Why would Ancient Egyptians believe in a God known as Heket, that has the head of a frog ?

 In Ancient Egypt when the River Nile floods, the river bank is inundated with frogs, they were spontaneously generated in the fertile mud left behind after the water receded, Frogs have a magical connection to the spiritual world of Egyptians, frog spawn looks like an egg conceived in the human womb

The Goddess Heket with a human body and a frog's head was the  goddess of fertility, and was associated with pregnancy and childbirth, she is  the consort of Khnum, the potter god, who would sculpt and create  models of the human body using the rich mud of the River Nile. 

Heket has the power to bring body and spirit into the being. Together with her consort Khumn they were  responsible for the formation, creation, and birth of every living being in the Egyptian universe.  Heqet would  breath  Ka into an inanimate being, Ka, in ancient Egyptian religion, was the soul of a human being or of a god, it was endowed with all the person’s qualities and faults. The ka is a spiritual double that lives on even after the death of the physical self.  Once Heket has invoked the Life force, the child is placed in the mother’s womb

It was common for pregnant women to wear amulets which portrayed the goddess Heqet for protection. The Priestesses who worked in the Mammsi houses ('place of giving birth') and helped with childbirth are known as 'the Servants of Heket'. Hekhet could bring on labour and offer her protection during labour. Khnum created the physical body, Heqet helps souls enter it. Just as the rebirth of a physical body, Heqet’s knives are used to severe the binding cords   

Heket and Khumn were portrayed on the walls In Birth rooms, birth colonnades and Mamsi houses. On the Birth Colonnade at Hatshepsut's Mortuary Temple at Dier El Bahari,  it is  recorded that Hatshepsut was the child of the God Amun with her mother the Queen Ahamose.  Heket holds an ankh to the nostrils of the  infant Hatshepsut and her ka, the ankh represents the breath, life, and spirit, it is a potent symbol representing the union of male and female and earth and heaven  It offers the gift of immortality, Hatshepsut does not expire or exhale, but inhales the breath of life. The Ankh represents the concept of Eternal Life.  The Ankh offers the body life and spiritual healing and protection against bad energies

The relief’s  on Hatshepsut's birth colonnade portray that it was the divine intention of both her  earthly father Tuthmosis 1, and her heavenly father Amun that she would rule Egypt, In the birth Colonnade it declares:

‘Amen –Ra called for the God Khumn the Creator and Fashioner of the Bodies of Men.’ Fashion for me the body of my daughter and the body of her Ka, a great queen shall I make of her, and honor and power shall be worthy of her dignity and glory’  ‘Amun-Ra answered Khumn ‘It shall be done as you have said.  So Khumn fashioned the body of Amen-Ra’s daughter and the body of her Ka, the two forms exactly alike, and more beautiful than the daughters of men. He fashioned them with clay from the air of his potters wheel and Heqet goddess of birth with the frogs head, knelt by his side holding the sign of life towards the clay that the bodies of Hatshepsut and her Ka might be filled with life and breath, and so one of the greatest queens of Egypt was announced to the world. 

In the Birth room at Luxor Temple I circled around the outside of the barque shrine and walked through a doorway that led into a suite of rooms that represent the bedroom of Amun where the Opet festival rituals took place, the pharaoh would  retire to the Birth Room, from which he would later  emerge symbolically re-born and restored. The statues of the king’s ka were no longer on display because the ka was now believed to have taken residence in the pharaoh’s body.  Reliefs in the birth room represent Amon choosing the Queen Mutemweje to give birth to his son. He sent Thoth with the message to the queen and ordered Khnum to create an image of himself on his potter’s wheel. The boy child Amenophis was born into the world created by Amon and then crowned as the King. I realized the similarity of this sequence of events of this ancient Egyptian relief as it compares to our Christmas story of the angel coming to visit Mary to tell her that she will give birth to the son of God.    As the Royal scribe Ani said; ‘God reveals himself in millions of forms’

Heket is present at both conception and death of a body, she is also shown in the afterlife tomb scenes as when death arrives, Heqet cuts the bindings that life places on the soul and stands guard to guide the body into the afterlife. 

