Apedemak
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Apedemak, alt Apademak, was a lion-headed warrior god worshiped in Nubia.
The term Nubia is a misnomerTemplate:Fact in that it was created in post-dynastic times to describe eastern Sudan, a region that was at various times in history considered a part of Egyptian territory. The Beja people are indigenous to a wide swath of North and Eastern Africa from the Horn of Africa to Egypt. The Tuareg and Wodabe of West Africa are believed to be descendants of Bejan ethnics forced to migrate westward in consequence of the fall of the Egyptian dynastic period. The Beja archers in Egypt's army were called Medjay. The Medjay beholden or loyal to a Chief of Eastern Sudan, Eastern Desert of Egypt or Lower Sudan would often consider themselves the defenders of the matrilineality of that region and were thus guardians of Apedemak and his mistress. The Medjay of Upper Egypt and Western Desert of Egypt and the Warrior Caste of the Delta near Tanis were referred to as Maahes rather than Apedemak because their respective matrilineal founders were of more or less recently divergent historical backgrounds.
He may, as Maahes, have been imported to Egypt with a wave of cultural reformers who were Bejans from Eastern Sudan or Eritrea that returned to Egypt to reclaim the nomes of their female ancestors. This lion god was used as a sacred guardian of the deceased hereditary chief, prince or king of a nome. Anyone who touched the chief's grave was said to be cursed by this Apedemak. In the temple of Naqa built by the rulers of Meroe he was depicted as a three-headed god with four arms.[1]
References
- ↑ Claude Traunecker, The Gods of Egypt, Cornell University Press 2001, ISBN 0801438349, p.106
