Teeming with wild birds and fish as well as dangerous animals such as hippopotami and crocodiles, all seen as incarnations of Egypt’s enemies, these were the setting for ritual hunts. Papyrus thickets were seen as liminal zones at the edges of the ordered cosmos, symbols of the untamed chaos that surrounded and perpetually threatened the Egyptian world. Ceilings in temples and tombs were frequently supported with columns in the form of papyrus plants, turning their architectural settings into models of this primeval marsh ( 68.154). Papyrus marshes were thus seen as fecund, fertile regions that contained the germs of creation ( 30.4.136). In ancient Egyptian cosmology, the world was created when the first god stood on a mound that emerged from limitless and undifferentiated darkness and water, a mythical echo of the moment each year when the land began to reappear from beneath the annual floodwaters. The goddess Wadjet, depicted as a rearing cobra ( 07.228.14) or a woman with the head of a lioness ( 35.9.2), was the tutelary deity of Lower Egypt, and often is shown carrying a papyrus-shaped scepter. When shown wound around the hieroglyph for “unite,” these two plants formed an emblem for the unification of the Two Lands of Egypt ( 15.5.1). Due to its prevalence in the Nile Delta, the papyrus was the heraldic plant of Lower (northern) Egypt, while the lily or lotus stood for Upper (southern) Egypt. An amulet in this shape was worn at the throat for protection and health ( ). A hieroglyph in the form of a papyrus plant was used in the writing of the word wadj, meaning fresh, flourishing, and green. The pharaonic word for papyrus was tjufy (with mehyt used as a more general term for marsh plants). From a horizontal root, the slender but sturdy stalks, topped by feathery umbels ending in small brown fruit-bearing flowers, can reach up to five meters in height ( 30.4.60). Needing shallow fresh water or water-saturated earth to grow, dense papyrus thickets were found in the marshes of the Nile Delta and also in the low-lying areas fringing the Nile valley. A member of the sedge family, the papyrus ( Cyperus papyrus) was an integral feature of the ancient Nilotic landscape, essential to the ancient Egyptians in both the practical and symbolic realms.
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