Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 31/07/2005 13:37, Ben Crick wrote:

> ...
>
> I seem to remember reading a work on Egyptology which I cannot now track
> down, describing the religion of the priests of Amun-Re in the temples of
> Karnak(?). The main activity of the priests at worship was to manually
> masturbate before the statue of Amun, and then ritually eat the semen thus
> produced. The statue of Amun was an "alpha male" with an enlarged sexual
> organ sticking straight out in front. Ptolemy's(?) troops were so disgusted
> with this that they struck off the offending member, which was how Manetho
> and later archaeologists discovered things. A few statues of Amun were found
> with everything still in place. Crudely carved hands and phalluses were also
> discovered as religious artefacts.
>  

See http://web.onetel.com/%7Epeterkirk/Egypt%20pictures/images/4-28l.JPG 
(suitable for an adult audience only!), my own photo from the Temple of 
Luxor. But this is actually from a barque shrine of Alexander the Great, 
so it was not necessarily the Greeks who were censoring such things.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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