Min is the god of male fertility, but heâs also a rainmaker, a protector in the desert, a god who smites evil forces, and a defender of travelers and roads. His topical representations, with the erect phallus, very descriptively depicts Minâs link with the male procreative capacity and his power to banish the evil with it. This quality also made Min relate in Egyptian civilization with many other ideas, like smiting, destroying and banishing evil and, especially, with the agrarian world.
Worshiped as a force of seeds and germination, especially wheat, and was equally protective of livestock. This made the cult of Min, in theory, favor both human pregnancies, as well as good harvests and the reproduction of cattle. The bull, a traditional symbol of fertilizing power and vital propagation, was one of its associated symbols; but also lettuce, specifically aphrodisiac in ancient Egypt, was one of its emblems.
It is known that Min was worshiped in Egypt since ancient times, around 3300 BC, in the city of Koptos, where sculptures were made that show the god.
But it could even happen that Min was documentable in older periods, if we consider a petroglyph represented in the Wadi Umm Salam, in the eastern desert, that some investigations date as contemporary to Naqada I (ca. 4000-3500 BC).
While it is true that the dating of many of these documents on rocks in the desert is disputed and that in some areas representations of very different times overlap, the image in question seems that it could be framed in a larger scene, in which they appear animals like giraffes and ostriches. But it is debatable, because very close there are images that may correspond to the New Kingdom.
The representation shows a figure with an erect penis and two long ostrich feathers on the head as a crown, which are distinctive of Min. It does not show a raised arm, which is a characteristic gesture of the pharaonic god, but, interestingly, he is presented as a shepherd who takes care of a cow that is tied with a rope, that is why some researchers identify him as âcow protector godâ. Actually, these representations of shepherds caring for animals, which also bear long ostrich feathers as an ornament on the head, are not rare among the petroglyphs in the desert considered typical of the Predynastic, but they do not occur in the later iconography of the god. Although the true exceptionality lies in the resemblance of this petroglyph with the iconography that for thousands of years identified Min, and if this depiction is really from a remote chronology, some attributes of the godâs iconography could already be here, as well as some of its symbolic powers. Minâs depictions antiquity, if the chronology is validated, would be then extraordinarily ancient.
-F. LANKESTER, Rock Art in Egyptâs Eastern Desert, Oxford (2013).
-T. WILKINSON, Genesis of the Pharaohs, London, (2003).
- âSome Notes on the Iconography of the God Minâ, published in the Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar of New York 7 (1985/6), 29-41 + 9 ill.
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