Download or read book The Cult of the APIs Bull written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-12-28 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes ancient accounts *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading Africa may have given rise to the first human beings, and Egypt probably gave rise to the first great civilizations, which continue to fascinate modern societies across the globe nearly 5,000 years later. From the Library and Lighthouse of Alexandria to the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Ancient Egyptians produced several wonders of the world, revolutionized architecture and construction, created some of the world's first systems of mathematics and medicine, and established language and art that spread across the known world. With world-famous leaders like King Tut and Cleopatra, it's no wonder that today's world has so many Egyptologists. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of ancient Egyptian civilization was its inception from the ground up, as the ancient Egyptians had no prior civilization which they could use as a template. In fact, ancient Egypt itself became a template for the civilizations that followed. The Greeks and the Romans were so impressed with Egyptian culture that they often attributed many attributes of their own culture - usually erroneously - to the Egyptians. With that said, some minor elements of ancient Egyptian culture were, indeed, passed on to later civilizations. Egyptian statuary appears to have had an initial influence on the Greek version, and the ancient Egyptian language continued long after the pharaonic period in the form of the Coptic language. To the ancient Egyptians, the gods and goddesses were all around them and could be seen daily in nature. Nearly every animal found in ancient Egypt, both domestic and wild, were associated with a god or goddess, which can be seen in Egyptian art where deities are often depicted with human bodies and animal heads. Or sometimes the deities are portrayed as complete animals. Since deities were associated with certain animals, all animals of a specific species were given divine and protected status. The reverence that ancient Egyptians had for certain animals evolved during the long duration of Pharaonic history until by the Late Period animals of specific species were mummified by the thousands as offerings for their associated deities. For instance, ibises were mummified for the god Thoth, while cats were mummified for the goddess Bastet. Modern archaeologists have uncovered most of the Late Period animal mummies in the region near the modern village of Saqqara, which has become known as the "Sacred Animal Necropolis." Although most of the animal mummies discovered in the Sacred Animal Necropolis of Saqqara are the thousands of nameless ibises, falcons, crocodiles, and cats, the region was also home to another, more important animal cult. By the time the Greeks took control of Egypt in the late 4th century BCE, the Apis cult was certainly one of the most influential, if not the most influential, of all the many different religious institutions that existed in the country at that time. Through a combination of modern archaeological excavations as well as Egyptian texts and classical historical accounts, the meaning, scope, and importance of the Apis cult can be better understood.
Download or read book A History of Research Into Ancient Egyptian Culture in Southeast Europe written by Mladen Tomorad and published by . This book was released on 2015-02-27 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of Ancient Egypt has been studied in the region of Southeast Europe since the end of the nineteenth century. In some of the countries this was not the case for various reasons, but mainly because of the undeveloped scholarly capabilities and institutions, insufficient funds for archaeological research in Egypt, and the lack of cooperation with scholars from other countries. From the 1960s, however, this situation has changed for the better, firstly with the numerous publications of the diffusion of the Ancient Egyptian cults during Graeco-Roman period, and then with publications (articles, catalogues, books) on Ancient Egyptian collections in various museum institutions located in Southeast Europe. From the early 1990s one can trace the increased production of various scholarly papers in which researchers from Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Romania, and Bulgaria not only researched the Egyptian cults in the Roman Empire, but also on the various aspects of history, religion and literature of Ancient Egypt. Their work, however, was mostly unknown to the scholars outside the region primarily because the results were written in the native languages. This book will try to give a review of the history of the studies of Ancient Egypt done in Southeast Europe, and present some of the latest research. The book comprises a selection of papers in which scholars from various institutions of the region reviewed the different aspects of past studies and the development of the research of the Ancient Egypt in some countries, along with recent research in the field. We hope that this publication will be useful for all scholars who are unfamiliar with the historiography of this region.
Download or read book Sarapis under the Early Ptolemies written by John Stambaugh and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-08-24 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Preliminary material -- INTRODUCTION -- THE HELLENISTIC ICONOGRAPHY OF SARAPIS -- SARAPIS AND PLUTO -- SARAPIS AND OSIRIS -- SARAPIS AND DIONYSUS -- SARAPIS AND THE APIS BULL -- SARAPIS AND APIS THE KING -- SARAPIS AND ASCLEPIUS -- LATER HELLENISTIC IDENTIFICATIONS -- CONCLUSION -- Plates I-IV.
