Min (god)

Min

Min is an Ancient Egyptian god in male human form, shown with an erect phallus which he holds in his left hand and an upheld right arm holding a flail. A god of fertility he was shown as having black skin to reflect the fertile black mud of the Nile's inundation. His other associations include the eastern desert and links to the god Horus. Flinders Petrie excavated two large statues of Min at Qift which are now in the Ashmolean Museum and it is thought by some that they are pre-dynastic. Although not mentioned by name a reference to 'he whose arm is raised in the East' in the Pyramid Texts is thought to refer to Min. His importance grew in the Middle Kingdom when he became even more closely linked with Horus as the deity Min-Horus. By the New Kingdom he was also fused with Amen in the deity Min-Amen-kamutef (Min-Amen- bull of his mother). As the central deity of fertility and possibly orgiastic rites Min became identified by the Greeks with the god Pan. One feature of Min worship was the wild prickly lettuce Lactuca virosa and Lactuca serriola of which is the domestic version Lactuca sativa which has aphrodisiac and opiate qualities. He also had connections with Nubia. However is main centres of worship were Qift (Coptos) and Akhmim (Khemmis). As a god of male sexual potency, he was honoured during the coronation rites of the New Kingdom, when the Pharaoh was expected to sow his seed — generally thought to have been plant seeds, although there have been controversial suggestions that the Pharaoh was expected to demonstrate that he could ejaculate — and thus ensure the annual flooding of the Nile. At the beginning of the harvest season, his image was taken out of the temple and brought to the fields in the festival of the departure of Min, when they blessed the harvest, and played games naked in his honour, the most important of these being the climbing of a huge (tent) pole. In Egyptian art, Min was depicted as wearing a crown with feathers, and holding his penis erect in his left hand (a masturbatory reference to fertility), whilst holding a flail (referring to his authority, or rather that of the Pharaohs) in his upward facing right hand. Around his forehead, Min wears a red ribbon that trails to the ground, claimed by some to represent sexual energy. The symbols of Min were the white bull, a barbed arrow, and a bed of lettuce, that the Egyptians believed to be an aphrodisiac, as Egyptian lettuce was tall, straight, and released a milk-like substance when rubbed, characteristics superficially similar to the penis. Even some war goddesses were depicted with the body of Min (including the phallus), and this also led to depictions, ostensibly of Min, with the head of a lioness. Min was always depicted in an ithyphallic (with an erect and uncovered phallus) style, and thus Christians routinely defaced his monuments in temples they co-opted, and Victorian Egyptologists would take only waist-up photographs of Min, or otherwise find ways to cover his protruding manhood. However, to the ancient Egyptians, Min was not a matter of scandal - they had very relaxed standards of nudity: in their warm climate, dancing girls, serving women, and farmers often worked naked, and children did not wear any clothes until they came of age. In the 19th century, there was an erroneous transcription of the Egyptian for Min as ḫm ("khem"), purely by coincidence. Since this Khem was worshipped most significantly in Akhmim, the separate identity of Khem was reinforced, Akhmim being understood as simply a corruption of Khem. However, Akhmim is a corruption of ḫm-mnw, meaning Shrine of Min, via the demotic form šmn. The existence of a god named Khem, was later understood as a faulty reading, but unfortunately it had already been enshrined in books written by E. A. Wallis Budge—now out of copyright and widely reprinted—, and so this error still finds a home among non-Egyptologists.

Min in non-Egyptian literature

In his Histories, Herodotus writes that the priests at Heliopolis claim Min as the first ruler of Egypt. Min may have been mentioned in the Tanakh in the Book of Isaiah 65:11. "But you are those who forsake the LORD, who forget My holy mountain, who prepare a table for Gad, and who furnish a drink offering for Meni". Meni has, in this case, also been translated as: 'God of Destiny' and 'God of Fate' or simply 'Destiny' or 'Fate'. According to Easton's Bible Dictionary: "Isaiah 65:11, marg. (A.V., "that number;" RSV, "destiny"), probably an idol which the captive Israelites worshipped after the example of the Babylonians. It may have been a symbol of destiny." More Commentary on Crosswalk. "Some take ... Meni, which we translate ... a number, to be the proper names of two of their idols, answering to Mercury." Matthew Henry Complete Commentary on the Whole Bible. There is a controversy concerning the fact that Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism once identified a depiction of Min (including erect penis) as 'God'. This depiction was included in the Mormon text Pearl of Great Price.

External links

• Site on Min, with some pictures
• Lactuca Serriola wild lettuce with white milky substance aphrodesiac opiate

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