Gods, Myths and Heroes - Part 23

 Egyptian God Min

Last time we saw an ancient Egyptian myth involving gods, sex, and lettuce.  Today we look at the Egyptian god Min, who was also associated with sex and lettuce.  What was the deal with lettuce?  Read on.

Min was the god of fertility and virility.  In this wall painting from the temple of Hathor at Deir-el-Medina, Min is the figure with the prominent erection.

To the left of Min in the painting is something odd-looking.  Another representation of it is above.  The thing in the center is a fan, but the things to the right and left are lettuce plants, believe it or not.  Min was associated with lettuce.

Egyptian lettuce was not short and round like our modern iceberg lettuce.  It was a tall, leafy plant like the plant of prickly lettuce, Lactuca seriola, above.

Both it and the related wild lettuce, Lactuca virosa, above, will bleed a milky sap if cut.  The sap actually contains latex, or natural rubber.  But to Egyptians, it reminded them of semen.

Because of this "semen", the lettuce plant was associated with Min (above), the god of male virility and fertility.  Egyptian lettuce was bitter-tasting, and the Egyptians didn't eat it as food.  But Egyptian men did eat it as an aphrodisiac.

Another statue of Min, above.  His weird-looking hat is the "crown of two feathers."  He was usually depicted holding a flail in his right hand.  The flail, which is used to thresh grain, was a symbol of the Pharaoh but also a symbol of agriculture, so it suggested agricultural fertility.  With his left hand, Min is masturbating, which suggests an entirely different kind of fertility.

Another statue of Min.  If you think having statues of a god masturbating is strange, consider the Egyptian creation myth:

The first god was called Atum, and he created himself.  He then created the rest of the world by masturbating.  (I am not making this up.)  First Atum masturbated and ejaculated into his mouth.  Then he spat it out in the form of the gods Shu (god of air) and Tefnut (goddess of rain).  Shu and Tefnut then mated and produced Geb (god of earth) and Nut (goddess of sky).  Geb and Nut went on from there, producing the gods Isis, Osiris, and Seth, who we saw last time.

So, basically, the world (air, water, earth and sky) came from the semen of a masturbating god.

We'll end today with the possibly apocryphal story that every year, in a public ceremony, the Pharaoh would masturbate into the Nile.  I can't find any Egyptian art portraying this charming custom, so we'll use a modern image (above).

The purpose of having the Pharaoh publicly masturbate into the Nile was to bless the land of Egypt with fertility.  The Pharaoh was considered descended from the gods, specifically the god Horus, and if the gods' semen was so life-giving, then so was the semen of the Pharaoh.