Luxor Temple has a soul that is lit by the Luminous Ka's of the Pharaohs

 As we passed the side of Luxor Temple one evening, I was inspired by its vision of radiance and light, its pale golden columns of the Festival Hall of Amenhotep 111  glowed against the early evening deep blue  sky, the floodlights seemed to increase the size of the columns almost helping them to touch the heavens, 

and then  I remembered an evening walk I had taken through the Temple with Hamde, who had worked in the temple for seventeen years, he told me of the ancient beliefs that the stones of the temple had a soul, and that when darkness falls the light of the stars illuminates them again, and they are  filled with the luminous Ka’s of the Pharaohs, then like Nut the god of the sky who comes to meet her husband Geb the god of the earth each evening, the stars came down to earth to fill the ancient containers in the temple with incense and myrrh. The columns had a stream of light reflected through them, and Hamdes beautiful story seemed so real, I looked at the Columns and I felt the magic of the temple and I was so grateful to be alive and experience my emotions that had become so entwined with this ancient culture.

Flinders Petrie & Margaret Murray's Discovery of the Osireion - The tomb of the God Osiris

 The Osireion is a symbolic tomb for Osiris

On the publication of her book ' the Osireon at Abydos' in 1904, Margaret Murray wrote : 'Through out this excavation it was always the unexpected that happened, we expected to find a passage, we found chambers and halls,  we expected to find it roofed in, the roof had been completely quarried away, we expected to find a tomb, we found a place of worship.'

For days I had carried candles and matches in in my pocket ready to enter the passage as soon as there was a hole big enough to squeeze through ; but they were never required.

Flinders Petrie,  (1853 –  1942) was an English Egyptologist and was a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and preservation of artefacts, he held the first chair of Egyptology in the United Kingdom at the University College London with the support of Ameliia Edwards who had created the Egypt Exploration Fund to help with the preservation of Egyptian temples and tombs, One of his trainees, Howard Carter, went on to discover the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922. 

Hilda Mary Isabel Petrie (1871 - 1957) was recommended to Flinders Petrie because of her drawing skills to illustrate his next book. From there, love blossomed as he had found someone to share his love of Egyptology and after their marriage they set off for Egypt.

Margaret Alice Murray ( 1863 – 1963) began her studies of Egyptology at the UCL in 1894 and  developed a friendship built on respect with the department head,  Flinders Petrie, who encouraged her early academic publications and appointed her as Junior Professor in 1898. In 1902–03 together with the assistance of Flinders Petrie's wife Hilda who was also an Egyptologist they commenced their  excavations at the temple of Seti 1 in Abydos, which in ancient times had been a major cult center of the God Osiris, and was considered to be the place where the head of Osiris was buried. 

When the God Ra left the world to rule the heavens, he appointed Osiris to rule the world of men. Osiris  was murdered by his brother Set who was jealous of him. Set dismembered the body of Osiris and scattered his remains. His grieving wife Isis searched all over Egypt for many years for his body parts, once she had found them all, she then reassembled  them and with her magic she brought Osiris back to life.  Ra decided that Osiris could no longer live amongst men and so made Osiris the lord and Judge of the dead in the Under world.

During their excavations they had found a tremenos wall which showed a connection between the Temple of Seti and the royal tombs of the earlier kings buried in the desert behind it, there appeared a slight long hollow on the surface beneath the wall, so Petrie instructed the workers to dig deeper, a third time they were told to go down, and soon after they struck some enormous blocks of stone. The final result was that we found the pavement of the hall was forty-one feet under the surface,' and buried under the sands of time where most of the roof had collapsed or was missing, they began to realize that they had discovered an enigmatic underground chamber connected to the River Nile created with enormous blocks of granite, it had a  93-meter western tunnel with adjoined Hall and a Chamber  as well as the beginning of a sloping passage, which connected it to the Temple of Seti I. The Osireion was built by Seti I, whose temple lies above ground, and it was Seti's grandson, Merenptah, who was responsible for its decorative theme.

Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray realized that the plan of the Osireion resembles the tombs in the  Valley of the Kings,  which is why Margaret expressed her confusion about what they expected to find, the original entrance is through a long sloping corridor that passes through two small chambers and a sharp right-angled turn, which eventually brings you to the main pillared hall. In the Osireion there is also a moat around it's outer edges which used the natural level of water to ensure the moat was filled,  to symbolically create the primeval waters of  nun, from which an island arose. 

 'Our first deep pit brought us into the South Chamber, which gave us the cartouche of Merenptah, and made us realize that we had found a building which has no known counterpart in Egypt. Then came the discovery of the Great Hall and then of the sloping passage.'

