Having retreated south around the Predynastic Period, lions were rare in pharaonic times, but they played a tremendous role in Egyptian iconography. As in many cultures, lions became firmly established as symbols of royal authority for their aggressive nature and their power. Rulers organized lion hunts demonstrating their control of the fierce animal. Lion bones found in the First Dynasty tomb of king Aha suggest that captured lions were kept in royal complexes. Lions often represented the horizons, where the sun rises and sets every day, as the desert habitat mythologically links them with the eastern and western margins of the universe. Lion images on funerary furniture illustrate this animal’s link with the cycle of death and rebirth, akin to the sun. The sun god himself appears as a lion with yellow ruff in the Book of the Dead, Spell 62, and the lion god Aker guards the entrance to the Netherworld. The aggressive power of lions was adopted as a symbol of forceful protection.
The lioness’s motherly instinct, manifested in gentle nurturing and fierce protection of her cubs, represented the mystical duality of fury and care. Although male deities assumed lion shape at times, most lion divinities were female (figure 32). Sakhmet, Bastet, Wadjet, Mut, Shesemtet, Pakhet, Tefnut, and others took the form of a lioness or a lion-headed woman. Many of these goddesses were also closely linked with other animals. The leonine goddesses were daughters of Re, and were connected with the myth of the Eye of the Sun; in one version of this myth, Re sends Sakhmet to slaughter humans, but having changed his mind, Re impedes the slaughter and Sakhmet is transformed into a peaceful cat. The dual role of feline goddesses inextricably links cats and lions, as a myth in the temple of Philae states: “She rages like Sakhmet and is peaceful like Bastet.”{16} The powerful protection of leonine goddesses is frequently used in amulets during life and after death.
Antelope
Egyptians attempted to domesticate the antelope (specifically, the gazelle and the oryx) at an early time, when the climate was damper and antelopes roamed the semi-desert regions.{17} The inability to control these relatively small and unaggressive animals may have contributed to the antelope’s eventual negative symbolism in Egyptian mythology. As a result, magical and protective objects depict them among the creatures under the control of Horus, conveying the power over all potential evil to the object’s user (figures 13, 33).
The multifaceted character seen in many other animals extends to antelopes as well. Despite their largely negative symbolism, their natural grace was observed by the Egyptians, and their image was adopted by minor queens and princesses for adornment and symbolic protection in place of the uraeus. A mummified and carefully wrapped gazelle found in a Twenty-second Dynasty royal cache suggests their role as pets. Like cats and monkeys, common images of gazelles under people’s chairs may symbolize regeneration.
The goddess Satet, venerated in the form of an antelope in the city of Elephantine and believed to guard the southern border of Egypt, was depicted as a woman with an antelope-horned crown. Satet’s name means “She Who Shoots/Pours Out,” and her epithet “Mistress of the Water of Life” closely linked her with water. Pyramid Texts describe her as purifying the deceased king. First signs of the inundation were observed annually at Elephantine, the location of Satet’s temple. Also associated with gazelles was Satet’s daughter, the huntress Anuket, whose cult dates back to the Old Kingdom. With her main temple at Elephantine, next to the first Nile cataract, Anuket’s festival commenced the annual inundation.
Monkey, Baboon
Mummies of monkeys appear in almost every animal necropolis of the Ptolemaic Period, but it is unclear whether monkeys were ever native to Egypt. If they were, they must have moved south, along with elephants, lions, and other savanna animals, at the end of the Predynastic Period. Monkeys enjoyed great popularity among the Egyptian elite. Records of Hatshepsut’s expedition to the south{18} and the tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor{19} describe their importation into pharaonic Egypt from Nubia and Punt. Tomb scenes and stelae dating back to the Fourth Dynasty depict monkeys under people’s chairs, suggesting their role as pets. Such images may represent sexuality, as texts indicate monkeys’ significance for rebirth. As such, monkeys were at times buried alongside humans. Although scenes of monkeys and baboons performing agricultural tasks have been interpreted as evidence of their service to humans, this theory remains questionable due to the rarity and presumed cost of these animals in ancient Egypt. Satirical depictions on inscribed potsherds and stone flakes, known as ostraca, and on papyri, particularly from the New Kingdom, include monkeys performing such human tasks as playing musical instruments. In mythology, the green monkey represents aspects of sun and moon deities, and accompanies the sun god in Netherworld books. Strangely, no cult of monkeys existed.
Like monkeys, baboons were not native to Egypt during much of the pharaonic period. Excavations yielded baboon burials at Hierakonpolis already in Naqada III, and Early Dynastic votive figurines of cynocephalus baboons from Abydos (figure 34) . The Egyptians observed baboons getting up on their hind legs and raising their arms every morning to warm their bodies as the sun came up after a cold night. Because the gesture closely resembled that of adoration in Egyptian hieroglyphs, baboons appeared to greet and worship the rising sun each morning, reinforcing their link with the sun and moon.
In the Late, Ptolemaic, and Roman Periods, baboons were equated with Osiris, mummified and carefully buried in catacombs. From the time of Ptolemy I, burials of sacred baboons included personal names of each baboon, genealogies, and dates of birth and death, as well as references to the new god traveling with the sun god in his boat. “Osiris-baboon” (wsir-pa-aan) was venerated alongside “Osiris-ibis” (wsir-pa-hb), another form of Thoth. Thoth, the purveyor of writing, knowledge, and recordkeeping, was frequently portrayed as a cynocephalus baboon. The god Hapy, one of the four sons of Horus connected with mummification, was typically depicted with a baboon head. The squatting baboon god Hedj-wer (“The Great White One”) represented the king himself for the royal ancestors who symbolically confirmed the newly appointed king. This deity occurs in the Early Dynastic Period and the Old Kingdom, but comes to represent Thoth and the moon god Khonsu thereafter (figure 35) . Thoth records the results of Osiris’s judgment of the dead, and baboons appear in the vicinity of scales, weighing the deceased’s heart in the Book of the Dead, Spell 125.
Baboons’ aggressive nature places them as guardians of the Netherworld Lake of Fire, where the sun regenerates daily. The Book of the Dead, Spell 126, describes them as those “who judge between the needy and the rich, who gladden the gods with the scorching breath of their mouths, who give divine offerings to the gods and mortuary offerings to the blessed spirits, who live on truth and sip of truth, who lie not and whose abomination is evil.” Their temperament is reflected in the hieroglyph “to be furious,” representing a baboon with a raised tail. The largely negative divinities like Seth and Apep at times assume baboon forms.
Ichneumon, Shrew
A large type of mongoose common in Africa, the ichneumon (Herpestes ichneumon; figure 36) is represented in Egyptian art from the Old Kingdom onward. Venerated for its ability to kill snakes, the ichneumon was related to Horus and Atum, among others, and worshipped throughout the country (figure 37); in fighting the divine serpent Apep, the sun god is said to have taken the form of an ichneumon with a sun disk surmounting its head. The normally feline goddess Mafdet, venerated for her power over snakes and scorpions, at times assumed the form of a mongoose; Mafdet protected the deceased from snake bites in the Book of the Dead, Spell 149, by beheading venomous snakes in the seventh mound