THEME: Hunting in antiquity THEME HUNTING & WARFARE IN ANCIENT EGYPT
The ancient Egyptians believed that the created world emerged from the dark, formless waters, which they called nun. The sun god fashioned the cosmos, heaven and earth, and all living beings, and each night descended into the Underworld. In the middle of the night, the sun came into contact with the nun-waters, which helped to refuel the solar cycle. Even though the chaos serpent Apep tried to stop the sun, divine magic defeated the evil snake.
Building temples and carrying out daily rituals were ways for people to assist the sun god, to strengthen maat – order, cosmic balance, justice – and defeat isfet – disorder and chaos. Pharaohs mediated between mankind and the gods, and one requirement of their office was to maintain maat and destroy isfet, both within Egypt and abroad. From the earliest examples of ancient Egyptian art to reliefs in Roman Period temples, triumph in war and success in hunting were ways of expressing the victory of maat.
The territory of ancient Egypt consisted of , the Black Land, the narrow strip of land where the Nile inundation deposited rich, black silt, and , the Red Land, the vast Sahara Desert that stretched east and west of the river. The deserts, the Mediterranean Sea,
