In which Usagi tackles the deep and philosophical issue of Egyptian religious pr0n
Fact: Egyptian locals really love my legs.
Admittedly, said locals are all mosquitos, sand fleas, camel fleas, and other biting insects, but rest assured, they LURVE me. Really, *really* lurve me. I have their hickies all over my vulnerable, sensitive flesh. Seriously, one amorous bug decided to leave his mark on the end of my toe. WTF. At any rate, my legs are now a cheerful explosion of red blotches, and my current goal in life is either to leap into a swimming pool of aloe vera or to engage in a vigorous rubdown using an unpeeled pineapple.
Obviously, this is a great segue for temple porn and smut in Egyptian religion!
Stuff beyond the cut is so, SO nsfw, not to mention quite tasteless. ;D
The Egyptians were very open about sex and sensuality. My mom would say they were obsessed with it, and while I think that's an exaggeration, I would say that there's no prudishness at all. Actually, in one of my Classical Studies courses at UBC, I did a paper on sex/sensuality in Egyptian love poetry... some of it is quite steamy and erotic, but very tasteful. Fortunately for the sake of comedy, there is no such taste in Egyptian mythology and temple art; instead, it's a veritable buffet of the bizarre. Like any buffet, I cannot choose just one, so here's a small sampling of some of the weirdness I've encountered.
- If, in an Egyptian relief or painting, you ever see a man and a woman sitting, facing each other, with their knees touching/overlapping, it means they are having sex. Like, right now. In living color. Oh, and usually they are accompanied by a bunch of goddesses holding up their chairs together. Apparently, Isis and Nephyths like to watch. >.>Knee fetishes and voyeurism, huzzah!
- Whenever a pharaoh or an ascendant to the throne had some sort of problem with their lineage or right to inherit, they absolutely loved to come up with their own version of the virgin birth, or, as the song goes, "I Saw Mommy Kissing A Rather Important Egyptian Deity, underneath the papyrus last night." For example, the prince who became Amenophis IV had a rather big problem in that he wasn't of pure Egyptian blood; his father was the pharaoh but his mother was from Syria (?). A pharaoh had to be of pure blood, so Amenophis did the next best thing; bribed the high priests of Luxor Temple to come up with a myth that his mother had been impregnated by Amun, king of the gods. The result is a giant frieze of Amun cozying up to the queen, then disguising himself as Tuthmosis IV (Amenophis's father's) and being led into the queen's bedchamber by Thoth. The text then says, "His dew entered her body." HAWT. It seemed to work, as most people decided that impure bloodline loses out to HAWT AMUN DEW (insert Mountain Dew advert here). Queen Hatshepsut pulled a similar trick to get around the double problem of being a woman and technically ousting her stepson; the Temple of Hatshepsut features friezes depicting Amun having HOT KNEE TOUCHING SEX with Hat's mother, then commanding some other gods to fashion his child inside the queen's stomach. What all the mothers in question thought about their kids running around claiming they had wild mad love affairs with Amun is not on record, sadly.
- There was more than a bit of weird creation centering around the various private parts of the gods. Nut, for example, is often shown consuming the sun at night and, uh, forcing it out of her, um... you get the idea. Hapi is a hermaphroditic god with a saggy female body, and was said to give birth to the Nile from his/her/its vagina. I really can't say anything about that that wouldn't be in the worst possible taste. >.> Some variations of the creation myth also have the primal mound of earth that rose up from the dark waters be all thanks to Amun and his over-active right hand (or left, who knows). And don't get me started on the Osiris myth. After getting ripped apart by Seth, his dick gets fed to a crocodile; when Isis put him back together, she decided to make him a replacement out of wood (har har) then proceeded to spend the night having sex with him. What she did with the wood after Osiris went to the underworld is up for speculation. >.> I could have sworn I also read somewhere that a variant of the Horus vs. Seth myth had homosexual overtones and involved some sort of contest about who could splut the furthest.
