The Ancient Gods have returned!
Western African-Congo
Efik
Anansa, goddess of the Sea,
allure and beauty.[citation needed]
Vodun
Erzulie Freda Dahomey, loa of love, beauty, jewelry,
dancing, luxury, and flowers.
Yoruba
Oshun, goddess of luxury and pleasure, sexuality and
fertility, beauty and love, the river and fresh water venerated in Ifá, Yoruba religion, Dahomey
mythology, Vodun, Santería, Candomblé, Haitian Vodou
Afroasiatic Middle East
Canaanite
Astarte, goddess of sex and war, Canaanite version of
Inanna.
Qetesh, goddess of love, beauty, and sex; "Qetesh"
is her Egyptian name.
Egyptian
Bastet, goddess of felines, love, protection, perfume,
beauty, and dance.
Bes, god of music, love, and dance.
Hathor, goddess of love, beauty, and music; originally a sky
goddess.
Min, god of reproduction, love, and sexual pleasure.
Qetesh, goddess of love, beauty, and sex; apparently
borrowed by the Egyptians from the Canaanites.
Hausa
Zamani, god of sex and beauty.
Mesopotamian
Inanna/Ishtar, goddess of sex and war.[3]
Nanaya, goddess personifying voluptuousness, sexuality and
sensuality.
Western Eurasia
Albanian
Prende, goddess of love, beauty and fertility.
Balto-Slavic
Lithuanian
Milda, goddess of love and freedom.
Slavic
Dogoda, Polish spirit of the west wind, associated with love
and gentleness.
Siebog, god of love and marriage.
Živa, goddess of love and fertility.
Celtic
Áine, Irish goddess of love, summer, wealth, and
sovereignty; possibly originally a sun goddess.
Branwen, Welsh goddess of love and beauty
Cliodhna, Irish goddess, sometimes identified as a goddess
of love and beauty.[4]
Norse-Germanic
Freyja, goddess of love/sex, beauty, seiðr, war, and death;
often thought of as the Norse equivalent of \
Lofn, goddess who has permission from Frigg to arrange
forbidden marriages.
Sjöfn, goddess associated with love.
Greek / Hellenic
Aphrodite, goddess of love, sex and beauty, Greek version of
Astarte and ultimately Inanna.
Eos, Greek reflex of Hausos, who may have been the PIE
lust/sex goddess.
The Erotes
Anteros, god of requited love.
Eros, god of love and procreation; originally a primordial
deity unconnected to Aphrodite, he was later made into her son, possibly with
Ares as his father; this version of him was imported to Rome where he came
known as Cupid.
Himeros, god of sexual desire and unrequited love.
Hedylogos, god of sweet talk and flattery.
Voluptas, Roman version of the Greek Hedone.
Cupid, Roman version of the Greek Eros, also called Amor.
Suadela, Roman version of the Greek Peitho.
Venus, Roman version of the Greek Aphrodite.
Etruscan
Albina, goddess of the dawn and protector of ill-fated
lovers.
Turan, goddess of love and vitality.
Western Asia
Armenian
Astghik, goddess of fertility and love.
Hindu-Vedic
Kamadeva Hindu god of human love or desire.
Rati, consort of Kama, goddess of love, carnal desire, lust,
passion and sexual pleasure.
Persian Zorostarian
Anahita, seems to have gained an association with fertility
and sex due to being influenced by the Mesopotamian Inanna; originally appears
to have been a water goddess.
Asia-Pacific / Oceania
Filipino
Bangan: the Kankanaey goddess of romance; a daughter of
Bugan and Lumawig
Amas: the Aeta deity who moves to pity, love, unity, and
peace of heart
Dian Masalanta: the Tagalog goddess of lovers,
Mangagayuma: the Tagalog deity specializing in charms,
especially those which infuses the heart with love; one of the five agent
brothers
Far East Asia
Chinese
Yue-Lao, a god of love, who binds two people together with
an invisible red string.
Tu Er Shen, a deity who oversees love between (effeminate)
homosexual men.
god. On her first assignment with a client, a prostitute was
supposed to make a sacrifice to him.
Qian Keng (Peng Zu), a god of health-focused sex.
Buddhist
Kuni, god of love.
Native Americas
Central American and the Caribbean
Aztec
Xochipilli, god of love, art, games, beauty, dance, flowers,
maize, fertility, and song.
South America
Rudá, god of love.
Papyrus
A symbol of life merging from primeval water. The plant is
used to produce the papyrus paper, the world’s first paper
Papyrus, writing material of ancient times and also the
plant from which it was derived, Cyperus papyrus (family Cyperaceae), also
called paper plant. The papyrus plant was long cultivated in the Nile delta
region in Egypt and was collected for its stalk or stem, whose central pith was
cut into thin strips, pressed together, and dried to form a smooth thin writing
surface.
Papyrus is a grasslike aquatic plant that has woody, bluntly
triangular stems and grows up to 4.6 m (about 15 feet) high in quietly flowing
water up to 90 cm (3 feet) deep. The
triangular stem can grow to a width of as much as 6 cm. The papyrus plant is
now often used as a pool ornamental in warm areas or in conservatories. The
dwarf papyrus (C. isocladus, also given as C. papyrus ‘Nanus’), up to 60 cm
tall, is sometimes potted and grown indoors.
