Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, hence why I
kept on down low for several months now. However, I have come back, (and with a
new haircut), and I feel like discussing something new for the moment.
The problem is, what do I want to discuss? Given my
blog’s latest tendencies, people might assume that I want to talk about MCU’s ‘Moon
Knight’ premiere, ‘The Goldfish Problem’. Fair enough, but for the moment there’s
nothing to discuss: MCU has made a wide choice by making ‘Moon Knight’ separate
from the rest of MCU – for the moment – but it does leave us rather bare-handed
and flat-footed as to where to go from here; so far, there’s nothing, except…
Except for Ammit, also known as Ammut, (and Ahemait,
apparently). As a matter of fact, she was
an Egyptian deity, but the thing is that the ancient Egyptians did not worship her/it; instead, Ammut
was an underling of Anubis, who was
the divine judge of their afterlife, and if an ancient Egyptian was found to be
unworthy, Ammut would it his heart, and the ancient Egyptian would be ‘dead a
second time’, according to the official sources. As such, the ancient Egyptians
did not worship Ammut, and in the religion of mainly animal-headed deities,
Ammut was a completely bestial chimera, with the head of a crocodile, the main
and the forequarters of a lion, and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus: whereas
the Greek Chimera was just three random animals jumbled together, the Egyptian
Ammut personified three of the deadliest animals known to the ancient Egyptian
culture and society. Neat, but she/it still was not worshiped… unlike in MCU.
That is not a problem, actually, but a while back there was an article about
how the team Moon Knight criticized Gal Gadot and Patty Jenkins as to how they
handled the Egyptian angle in WW1984, calling their approach… retrograde and
backwards, basically. The irony here is that MCU seems to be treating the
ancient Egyptian mythology very similarly, especially when you look at the
episode’s monster.
Let us roll back. At the episode’s finale, the show’s
main villain, Arthur Harrow, have conjured up some sort of a demon creature
with a humanoid body and the head-skull of a jackal, (for simplicity’s sake,
let’s treat it as such). Well, given the strong influence of the ‘Mummy’
trilogy (of the late 1990s and the early 2000s) in the monster’s depiction and
actions, I feel that MCU have repeated the trilogy’s confusion and conflation
of Anubis and Set.
…If there are people who are not too versed in the ancient Egyptian myths, then while Anubis
was the divine judge of the ancient Egyptian underworld, Set was a god of evil
instead; the two are depicted
similarly – Anubis has the head of a jackal, whereas Set has the head of… a Set
beast or a sha, a creature that hasn’t been fully identified yet, (though some
people associate it with the saluki, an ancient dog breed; the fact that Set
was also Anubis’ father in the ancient Egyptian canon doesn’t help things
either. Still, the ancient Egyptians had no problem in keeping the two gods
apart, and they did not consider Set wholly bad; he was one of the strongest lieutenants
of Ra, the sun god, and regularly helped Ra with fighting Apep, the chthonic
demon-snake of the ancient Egyptian myths. More precisely, Rick Riordan got the
facts down flat in his ‘Kane Chronicles’ trilogy, and since Mr. Riordan is
associated with Disney just as the MCU is, there’s no reason as to why MCU had
to conflate the two gods and throw Ammut/Ammit into the mix as well. I wonder
as to how they will treat Khonshu the moon god now…
Did we digress, or rather ramble? Well yes, we have.
In my defence, it has been a while
since I wrote in my blog and I have a lot under my belt, but an article entry
about the ‘Moon Knight’ series’ premiere isn’t it, sadly. Therefore, I am
ending my rant for now.
See you all soon (hopefully)!
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