Egyptian mythology

Mythical objects — Egyptian mythology

The wedjat eye is no abstract symbol: it is the eye Horus loses to Seth and Thoth restores, which is why it became the most widely worn healing amulet in Egypt. Each entry explains the object's mythical origin, its attested ritual or funerary use and the materials it was made from, then points to the stories where it is at stake. Egypt produces fewer object-characters than Greece or Scandinavia: its instruments of power are first of all royal insignia — the heqa sceptre, the flail, the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt, the uraeus — and funerary amulets such as the djed pillar or the knot of Isis, whose function is read in ritual rather than in a plot.