The VERY Messed Up Mythology of THOTH Egyptian God of Wisdom

Ancient myths are filled with jerks. That's the most grown-up word YouTube will let me use this early in the video. Gods, heroes, mortals, monsters. No matter how much you love or even worship a figure from mythology, there's no denying that even the most divine, noble, and righteous of characters have their jerk hole moments. These jerk holes come in all shapes and sizes. Kings who would rather feed their daughters to leviathans than let their workers unionize. Gods who chain up and abandon adorable doggos who'd never been anything but good boys. Basically, anyone who inflicts undue misery on someone else is a jerk, or at the very least, having a jerk hole moment. The extraordinary amount of jerks in myth is what makes the figures who are known for their wisdom and sense of justice all the more interesting. They're exceedingly rare, but when a deity is described as a mediator and settler of disputes among the gods, you know two things. One, they're wise. Two, they're not a jerk. And trust me when I say those rules apply to today's subject of discussion, the Egyptian god Thoth. He wasn't a violent deity, but he was a force to be reckoned with. And if he or someone he cared about wanted something, he made sure they were going to get it. And the best part is he was on our side. It's because of Thoth that humanity learned how to write things down, could enjoy what the afterlife had in store for them, and in one particularly disturbing myth, that will almost definitely get this video demonetized, he saved Egypt from being destroyed by the god of chaos. Before we dive into Thoth's amazing and messed up mythology, though, I want to say thanks to our sponsor, Babbel, whom he'd definitely approve of. Similar to how Thoth blessed humanity with written language, today's sponsor, Babbel, blesses its users with the ability to speak new languages. Babbel is the number one language learning app on the planet. It teaches you real world, practical conversations in bite-sized, 10-minute interactive lessons designed by real language experts. I think it's pretty easy to see from what I do for a living that I am fascinated by other cultures, but I often like to make jokes that I'm an uncultured swine because I am. Thanks to Babbel, that's gonna be slightly less true going forward, though, because I'm using the app to learn Spanish, a language that my high school teacher failed to pass on even a single syllable of. There's a lot of language learning apps out there, but none are quite like Babbel, which uses scientifically proven strategies to help you start speaking a new language in as little as three weeks. The best part is that unlike other apps and classes you may have taken in the past, lessons prepare you to have practical conversations about travel, business, relationships, and more. And you can learn using whatever tools are best for you, traditional lessons, podcasts, games, videos, even live classes. So if you wanna start speaking a new language and get 60% off your membership, hit my link in the description or pinned comment. With a 20-day money-back guarantee, you've got nothing to lose. From what we gathered in our research, Thoth appears to be featured in two kinds of stories. Those are tales of creation and tales of mediation. We're gonna unpack the creation myths first because in the timeline of Thoth's life, that makes the most sense. As a matter of fact, let's start with the creation of Thoth himself. Like a lot of other gods and a lot of other pantheons, there is more than one version of Thoth's birth. According to a tale that was sourced from the city of Vermopolis, the city that considered Thoth its patron god, he was there from the beginning. I mean, the very beginning. Even before creation officially started, Thoth gave birth to himself and coexisted with the eight gods and goddesses who embodied the universe. They were known as the Agdod and are such an ancient part of Egyptian mythology that by the time the new kingdom was established in the 16th century BCE, the Egyptians themselves weren't totally sure what these gods originally did. Nevertheless, they were still given the proper respect and archeologists have found paintings and carvings depicting the gods as human-animal hybrids. The males had the body of men and heads of frogs while the females had the bods of women and heads of snakes. The story goes that these eight gods worked together to build an island in the infinite sea of Noon. Noon was one of the Agdod and he personified the infinite chaos of the universe, which the ancient Egyptians believed was an expansive watery abyss. Hence the sea of Noon. Upon seeing the island, Thoth took the form of an ibis, a long-legged wading bird with a curved bill and the form he was most often depicted in. Then he laid an egg, but it wasn't just any egg, it was the cosmic egg that held all creation and when it hatched, it became the sun. We're gonna do an episode unpacking all the Egyptian creation myths at some point in the future. So if you don't wanna miss that, make sure to subscribe. But you can