Download or read book The Ancient Worlds Most Mysterious Religious Cults written by Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-01-08 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes ancient accounts *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading Africa may have given rise to the first human beings, and Egypt probably gave rise to the first great civilizations, which continue to fascinate modern societies across the globe nearly 5,000 years later. From the Library and Lighthouse of Alexandria to the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Ancient Egyptians produced several wonders of the world, revolutionized architecture and construction, created some of the world's first systems of mathematics and medicine, and established language and art that spread across the known world. With world-famous leaders like King Tut and Cleopatra, it's no wonder that today's world has so many Egyptologists. To the ancient Egyptians, the gods and goddesses were all around them and could be seen daily in nature. Nearly every animal found in ancient Egypt, both domestic and wild, were associated with a god or goddess, which can be seen in Egyptian art where deities are often depicted with human bodies and animal heads. The Apis cult began early in Egyptian history and gradually rose to prominence until, like the other animal cults, it became the object of popular veneration for all Egyptians. Despite gaining popularity with Egyptians of the lower classes, the Apis cult was also patronized by all of Egypt's kings, which included foreign kings who wanted to legitimize their rule in the eyes of the Egyptian people. Ancient Greece and its mythology has fascinated people for thousands of years, and few elements have intrigued people quite like the Eleusinian Mysteries, which the Greeks believed transformed the initiates and gave them knowledge that eased both the living of life on earth and allayed fears of death, allowing an acceptance of their ultimate fate. The influence of the Eleusinian Mysteries was also far reaching; for example, the Telesterion is reminiscent of the labyrinthine, symbolic structures that can be found all over pre-historic Europe, ranging from those in Ireland to Malta and Crete to the Shetlands. The larger precinct of Eleusis, combining as it did caves, terraces and buildings carved into the rock again, all echo that ancient past. The external journey of the initiate is mirrored in his internal journey, and what can be seen is that the spiritual torch of classical Greece, as exemplified in these rites, hides the much older worship of deities. It was the spirit of those older gods and goddesses that ultimately pervaded Eleusis. In the early Roman Empire, as Christianity struggled to gain a foothold and survive in the polytheistic pool of Roman theology, its greatest rivals weren't the Caesars or the Roman aristocracy but rather the faith and devotion of the common Roman legionary. The faith of these men was centered on the god Mithras, who, they believed, led them to victory upon the field of battle and had done so for nearly four centuries. Despite this widespread belief among soldiers, the cult of Mithras was not a creation of the Romans, although they would eventually add their own rituals and mysteries to the ancient religion. In fact, the Mithraic religion was an Indo-Persian creation, a theology which managed to travel from India and back into the Hellenic and Roman world by way of Alexander the Great's conquest of the Persian Empire. Of course, if the Mithras cult began as a Roman interpretation of some elements of Zoroastrian theology, then new questions are raised. Perhaps the most obvious question is why the Romans would adopt one of their biggest enemies' gods. The answer to this question may never be revealed, but the fact that the Romans worshiped Mithra demonstrates the strength and vitality of foreign cultures, even when Rome conquered them.
Download or read book Memphis Under the Ptolemies written by Dorothy J. Thompson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on archaeological findings and an unusual combination of Greek and Egyptian evidence, Dorothy Thompson examines the economic life and multicultural society of the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis in the era between Alexander and Augustus. Now thoroughly revised and updated, this masterful account is essential reading for anyone interested in ancient Egypt or the Hellenistic world. The relationship of the native population with the Greek-speaking immigrants is illustrated in Thompson's analysis of the position of Memphite priests within the Ptolemaic state. Egyptians continued to control mummification and the cult of the dead; the undertakers of the Memphite necropolis were barely touched by things Greek. The cult of the living Apis bull also remained primarily Egyptian; yet on death the bull, deified as Osorapis, became Sarapis for the Greeks. Within this god's sacred enclosure, the Sarapieion, is found a strange amalgam of Greek and Egyptian cultures.
