The plagues of Egypt spoke against the various gods of Egypt.
Egypt had over 2,000 gods, but many of them had similar characteristics
and appeared all over the country by different names. Almost all gods
had one thing in common - they had a counterpart of the opposite sex
and manifested themselves on earth through animals. Thus hundreds of
birds, crocodiles, snakes, frogs, turtles, cows, cats etc. were considered
to be the living images of a particular god and a natural and indestructible
part of the environment in which people lived. You can read further
on the religion of the Egyptians here.
Plagues of Egypt |
Egyptian mythology |
Yahweh - slayer of the gods |
1st plague against
the Nile. Turning it into blood. |
The river Nile (The source of
life) |
By turning the Nile
into blood and killing the fish (supposedly protected by Hathor
and Neith), Yahweh was not only shaming these gods but showing that
sustenance only comes from the hand of Yahweh. |
Khnum - guardian of the Nile.
Khnum was the ram-headed god of Creative Pottery.
He creates everybody's bodies on his potter's wheel, shaping the
clay as it turns round and around. If you ever get dizzy spells,
that's probably why.
His wife is the froggy goddess of Childbirth
Heqet. When a clay baby is finished, they sneak it into the mother's
womb and nature takes its course. Which shows that the ancient
Egyptians weren't silly enough to believe all that nonsense about
storks and cabbage patches.
|
Hapi - spirit of the
Nile and god of fertility. |
Osiris - god of the underworld,
whose blood the Nile was considered to be. |
2nd
plague, of an immense number of frogs. |
Heqet (Heket) is Ra's daughter and wife
of Khnum. The goddess of Childbirth, she looks like a frog and
is just as good at the spawning game. Wearing a frog amulet might
help you get pregnant. Unless you're male. There's a strong possibility
that she was adopted by the Greeks under the name Hecate.
The title of "Servants
of Heqet" may have been a title applied to her priestesses
who were trained as midwives.
She was thought to be the wife of Khnum, the
god who creates men on his potter's wheel, and she gave the newly
created being the breath of life before the child was placed to
grow in the mother's womb.
|
These
goddesses were powerless to prevent these symbols of life from becoming
rotting piles of death. |
Isis - goddess of motherhood, royalty
and family commitment.
Her murdered husband was Osiris, with whom she
became pregnant in a "funeral rite" and mothered Horus,
a superhero god. Horus became the first ruler of a peaceful united
Egypt.
Isis was one of the few Egyptian gods the Greeks
took a fancy too, and she even went through to the Romans. There
was a temple built to her at Pompeii. The cult became very popular
and her consort Osiris was probably the foundation of the Roman
God Serapis.
During the Cleopatra/Anthony affair, Cleopatra
saw herself as the personification of Isis. With her departure,
the Roman Senate did its best to demolish her Egyptian shrines,
but you can't keep a good goddess down. By the time of Julius
Caesar the cult was thriving and had its own festivals.
With the Christians she happily became identified
as the Virgin Mary. The Armenian liturgy even retained the
rattling sistrum sound. Penitents crawling on a symbolic search
for Christ were only replacing the earlier devotees on the symbolic
search for Osiris.
|
3rd plague of lice (or gnats
or mosquitoes) from the dust of the earth. |
Earth deities (e.g. Akhor)
|
|
4th plague of flies. |
Khepri - the scarab (dung
beetle) god. |
A plague of flies shows failure
of the dung beetle god to do its job of burying the dung, which
stops flies from breeding in the dung. |
5th plague on the
livestock. |
Apis - the sacred bull god. A god of strength
and fertility.
His spirit was said to be present in the body
of a real bull which was kept by the Pharaoh and looked after
by his priests. At the end of the old year, the bull was slaughtered
and its flesh eaten by the Pharaoh. It was believed that the Pharaoh
would then inherit his great power. Each year the priests would
search for a new bull (with very specific markings) which would
then live a life of luxury until the ritual was repeated.
The birth of an Apis calf was a time for celebration
among ancient Egyptians, since this meant that a living god had
been born into their midst.
|
All shown to be
imposters. |
Mnevis - a bull-god symbol
of fertility. |
Hathor - the cow-like
mother goddess |
Isis (previously described)
- she wore a cow's horns on her head. |
6th plague of boils. |
Hike - god of medicine, magic and medicinal
magic.
Advisor to priestly doctors, who wouldn't even
bandage a finger without consulting him.
|
These gods were impotent to
protect even the priests from the power of Yahweh. |
7th plague of hail |
Sky deities (e.g. Shu,
Tefnut and Nut) |
|
8th plague of locusts (brought
by the wind). |
|
|
9th plague of darkness. |
Ra - the supreme deity
of Egypt, the sun-god Ra or Amon-Ra who was believed to bring light
and heat to the earth. |
|
|
Other sky gods - Horus,
Seker, Khepri, Mut and Nut. |
|
10th plague of death of the
firstborn. |
Divinity of Pharaoh - the Egyptians
believed Pharaoh was an incarnation of the sun-god and of Osiris,
the giver of life. |
Yahweh alone had absolute control
of life and death. |