The Great Hall, the floor of which was more than forty feet below the surface of the desert, was fifteen feet wide, thirty-four feet long, and seventeen feet high. There were three doorway's, one to the south, leading to the South Chamber ; one to the east, to the sloping passage ; one to the north, to the north passage.

The Boat of Ra can be seen on the wall in the great hall, the ancient Egyptians believed that as the River Nile flowed through Egypt and formed the great highway, so a celestial river flowed through the sky and the Duat, the Kingdom of the Dead which is a dark and damp place, intoxicated by the primeval waters of the god Nun that flows through the underworld. Nun is to be understood as both a god and the attribute of the underworld. and on this river sailed the great boat in which the sun made his daily journey from east to west, and at night followed the course of the river through the Duat. 

With regards to The Shrine of the South and the shrine of the North, Margaret suggests that it is probable that one is the shrine of Oriris being the the living King in the north, the other shrine is for Osiris the dead king in the south.

The shrines show relief's of The Sektet Boat and the Atet Boat. These are the two boats of the Sun ; in one he made his daily voyage across the sky from east to west, in the other he travelled through the Duat, or other world, during the night.

The sloping passage leading from the hall towards the Temple of Seti is inscribed on both sides of the passage with chapters from the Book of the Dead,  which is a collection of spells which enable the soul of the deceased to navigate the afterlife. This title was given to the text by Western scholars, the Ancient Egyptian title would translate as The Book of Coming Forth by Day or Spells for Going Forth by Day. They gave the soul the knowledge of what to expect in their journey  through the afterlife, it gave instructions on how to overcome the dangers of the afterlife by enabling them to assume the form of several mythical creatures and to give them the passwords necessary for admittance to certain stages of the underworld. 

There is an  astronomical ceiling  in the burial chamber which  shows the daily and annual celestial motions and also gives specific details of the heliacal rising and disappearance dates for some of the most highly revered stars. It also gives instructions on how to make a sundial.

For over a hundred years since the discovery of the Osireion by Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray it has only possible to descend down a wooden staircase, where you reach a dark green-coloured water at the bottom which is a result of the rising water table level, and you could only enter into the Osireion with a special permit for a few weeks of the year when the water level was low enough to make it safe. 

I have observed that the Osireion attracts spiritual tours because of the flower of life symbols on one of the Granite slabs, I personally do not believe that the flower of life symbol was on this granite slab when the Osireion was discovered by Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray, because they were systematical and  methodical in everything they observed, they even copied the Hieratic,  Demonic, and Greek Graffitti, so I am sure that they would have noted the Flower of Life Symbol if they had seen it on the granite slab. 

The Flower Of  Life symbol is a geometric symbol of sacred geometry that expands to quantum physics, and is applied in energy healing, meditation, and mysticism.  It is believed that within this symbol, holds the most meaningful and sacred patterns of our universe as a whole. It connects us to all living things. This ancient symbol demonstrates that all consciousness arises from one source, the first circle. The two symbols were painted onto the Granite with red ochre paint.

On April 5, 2019. Egypt's Minister of Antiquities Khaled al-Anany opened the symbolic burial room Osiris, ruler of the afterlife, after lowering the level of ground water.

On the 5th January 2015 Archeologists  uncovered a tomb on the hillside of Sheik Abd el Quarna, which is on the West Bank of Luxor, opposite the Rammessium, (the mortuary temple of Ramses the Great), their discovery is modeled on the Tomb of Osiris at Abydos

If you would like to read Margaret Murrays book ' The Osireion at Abydos', you can find it on  

https://archive.org/details/osireionatabydos00murr/page/n3/mode/2up

The Festival of the Beautiful Embrace - Hathor's journey & mystical ceremonial marriage celebrations to her husband Horus

 All temples survived on the produce of the land, and the produce of the harvest Festival at Dendera Temple proceeded the most spectacular festival that was known as the' Festival of The Beautiful Embrace' where once a year after the harvest, the Goddess Hathor’s barque was loaded with the produce of the fields in preparation for the annual visit she made to see her Husband the God Horus at his earthly home the Temple Of Edfu where they would re-enact in a mystical ceremony their marriage, and the conception of their son Ihy

At Hathor's earthly home of Dendera Temple I followed the side wall all the way around the temple where my enthusiasm increased as the relief’s were untouched, beautiful and unspoilt once more, and they portrayed the harvest festival, where  the beautiful goddess Sekhet, the goddess of the fields brings the produce of the land to the temple, she walked through the fields of wheat Papyrus and lotus, small geese fly from the ground whilst she follows a calf, her breath has the  scent of flowers and she is adorned with Lotus blossoms, and in her arms she carries Lotus geese fruits and wine.  

