I was looking through some pictures of depictions of Egyptian gods and it appears that animal-wise (as far as the Nile Delta goes), the crew was all there: jackal, couple brands of predator birds, an ibis, a cat, etc. I thought that with the seeming ubiquity of snakes in the area and the appearance of snakes in other religious mythologies, this seems like an odd exclusion. Is there any documented history as to why?
There are at least three ancient Egyptian snake-headed gods:
1. Nehebkau, usually depicted as snake-headed and snake-tailed humanoid:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Egyptian_-Neheb-kau-Walters_481615-_Right.jpg
but sometimes more thoroughly snake-like:
Nehebkau appears to have originally been a god of primordial chaos, but became a benevolent god of the afterlife.
2. Wadjet was a local protector god, later promoted to a protector of Lower Egypt, and later, with the unification of Egypt, a protector of all Egypt. She is depicted as either a snake-head humanoid
or a cobra:
3. Apep, like the earliest Nehebkau, was a god of primordial chaos. Perhaps it is cheating to include Apep, since it is depicted as a giant snake:
rather than a snake-headed humanoid. (But a snake is snake-headed.) Unlike Nehebkau, Apep remained an evil god, either depicted as primal chaos being slain by other gods:
By Set: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Set_speared_Apep.jpg
By Ra (as a (long-eared) cat): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apep_2.jpg
or as a dangerous eater-of-souls in the afterlife.
Hey there,
Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.
If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!
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