Aten (Aton, Yiten) - "Sun's Disk" Aten is the physically visible sun, the yellow sphere in earth's sky that can fructify or scorch. The Aten-disk is venerated as a form of Shu, Ra, or Heru from the late Middle Kingdom onward and was not, as some have erroneously stated, "invented" by New Kingdom pharaoh Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten. However, beginning with Akhenaten's father, Amenhotep III, Aten enjoyed a higher level of worship, and during Akhenaten's reign, for reasons not entirely clear in the historic record, Akhenaten declared all other Names invalid and Their priests useless, and ordered Kemet to worship him as the "Sole One of Aten," who would then take the people's prayers to His Father (he did not order them to worship Aten; the texts state that only Akhenaten is qualified to do this as the Disk's intermediary). Akhenaten's religious reforms, which did not represent monotheism as has been often suggested (Akhenaten offers Ma'at in friezes, and some of his hymns refer to "Ra-Heru-akhety in His Name of Shu Who is in Aten," indicating Akhenaten's "destruction" of other Names was selective), did not long outlast him; a backlash against the Atenist movement by the priesthood of Amen-Ra after Akhenaten's death resulted in the loss of much of this Name's information.

Set (Sutekh; G/R Seth) - (unknown, derived possibly either from the word "to dazzle" (setken) or "stabilizing staff/pillar" (setes)) In the oldest mythologies, Set is "He Before Whom the Sky Shakes," a sky-Netjer like Heru, and specifically of the storm, with lightning and thunder His heralds. Eventually, because of His natural opposition to His brother/nephew Heru, and also because during the Second Intermediate Period, invading Hyksos forces identified their own chief god with Him, Set's reputation changed. Into the New Kingdom with the rise of the cult of Wesir, which posited Set (as lord of the desert which crept into the arable land at the end of every year) as the "murderer" of the Lord of the Black Land, Set was literally demonized, and in late periods was identified with Apep as a symbol of complete destruction and with later religions' concepts of "the Devil," including both Greek Typhon and Hebraic "Satan." It is important to note that both are non-Kemetic understandings - Set at all times, while not exactly a "nice guy," is a necessary force in the universe - that of strength and violent force - and in Kemetic myth, even Ra acknowledges this, by awarding the post of guardian of the Boat of Millions of Years to Set after the kingship is given to Heru, because Set "is the only one strong enough to do it." Set is symbolized by the ass and the hippopotamus and the pig, and sometimes the jackal (and at least theoretically the hyena); however, His main theophany is an unknown canid with square ears and a forked tail, often called simply the "Set-animal," whose species has been a mystery to Egyptologists. In late 1996, a large mammal with square ears and a forked tail allegedly was caught and killed in Upper Egypt. Called "salawa" by the locals, the animal has been theorized to be part of the family from which the South African Cape Hunting Dog comes; its extreme size and appearance lend credence to the folktales surrounding this newly-discovered desert mammal as "Set."

Anubis (Anpu) Egyptian god of the dead, represented as a black jackal or dog, or as a man with the head of a dog or jackal. His parents were usually given as Re in combination with either Nephthys or Isis. After the early period of the Old Kingdom, he was superseded by Osiris as god of the dead, being relegated to a supporting role as a god of the funeral cult and of the care of the dead. The black colour represented the colour of human corpses after they had undergone the embalming process. In the Book of the Dead, he was depicted as presiding over the weighing of the heart of the deceased in the Hall of the Two Truths. In his role as psychopomp he was referred to as the "conductor of souls". The Greeks later identified him with their god Hermes, resulting in the composite deity Hermanubis. His principal sanctuary was at the necropolis in Memphis and in other cities. Anubis was also known as Khenty- Imentiu - "chief of the westerners" - a reference to the Egyptian belief that the realm of the dead lay to the west in association with the setting sun, and to their custom of building cemeteries on the west bank of the Nile.

Copyright © 2003 Lisa Sevier.All Rights Reserved