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The mystery animal on an ancient god's head

32 points surprisetalk 1 day ago 8 comments

fsckboy 59 minutes ago | parent

if you right click and open the images in new tabs you'll be able to see them because the unfortunate blue background will be gone. in B4 "i don't see that in reader mode"

the Set animal has a snout that is more bird/reptile-like. the ears are a cipher.

pluc 56 minutes ago | parent

There is no conclusion in this article if you care about such things.

tomrod 46 minutes ago | parent

Huh. Pretty clearly a dog/jackal though, right?

Set was the god of Libya and was at war with the "good guy gods" in Egypt, so one has to assume the civilization based in Libya would be were we could correlate the answer -- and we have the contention that the Sahara has grown since the early days of Egypt, so its possible the definitive answer remains buried.

guelo 35 minutes ago | parent

They already had a jackal god in Anubis which is represented without the weird down slopping snout and squared ears.

emmelaich 17 minutes ago | parent

Aardvark to me. Similar snout, long ears. They were probably in the southern reaches of Egypt.

With regard to differences that could be explained by stylisation and the lack of familiarity due to it's rarity in most of Egypt.

emigre 43 minutes ago | parent

Is it Cerebus the aardvark perhaps?

BeetleB 28 minutes ago | parent

Terrible background choice for this article!

astral_drama 25 minutes ago | parent

I like to think Set's form is emergent and takes whatever form you want see, or a group of people want to see. Set sort of emerges from the chaos, and that's what his image does for me, sometimes I see a dog, sometimes an anteater and so on. I think the Egyptians probably imagine that the world is always emerging from the primal chaos, it's not something that simply occurred in the past, and it's up to us what we make of it.