 In splendid celebration Hathor whose name means “The House of Horus”, was carried from her sanctuary within Dendera and greeted by all important dignitaries and priests, the locals were allowed to join this celebration,  then   gently her splendid barque that was known as ‘Great of Love’ carried her upstream where she was joined by a flotilla of barques until she arrived at Karnack Temple, where she would stay for a few days to visit the Goddess Mut, the wife of Amun Ra, more barques joined her flotilla as she left Karnack to continue her journey south, Her Husband Horus would leave his temple and head downstream to greet her and in glorious celebration he would escort his wife to his home of Edfu Temple to  begin  fourteen days of joyous celebration where their sacred marriage was enacted once more and their son Ihy was conceived. Each day throughout the waxing moon the same set of ceremonies were carefully performed. It was felt that on the evening of the fourth day Ihy, the son of Horus and Hathor, was conceived .

Over the centuries, the temple of Horus at Edfu became buried to a depth of 12 metres (39 ft) beneath drifting desert sand and layers of river silt deposited by the Nile, and just like the Temple of Dendera Local inhabitants built homes directly over the former temple grounds. the temples of Dendera and Edfu were built during the Ptolemaic period, the successors of Alexander the Great.

Only the upper reaches of the temple pylons at Edfu and Dendera were were visible. In 1860 Auguste Mariette, a French Egyptologist, began the work of freeing Edfu temple from the sands.

Hathor has 411 epithets expressing her qualities and attributes mentioned at her temple in Dendera, some of them are also written on the walls of Edfu temple, The wall relief of the pylon at Edfu describes her as: 

'Hathor, the great one, lady of Dendera, eye of Re, who residence in Edfu, lady of the sky, mistress of all the gods, the Uraeu which is upon the head of Atum, who created her place upon his head, the great cow of heaven, who born Re, the first one of the Ogadoad, Rennet, the noble one in Egypt, the Uraeus to all gods, lady of charm, sweetness of love, all men and women behind her, lady of protection in the bark of millions, who protects the bow in the bark of god, beautiful of hands, who carry the sistrum to appease who hide his name, great of magic, lady of upper Egypt house, who says spells with her name, brighten of eye-brows, sweetness of love'

On the day of the full moon the festivities ended and Hathor bid Horus farewell and began her return journey to her own temple once more, where on her return announced the long awaited flooding of the River Nile

Hathor was a sky goddess, known as “Lady of Stars” and “Sovereign of Stars” and together with the goddess Isis was linked to Sirius in the heavens, once Sirius rose the Nile would flood, astronomer-priests noted that Sirius rose with the Sun just prior to the annual flooding of the Nile which was known as the “Tears of Isis”  which hopefully flooded large areas, feeding the land with the rich nutrients that made the valley fertile. Over the centuries, the seasonal floods have been the lifeblood of the Egyptian civilization, and their failure could bring pestilence & famine due to crop failure.

I would like to thank my friend Mohamed A Fahmy, who is a very spiritual tour guide, for his knowledge on the titles of the Goddess Hathor and the image of Hathors Barque. You can contact Mohamed on Facebook

Poem of Isis & Osiris by Esama Chiba

Walking in the shadow of fate

Dragging her KA, 

tormented Her BA, 

Shedding tears of RA

Isis began a long journey

Searching for her husband

Osiris the beloved King of Egypt

Whose jealous brother

Dark Seth Lord of the Evil

Put him in a golden coffin

Threw him in the River

Roaming along the Nile

She found him in Byblos

Hidden between the trees

With grief and sadness

She opened the casket

In sorrow embraced him

Put the coffin in a boat

Heading back to bury him

Evil Seth wouldn't let her

Ripped his body apart

With no mercy in his heart

Spread it all over Egypt

The blessed Earth of Geb

Isis and her sister Nephthys

Started a second journey

Many years in despair

Collecting all the parts

With the help of Anubis

Osiris became the first

Mummy in the history

Isis used magic power

To breathe life into him

Osiris became the king

Of the land of the dead

The Egyptians believed

The last battle is still

To come with triumph

When Horus the avenger

The son of Isis and Osiris

After long battles and wars

Will finally slay evil Seth

Then Osiris would rise

Return from the dead

With his faithful followers

Live forever on earth

Under the good god

Osiris, Isis his queen

And their son Horus