and death or fertility

seasons, light in the sky,
life under water,

the fate of the universe itself.

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All of this and more was
explained through the lives,

actions and statements
of the gods.

From the Earth to the Sun.

From knowledge to imagination.

The actions of the
gods governed them all.

All forces had divine
inspiration behind them.

They did not believe their
gods had animal heads

they simply used symbolism to
explain aspects of the power

and nature of the gods.

As their own writing system
of hieroglyphics was symbolic

and held multiple meanings

so did their
concepts of the gods.

They did not think
the sky was a cow

called Hathor supported
by other gods,

this simply explained
the power of that Goddess

and merged several ideas
about existence together.

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Even though there were
temples and statues

depicting the gods,

the real realm of the gods
cannot be known or imagined.

It is not accessible to humans.

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The myths create stories
to explain in human terms

what it all means.

It was in fact a
very clever devise

and one used by later
religions such as Christianity.

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The myths are in fact
never fully developed

we have to fill in
many missing blanks.

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There was a reason behind
this, a philosophical statement

saying that we simply
cannot know, as humans.

They only had general
outlines and fragments

and the gods themselves would
not pass the script test

for a Hollywood movie
because their characters

are never fully developed.

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The truth is that the
meaning is the most important

part of the myth,
not the detail.

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As long as the meaning remained

what did it matter that a
mere detail was altered?

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Many of the myths came
from earlier times

and other cultures,

they were adapted for their
own environment and people.

The same thing would
happen to the Egyptian gods

as Greece and Rome
and then Christianity

stole the ideas
and changed them.

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