Snow and Egyptian Gods Turning into Demons

Ancient Egyptian gods sometimes transformed into butt-kicking demons. It all depended on their mood.

Consider sweet, loving, cow-faced Hathor who went wild-eyed crazy on you if you got her mad enough. That’s when she turned into lion-headed Sekhmet, who feasted on human flesh.  It wasn’t easy to call her off once she got started gorging either. 

The god Shezmu offered you his
his best wine. If he liked you.

Beer worked pretty well, though. One myth had her guzzling 700 jars of beer before she agreed to stop devouring people.

Another fascinating god/demon was Shezmu.  Shez was like a bouncer at a popular bar. If word from above came that you were allowed into his highly exclusive club known as the Afterworld, he’d welcome you with a big grin, a pat on the back and an enormous goblet of wine.

But if he got word that you were not on the list, he—like Hathor—went postal on you.  Instead of offering you a cup of wine, he’d grab your head, shove it into his wine press and…well, press. Really, really hard. Just as a wine press squeezed all of the juice out of a grape, he squeezed all the blood out you.

And then drank it.  Because he could.

So, what’s the connection between snow and the dual nature of some ancient Egyptian gods/demons? There is none.

It’s just that after Day Four of being snowed/iced in—no school, no mail, no driving—I’m starting to understand this dual nature a little better.

If Shezmu didn't like you, it was your head in that press.

On the one hand, snow in the South is a novelty—beautiful and sparkling and extraordinary. Like Shezmu, I welcomed it into my life with open arms and a beaming grin.

But on the other, it has overstayed its welcome and gone demonic. I’m ready for Sekhmet to turn back into Hathor, for wild-eyed Shezmu to turn into fun-loving Shez.

Unfortunately, I don’t have 700 jars of beer to bribe the gods for release from this icy torment. But once it all melts and I can drive to the store, I’ll start stocking up and making up for this oversight.

And I’ll even save it all for them. I swear.

How the Ancient Egyptians Celebrated New Year's

Most of us celebrate the New Year by staying up late and having fun with friends. For the ancient Egyptians it was a time of fear and dread.

Why? Because no one knew exactly when the New Year would arrive. It all depended on when the Nile River began its annual flooding.  To make matters worse, no one knew exactly how it would flood either. The stakes were high: if the waters were too low, people might starve. If they were too high, people could drown.

The Egyptians added to the stress and anxiety by claiming that just before the inundation, the god Khons wrote The Book of the End of the Year, which contained the list of who would live and who would die in the coming year.

Priests worked overtime to protect the people with a magic spell called, The Book of the Last Day of the Year, written on a strip of papyrus and worn around the neck. It’s likely no one dared walk around with a naked neck during those anxious filled days.

On New Year’s Day—the day the Nile actually began flooding—the Egyptians celebrated by exchanging presents, usually small amulets of Sekhmet (the lion-headed goddess) or Bastet (the cat headed goddess). Even the gifts were tinged with anxiety: the amulets warded off the dreaded demons of plague, famine, or flood.

Of course, the ancient Egyptians were great partiers too, sometimes extending their feasts into weeks-long celebrations.  Still, their fear-filled New Year’s worries reminds us just how fragile and precarious their lives were.

Which puts our complaining about “boring” celebrations into perspective, doesn’t it?