![]() ![]() ![]() In one of the great mythic cycles central to Egyptian religion, the goddess Isis took her infant son Horus to the papyrus thickets of the north to conceal him from her brother Seth, who had murdered her husband Osiris and usurped his throne. The single-handed defeat of these chaotic creatures by a king or noble, often depicted on the walls of temples and elite tombs, was emblematic of the maintenance of the ordered cosmos against the forces of entropy ( 30.4.48). Teeming with wild birds and fish as well as dangerous animals such as hippopotami and crocodiles, all seen as incarnations of Egypt’s enemies, these were the setting for ritual hunts. Papyrus thickets were seen as liminal zones at the edges of the ordered cosmos, symbols of the untamed chaos that surrounded and perpetually threatened the Egyptian world. Ceilings in temples and tombs were frequently supported with columns in the form of papyrus plants, turning their architectural settings into models of this primeval marsh ( 68.154). Papyrus marshes were thus seen as fecund, fertile regions that contained the germs of creation ( 30.4.136). In ancient Egyptian cosmology, the world was created when the first god stood on a mound that emerged from limitless and undifferentiated darkness and water, a mythical echo of the moment each year when the land began to reappear from beneath the annual floodwaters. The goddess Wadjet, depicted as a rearing cobra ( 07.228.14) or a woman with the head of a lioness ( 35.9.2), was the tutelary deity of Lower Egypt, and often is shown carrying a papyrus-shaped scepter. When shown wound around the hieroglyph for “unite,” these two plants formed an emblem for the unification of the Two Lands of Egypt ( 15.5.1). Due to its prevalence in the Nile Delta, the papyrus was the heraldic plant of Lower (northern) Egypt, while the lily or lotus stood for Upper (southern) Egypt. An amulet in this shape was worn at the throat for protection and health ( ). A hieroglyph in the form of a papyrus plant was used in the writing of the word wadj, meaning fresh, flourishing, and green. The pharaonic word for papyrus was tjufy (with mehyt used as a more general term for marsh plants). From a horizontal root, the slender but sturdy stalks, topped by feathery umbels ending in small brown fruit-bearing flowers, can reach up to five meters in height ( 30.4.60). Needing shallow fresh water or water-saturated earth to grow, dense papyrus thickets were found in the marshes of the Nile Delta and also in the low-lying areas fringing the Nile valley. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him.A member of the sedge family, the papyrus ( Cyperus papyrus) was an integral feature of the ancient Nilotic landscape, essential to the ancient Egyptians in both the practical and symbolic realms. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. ![]() She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. ![]() Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.īut when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. Just click on any of the coloring pages below to get instant access to the printable PDF version.
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