- But nothing quite comes up to Amun-Min, or Amun-Kent. He appears all over Egyptian art, especially in Karnak Temple in Luxor. He's shown with the crown of Amun (he's considered an aspect of Amun), a single arm upraised with the other one not visible, a single leg in profile... and a nice, shiny, erect phallus poking out of his side. Seriously, it's impossible to miss it. You could hang your coats and hats on the thing. According to the more learned guides, he is merely a fertility god, and any of the weird myths told about him are actually falsified by tourguides looking to sell merchandise. But you know what? Sod it, the myth is hilarious. According to the usually repeated myth, there once was a time when Pharaoh had to leave a city to go on campaign, and he was to take all the men with him. This would leave all the women without a protector, so he chose a man named Kent (?) to stay behind and protect the women. Obviously, this was a brilliant plan that could in no way backfire. So, a few months later, Pharaoh returned to the city to find every single woman pregnant. Please, contain your shock. >.> Pharaoh asked all the women who had impregnated them, as there were SO MANY potential suspects, but they all played dumb and said, "We have absolutely no idea." Frankly, I think they were just stringing Pharaoh along... if you couldn't put two and two together, Your Majesty, you are probably too stupid to live. Eventually, a "bad" woman confessed that it was Kent; how this made her bad, I have no idea, but perhaps it was because she spoiled the joke. Pharaoh decided to punish Kent by chopping off one arm and one leg (as opposed to, you know, the bit that actually caused the problem)... and thus, he became Amun-Kent (ie Amun-Min), the one armed, one legged, and uh, one eyed fertility god. As I said, this myth is apparently cooked up by tour guides, but screw that, that is such a mindboggling myth that it deserves to be repeated.
- not so much an art thing, but while we were looking up Amun-Min's art in the guidebook for Karnak, it also happened to mention that Egyptologists believe priestesses used to "service" a statue of Amun-Min (the mind boggles) and that, even more jaw-droppingly, there was a regular festival where the current Pharaoh would ejaculate into the Nile in order to ensure fertility. Needless to say, this provided our party with endless hilarity and wry comments regarding aim, trajectory, and general, "didn't they have anything BETTER to do?" This was further compounded by the fact that, by now at least, the Nile is a good 500m away from most of the temples, resulting in even more scarring/hilarious mental imagery. Mom muttered some highly TMI comparisons with Dad (speaking of scarring...), while I couldn't stop thinking of some sort of demented squirt gun event.
- somewhat related... if you are looking at an Egyptian stone relief of a goddess or woman, and they actually have boobs that jut out at right angles, then the image actually dates from the Greco-Roman period (ie Ptolemaic or later). This is the Greek influence on Egyptian art; they wanted to try and show the body more, as they did back home. In contrast, pure Egyptian art depicts women with the same chest curve as the men; the only differentiation is the dress, if clothed, or the fact that they add a distinctive nipple, if they are topless.
Right, I'm sure I've offended all your delicate sensibilities by now. ;-) Just remember, if two people have their knees touching, they're obviously having sex. Keep this in mind as you walk through life, and I'm sure it will guide you and set you right. ;-)
Admittedly, said locals are all mosquitos, sand fleas, camel fleas, and other biting insects, but rest assured, they LURVE me. Really, *really* lurve me. I have their hickies all over my vulnerable, sensitive flesh. Seriously, one amorous bug decided to leave his mark on the end of my toe. WTF. At any rate, my legs are now a cheerful explosion of red blotches, and my current goal in life is either to leap into a swimming pool of aloe vera or to engage in a vigorous rubdown using an unpeeled pineapple.
Obviously, this is a great segue for temple porn and smut in Egyptian religion!
Stuff beyond the cut is so, SO nsfw, not to mention quite tasteless. ;D
The Egyptians were very open about sex and sensuality. My mom would say they were obsessed with it, and while I think that's an exaggeration, I would say that there's no prudishness at all. Actually, in one of my Classical Studies courses at UBC, I did a paper on sex/sensuality in Egyptian love poetry... some of it is quite steamy and erotic, but very tasteful. Fortunately for the sake of comedy, there is no such taste in Egyptian mythology and temple art; instead, it's a veritable buffet of the bizarre. Like any buffet, I cannot choose just one, so here's a small sampling of some of the weirdness I've encountered.
- If, in an Egyptian relief or painting, you ever see a man and a woman sitting, facing each other, with their knees touching/overlapping, it means they are having sex. Like, right now. In living color. Oh, and usually they are accompanied by a bunch of goddesses holding up their chairs together. Apparently, Isis and Nephyths like to watch. >.>Knee fetishes and voyeurism, huzzah!
- Whenever a pharaoh or an ascendant to the throne had some sort of problem with their lineage or right to inherit, they absolutely loved to come up with their own version of the virgin birth, or, as the song goes, "I Saw Mommy Kissing A Rather Important Egyptian Deity, underneath the papyrus last night." For example, the prince who became Amenophis IV had a rather big problem in that he wasn't of pure Egyptian blood; his father was the pharaoh but his mother was from Syria (?). A pharaoh had to be of pure blood, so Amenophis did the next best thing; bribed the high priests of Luxor Temple to come up with a myth that his mother had been impregnated by Amun, king of the gods. The result is a giant frieze of Amun cozying up to the queen, then disguising himself as Tuthmosis IV (Amenophis's father's) and being led into the queen's bedchamber by Thoth. The text then says, "His dew entered her body." HAWT. It seemed to work, as most people decided that impure bloodline loses out to HAWT AMUN DEW (insert Mountain Dew advert here). Queen Hatshepsut pulled a similar trick to get around the double problem of being a woman and technically ousting her stepson; the Temple of Hatshepsut features friezes depicting Amun having HOT KNEE TOUCHING SEX with Hat's mother, then commanding some other gods to fashion his child inside the queen's stomach. What all the mothers in question thought about their kids running around claiming they had wild mad love affairs with Amun is not on record, sadly.
