Footnotes :  

198 Richard H. Wilkinson: “Reading Egyptian Art ...”, page 97.
 

199 Rosalie David: “A Guide to Religious Ritual at Abydos”, Aris & Phillips Ltd., Warminster, Wilts., England, 1981, page 52 left.
 

200 Utterance 304 on the north wall of king Unas’ antechamber, as translated by Miriam Lichtheim in “Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume 1: The Old and Middle Kingdoms”, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1975, page 39.
 

201 The “abir” of Jacob in Genesis 49:24; Isaiah 49:26; Psalm 132:2,5; and of Israel in Isaiah 1:24, as cited by Cyrus H. Gordon in “The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations", W. W. Norton & Co, New York, 1965, page 157.
 

202 The famous bull-leaping frescoes depict no actual scenes because bulls twist their heads when attacking and make it impossible to leap them in the way shown, as the Cretan archaeologist J. Alexander MacGillivray points out in “Labyrinths and Bull-Leapers”, Archaeology, November/December 2000, pages 53 to 55. MacGillivray proposes the bull frescoes may represent astronomical constellations, not sporting events.
 

203 Sarah P. Morris: “Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art“, Princeton University Press, 1992, chapter 6: “Daidalos in Crete”, subchapter “Minos and Moses”, pages 172-194, see page 185.

204 Richard Lobban: “A Solution to the Mystery of the Was-Scepter of Ancient Egypt and Nubia”, KMT, Fall 1999, pages 68 to 77.

  The Religious Board Game on the Phaistos Disk. Copyright 2012 by Peter Aleff    by Peter Aleff      Scroll 25

6.1.2.3. The goose as sky goddess

The Goose was also holy to Geb’s daughter, the sky goddess Isis whom some hymns called “the Egg of the Goose”¹⁹⁸. That surname, in turn, matches the image of her celestial vault as the cosmic egg.

As sister and wife of the murdered Osiris, Isis had specially important funerary roles. She helped to supervise the embalming process and guaranteed a new life for the dead: every morning she gave birth to the new sun god Horus and nursed him, hidden in the rushes on the eastern horizon.

And Horus grew in strength and drove back the forces of darkness but by evening sank into the netherworld to become one with his own dead father in the west.  Isis revived him there each night with her magic to then conceive from him the new sun. So the Goose as Isis was also responsible for the daily creation of the world.

To start the New Kingdom, the Goose further added the equally self- created pantheon ruler Amun to its client list. It must have kept quite busy representing him, too, because the name Amun meant “he who remains hidden”.

6.1.2.4. The goose allied with the snake

If the Snake Game in the above spell was expected to transport a pyramid tenant to the Roads of Heaven, it probably made sense to include among the magic of its board also the powerful symbol of this cosmic Goose that had made said heaven to begin with and still sheltered it and everything in it under its wings. After all, that Goose represented the earth god, too, just as the Snake did.

This union of Snake and Goose in Geb could well be the reason why the snake shared its Mehen gameboard with that goose head. Combining the symbolism of both, the game on it is then likely to have represented the passage of time on earth and in the sky, or the path of the players through the time of their lives on earth, followed by their renewal and ascent to the sky at its end.

6.1.2.5. Geese as gifts to the gods

Their great symbolic importance and tasty flesh made geese also a popular and convenient offering: sacrificing them was certain to please the gods of the earth and of the sky as well as the unseen spirit behind both.  You could not go wrong with a goose offer because it covered all there is. And their roasted remnants pleased the palates of the priests who were entitled to their share of the gods’ meals.

Beyond those everyday clerical and culinary chores, the goose had a special assignment in the ceremonial foundation deposits buried under the four corners of many temples. These were usually made from the heads of several geese and a bull¹⁹⁹.

6.1.2.6. The bull heads buried with the goose heads

Bulls were a symbol of divinity and kingship. They supplied the incarnations of Apis- Osiris, and of the similarly venerated Mnevis bull holy to Ptah. A bull also guarded heaven as the “four- horned bull of Re” who had a horn in each of the cardinal directions²⁰⁰.

Most major ruling gods in Egypt as well as throughout the ancient Levant and India were typically addressed or pictured as bulls, as attested from Harappa, Egypt, Ugarit, Phoenicia, Crete, and Greece. Even the biblical God of Israel is repeatedly called the “bull of Jacob” or of Israel²⁰¹ and received sacrifices on altars with horns. At times, he was also worshipped as a golden calf. Castings of bull calves found in some of his early shrines at Bethel and Dan support those accounts, though they were made of golden- looking but less costly bronze.

Similarly, Crete had its supernatural “bull of Minos” or “Minotaur” and a great fondness for bulls on seals and frescoes which all had religious meanings²⁰².  Even the Greek Zeus, who had abducted the Phoenician princess Europa in the form of a bull to bring her to Crete, still wore “gilded horns” in the Orphic poems²⁰³ from about the sixth century BCE.

The earthly representatives of these bulls, the kings, appropriated this symbol of divine power and fertility for their own propaganda.

From at least the Narmer Palette on, Egyptian kings included “Mighty Bull” among their royal titles. A recent scholarly analysis also suggests that the was- scepter, a prominent symbol carried by most gods and kings and some goddesses, was made from a dried bull penis²⁰⁴ which again fits the connection of divine life- giving with bullship.