 |
The grape pressing, closely
linked to the cult of Shesmu,
on the walls of Nakht's tomb |
God Shezmu was the Violent god of wine and unguent-oil promotes. Shezmu is a divinity with a double personality who can both present cruelty and provide benefits. These contrasts are apparent as early as the
Pyramid Era and coexist down to the Roman period. He is normally envisaged as hominid but in the older period of Egyptian civilization a lion-iconography of this deity goes more popular. In the spell in the
Old Kingdom pyramids where the king draws extra divine strength by eating tried deities and powerful beings, it is Shezmu as butcher who issues them up and makes them for the monarch on the evening hearth stones. Also in the Pyramid Texts he brings the king grape juice for wine production. There is evidence from a bowl found near
the Step Pyramid that at this clip Shezmu already had a priesthood. By the
Middle Kingdom his fad had went well tried in the
Faiyum.
From the Coffin Texts there is the living image of an Scheol demon who squeezes out heads like grapeshots and who lassoes sinners for the slaughter-block. A Fantastic Papyrus (Dynasty XXI) describes this vengeful aspect of the wine-press god by display two hawk deities twisting the net of the wine fight which takes three human heads rather of grapes and explains to the Egyptian brain the red beam of the sky after old.
