Amun is the sun-god and his name means simply 'hidden'.
Anubis is actually the Greek rendering of the Egyptian name Anpu or Inpu which is said to be 'a royal child' and from a root meaning 'to decay' (no, neither can I see that link). The god is known by several titles, including First of the Westerners; Lord of the Sacred Land; He Who is Upon His Sacred Mountain; Ruler of the Nine Bows; Master of Secrets; He Who is in the Place of Learning; Foremost of the Divine Booth; and The Dog who Swallows Millions.
Horus is rendered in hieroglyphs as 'falcon', although etymologists also suggest his name means 'the distant one' or 'one who is above'.
Osiris is a Latin Translation of the Greek rendering of the original Egyptian, where the name is wsjr. This could be 'the Mighty One'; 'seat of the eye', 'something made', 'she who bears the eye', 'to make', or 'engendering male principle'. These varied explanations are down to the Egyptian hieroglyphs lacking vowels in translation - you can see the problems, for if the same applied in English it would be difficult to know if the word was net, nit, not, or nut.
Shu means either 'emptiness' or 'she who rises up'.
Sobek, the crocodile god, is the Egyptian for 'to impregnate'.
Bat is a cow goddess, whose name has the suffix 't', to represent a female, following the name Ba which seems to refer to 'the soul'.
Nut is thought to be named for her place of residence, as it probably translates as 'sky'.
Tefnut is a god of moisture and dew and rain, and some think the name (which has no suggestable etymology) is the onomatopoeia of the sound of spitting - this has nothing to do with the moisture aspect, but a reference to the mythological birth of this god when another god spat and created Tefnut and his sister. There is an alternative suggestion to spitting featuring other bodily fluids, but we'll gloss over that.
Nu is derived from nen 'inactivity', if it comes from Egyptian, or it could be Coptic noun 'abyss, deep'.
Amenhotep translates as 'Amun is satisfied'. Just why he was satisfied is extremely complicated and I lost interest halfway through reading.
Baal is from the Greek, previously linked to many Semitic languages such as Ugaritic, Phoenician, Hebrew, Amorite, and Aramaic, and which probably means 'owner', understood as 'lord'.
Imhotep translates as 'the one who came in peace'.
Tutu means 'image', although he's also known as 'Son of Neith', 'the lion', 'great of strength', and Master of the demons of Sekhmet and the wandering demons of Bastet'.
No comments:
Post a Comment