cladking wrote:

>
> We really shouldn't be translating "neter" as "god". It would
> be essentially the same error as translating the "hydraulic
> cycle" (nehebkau) as "god" in a science text. They didn't
> "believe" in "nehebkau" so much as they discovered him. He was
> named so as to describe his function (gatherer of lifes' works)
> and he was anthropomorphized. These people were very earthy so
> it was only natural for them to see themselves as forces of
> nature and nature as being like unto themselves. So they
> didn't "discover" gods but the gods were born. These births
> are even mentioned in the ancient literature such as the birth
> of "min" around 2900 BC listed on the Palermo Stone.
>
Isn't this simply turning useful things into deities? Or birthign the gods as you put it?

> Horus, son of Isis, wasn't worshipped any more than any of
> their gods. He was created when stone began being removed from
> the ground in the "land of horus" as he was that stone. He was
> the "son of osiris" because it was osiris who made it possible
> for his mother isis to lift him up and form the ka of the king.
> Osiris was the ballast that made the counterweight heavier
> than the stones so that a falling weight (isis) could lift
> horus.
>
> Tayet is not of great importance in the land of horus because
> she is merely a generic term for a phenomenon of a quarry and
> where pyramids were built horus is far more important and
> equally appropriate as the phenomenon of the quarry. Tayet is
> important only to cracking this code; Utterance 597. -1642. "To
> say: O N., come, clothe thyself with the sound eye of Horus,
> which was in Tȝi.t.(tayet)". Tayet was she of pale
> complexion who was born green (covered in vegetation).
>
> The gods themselves were in no way "useful" but understanding
> of the gods was how they accomplished every single thing they
> did. Life was ma'at (balance).
>

This is function over worship imo, it is how I see the solar gods. Phenomena or useful stuff becomes raised to great import. They probably put some man in the garb of each of the useful trades or functions just to emphasize the point for the ill educated.

Chris