A serpent guard, a Horus guard, and a Setesh guard meet on a neutral planet. It is a tense moment. The serpent guard's eyes glow. The Horus guard's beak glistens. The Setesh guard's... nose drips.
A dog enters a bar. He doesn't see anything, so he says "shall I open this door?"
(the combination of an article about a mysterious aspect of such a well known ancient god and your joke made me think of this mysterious Babylonian joke, recorded from 1700 BCE but whose meaning we can only theorize about)
Too funny.... All I could literally think about while reading the article was the Goa'uld saying "Jaffa Kree!" Maybe I will give it another year of senility and watch it all over again... should have forgotten everything by then.
Set was the god of Libya and was at war with the "good guy gods" in Egypt, so one has to assume the civilization based in Libya would be were we could correlate the answer -- and we have the contention that the Sahara has grown since the early days of Egypt, so its possible the definitive answer remains buried.
> From their distribution today, it seems that after the Flood, the aardvarks headed south-west from the Ark’s landing site “in the mountains of Ararat” (Genesis 8:4). In the 4,500 years since, aardvarks have multiplied greatly to be widespread across sub-Saharan Africa.
Yeah, I'm a fan of Egyptian mythology and enjoyed reading it, for one moment I thought the article would present some new evidence/findings to settle the debate, unfortunately that's not the case
NGL, the quote below was a nice way to end the article giving all the data we have though
> So we may not know for sure what the Set animal is, [...] And maybe that’s exactly how a god of chaos within an ordered world would want it to be.
I like to think Set's form is emergent and takes whatever form you want see, or a group of people want to see. Set sort of emerges from the chaos, and that's what his image does for me, sometimes I see a dog, sometimes an anteater and so on. I think the Egyptians probably imagine that the world is always emerging from the primal chaos, it's not something that simply occurred in the past, and it's up to us what we make of it.
I don't understand why this should be such a mystery.
Show it to a biologist or naturalist (and without the horrendous dark blue background behind the black head – didn't anyone look at the article before it was published?!), and the first response would probably be: "aardvark!" (or possibly "anteater!").
The aardvark's range covers much of the African continent; conceivably, it could have extended to Egypt, several thousand years ago.
The Greeks popularized the epithet of Jews being donkey-worshippers there is evidence that it predates this and since Set, Typhon, and Yahweh are in some aspects syncretic, by induction and by appearance I can't see how it isn't a donkey.
the problem is we have zero remains of aardvarks/anteaters in Egypt, nor any discussion of them being in the area. So it could be, but it could just as well be anything else.
if you right click and open the images in new tabs you'll be able to see them because the unfortunate blue background will be gone. in B4 "i don't see that in reader mode"
the Set animal has a snout that is more bird/reptile-like. the ears are a cipher.
As the Old Jaffa joke says:
A serpent guard, a Horus guard, and a Setesh guard meet on a neutral planet. It is a tense moment. The serpent guard's eyes glow. The Horus guard's beak glistens. The Setesh guard's... nose drips.
As the older Babylonian joke says[0]:
A dog enters a bar. He doesn't see anything, so he says "shall I open this door?"
(the combination of an article about a mysterious aspect of such a well known ancient god and your joke made me think of this mysterious Babylonian joke, recorded from 1700 BCE but whose meaning we can only theorize about)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_joke#First_recorded_exampl...
I hope it's a deadpan joke that the dog can not only speak, but does so like any other bar patron.
Too funny.... All I could literally think about while reading the article was the Goa'uld saying "Jaffa Kree!" Maybe I will give it another year of senility and watch it all over again... should have forgotten everything by then.
Same here. I read the headline, immediately guessed which god it's about, and hoped the good ol' Jaffa humor will be there waiting in the HN comments.
Glad to see it as top comment. Recognition for the classics means there's still hope for humanity yet.
Indeed
Huh. Pretty clearly a dog/jackal though, right?
