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The mystery animal on an ancient god's head

73 pointsby surprisetalklast Tuesday at 12:00 PM20 commentsview on HN

Comments

evandrofisicotoday at 12:48 AM

As the Old Jaffa joke says:

A serpent guard, a Horus guard, and a Setesh guard meet on a neutral planet. It is a tense moment. The serpent guard's eyes glow. The Horus guard's beak glistens. The Setesh guard's... nose drips.

dyzonetoday at 3:44 AM

It's a pikachu!

tomrodyesterday at 10:28 PM

Huh. Pretty clearly a dog/jackal though, right?

Set was the god of Libya and was at war with the "good guy gods" in Egypt, so one has to assume the civilization based in Libya would be were we could correlate the answer -- and we have the contention that the Sahara has grown since the early days of Egypt, so its possible the definitive answer remains buried.

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plucyesterday at 10:18 PM

There is no conclusion in this article if you care about such things.

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cgriswaldyesterday at 11:34 PM

That’s clearly a Groening rabbit.

jjtheblunttoday at 2:53 AM

anteater / aardvark looks like what Set is modeling back in the day

emigreyesterday at 10:31 PM

Is it Cerebus the aardvark perhaps?

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astral_dramayesterday at 10:49 PM

I like to think Set's form is emergent and takes whatever form you want see, or a group of people want to see. Set sort of emerges from the chaos, and that's what his image does for me, sometimes I see a dog, sometimes an anteater and so on. I think the Egyptians probably imagine that the world is always emerging from the primal chaos, it's not something that simply occurred in the past, and it's up to us what we make of it.

BeetleByesterday at 10:46 PM

Terrible background choice for this article!

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harimau777today at 1:29 AM

Clearly he is an Irish Setter!

fsckboyyesterday at 10:15 PM

if you right click and open the images in new tabs you'll be able to see them because the unfortunate blue background will be gone. in B4 "i don't see that in reader mode"

the Set animal has a snout that is more bird/reptile-like. the ears are a cipher.

iwontberudeyesterday at 11:31 PM

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