History
In very early Egyptian mythology, the deity Imiut (meaning, "He who is in his wrappings") may have been a god of the underworld, although insufficient records survive to explain whether this was the case. An early example found in 1914 by an expedition of the Metropolitan Museum of Art near the pyramid of Senusret I (c. 1971-1928 BCE) was placed in a shrine.
Since it was later connected to the god Anubis, it is sometimes called the Anubis fetish. One idea is that it came to symbolise Anubis as an embalmer, although this is unlikely to be the original understanding, as Anubis was originally a god of the dead, rather than just embalming. There are depictions of the imiut fetish on ancient Egyptian temples, and sometimes there were models of it included with the funerary equipment, most notably the two found in the burial chamber of Tutankhamun by Howard Carter.
Read more about this topic: Imiut Fetish
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.”
—Malcolm Bradbury (b. 1932)
“Like their personal lives, women’s history is fragmented, interrupted; a shadow history of human beings whose existence has been shaped by the efforts and the demands of others.”
—Elizabeth Janeway (b. 1913)
“Boys forget what their country means by just reading “the land of the free” in history books. Then they get to be men, they forget even more. Liberty’s too precious a thing to be buried in books.”
—Sidney Buchman (1902–1975)