The ancient Egyptians used the stem of the papyrus plant to
make sails, cloth, mats, cords, and, above all, paper. Paper made from papyrus
was the chief writing material in ancient Egypt, was adopted by the Greeks, and
was used extensively in the Roman Empire.
Due to its prevalence in the Nile Delta, the papyrus was the
heraldic plant of Lower (northern) Egypt, while the lily or lotus stood for
Upper (southern) Egypt.
The goddess Wadjet, depicted as a rearing cobra or a woman with the head of a lioness , was
the tutelary deity of Lower Egypt, and often is shown carrying a papyrus-shaped
scepter.
In ancient Egyptian cosmology, the world was created when
the first god stood on a mound that emerged from limitless and undifferentiated
darkness and water, a mythical echo of the moment each year when the land began
to reappear from beneath the annual floodwaters. Papyrus marshes were thus seen
as fertile regions that contained the germs of creation Ceilings in temples and
tombs were frequently supported with columns in the form of papyrus plants,
turning their architectural settings into models of this primeval marsh
In one of the great mythic cycles central to Egyptian
religion, the goddess Isis took her infant son Horus to the papyrus thickets of
the north to conceal him from her brother Seth, who had murdered her husband
Osiris and usurped his throne. Horus grew to manhood here, hidden among the
swaying reeds whose rustling sounds soothed him and masked his cries, until he
emerged to defeat his wicked uncle and reclaim his patrimony (. Horus was
protected and nursed while a baby by the goddess Hathor, who was worshipped in
the ritual of the Shaking of the Papyrus.
To celebrate her role as wet-nurse of Horus and symbol of
rebirth and resurrection in the celestial realm, this goddess is shown in the
form of a cow emerging from the papyrus thicket The handles of mirrors,
associated with Hathor as the goddess of eroticism and beauty, were often in
the form of papyrus plants.
The Papypus has served mankind well
Hotep: An offering table that is set before the gods.
Certain pharaohs names connected to the word Hotep to the god. Amun hotep,
Mentuhotep. In this form Hotep means pleasing to the god, The name of the physician
Imhotep means bringer of peace. It is used as a greeting by many today
Hotep is an Egyptian word that roughly translates as
"to be satisfied, at peace". The word also refers to an
"offering" ritually presented to a deity or a dead person, hence
"be pleased, be gracious, be at peace". It is rendered in hieroglyphs
as an altar/offering table. The noun ḥtp.w means "peace, contentment
According to Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, Temple University’s
Chair of African American Studies, hotep has been used as a greeting among some
back people since at least the 1970s. Reporter D.L. Chandler recalled hearing
the greeting in the 1980s. A letter to the editor of The Black Collegian in
1990 used the greeting hotep.
In particular, hotep is used as a greeting by adherents of
Afrocentrism, a movement that looks to African history to inform values for the
black diaspora. Afrocentrists often look to Ancient Egypt as the source of
African culture, hence the adoption of the Egyptian term hotep.
Canopic Jar: One set of a set of 4 jar in which the liver
lungs stomach and intestines of the dead were stored. These jars were generally
fashioned after the sons of Horus.
Canopic jars were used by the ancient Egyptians during the
mummification process to store and preserve the viscera of their owner for the
afterlife. They were commonly either carved from limestone or were made of
pottery. These jars were used by the ancient Egyptians from the time of the Old
Kingdom until the time of the Late Period or the Ptolemaic Period, by which
time the viscera were simply wrapped and placed with the body. The viscera were
not kept in a single canopic jar: each jar was reserved for specific organs. the
name derives from the location Canopus (now Abukir) in the western Nile Delta
near Alexandria, where human-headed jars were worshipped as personifications of
the god Osiris
Hieroglyphs for the four sons of Horus used on an Egyptian
canopic jar
from the 19th dynasty until the end of the New Kingdom 15 39
to 10 75 BCE, the heads represented the four sons of the god Horus
(jackal-headed Duamutef, falcon-headed Qebehsenuf, human-headed Imset, and
baboon-headed Hapy).
The four sons of Horus were a group of four gods in ancient
Egyptian religion, who were essentially the personifications of the four
canopic jars, which accompanied mummified bodies. Since the heart was thought
to embody the soul, it was left inside the body. The brain was discarded.
Attributes of the Sons of Horus.
Imsety, the Human aspect, housed the liver. He was associated with the South and the Goddess
Auset.
Duamutef. the Jakal head.
protected the stomach. he was associated
with the Deity Neith and the North.
Hapi, who was the Baboon, housed the lungs and was associated
with the East and Nephtys.
Qebehsenuef the falson headed, holds the intestines and is associated
with the West and Serket.
1542• Portugal helps
Ethiopia end the Arab invasion.
c. 1550
In Italy the Beretta family branched into guns
Africans, bought in the Portuguese trading posts of west
Africa, are shipped across the Atlantic as slaves.
1562• Britain begins
slave trade in Africa
1570• Angola becomes a Portuguese colony.
7. 1591• Moroccan forces destroy the Songhai Empire
8. 1625• Holland involved in the slave trade.
1630 - The first true flintlock.
1638
The French build a trading station on the estuary of the
Senegal river in west Africa
1637-1641• Holland seizes Portugal’s Elmina, Sao Tome, and
Luanda trading posts.
10. 1642• France involved in slave trade
11. 1651• Britain invades Gambia
1652
Jan van Riebeeck establishes a Dutch settlement at the Cape
of Good Hope