Saturday, May 19, 2012

UPDATE The Ibis Apocalypse fiction - Who was Egypt's ibis god of wisdom and words of power Thoth?

Egypt's mysterious ibis god Thoth


“You believe the Stela has appeared in history at times before struggles and suffering? In the time of Rameses and the suffering of the Hebrews... and in Hitler’s Germany?”
Suffering - Old Testament - a young Jewish woman. Did that account for her interest? She searched his face as he answered, her eyes almost level with his. The intensity of her gaze made him flinch. She was quite rangy, he noted, almost matching his lanky height.
“I’m sure of it,” he said. “In fact, I believe its message is about to resurface, if it hasn’t already done so.”
“This tablet would be very ancient,” she said.
“Exceedingly. It comes from the womb of history – from an age that the ancient Egyptians called Zep Tepi.”
“Zep Tepi,” she said after him. She played with the words.
“An age before the pharaohs, when divinities like Thoth were supposed to have reigned over Egypt.”
A frown briefly disturbed the smoothness of her forehead.
“Yes, but pre- the invention of writing, surely?”
“Not necessarily. They keep pushing back the date of Egypt’s invention of hieroglyphs with new discoveries. I believe writing goes back further than Egyptologists believe.”
“I forget. You’re alternative. But people always called it a scroll - The Scroll of Thoth.”
He shook his head.
“The first books, like the Ten Commandments, were in stone and Egyptian stelae were books in stone. So-called papyrus Scrolls of Thoth appeared later in the New Kingdom.”
“Okay. But to believe in the Stela of Thoth, you’ve got to believe in Thoth. An Egyptian god with a bird’s head.”
“We don’t know who, or what, Thoth may have been,” he said. “But even putting aside the question of whether or not a race called the Neteru, or the gods, actually existed at some distant age, consider it a case of inspired agency. Like the Bible. Egyptian religion and mythology tells us that Thoth was the first example of the divine mind, the logos, or the ‘word’ of creation as Christians call it. He was known as the master of wisdom, writing and time, symbolised by both the sacred ibis and the dog-faced baboon.”
“A bird and a baboon as the god of wisdom?”
“Not so unexpected. Have you ever looked at an ibis? The curve of its beak echoes a crescent moon, or perhaps the rim of an eclipse. Watch the measured way an ibis strides, picking out small fish, snakes, frogs and insects like a master scribe judiciously selecting his words. Thoth was also the god of time and measurement. Picture the way the ibis strides the fields of Egypt, pace by measuring pace, like a scribal surveyor of ancient times re-measuring the land and setting boundaries after mud from the inundation covered the river banks.”

(Excerpt from The Ibis Apocalypse 2nd in the Egypt adventure series.) 

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