#was scepter

Hey everyone, I apologize for my lateness but I’ve been pretty busy lately, so here’s a short trivia post! Most of the time, Egyptian gods were depicted holding specific items. In this case, Horus is holding something in each hand: his left one is holding an Ankh. For those of you who don’t know, the ankh is the symbol of eternal life, and so it is usually associated with gods. I’d like to take a second to talk about the other object, however. This is a Was Scepter: it is believed that the animal head was in honor of Waset, tutelary goddess of the nome of Thebes (this would explain its name). Another hypothesis is that the head (and the bifurcated tail) are representative of the Set animal. The Was scepter, in fact, came to symbolize power (the Was hieroglyph itself means “power”) and, later on, control over chaos (Set’s main tool for… Pretty much everything). It was also seen as an amulet and used in rites, particularly funeral ones. For these reasons, several pharaohs, gods and priests are depicted holding this object. -Menes.

Set, and the scepter was