THOTH - Djehuty

Thoth is actually a Greek rendering of the name, which in Egyptian was something in the lines of “Djehuty”. He was present since Predynastic times and was originally an important moon god, a companion of the sun god Re, and identified as the “night sun” or, later, as the “silver Aten”. Only later Thoth assimilated the aspects of knowledge and became the god of scribes and scholars. Thoth was often considered a son of Horus, being born from the forehead of Seth after the latter ate some lettuce with the semen of the former. 

Thoth invented writing and was said to record everything (including the result of the weighing of the heart ceremony, as seen above; Fig. 3B). He also determined the length of each pharaoh’s reign (he was thus called “Lord of Time”), recording it on a palm leaf (Fig. 12A); however, this function was most commonly attributed to his wife (or sometimes daughter) Seshat, who shared most of his aspects anyway. 

Thoth had thus a pristine reputation of integrity and truth. As patron of all areas of knowledge, he also had access to magic and secrets unknown to the other gods. Finally, Thoth was also a messenger of the gods and usually conciliated quarreling deities. This led the Greeks to equate him with their messenger-god, Hermes. The so-called “Hermes Trismegistus” (meaning the “thrice great”) may be a syncretic combination of Hermes and Thoth. (Trismegistus, by the way, is the second form of Junpei Iori’s persona in P3; his starting persona is Hermes.) 

The city housing Thoth’s largest cult center became known to the Greeks as Hermopolis Magna (Khemnu, in Egyptian). To the west of Hermopolis, lies the necropolis of Tuna el-Gebel, where the catacombs known as the “Ibeum” holds hundreds of animal mummies of ibises and baboons, Thoth’s sacred animals. Thoth is most usually depicted as an ibis-headed man (Figs. 12A–B), but can also appear as a full ibis (Fig. 12C); his depiction as a baboon (Fig. 12E) is secondary, but very common. Here is a good place to remark that Egyptian art was very naturalistic when it came to animals (Fig. 12C), representing them in natural poses and lively activities and in a manner that makes possible for us to easily identify the species in question. 

Thoth’s ibis is aptly called “African sacred ibis” (Fig. 12D); its scientific name is Threskiornis aethiopicus (Latham, 1790), meaning the “religious (or worshipping) bird from Ethiopia”. The ibis’ white plumage and long sickled bill probably had lunar symbolic significance. Is his ibis or hybrid form, Thoth isusually shown wearing his own brand of the atef crown (Fig. 12C): it is made of two twisting ram’s horns on its base, from where sprouts three bundles of reeds (each topped by a sun disk), which in turn are flanked by ostrich feathers and uraeus serpents.Unfortunately, the Persona games went for the baboon look (Fig. 12F), but, instead of the atef crown, he has a small solar disk on his head. 

I call it a solar disk because it is golden instead of the lunar silver. The baboons were sacred to the sun god, because these animals sit on their hinds legs at sunrise and raise their hands, which was interpreted as a sign of reverence for the sun. Thoth’s representation (likely based on the yellow baboon, Papio cynocephalus (Linnaeus, 1766); Fig. 12G) was always a sitting baboon with his arms in resting position (Fig. 12E), precisely to differentiate him from the solar baboons. Finally, the book in the official artwork is of a rather modern look; it surely gives a nice effect, though. The wedjat (Eye of Horus) depicted on the book’s covers was sometimes found in amulets of Thoth.