OK well I was looking through my notes in this Egyptian class I took in college, and I came across something that might be a clue.
It is the Sed Festival, it happens every 30 years. This would fit in with Bree's comment that the ceremony doesn't happen too often.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sed_festival
Whatdya think?
The Ceremony
Moderator: Moderators
-
- Enthusiastic Fan
- Posts: 289
- Joined: Mon Oct 09, 2006 4:36 am
- Location: St. Louis
Did the ancient Egyptians practice human sacrifice? I know by the time of the Ptolemies they certainly weren't (they were Roman vassals and the Romans made some very graphic examples of what they thought of religions which practice human sacrifice, see Carthage and the Druids), but the Ptolemies were a strongly Hellenizing influence. If Bree's religion is a form of Egyptian worship, is there anything in there which involved sacrificing virgins, etc?
-
- Lonely Fan
- Posts: 176
- Joined: Tue Sep 12, 2006 9:11 pm
Since Bree's part in the ritual is supposed to be a huge honor, it's possible that she is going to reprsent the goddess in physical form.
Copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris
In the Osirian temple at Denderah, an inscription (translated by Budge, Chapter XV, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection) describes in detail the making of wheat paste models of each dismembered piece of Osiris to be sent out to the town where each piece was discovered by Isis. At the temple of Mendes, figures of Osiris are made from wheat and paste placed in a trough on the day of the murder (Osiris killed by his brother), then water added for several days, when finally the mixture was kneaded into a mold of Osiris and taken to the temple and buried (the sacred grain for these cakes only grown in the temple fields). Molds are made from wood of a red tree in the forms of the sixteen dismembered parts of Osiris, cakes of divine bread made from each mold, placed in a silver chest and set near the head of the god, the inward parts of Osiris as described in the Book of the Dead (XVII). On the first day of the Festival of Ploughing, where the goddess Isis appears in her shrine where she is stripped naked, Paste made from the grain is placed in her bed and moistened with water, representing the fecund earth. All of these sacred rituals were climaxed by the eating of sacramental god, the eucharist by which the celebrants were transformed, in their persuasion, into replicas of their god-man (Larson 20).
Copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris
In the Osirian temple at Denderah, an inscription (translated by Budge, Chapter XV, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection) describes in detail the making of wheat paste models of each dismembered piece of Osiris to be sent out to the town where each piece was discovered by Isis. At the temple of Mendes, figures of Osiris are made from wheat and paste placed in a trough on the day of the murder (Osiris killed by his brother), then water added for several days, when finally the mixture was kneaded into a mold of Osiris and taken to the temple and buried (the sacred grain for these cakes only grown in the temple fields). Molds are made from wood of a red tree in the forms of the sixteen dismembered parts of Osiris, cakes of divine bread made from each mold, placed in a silver chest and set near the head of the god, the inward parts of Osiris as described in the Book of the Dead (XVII). On the first day of the Festival of Ploughing, where the goddess Isis appears in her shrine where she is stripped naked, Paste made from the grain is placed in her bed and moistened with water, representing the fecund earth. All of these sacred rituals were climaxed by the eating of sacramental god, the eucharist by which the celebrants were transformed, in their persuasion, into replicas of their god-man (Larson 20).