Posted on 01/14/2004 11:07:36 AM PST by aculeus
King Tut had a wet nurse?
Buffalo Bill has a museum?
A skeleton is a mummy?
A cat goddess named Bastet had a son named Mahes?
It's dead, Emily.
If you ever find yourself in Craig, Colorado, you can visit their version of the Buffalo Bill museum. It's small, but fairyl intersting. My wife and I had the opportunity to visit while I was working an assignment up there.
Not quite as cool, however, as standing in the building that was once the Lincoln County courthouse, where Billy the Kid was held, escaped from, and shot Ollinger and Bell. Now that was an experience.
First off, I know of no one who cares what the French say.
Secondly, this is no big deal. Big cats are worshiped in California, Colorado, and other states.
Some people even sacrifice themselves to them, to insure their survival.
The Buffalo Bill museum in Cody is well worth a visit. I was particularly impressed by the VAST firearms collection.
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They (the ancients) used to move stuff around periodically in an attempt to thwart graverobbers. There was one tomb, in the Valley of Kings I think, that had a whole bunch of mummies stored in it for safe keeping.
Zivie's research team discovered the lion's remains in 2001 as they excavated the tomb of Maia, wet nurse to Tutankhamun, the "boy king" popular with museum visitors today for his opulent gold funeral relics. He ruled for 10 years and died around 1323 B.C. . . The lion may have been considered an incarnation of the god Mahes, the son of Bastet, Zivie said.
Tut-Ankh-Amun was NOT named that in the first years of his reign. In the first years of his reign he was known as Tut-Ankh-Aten.
Tut-Ankh-Aten/Amun was the last Pharoah of the short lived religious heresy of his father Akh-En-Aten who changed his own name from Amun-Ho-Tep when he banned polytheism in favor of a single god. Both Tut's original name and his father's adopted name were intended to honor that one god.
Tuts father named him after the face (the Aten) of the Sun God Re or Ra, that was the ONLY god allowed to be worshipped in Akh-en-Aten's reign. All other gods were banned! When the weak King Tut was forced to re-instate the polytheism of the other gods (and elevating himself to godhood which his father denied), he changed his name (or it was changed for him) to reflect his agreement with the change.
Therefore, the idea that the Lion may be a representation of the god Mahes is unlikely, if contemporaneous with the entombment of Maia.
It is possible the tomb was opened and the lion added to erase the heresy by including other gods.
I hear you talking...I was going to post a gratuitous pic of Petra, but I can't seem to find one with her clothes on.
One that was worth posting, anyway.
Actually, no, there was nothing taboo about it. The egyptians themselves removed almost all of the Pharoahs' sarcophagi and moved them all into one tomb after the fact... to prevent their bodies from being destroyed by looters who had already invaded their tombs.
It would be especially not a problem for them to open the tomb of someone associated with the Aten heresy of Ankenaten and his children... and their servants. There are other signs of opening of these tombs to desecrate Aten symbology, destroy the cartouches of Ankhenaten, etc.
Also, it is quite obvious to later researchers that the short reign of Tut in a time of depressed economy lead to his relative poverty as Pharoahs go... and that many of the treasures in his tomb had been TAKEN (borrowed?) from other tombs and had the "serial numbers filed off" so to speak.
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