Being able to tell the difference between the many Gods and Goddesses of ancient Egypt can be difficult. Many of their traits overlap and, with the progress of time, many of them have changed from the Old Kingdom up to the Grecian occupation. So let’s look at some of the more common Gods and how to identify them.
Osiris
Osiris is quite identifiable. He is a God with green skin (though this trait is shared with several others) and he bears the white crown of Upper Egypt. He is also represented as a mummified man, meaning he is clad in white linen wrappings. He wears a collar, a royal beard, and holds a crook and flail. His name in hieroglyphs is easy to remember as it is only the Eye of Ra, the throne of Egypt, and then the determinative that this is a royal name.
Thoth
Thoth is also a very identifiable God because he is one of the only Gods with an ibis head. However, he is also sometimes portrayed as a full baboon, but rarely as a human with a baboon head. He often carries an ankh with him. Above him, he can sometimes wear the Atef crown—the double crown of lower and upper Egypt—but commonly bears a lunar disk type crown that rests on a crescent moon. His name in hieroglyphs can be quite long but there is, fortunately, a short version which is very easy to identify, as it is made up of an ibis, a loaf of bread, and two slash marks. Like Osiris and all other gods, there is a determinative that shows this is a God’s name.
Used traditionally as an amulet worn, carried, or used as an offering. It is modeled after a plant called wadj, meaning green. Meant to invoke vitality and regeneration.
TheRosetta Stone was found on July 19, 1799, during Napoleon Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign by French soldiers near the town of Rosetta (el-Rashid, about 65 km north of Alexandria). It contained fragments of passages written in three different scripts: Greek,Egyptian hieroglyphicsandEgyptian demotic.
On Napoleon’s defeat, the Rosetta Stone became the property of the British under the terms of the Capitulation of Alexandria (1801) along with other antiquities that the French had found. Before being put on public display, the stone was sent to the Society of AntiquariesinLondon to be copied. Four plaster-cast copies were made and distributed to four universities: Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Dublin. Hundreds of prints were produced and spread across Britain, sent to both individuals and to institutions. Direct copies were also made from the stone itself; ink was smeared over its surface before paper was laid down on it and the inscriptions were coloured in white chalk to make them more legible. Several scholars made progress with the initial hieroglyphics analysis but it was 20 years, however, before the transliteration of the Egyptian scripts was announced by Jean-François Champollion in Paris in 1822.
The decoding of the Rosetta Stone was a massive advance. It provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs and the chronology of Egyptian history.
Today the Rosetta Stone is an archaeological icon and one of the treasures of the British Museum.
Pictures 1-2: A copy of an engraving of the Rosetta Stone, done in the Society of Antiquaries in 1801