Download or read book The Rise and Development of the Solar Cult and Architecture in Ancient Egypt written by Massimiliano Nuzzolo and published by . This book was released on 2021-08-04 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume joins together the proceedings of the three workshops held in Prague on December 15, 2017, December 10, 2018 and June 25-26, 2019, within the framework of the research project (The rise and development of the solar cult and architecture in Third Millennium BC Egypt) launched in 2017 at the Czech Institute of Egyptology - Charles University, Prague, under the auspices of the Czech Science Foundation - Grant Agency of the Czech Republic. The key aim of the project was to contribute to the study of the dynamics of development and featuring of the sun cult in ancient Egypt, as well as of the evolution of some related topics, such as royal ideology and funerary texts. The contributions span all periods of ancient Egyptian history and bring together scholars dealing with diverse geographic areas, from the capital site of Memphis, with its huge necropolis, to the southernmost and liminal area of Elephantine. Previously unpublished data are also presented in the volume, including new research on the Palermo Stone and the royal annals; results of latest archaeological campaigns in Abusir, Dahshur and Heliopolis; and new analyses of the Pyramid Texts and their reappropriation and renegotiation in later phases of Egyptian history.
Download or read book Religious Practice and Cultural Construction of Animal Worship in Egypt from the Early Dynastic to the New Kingdom written by Angelo Colonna and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2021-10-21 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study presents an articulated historical interpretation of Egyptian ‘animal worship’ from the Early Dynastic to the New Kingdom, and offers a new understanding of its chronological development through a fresh review of pertinent archaeological and textual data.
Download or read book Isis Pelagia Images Names and Cults of a Goddess of the Seas written by Laurent Bricault and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-11-11 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Isis Pelagia, Laurent Bricault offers a new interpretation of many of the various sources on Isis as a goddess of the seas in the Graeco-Roman world.
Download or read book Temple of the World written by Miroslav Verner and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the prominence of ancient temples in the landscape of Egypt, books about them are surprisingly rare; this new and essential publication from a prominent Czech scholar answers the need for a study that goes beyond temple architecture to examine the spiritual, economic and political aspects of these specific institutions and the dominant roles they played. Miroslav Verner presents a deeper and more complex study of major ancient Egyptian religious centers, their principal temples, their rise and decline, their religious doctrines, cults, rituals, feasts, and mysteries. Also discussed are the various categories of priests, the organization of the priesthood, and its daily services and customs. Each chapter offers the reader essential and up-to-date information about temple complexes and the history of their archaeological exploration, in the context of the spiritual dimension and cultural legacy of ancient Egypt.
Download or read book Where Dreams May Come 2 vol set written by Gil Renberg and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2017-06-01 with total page 1130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Gil H. Renberg analyzes in detail the vast range of sources for “incubation,” dream-divination at a divinity’s sanctuary or shrine, beginning in Sumerian times but primarily focussing on the Greeks and Greco-Roman Egypt.
Download or read book Gods and Men in Egypt written by Françoise Dunand and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In their wide-ranging interpretation of the religion of ancient Egypt, Françoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coche explore how, over a period of roughly 3500 years, the Egyptians conceptualized their relations with the gods. Drawing on the insights of anthropology, the authors discuss such topics as the identities, images, and functions of the gods; rituals and liturgies; personal forms of piety expressing humanity's need to establish a direct relation with the divine; and the afterlife, a central feature of Egyptian religion. That religion, the authors assert, was characterized by the remarkable continuity of its ritual practices and the ideas of which they were an expression.Throughout, Dunand and Zivie-Coche take advantage of the most recent archaeological discoveries and scholarship. Gods and Men in Egypt is unique in its coverage of Egyptian religious expression in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Written with nonspecialist readers in mind, it is largely concerned with the continuation of Egypt's traditional religion in these periods, but it also includes fascinating accounts of Judaism in Egypt and the appearance and spread of Christianity there.
