#as an aside this is precisely why it's so goddamn fucking funny that greekbitch keeps taking this phrase as me saying

[rudjedet]

Okay, I'll ask because someone has to: what *about* the Vigorous Nature of Seth's Coition? What is the context for this? To which does said vigorous nature relate, and what does it imply? (Apologies if you've answered this question before)

[TL;DR below]

Ha, well, the context is that it's a phrase from a paper by my thesis advisor Jaap van Dijk on the story of Seth, Anat and the Seed of P'Re. This text is part of the corpus of mythological stories that are used as medicinal heka - i.e. a story that is a recounting of something that happens in the realm of the gods, and which ends with Isis proclaiming her proficience as a magician, and reciting an invocation to effectuate a cure. In this case, it's an invocation against a headache thought to be engendered by The Seed (mtwt in Middle Egyptian, which can mean both "semen" and "poison").

In the text, Seth comes across The Seed, a goddess who is likely a personification of semen (and who is also Hathor) and who is said to be the wife of P'Re in his nocturnal form, as she is taking a bath. He is mightily taken by the sight of her buttocks, and has sex with her. The text is a little bit ambiguous, some interpreting it as Seth forcing himself upon her, but textual analysis of the words used may indicate that it wasn't so much rape, but rather, quoth Jaap, "[stressing] the vigorous nature of Seth's coition". Either way, The Seed wasn't too fond of it, and she flies up against him and hits him in the forehead, so that comes down with a sick headache and has to go lie down in his bed.

Another argument against the rape interpretation is that the text seems to be dealing with the fallout of Seth engaging in sexual indulgences as he's wont to do, and through that, throwing a spanner in the works for the rebirth of the sun god. The nocturnal form of P'Re copulates with The Seed every night, so that he may be reborn as the sun god every morning. But because Seth had sex with The Seed, and The Seed in response fucked him over by entering his body and causing a terrible headache, that cyclicity is broken. Anat, who is at this point in time Seth's wife, then enters the story and asks P'Re to take The Seed away from Seth's head, but P'Re is angry and says "let his stupidity be a lesson to him". After this, Isis shows up and instigates the invocation proper, which has both real world consequences (i.e. a medical cure) and mythological consequences (The Seed is taken from Seth's head and the cyclicity of rebirth is restored).

To recap the full story: P'Re is old and dying; Seth, by robbing P'Re's Seed through having sex with her, prevents his rebirth. Anat attempts to fix it but can't because she's barren. Isis shows up, and with help from Anat, recovers the Seed. Isis then becomes both P'Re's wife and mother, which enables P'Re's rebirth again. In its essence, Seth’s vigorous coition - which is always portrayed as something aberrant (in this case, adultery, in others, homosexual intercourse*/pederasty/rape) - just fucks up a whole lot of things for a whole lot of people and this story is a representation of one of the ways in which Seth can be a dickbag the antithesis to Ma’at.

This a condensing of some relatively complicated religious concepts. There's a lot more to be said about how the three goddesses stand in relation to each other and Seth, which Jaap does in his paper. If you're interested in the full background, hit me up with your e-mail through messages and I'll send the paper to you. I can't post it because Tumblr would just hide the post because of the link.

Ultimately, the phrase "the vigorous nature of Seth's coition" really tickled me because I know the man who wrote it and I know just the kind of face he likely made when he did. I also think it's one of the more interesting myths involving Seth, because it has a lot of parallels, for example structurally, with the Osiris Mythos, but also in terms of goddesses; Anat and Nephthys are similar figures - both either barren or unable to give birth to children, both said to assist Isis, and both with a spousal relation to Seth.

*homosexual intercourse in ancient Egypt was considered an aberration from the norm, the all-important nuclear family focussed in procreation. Although we do have evidence that same-sex couples existed in Egypt and weren’t necessarily shunned or otherwise punished for their homosexual behaviour, within the religious realm this is portrayed as undesirable because of the nature of the gods.

TL;DR; The vigorous nature of Seth’s coition represents an aberration from the norm that results in the breaking of the cosmic cyclicity necessary to maintain Ma’at.

#egyptology #seth #tw rape mention #ancient egypt #as an aside this is precisely why it's so goddamn fucking funny that greekbitch keeps taking this phrase as me saying #''i would totally bang seth'' #lmao #but hey we already knew he knows absolute jackshit about the intricacies of Egyptian culture so are we really surprised? #he's 100% hate reading this so who wants to take bets on when he's going to look up everything Herodotus ever said about Seth #to somehow prove that I do actually want to have sex with an ancient assholic deity