Neteru: Gods of Ancient Egypt

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The deities of ancient Egypt, or neteru (sing. neter), were the core of ancient Egyptian religion and culture for over 3000 years, a scope of time nearly inconceivable to our modern sensibilities. The only other human culture with a plausible claim to such persistence of belief would be the Jainism and Hinduism of India.

For the ancient Egyptians the core concept, around which all of their beliefs orbited, was that of balance or ma'at, personified as a goddess who regulated the stars, seasons, and the actions of both mortals and the deities, and who set the order of the universe from the moment of creation. Despite their diverse functions, most neteru had an overarching role in common: maintaining ma’at - those that did not share this goal represented disruption and chaos, constantly threatening to annihilate the order of the universe.

The roles of each deity were fluid, and each god could expand their nature to take on new characteristics as the culture shifted over time, and the prominence of locations and their patron deities evolved. Neteru were syncretized or sub-divided to reflect changing beliefs; a god could be called the ba (an aspect of the soul) of another, or two or more deities could be joined into one god with a combined name and iconography. Local lesser gods were linked with greater ones, and deities with similar functions were combined, or sometimes supplanted each other in preeminence - for instance, there are a number of distinct neter that lay claim to the title “Creator of the World”. As a result, gods' roles are difficult to categorize or define, but despite their flexibility, the gods had limited abilities and spheres of influence, and did not exhibit omnipotence or omniscience.

The neteru were considered to be immanent; moving from the divine realm to dwell in their temples where they inhabited their cult statues allowing mortals to nourish them through the presentation of offerings, sacrifices, spells and rituals. These offerings, in addition to maintaining ma’at for the gods, celebrated deities' life-giving generosity and encouraged them to remain benevolent rather than vengeful. Rituals for a neter were often based in that deity's mythology, and as such the rituals were meant to be repetitions of the events of the mythic past, renewing the beneficial effects of the original events. In this manner the worshipers provided the gods with ma’at so they could continue to perform their vital functions, empowering them with the fundamental power of heka (magic) to maintain ma’at in the cosmos and sustaining all living things.

In conjunction with these day-to-day immanent roles, the collected mythological stories of the ancient Egyptians told the tales of the gods' actions during a mythic prehistory when the gods walked in material form on earth and interacted directly with mortals. Although many of these myths contain seemingly contradictory ideas, each expresses a particular perspective on divine events and they are rife with symbolic meaning. The contradictions in myth are as much a part of the Egyptians' many-faceted approach to religious belief as they are a reflection of the millennia over which they were told, retold and interpreted – testament to their comfort with a "multiplicity of approaches" to understanding the divine.

In myth, the neteru behave much like humans: they feel emotion; they can eat, drink, fight, fuck, weep, sicken, and die. Some have unique character traits or flaws: Ra, the sun god, is pompous and self-important; Set, god of chaos and the desert, is aggressive and impulsive; Thoth, patron of writing and knowledge, is prone to long-winded speeches; Isis, goddess of motherhood and magic, is crafty, poisoning the superior god Ra and refusing to cure him until he reveals his secret name to her, thus granting her and her son, Horus, greater knowledge and power.

Egyptian writings describe the gods' bodies in detail - they are composed of precious materials; their flesh is gold, their bones silver, and their hair made of lapis lazuli, and they emit a scent that the Egyptians likened to the incense used in rituals. Some texts give precise descriptions of particular deities, including their height and eye color, yet these characteristics are not fixed; in myths, gods change their appearances to suit their own purposes. The Egyptians' visual representations of their gods are therefore not literal. They symbolize specific aspects of each deity's character, functioning much like the ideograms in hieroglyphic writing. For this reason, the funerary god Anubis is commonly shown in Egyptian art as a dog or jackal, a creature whose scavenging habits threaten the preservation of buried mummies: an effort to counter this threat and employ it for protection. His black coloring alludes to the color of mummified flesh as well as to the fertile black soil that Egyptians saw as a symbol of resurrection.

In this series, I have translated my attraction to these deities into forms that play upon elements of the ancient Egyptian artistic canon while infusing personality (ba) & spirit (ka) into them in a manner that, I hope, will bring them to life for the viewer…

Each sculpture is available in one of two different color palates: one Black with Gold Leaf counter-point, the other using Colored Patinas to reflect the traditional pigments used in portraying the neter in ancient Egyptian tomb wall-paintings, also with Gold Leaf accents.

Satyrs: Blithe Spirits of the Wilde

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In Greek mythology, Satyrs are part of the troop of ithyphallic male companions of the gods Dionysus and Pan, who roamed the woods and mountains as part of the thiasos (the ecstatic retinue of Dionysus, often pictured as inebriated revelers).

The satyrs’ chief was Silenus, a minor deity associated (like Pan, Dionysus, Hermes and Priapus) with fertility, who was also the tutor of the young Dionysus. They sport goat-like (caprine) or horse-like (equine) features, including a tail, elongated ears, and sometimes a permanently erect phallus, and are depicted as being strongly built with long curly hair and full beards, with wreaths of vine or ivy circling their heads. Satyrs often carry the thyrsus: the rod symbolic of Dionysus, which is wrapped with ivy and tipped with a pine cone.
Similar beings, called Fauns, exist in Roman Mythology; where they are portrayed with human head and torsos and goat-like from the haunches to the hooves. Greek satyrs acquired their goat-like aspect through later Roman conflation with the Faun, as Greek-speaking Romans often used the Greek term saturos when referring to the Latin faunus, eventually resulting in the syncretization of the two types of beings. Mature satyrs are often depicted in Roman art with goat’s horns (and sometimes even ram’s horns), while juveniles are shown with bony nubs on their foreheads.
Carefree Italic nature-spirits Fauns were conflated in the popular and poetic imagination with Latin spirits of woodland and with the rustic Greek god Pan. They are alternately bawdy and innocent, gentle and fearsome, and represent a deep connection with nature in all its untrammeled aspects: with the brutal instincts necessary to defend against threats, and fully capable of surviving without the benefits of civilization.
As Dionysian creatures they are lovers of wine and inebriation, and are eager for every hedonistic pleasure. Because of their love of wine, they are often represented holding wine cups, and they appear often in the decorations on wine cups. In myths they are often associated with music, and are said to roam field and hill to the music of aulos reedpipes (auloi [Ancient Greek] or tibia [Latin]), the syrinx, cymbals, castanets, tympanum (a type of frame drum or tambourine), and askaulos (a type of bagpipe).
These beings can be found in the only complete remaining satyr play, Cyclops, by Euripides, and the fragments of Sophocles’ Ichneutae (Tracking Satyrs). The satyr play was a short, lighthearted tailpiece performed after each trilogy of tragedies in Athenian festivals honoring Dionysus, which burlesqued the serious events of the mythic past with lewd pantomime and subversive mockery.

Hellas: Gods & Heroes of Ancient Greece

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Hellas is the name Greeks use for Greece (Ἑλλάς; modern pronunciation Ellas), and here refers to all lands inhabited by the Hellenes – all of Ancient Greece, including the Greek colonies.

This series features images of Ancient Greek Gods & Heroes, for whom my fascination dates back to early childhood. These entities and archetypes captured and held my attention and imagination with their visceral, earthy, and all together human follies and foibles in a way that the divine representatives of the transcendental spiritual paths of modern western thought never could.

As Sir Terry Pratchett so aptly puts it in his novel Reaper Man, 'They tend to do exactly the things people would do if only they could, especially when it comes to nymphs, golden showers, and the smiting of your enemies.'