For this year's A-Z challenge, I'm posting juicy tidbits of researchy goodness for your interest and edification. I intend to use these as story prompts for the terrifying writing challenge Story a Day in May. You may use them however you wish.
I admit I'm getting tired of titling my posts according to the letter of the alphabet. This
is an A to Z post; it's just that "D" - today's letter - is encoded.
"[T]he god Khepera...represents matter containing a living germ which is about to pass from a state of inertness into one of active life."
"As he was a living germ in the abyss of Nu, and made himself to emerge therefrom in the form of the rising sun, so the germ of the living soul, which existed in the dead body of man, and was to burst into a new life in a new world by means of the prayers recited during the performance of appropriate ceremonies, emerged from its old body in a new form either in the realm of Osiris or in the boat of Ra."
"This doctrine was symbolized by the germs of life rolled up in the egg-ball of the beetle, and the power which made those to become living creatures was that which made man's spiritual body to come into being, and was personified in the god Khepera."
"Thus Khepera symbolized the resurrection of the body, and it was this idea which was at the root of the Egyptian custom of wearing figures of the beetle, and of placing them in the tombs and on the bodies of the dead."
Text from page 357 of
The Gods of the Egyptians (Vol. 1) by E.A. Wallis Budge (Methuen & Co.,1904).
(D is for dung beetle. I promise at some point I'll get off this animal / insect / poop / Egypt theme. This one was for
FWG.)
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