already see the important role he played in the creation of creation itself. Interestingly though, there is another story that says Thoth was created from the lips of Ra at the beginning of creation and where he describes himself as the eldest son of Ra. If you dug real deep, you could also find myths where he's said to be the son of Horus. The thing with Egyptian mythology is that people were allowed to bend the stories pretty much however they saw fit. So if you hypothetically wanted to get real weird with it and say that Thoth gave birth to Ra while Ra simultaneously gave birth to Thoth, you wouldn't be out of line. You'd be weird but not out of line and certainly not a jerk. In addition to creating the physical space that we humans inhabit and just about everything in it, Thoth also blessed the ancient Egyptians with a writing system that we know as hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs are little symbols that represent sounds we make with our mouth hole. I actually bought a book about hieroglyphs recently. I'm approximately one lesson in but it's surprisingly easy so far. If you're looking to pick up a new hobby or a new tattoo, I'll put an Amazon affiliate link at the bottom of the description. Anyway, this is actually pretty ironic now that I think about it but the story about Thoth creating written language for the Egyptians was actually discovered in the Phaedrus, a work written by the Greek philosopher Plato. Some context, the Phaedrus is a dialogue between Socrates and his student Phaedrus and a portion of this dialogue is dedicated to discussing what forms of rhetoric the gods like the most. Essentially, Socrates uses the following story about Thoth to demonstrate that some things can and should only be communicated in the spoken word and in that way, writing is overvalued. To illustrate his point, Socrates tells Phaedrus about Thoth and credits him with inventing astronomy, astrology, botany, theology, arithmetic, medicine and droughts, basically checkers. Then he says his greatest invention was the use of letters and tells Phaedrus that Thoth brought these inventions to the god Thammuz, another name for Amun who was also a member of the Aghdod. Thoth presents Thammuz with his creations and tells him that he'd really like for the Egyptian people to be able to use them. Well, Thammuz went through the inventions one by one, approving some, censoring others and outright rejecting a few and eventually they came to writing. Thoth told Thammuz that writing will make the Egyptians wiser and give them better memories but Thammuz completely disagreed. He said that written language will make people more forgetful because they won't have to use their memories they'll put all of their trust on external characters and not remember it themselves. Then Thammuz told Thoth how he really felt. He said that writing will lead to people forgetting most of what they hear. They'll appear to know everything but won't know much about anything and will suck to hang out with because they think they're really smart when that's not at all the case. That's the end of the dialogue as it pertains to Thoth but obviously the Egyptians received the writing system despite the God King's opposition. So I'm very curious to hear what you all think about Thammuz's concerns. I'll be honest, his words do kind of feel like a personal attack because I take notes on almost everything I read and if I couldn't write scripts to read off a teleprompter this show would more than likely not exist. Then again, that could be said of a lot of things. You really can't overvalue the ability to communicate ideas through writing. Sending letters allowed important and influential figures to negotiate and strategize over long distances. Warning labels stop people from drinking bleach just because they like the smell. The way I see it, Thoth gave humanity the tools and knowledge to shape our world the way he did the universe. But a lot of good that did me in 2004 when I had to take a quiz on the Northeast region of the United States. I had to label every state in the region and guess which one I remembered? Maine, just Maine. I spent the rest of that semester in fourth grade making up for that F and finished with a D plus. I was that close to straight A's. Thanks a lot, Thoth. In addition to looking out for humanity and giving us the best chance at thriving that he could, Thoth also played a key support role as the advisor of the gods and settled a number of disputes, many of which were started by Ra, god of the sun and kings. One story comes from the city of Heliopolis where the foundation of the religious belief was the Aeneid, a group of nine gods that would have been much smaller if Thoth didn't get involved. You see, Ra created two children, Shu and Tefnut, who in turn spawned the deities Geb and Nut. Ra thought his granddaughter Nut was pretty cute and wanted her to himself. So when he saw her getting busy with her brother Geb, he was enraged and cursed her so that she couldn't give birth on any day of the year. Thoth heard about this incident and must've thought it was pretty messed