Set was the god of Libya and was at war with the "good guy gods" in Egypt, so one has to assume the civilization based in Libya would be were we could correlate the answer -- and we have the contention that the Sahara has grown since the early days of Egypt, so its possible the definitive answer remains buried.
If experts have disagreed about it for longer than you’ve been alive it seems like arrogance to say it’s pretty clearly anything.
Aardvark to me. Similar snout, long ears. They were probably in the southern reaches of Egypt.
With regard to differences that could be explained by stylisation and the lack of familiarity due to it's rarity in most of Egypt.
From the article, "Egypt was conquered several times by foreign nations that the Egyptians perceived as worshiping Set."
So while the Egyptians might have seen Set as the god of Libya, the Libyan representations might not be the one that Egyptians were comparing to.
If this is not a dog then we should cast doubt over the identity of the other animals we think we know too.
They already had a jackal god in Anubis which is represented without the weird down slopping snout and squared ears.
Could be a combination of stuff too like a birds beak shoved on a cat shoved on a human body.
See also: serpopards. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpopard
it's clearly an anteater ::shrug::
anteater / aardvark looks like what Set is modeling back in the day
There is no evidence Aardvarks in egypt at that time. I think we'd probably expect at least a few aardvark bones if it was.
From creation.com:
> From their distribution today, it seems that after the Flood, the aardvarks headed south-west from the Ark’s landing site “in the mountains of Ararat” (Genesis 8:4). In the 4,500 years since, aardvarks have multiplied greatly to be widespread across sub-Saharan Africa.
Yep, timing checks out.
That’s clearly a Groening rabbit.
There is no conclusion in this article if you care about such things.
The great thing about history is that there can only be conjectures, never conclusions.
Unless you invent a time machine of course.
i meant to say there is no such thing either, but your comment changed my mind. eye opening.
Yeah, I'm a fan of Egyptian mythology and enjoyed reading it, for one moment I thought the article would present some new evidence/findings to settle the debate, unfortunately that's not the case
NGL, the quote below was a nice way to end the article giving all the data we have though
> So we may not know for sure what the Set animal is, [...] And maybe that’s exactly how a god of chaos within an ordered world would want it to be.
Is it Cerebus the aardvark perhaps?
Terrible background choice for this article!
Yes. Same image on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(deity)#/media/File:Set.sv...
I had to disable the body background-color with the web inspector to see any of the animal heads!
You can also drag the images. At least Firefox will put a white background on the dragged thumbnail.
I like to think Set's form is emergent and takes whatever form you want see, or a group of people want to see. Set sort of emerges from the chaos, and that's what his image does for me, sometimes I see a dog, sometimes an anteater and so on. I think the Egyptians probably imagine that the world is always emerging from the primal chaos, it's not something that simply occurred in the past, and it's up to us what we make of it.
Clearly he is an Irish Setter!
Borzoi?
I've heard saluki as a genuine theory
I don't understand why this should be such a mystery.
Show it to a biologist or naturalist (and without the horrendous dark blue background behind the black head – didn't anyone look at the article before it was published?!), and the first response would probably be: "aardvark!" (or possibly "anteater!").
The aardvark's range covers much of the African continent; conceivably, it could have extended to Egypt, several thousand years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark
The Greeks popularized the epithet of Jews being donkey-worshippers there is evidence that it predates this and since Set, Typhon, and Yahweh are in some aspects syncretic, by induction and by appearance I can't see how it isn't a donkey.
The Greeks were sort of ass-worshippers in their own way, its called Calliphygian and it means something like "nice ass haver"
the problem is we have zero remains of aardvarks/anteaters in Egypt, nor any discussion of them being in the area. So it could be, but it could just as well be anything else.
EDIT: also, wrong tail.
It's a pikachu!
if you right click and open the images in new tabs you'll be able to see them because the unfortunate blue background will be gone. in B4 "i don't see that in reader mode"
the Set animal has a snout that is more bird/reptile-like. the ears are a cipher.