ADELA OPPENHEIM: One of the Egyptian ideas about how the world and the universe was created is a kind of divine family.

NARRATOR: Adela Oppenheim is a curator in the Department of Egyptian Art.

OPPENHEIM: The god at the head of this family is Atum. And he can have many different ways that he’s represented.

NARRATOR: He’s the seated figure on the right side of the stela in this case. You’ll also see several animal representations of Atum, each revealing different aspects of this deity.

For example, on the right is an eel with a cobra hood and a human head, which hints at beliefs surrounding Atum’s origin.

OPPENHEIM: The eel lives in dark and murky waters and for the Egyptians, they equated this with the Nun, this dark, murky, watery environment from which Atum emerged at the beginning of time.

NARRATOR: There’s also a smooth-bodied mongoose resting its chin on an obelisk. This speaks to Atum’s protective qualities as leader of the divine family, as the mongoose is known for hunting snakes.

Yet, in a seeming contradiction, we also see a snake, with arms, standing upright against a pillar, holding a disk—another representation of Atum. This snake form presumably connects with other aspects of Atum’s persona, perhaps power or royalty.

OPPENHEIM: So, the Egyptians were always looking at the animals that lived around them and trying to sort of fit them into different aspects of their worldview.

They didn’t really necessarily think that every mongoose that was in front of their house was Atum, but that it was somehow a way of visualizing him, or making this connection