Download or read book The Power of the Bull written by Michael Rice and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Everyone has heard of the Minotaur in the labyrinth on Crete and many know that the Greek gods would adopt the guise of a bull to seduce mortal women. But what lies behind these legends? The Power of the Bull discusses mankind's enduring obsession with bulls. The bull is an almost universal symbol throughout Indo-European cultures. Bull cults proliferated in the Middle East and in many parts of North Africa, and one cult, Mithraism, was the greatest rival to Christianity in the Roman Empire. The Cults are divergent yet have certain core elements in common. Michael Rice argues that the ancient bulls were the supreme sacrificial animal. An examination of evidence from earliest prehistory onwards reveals the bull to be a symbol of political authority, sexual potency, economic wealth and vast subterranean powers. In some areas representations of the bull have varied little from earliest times, in others it has changed vastly over centuries. This volume provides a well-illustrated and accessible analysis of the exceptionally rich artistic inheritance associated with the bull.
Download or read book The Apis Bull written by C. Brooks and published by Publish America. This book was released on 2006-06 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Apis Bull is a novel about an embittered veteran returning home after World War II to take up where he had left off two years before, that of farming along with his dominating father and an unloving mother. During one of his military assignments, Doyle Cutteridge had been introduced to an ancient Egyptian cult of the Apis Bulls. Apis enters into the farmeras life back in Indiana. The handsome artistic farmer, while attempting to work in partnership with his father, becomes romantically involved with an ambitious, independent city girl with an ugly secret. As Doyle and Abby struggle to find their destiny with each other in the changing world of post-World War II, they are forced to cope with a sudden tragedy that compromises their future relationship. What brilliant creation caused a bizarre reaction that broke the spell of repressed guilt and desire?
Download or read book A History of World Egyptology written by Andrew Bednarski and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-05-27 with total page 1135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A History of World Egyptology is a ground-breaking reference work that traces the study of ancient Egypt over the past 150 years. Global in purview, it enlarges our understanding of how and why people have looked, and continue to look, into humankind's distant past through the lens of the enduring allure of ancient Egypt. Written by an international team of scholars, the volume investigates how territories around the world have engaged with, and have been inspired by, ancient Egypt and its study, and how that engagement has evolved over time. Chapters present a specific territory from different perspectives, including institutional and national, while examining a range of transnational links as well. The volume thus touches on multiple strands of scholarship, embracing not only Egyptology, but also social history, the history of science and reception studies. It will appeal to amateurs and professionals with an interest in the histories of Egypt, archaeology and science.
Download or read book A History of Research Into Ancient Egyptian Culture in Southeast Europe written by Mladen Tomorad and published by Archaeopress Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2014-03-20 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book will try to give a review of the history of the studies of Ancient Egypt done in Southeast Europe, and present some of the latest research. The book comprises a selection of papers in which scholars from various institutions of the region reviewed the different aspects of past studies along with recent research in the field.
Download or read book Hidden Religion written by Micah Issitt and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering secret societies, mysterious ancient traditions, and the often-mistaken history of the world's religious symbols, this book takes readers on a tour through the fascinating world of religious symbolism and reveals the most mysterious and misunderstood facets of religion. Hidden Religion: The Greatest Mysteries and Symbols of the World's Religious Beliefs not only explores the history and origins of widely recognizable symbols, like the Christian cross and the Star of David, but also introduces readers to more obscure symbols from religious traditions around the world—even defunct ones like those of the ancient Aztec and Mayan societies. In addition, the book discusses the "religious secrets" found in the major religions, including secret societies of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. Containing more than 170 entries, the encyclopedia is organized by religious category, such as Abrahamic, East Asian, and African Diasporic religions, then alphabetically within each category. Each entry is prefaced with a short introduction that explains where and when the religious tradition originated and describes the religion today. This information is followed by an analysis of the historical development and use of symbols along with an explanation of connections between symbols used by different religions, such as shared astrological symbolism in the form of moon, sun, or star motifs.
Download or read book Religion and Magic in Ancient Egypt written by Rosalie David and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2002-10-03 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient Egyptians believed that the Nile - their life source - was a divine gift. Religion and magic permeated their civilization, and this book provides a unique insight into their religious beliefs and practices, from 5000 BC to the 4th century AD, when Egyptian Christianity replaced the earlier customs. Arranged chronologically, this book provides a fascinating introduction to the world of half-human/ half-animal gods and goddesses; death rituals, the afterlife and mummification; the cult of sacred animals, pyramids, magic and medicine. An appendix contains translations of Ancient Eygtian spells.
