Plague Doctor

The animal pottery statue on the long table is about 35cm high and 20cm wide. It is not a common style of Egyptian pottery and is more refined. Moreover, this ram's head - even if it is a ram's head, there are many differences in Egyptian civilization. The shape represents different gods and what different gods look like at different times of the day.

Fortner had never seen the ram's head in front of him before, and he didn't remember it.

The most special thing about it is the pair of horns.

Just like some hieroglyphic texts involving sheep's heads and horns "??, ??, ??, ??, ??, ??", most of the ram's horns in Egyptian civilization were straight with a little undulating lines, or The sides are turned up.

However, these horns are curved like a rolling whirlpool, and somewhat like a womb - just like the hieroglyph "??" of "womb".

"George..." Fortner couldn't help but say, already making a judgment in his mind, "The womb-shaped horns don't look like an Egyptian handiwork."

"Yes, yes...I think so too, the uterus..." Edwin murmured to identify, "It's Nubian, it's Kushite..."

They knew a lot about Egyptian civilization, but Paul Smith couldn't quite understand it, and Bashir and Ella were even more confused.

"What do you mean?" Bashir asked, wary of their misunderstandings, "You said this is not authentic?"

"No, it's not that." Fortner looked at the pottery statue and wanted to go up and take a closer look, but Edwin temporarily occupied the position. "Generally speaking, a ram's head and a lion's body represent the sun god. Meng, but the situation of this pottery statue is different, it is not the common ram's horn, nor is it the ammon horn..."

"Isn't this pottery statue Amon, the sun god?" Paul Smith heard something, and thought about it, "Is it the Kushite sun god?"

"Yes, Paul, I think it's possible," Fortner responded.

"You'd better explain it to us clearly." Ella was a little impatient, thinking that this was the other party's way of lowering the price, and was still singing a double act, "Why is the sun god not a sun god? Tell me, don't think we will Can't understand."

Edwin ignored their words completely, and his gloved hands were gently touching the surface of the pottery statue, fascinated and crazy.

Fortner took a deep breath. Those were just some thoughts for the time being. He explained as simply as possible: "God Amun is the sun god of the Egyptians, but the original image of God Amun did not have ram's horns. The element of ram's horns is the Egyptian god. After conquering the Kingdom of Kush in the Nubia region and absorbing the Kushite sun god and possibly the ram-headed image of Knum, the god of the source of the Nile, the god Amun began to have ram horns."

"Later, Knum also became the ram god among the Egyptian gods. Legend has it that it created human beings. Everyone who came to the world was made of babies by Knum from clay, and then put the babies into their mothers' bodies. Inside the womb.”

"As for the Kushite sun god, the name has been lost. History generally calls him 'Nubian-Amon'."

The more Fortner said this, the more confused his mind became, and the feeling of trance became stronger.

Once again, he seemed to see the pair of womb-shaped horns turning, but when he calmed down, he realized that it was just an ancient pottery statue.

"So...you know, this is the Nubia region, and the Kingdom of Kush was once on this land. At the beginning of the New Kingdom period, Egypt conquered Kush, which was about 1500 BC. Although Kush has become an important province of Egypt, and its cultural, economic and other aspects have become more and more symbiotic from the initial colonial relationship.

However, there have always been various rebellions in the Kush region, especially during the two hundred years or so during the New Kingdom period, there were many rebellions of varying sizes. Later, around 1075 BC, the New Kingdom collapsed and the Kushites regained their independence. Hundreds of years later, they even conquered Egypt in turn and established the Twenty-fifth Dynasty.

It is also through this relationship that the image of the ram's horns of the god Amun became stable, and it continued to gradually merge with the god Ra to become the god Amun-Ra, known as the King of God.

Because Ra - this is also the sun god, Ra's appearance in the evening was considered to be the ram god Khnum.

So this pottery statue is the sun god, but it is not the god Amun, not the Egyptian god. It is more like Ra than Amun, like Khnum, like Nubian-Amun, who is a Kushite. God... In this case, we can explain the lines of the holy writings..."

Fortner talked so that he was fascinated, and some ideas came together.

"The king's rebels, the rebels of the sun god Amun, used stone disease to kill Imhotep and his followers and establish a new world ruled by the ram-headed sun god. The previous sun god was the Egyptian Amon Meng, the latter sun god belongs to the Kushites... I don’t know the name of the god either. In the Egyptian and Kushite civilizations, the name of the god is powerful and has power itself. If the name of the god is taken away, then this god It fell. The name of the god 'Nubian-Amon' was taken away by Amon.

They believe that calling the name of God can gain strength, and all sacrificial activities are inseparable from the name of God. From a political point of view, if the name of the god 'Nubian-Amun' is destroyed, the Kushite civilization will lose its independence. Sexuality was gradually absorbed and integrated... So even if the Kushites later regained their kingdom and even became the masters of Egypt, they still used 'Amon' and 'Amon-Ra' as the name of the sun god they worshiped.

Nubia-Amon has fallen..."

As Fortner spoke these messy words, those womb-shaped horns seemed to make his heart whirl.

"Okay, okay." Ella had stopped listening carefully and said angrily: "Let's just tell you, how much do you charge for this pottery statue?"

"Here... there are hieroglyphics

The word..." Edwin suddenly spoke softly, seemingly with a little urgency and enthusiasm, "This is a name... Heri, come and take a look, the modifier of this name is 'life-giving'... This is a divine name! "

Fortner's heart suddenly thought, and he saw that Edwin was already holding the pottery statue with both hands, his feet bent and almost kneeling on the ground, his eyes fixed on one part of the pottery lion's body, and his figure covered it only a little bit. In the corner is a line of sacred writing.

The first modifier??????, the one that gives life...

That is the name of the god "Nubian-Amun"...

"George!" Fortner shouted for some reason, his whole body shuddering, his voice trembling: "Don't!"

Paul Smith, Bashir, and Ella were all still confused. Edwin at the table over there was reciting something hoarsely and frantically, which was so weird that it didn't sound like a human voice.

"i?! The real sun god, the creator of all things, the black goat of the forest who gave birth to thousands of descendants!"

Following the call, the pile of rectangular things covered with nylon cloth at the back of the tent slowly began to move.

Love the Plague Doctor.