Egyptian Godheads

Hey reader! I'll bet you thought I forgot about this blog. Or that you just forgot it yourself. WELL YOU'RE WRONG!! So there. And I have some new art that chances are you've already seen if you're from dA.

It's a series of helmets based on Egyptian gods, which totally doesn't rip off the Stargate franchise or any of the other hundreds of people that have already done something like this. Totally.

First up is Anubis! Completely original!

Look at how original I'm being!

This was of course the first one I did, and therefore is the least polished. I didn't do any research into symbols associated with Anubis, I just kinda winged it on the features and hoped it looked sufficiently Egyptian. I notice the ears resemble those stylized Egyptian wings you see all the time in carvings. I wish I could say that was intentional, but it's just a coincidence. Originally the lines were perpendicular to the shaft that marks the boundary of the ear. But that would cause problems when the ears moved (you may notice they are bolted on). This design allows the ears to change shape, at least in a limited fashion.


Next up we have Sobek, a personal favorite among the Egyptian gods. I have no idea why.

Just look at that crocodilian goodness.

You can maybe see a bit more polish on this one. It's the second one I did, so I had some idea of the style I was developing for these. I didn't have to come up with an overall design as much as I did with the Anubis helmet. You may have noticed too the black gem insets on both this and the Anubis one. That is part of the continuing theme I plan to have for this series.

For this I did a little bit more research than with Anubis, but only in so far as I did an image search on Google for "Sobek". I know, how do I find the time to do this extensive research?

During my laborious research I noticed that a symbol kept cropping up. At the time I had no idea what it meant but it was always there so I decided to include it. Anything to make these look better, and including real symbols can certainly help that. Anyway, I later was told that it was in fact "a great big royal god crown". Which explains why it was always on his head, hurr durr. But I couldn't put it on his head in this because that would just look ridiculous. So I put it on his chestplate.

I did know one thing about Sobek from some earlier research, and that was that he was a god of the Nile river. That suggested to me that he might be a fertility god (natural, not sexual, though the two are connected most of the time, I think) so I added some vines with stone insets to represent fruit. That's the reason I chose that. The reason I put anything there at all was because it looked too empty without something there.

And about the ears. In most of the images I saw he had fairly large ears. I know crocodiles don't necessarily have ears that big, but I'm not always going for realism with these. In fact I'm usually not. So there.

That lower jaw feels a bit incomplete too, and it has since I "finished" it. I'm still considering doing something more with it, but I think it's fine if I don't.

And finally (for this post anyway) we have Thoth, an Egyptian moon god.

Thoth is ridiculously fun to say.

This one was interesting. I actually did research on Thoth before doing this. His head is that of an Ibis, specifically an African Sacred Ibis. He is sometimes also depicted as a baboon. He's the god of the moon, the divine record keeper (but not necessarily record writer), the inventor of writing, the weigher of souls on the Scales of Truth, and a whole host of other things you'll have to look up because I can't be bothered to look them up again right now.

This one is also the most polished of the helmets so far. I spent more time on this than either of the others.

So, onto the design. You may notice the eye is different on this one. The classic Eye of Tehuti design that everyone puts on every depiction of the Egyptian gods now. I've never seen that design actually present on the other two I've done (aside from popular depictions, which I'm not inclined to trust completely). But Thoth happens to also be known as Tehuti, which makes the Eye of Tehuti his eye. So I put it in this design because it felt justified.

As I said, he is the moon god (or maybe just a moon god) and as such is sometimes depicted with the lunar disc carried in a boat on his head. You can see I've added that on top of his head, though I do have it lying flat as opposed to being vertical as it is usually shown.

On his chestplate you can see three symbols. Or you can on a larger image, which I suggest you look at. I think if you click on it you'll get one. The bottom design the Scale of Truth, with the feather against which the heart is weighed. If the heart weighs the same as the feather you are admitted to the afterlife. If it is weighed down with sins or lies or whatever it is, your soul is devoured by Ammut, which kinda sucks.

The middle design is a lotus flower, specifically an Egyptian White Lotus flower, which blooms at night and folds up at dawn, and is therefore associated with night and death (I think), both of which Thoth is connected to. Had it been a blue lotus, associated with day and life, I probably would have made it with some more of those black gem insets.

The top symbol on the chestplate is the head of a baboon. You might recall that one of Thoth's alternative forms is a baboon. Baboons were seen as wise, intelligent creatures in ancient Egyptian culture. That's really all I have to say about my choice of that symbol.

The rest of the chestplate designs are just there to make it look less empty, just like the vines on Sobek. They don't have any Egyptian symbolism as far as I know, they just look cool. If they do have symbolism I don't know about, I hope it doesn't clash with the god.

So there you have it. Not a frog dragon like I said this would be, but I hope these three make up for that. Because you probably won't be getting one of those for a while. Expect more Egyptian gods, as I have a lot of fun painting these. I hope you liked seeing them, and are looking forward to more.

See you next time!