Min- Egyptian GodDeity"Lord of the Eastern Desert"
Also known as: Mnw, Menu, Amsu, and Khem
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Description
Black-skinned, ithyphallic, one arm raised with a flail behind his head. Min stands in the same pose from the earliest colossal statues at Coptos to the last temple reliefs of the Ptolemaic age. Behind him, a bed of lettuce: the plant's milky sap was the Egyptians' sign of his generative power.
Mythology & Lore
The Oldest Form
Three colossal limestone statues from Coptos, dating to the Predynastic period before Egypt was unified, already show Min in the ithyphallic mummiform pose he would hold for the next three thousand years: legs together, left arm raised with a flail behind his head. His skin was painted black, the color of the fertile silt left by the Nile's flood. He wore a tall double-plumed crown with a ribbon streaming from his headdress, and behind him stood his sacred lettuce, whose milky sap the Egyptians took for semen.
At Coptos, Min guarded the trade routes through the Eastern Desert to the Red Sea and the quarries of Wadi Hammamat. Travellers and miners prayed to him before setting out across dangerous ground.
The Festival of the Harvest
The Festival of Min was held at the start of the harvest season. The pharaoh himself reaped the first sheaf of emmer wheat and offered it to Min. A white bull sacred to the god was paraded through the festival grounds. Priests carried lettuce plants and a towering pole hung with Min's emblems. Then the king shot arrows toward the four cardinal directions, claiming dominion over the earth's fertility on Min's behalf.
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