up because he took matters into his own hands. He challenged the moon to a game of droughts and won from her 170th of her illumination. Thoth added up his winnings, which equated to five days of light and slapped them on the end of the Egyptian calendar, which at that time was only 360 days. Thanks to Thoth, going forward, a year would consist of 365 days and Nut was free to give birth during those additional five days that were not affected by Ra's original curse. Although it seems like Ra could have just made a new curse that included those extra five days instead of doing a why I oughta, but maybe he didn't think about it until it was too late. So on that particular occasion, Thoth went against Ra's prerogative, but there were times where he recognized it'd be smarter to help him. In one instance, Ra got into an argument with his daughter, Tefnut, and she essentially ran away from home. Then Ra realized he kind of needed his daughter for protection and sent Thoth after her. The wise god was able to track her down and approached her while disguising himself as a baboon. Despite his disguise, Tefnut identified the god of wisdom pretty much immediately and was about to attack him when he blurted out, fate punishes every crime. This made Tefnut pause just long enough for Thoth to start his spiel on why the goddess shouldn't attack him and come back home instead. He told her tales of Egypt's beauty, fables about strong animals allying themselves with the weak, and according to some legends, he requested that she calm down 1,077 times. We can't say for certain what it was that finally broke Tefnut's ironclad resistance, but ultimately Thoth convinced her to return home to her father. I'll be honest, I almost decided to leave this story out, but then I realized that Thoth treats Tefnut almost exactly the same way as he treats Kratos in the Fallen God comic series. Like Tefnut, Kratos is also running away from his home and Thoth is just harassing him, repeating platitudes about fate and destiny to a point where Kratos thinks he's losing his mind. We even get to see Thoth in all of his forms, as a man, as an ibis, and as a baboon. Overall, I was disappointed in the Fallen God series and found it to be almost pointless, but I'll admit that the accuracy and specificity of this Thoth portrayal does make it better. Still not that good though. Now this next tale is gonna require some serious censoring on my part. I'm gonna be using a lot of euphemisms and analogies to get my point across. To be clear, that's not because I want to, but I feel like I've gotta be extra cautious now because YouTube has been flagging my content lately, despite telling me directly that it doesn't even violate their guidelines. They just think it's kind of icky. Gotta love when they punish educational content, don't ya? Have I mentioned you can follow Messed Up Origins on all the podcast platforms by following the links in the description? We might even start posting the video versions of these episodes to Spotify because the YouTube algorithm has not been my friend lately. Back to the icky stuff, there came a time where Set, the god of chaos, and his nephew Horus, the god of the sky, were competing against each other for the cosmic throne, which was freshly vacant after the death of Horus's father, Osiris. The two gods stood before the Aeneid, those nine gods I mentioned a minute ago, and the Aeneid actually told them to piss off somewhere and make friends with each other because they were sick of listening to them fight. And so left without much of a choice, Set and Horus did as they were told, sort of. Set invited Horus to his house for some nondescript merrymaking, but that's not the weird part. Where it gets weird is that after Horus fell asleep on the couch, his uncle Set took out his condiment-spreading device and spread his mayonnaise into Horus's buns. Don't worry, YouTube censors, there's nothing inappropriate about that. He's just making him a sandwich. What Set didn't realize, though, is that Horus was awake and he reached down to catch his uncle's mayonnaise in his hand. A little while later, he went to his mother, Isis, to ask for advice, and she was like, "'Ew," and then she chopped off Horus's hand. After that, she rubbed some lotion on her son's condiment-spreading device and then put his mayonnaise into a container. Now, before we go any further, I want you to leave a comment telling me what you think she's gonna use Horus's mayonnaise for without looking at any others, because I'm gonna really enjoy how wrong everybody is. Honestly, though, if you guess right, you might want to test your luck in Vegas, then use your winnings to pay for a psychiatrist. The following morning, Isis went to Set's garden and spread her son's mayonnaise on some lettuce, which Set's gardener told her was the only thing the god of chaos snacked on, ******* vegans. Later that day, Set made a stop at his garden for a snack and devoured the lettuce, which I guess he just thought was saltier than usual. Then he summoned his nephew so they could present themselves in front of the Aeneid once again and