Ancient menace and the echoes of supernatural beings haunt this Egypt fiction series.
Anson Hunter, fiction's Egyptologist, quotes a text from the eighteenth Nome of Upper Egypt that describes a whole necropolis of buried gods.
The gods lived and died, all except the High God, according to the Egyptians.
A copy of the Turin
Papyrus documents the life spans of Egypt's gods in a detailed list. It
records that these supreme beings enjoyed life spans of between 200 and
3,126 years. If you can conceive, even for a moment, that they existed,
then who were they? These were the First Timers of the age of Zep Tepi.
This was a time when Egypt was ruled by a race of so-called gods known
as the Neteru, some humanoid, some hybrids.
Of course there have been monsters to tease us, like the Topkapi hybrid.
Authorities in charge
of antiquities in the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul found a mystery
when they examined an Egyptian mummy included in their collection - a
child in a wooden sarcophagus. Under the linen wrappings and their
puzzled gaze they found a small crocodile joined to a boy. What was this
strange creature? A joke, a trick pulled on posterity by the ancients?
Was the Topkapi freak the spawn of ancient
god-seed? Boy and crocodile? Egyptologists dismissed it as an ancient
hoax or practical joke. Others saw the interment as an act of veneration
in honour of Sobek, the crocodile god of Egypt who had cult centres in
Kom Ombo and more importantly the Faiyum, around ancient Lake Moeris.
A croc boy? It
sparked some sensationalist debate. Had a race of so-called gods and
demigods of ancient Egypt actually existed, as Greek historians
attested, an unearthly strain, many with heads of lions, jackals,
crocodiles, snakes, cows, rams, and birds? Perhaps the reptile boy was
an example of a short-lived offspring from this distant epoch. Or the
rest of the boy was eaten by a crocodile. (The Smiting Texts.)
UPDATE: See a more detailed report and image of this hybrid mummy - thanks to Karl Shuker, Zoologist and media writer. Here's a link
UPDATE: See a more detailed report and image of this hybrid mummy - thanks to Karl Shuker, Zoologist and media writer. Here's a link