- There was more than a bit of weird creation centering around the various private parts of the gods. Nut, for example, is often shown consuming the sun at night and, uh, forcing it out of her, um... you get the idea. Hapi is a hermaphroditic god with a saggy female body, and was said to give birth to the Nile from his/her/its vagina. I really can't say anything about that that wouldn't be in the worst possible taste. >.> Some variations of the creation myth also have the primal mound of earth that rose up from the dark waters be all thanks to Amun and his over-active right hand (or left, who knows). And don't get me started on the Osiris myth. After getting ripped apart by Seth, his dick gets fed to a crocodile; when Isis put him back together, she decided to make him a replacement out of wood (har har) then proceeded to spend the night having sex with him. What she did with the wood after Osiris went to the underworld is up for speculation. >.> I could have sworn I also read somewhere that a variant of the Horus vs. Seth myth had homosexual overtones and involved some sort of contest about who could splut the furthest.
- But nothing quite comes up to Amun-Min, or Amun-Kent. He appears all over Egyptian art, especially in Karnak Temple in Luxor. He's shown with the crown of Amun (he's considered an aspect of Amun), a single arm upraised with the other one not visible, a single leg in profile... and a nice, shiny, erect phallus poking out of his side. Seriously, it's impossible to miss it. You could hang your coats and hats on the thing. According to the more learned guides, he is merely a fertility god, and any of the weird myths told about him are actually falsified by tourguides looking to sell merchandise. But you know what? Sod it, the myth is hilarious. According to the usually repeated myth, there once was a time when Pharaoh had to leave a city to go on campaign, and he was to take all the men with him. This would leave all the women without a protector, so he chose a man named Kent (?) to stay behind and protect the women. Obviously, this was a brilliant plan that could in no way backfire. So, a few months later, Pharaoh returned to the city to find every single woman pregnant. Please, contain your shock. >.> Pharaoh asked all the women who had impregnated them, as there were SO MANY potential suspects, but they all played dumb and said, "We have absolutely no idea." Frankly, I think they were just stringing Pharaoh along... if you couldn't put two and two together, Your Majesty, you are probably too stupid to live. Eventually, a "bad" woman confessed that it was Kent; how this made her bad, I have no idea, but perhaps it was because she spoiled the joke. Pharaoh decided to punish Kent by chopping off one arm and one leg (as opposed to, you know, the bit that actually caused the problem)... and thus, he became Amun-Kent (ie Amun-Min), the one armed, one legged, and uh, one eyed fertility god. As I said, this myth is apparently cooked up by tour guides, but screw that, that is such a mindboggling myth that it deserves to be repeated.
- not so much an art thing, but while we were looking up Amun-Min's art in the guidebook for Karnak, it also happened to mention that Egyptologists believe priestesses used to "service" a statue of Amun-Min (the mind boggles) and that, even more jaw-droppingly, there was a regular festival where the current Pharaoh would ejaculate into the Nile in order to ensure fertility. Needless to say, this provided our party with endless hilarity and wry comments regarding aim, trajectory, and general, "didn't they have anything BETTER to do?" This was further compounded by the fact that, by now at least, the Nile is a good 500m away from most of the temples, resulting in even more scarring/hilarious mental imagery. Mom muttered some highly TMI comparisons with Dad (speaking of scarring...), while I couldn't stop thinking of some sort of demented squirt gun event.
- somewhat related... if you are looking at an Egyptian stone relief of a goddess or woman, and they actually have boobs that jut out at right angles, then the image actually dates from the Greco-Roman period (ie Ptolemaic or later). This is the Greek influence on Egyptian art; they wanted to try and show the body more, as they did back home. In contrast, pure Egyptian art depicts women with the same chest curve as the men; the only differentiation is the dress, if clothed, or the fact that they add a distinctive nipple, if they are topless.
Right, I'm sure I've offended all your delicate sensibilities by now. ;-) Just remember, if two people have their knees touching, they're obviously having sex. Keep this in mind as you walk through life, and I'm sure it will guide you and set you right. ;-)