put his own plan into effect. Once in front of the Aeneid, Set made a bold claim. To the disgust of the governing gods, he said he was entitled to the throne after performing the labor of a man against Horus. Ha! Gay! It wasn't Set they were disgusted with, though. They berated and spat on Horus, who couldn't help but laugh. Horus told the gods that Set was a liar and that if they wanted to know the truth, then they should call forth each of their condiments. That's when Thoth, who is not actually a member of the Aeneid but played his usual advisory role instead, used his magic on their mayo. To the surprise of Set, his baby batter showed up in the nearby marsh where Horus's mother secretly disposed of it. Meanwhile, Horus's jujube juice shot out the top of Set's head and formed a golden solar disk. Seeing that his plan completely backfired, Set tried to grab the solar disk and destroy it, but Thoth had already taken it and wore it as a crown on top of his head. Don't ask me why he wanted to wear a crown, but he did. And that's now something you can't unknow. One of the most fascinating things about Thoth is that despite not being a super well-known god in modern times, he was worshiped the longest out of almost all the gods in the Egyptian pantheon. Worship of him is believed to have started during the pre-dynastic period, between 6,000 and 3,150 BCE, and continued all the way to the Ptolemaic period, which began around 300 BCE. By the way, I've learned so many new words we'll make in this episode. Don't forget to leave a comment down below telling me how wrong I'm pronouncing them all. There were also civilizations outside of Egypt that incorporated Thoth into their own pantheons. The ancient Greeks, for example, equated him to their messenger god, Hermes, hence why Thoth's religious center was called Hermopolis. Curiously, though, despite being such an ancient deity, Thoth doesn't really have any stories where he's the focus. Outside of the creation myths, he only appears when there's a mess to clean up, and there may be a fascinating real-world reason for that. You see, Thoth didn't originate in the same religious centers that spawned the majority of other gods in the pantheon. He was created on the outskirts, and as a result, took on the role of the perpetual outsider, hence him operating on the edge of various conflicts and often without any real stake in how they unfold. Regardless of his outsider role, Thoth was widely respected by Egyptian society, and people were so eager to gain his favor that when archaeologists looked into the 31 animal necropolises that existed in ancient Egypt, they found 20 million embalmed animals with a whopping six million ibises, the bird that was most sacred to Thoth and the one that he's embodying in most depictions. That's a huge portion of sacrifices considering that nine other gods existed just in the Aeneid alone. So who was making that? Well, as the god of writing, we know that Thoth was the patron god of many scribes living in Egypt, but there obviously couldn't have been that many scribes living in a society that was mostly illiterate. So I'm thinking that maybe folks were trying to curry favor with the gods involved in the judgment of their souls. You see, to the Egyptians, life after death was not guaranteed. If you didn't live a life that was more honorable than not, there was a chance that your soul would be devoured by Ammit, and obliterated out of existence. Try to picture what nothing looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels like. That's what you would be. In order to avoid that fate and be blessed with a blissful life in the field of reeds, your heart had to be placed on a scale and weighed against the feather of truth. If you were deemed unworthy, the last thing you'd ever see would be Ammit eating your heart. But if the gods liked you, then you'd be given a royal welcome into the kingdom of Osiris. The gods who attended the heart-weighing ceremony varied depending on who you asked and what time period you were in, but one god who was consistently present was Thoth. He was responsible for writing down the verdict of the heart-weighing ceremony, though we aren't exactly sure what the purpose of this was. Maybe they needed to have an official record of the people who were erased from existence for like insurance purposes or something. So now you know the complete and messed up mythology of Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom, writing, the moon, and a bunch of other stuff. But your journey doesn't have to stop here. If you wanna continue learning about Egyptian mythology, then I recommend you check out my episodes on Ammit and Osiris, or even vampires. And to those who want more messed up mythology and folklore sent to their sub box and recommended feed every single weekday, hit that subscribe button and turn notifications on. You can expect more deep dives like this episode every Thursday around 3 p.m. Central. I'll see you all next week when we dive into the messed up origins of Cocoa Melon. Until we meet again, my name is Jon Solo, and don't forget, Jon shot first. ♪♪