The word for baboon in ancient Egyptian was , with later variants such as and ,Bell, Lanny, Interpreters and Egytianized Nubians in Ancient Egyptian Foreign Policy: Aspects of the History of Egypt and Nubia, 1976, page 8 et seq. rendered in the obsolete Lepsius romanization as respectively ȧāni and ȧānā.Compare the Lepsius-style transcriptions in Budge, E. A. Wallis, An Egyptian Hieroglyphic Dictionary, volume 1, 1920, page 29. Attested over fifty times in extant literature, this word simply refers to the animal itself.Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae, jꜥnꜥ “baboon.” (Lemma ID 850186): Wb 1, 41, 5-6; vgl. FCD 11; LÄ IV, 917. Uses in Pyramid Texts spells PT 275, 315, 320, 570B, 698B, especially from the Pyramids of Wenis and Pepi. Book of Dead usage occurs in spells BD 5, 75, and 126. Online at Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, https://thesaurus-linguae-aegyptiae.de/lemma/850186 In ancient Egyptian religion, the baboon was considered sacred to the Egyptian god Thoth.Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, repeated in Benet, The Reader's Encyclopedia (1948) and in Gertrude Jobes. Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore, and Stymbols, Part 1. New York:The Scarecrow Press, 1962.William Ricketts Cooper, An Archaic Dictionary: Biographical, Historical, and Mythological, 1876: "One of the Egyptian names of the Cynocephalus Baboon, which was sacred to the god Thoth." Many Egyptian gods can manifest in a baboon aspect or have other associations with the animal, including
Hapy, a god who protects the canopic jar containing the lungs after embalming.Taylor, J., Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt, Univ. of Chicago Press, pp. 65-66. Khonsu, a god known as “eater of hearts” in the Pyramid Texts.Pinch, G., Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt, Oxford, 2002, p. 155. Thoth, a god of reason and writing: “And so the Baboon of Thoth came into being,” says one 18th Dynasty text."Myth of the Heavenly Cow," line 73. Simpson, W.K., The Literature of Ancient Egypt, Yale Univ. Press, 2003. p. 295
Animal iconography does not imply the Egyptians identified the animals concerned as deities themselves. Rather, the animal could serve as an icon, or a large hieroglyph, representing a god.Hornung, Erik, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, Cornell Univ. Press, 1996, p. 124 The Lexikon der ägyptischen Götter und Götterbezeichnungen also notes that a number of gods are given the epithet "the Baboon" in ancient Egyptian texts, including Osiris, Khonsu, and Thoth.Leitz, Christian et al., Lexikon der ägyptischen Götter und Götterbezeichnungen, volume 1, 2002, page 136–137
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