Egyptian symbols of life and death?

be...@ix.netcom.com

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Dec 29, 1996, 3:00:00 AM12/29/96

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The symbol of life is the ankh or cross with a loop at the top. Does
anyone know the symbol of death?

Thomas

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Dec 29, 1996, 3:00:00 AM12/29/96

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It's a small owl called HORUS, usually inconspicuous.

be...@ix.netcom.com wrote in article
<5a4epf$l...@sjx-ixn10.ix.netcom.com>...

Kate Lewis

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Dec 29, 1996, 3:00:00 AM12/29/96

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In article <01bbf52f$d9f068e0$925c...@aegypt.ix.netcom.com>, Thomas
<aeg...@ix.netcom.com> writes

>It's a small owl called HORUS, usually inconspicuous.
>
>

Horus is a falcon headed God. He was the national God and the sun God.
The pharoah was his reincarnation on earth. None of this has much to do
with death. How is he concerned with death ?
>>

--
Kate Lewis

Kate Lewis

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Dec 29, 1996, 3:00:00 AM12/29/96

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In article <5a4epf$l...@sjx-ixn10.ix.netcom.com>, be...@ix.netcom.com
writes

>The symbol of life is the ankh or cross with a loop at the top. Does
>anyone know the symbol of death?
>

I could be making a fool of myself here but I don`t think there was one.
The Egyptians believed in an afterlife if you were deemed unworthy for
this you were wholly consumed, no pert of you lived on but this was to
the best of my knowledge not represented pictorially by any one symbol.
Please educate me someone else if I am wrong in this.
--
Kate Lewis

Jacques Kinnaer

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Dec 31, 1996, 3:00:00 AM12/31/96

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Where did you get that? Horus is the LIVING son of Osiris. He is under
no condition to be considered as a symbol of death!

Cat Thériault

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Dec 31, 1996, 3:00:00 AM12/31/96

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Kate Lewis writes,

<I could be making a fool of myself here but I don`t think there

<was one... to the best of my knowledge not represented

<pictorially by any one symbol.

I agree ... to the best of my knowledge there are no symbols of
death per se, only depictions of the gods & demigods associated
with the final judgement.
Cat

--
Cat

Michel Bardiaux

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Dec 31, 1996, 3:00:00 AM12/31/96

to Kate Lewis

I think Thomas might actually be speaking of the 'Ba'. In one of the
most famous pages of the 'Book of the Dead', the 'Weighing of the Soul',
we see both the Devourer (mentionned in another of your posts) and a
small (hence 'inconspicuous'?) human-headed bird representing the 'Ba'
of the deceased.

As for a symbol of death, equivalent e.g. to what Judeo-Christian
people see in a skull, I do not think there was one. Egyptians thought
of life continuing 'somewhere else', in a realm that was essentially a
kind of mirror image of the 'normal' one. So many symbols of 'life'
appear in a funerary context - like the ankh.

However, there were conventional representations for being deceased:
being called 'the Osiris xxx', being shown in statuary or painting
dresses in an Osirian shroud,...

--
Michel Bardiaux
UsrConsult S.P.R.L. Rue Margot, 37 B-1457 Nil St Vincent
Tel : +32 10 65.44.15 Fax : +32 10 65.44.10

Normandi

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Jan 1, 1997, 3:00:00 AM1/1/97

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Actually, if the hieroglyph for life is the ankh, the hieroglyphs for
death--from what I can find-- are:
mut (the vulture goddess perhaps), but also the signs for M and T, which
are an owl and a loaf of bread, occasionally followed by another
hieroglyph of the sparrow.
The other word is menat, which is cognative of the word men for "hidden,
or unknown" and a final ending glyph of the lion-headed funeral bier.
There was no one single hieroglyph that meant death, but apparently there
were two kinds of words for death.

Jacques Kinnaer

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Jan 3, 1997, 3:00:00 AM1/3/97

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> Horus is a falcon headed God. He was the national God and the sun God.

Well, yes and no. Horus is associated with the falcon, because he is the
god of the heavens. He is also the god of Kingship. He is associated
with the sun-god as Ra-Harakhte, Ra-pa-Hor Hor-Behdeti ... but in
himself he is not really a sun god. He has rather "inherited" his solar
aspects from his association with the sun god Ra. This association is
quite logical: as the god of heaven, he is closest to the sun and as a
falcon, he is the one who protects the sun.

Jacques Kinnaer

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Jan 3, 1997, 3:00:00 AM1/3/97

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> I think Thomas might actually be speaking of the 'Ba'. In one of the
> most famous pages of the 'Book of the Dead', the 'Weighing of the Soul',
> we see both the Devourer (mentionned in another of your posts) and a
> small (hence 'inconspicuous'?) human-headed bird representing the 'Ba'
> of the deceased.
>

The Ba (represented as a Bird with the head of a human being) is not
limited to the world of the dead. In the conversation between a man and
his Ba, the man is still alive.

I indeed concur that there is no real symbol for death. Indeed, a
deceased person became AN Osiris (the god of the dead and of
resurection) and may have been depicted as Osiris. But Osiris is not a
symbol of death: he is a symbol of resurection, if one is to limit his
complex character into one simple symbol/

Phillip Assaad

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Jan 4, 1997, 3:00:00 AM1/4/97

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be...@ix.netcom.com wrote:
>
> The symbol of life is the ankh or cross with a loop at the top. Does
> anyone know the symbol of death?

I'm not quite sure what the symbol for death is, but what I'm sure of is
that death was not necessarily a negative thing to the Ancient
Egyptians. It was something that they worked most of their life to
prepare for.

Phil