The British Museum
Among the most attractive objects in the Egyptian collection of the British Museum is a little wooden statue of a human headed turtle. It was found at Valley of the Kings in early1900 and was kept by the museum. Since its discovery, there was a debate on its nature and function, some thought the turtle would help the deceased to reach Osiris's land of justice and others thought it should be one of the obstacles that dead would be confronting in the underworld. While I agree about being the turtle representation is so rare to be found and maybe the one at the British museum seems to be the only one, I have what can lead our attention to its function as I have another representation to the turtle. The second and most probably the last, is found at the temple of Hathor at Dandara, north of Luxor city.
The carving represents the pharaoh stabs the turtle and as it is traditional in the Egyptian mythology to describe the pharaoh as god Horus or the good force and the river animals and reptiles to be each is a representation to god seth or the evil force. So here we can see the turtle is classified to an evil representation. This carving is older than 2000 years and dates back to the Greco-Roman era in Egypt.
Copyrig © 2006.
No comments:
Post a Comment