Certain numbers were considered sacred, holy, or magical by the ancient Egyptians, particularly 2, 3, 4, 7, and their multiples and sums.[1][clarification needed]
The basic symbol for plurality among the ancientEgyptians was the number three: even the way they wrote the word for "plurality" in hieroglyphics consisted of three vertical marks (𓏼). Triads of deities were also used in Egyptian religion to signify a complete system. Examples include references to the god Atum "when he was one and became three" when he gave birth toShu andTefnut, and the triad ofHorus,Osiris, andIsis.[2]
Examples
The beer used to trickSekhmet soakedthree hands into the ground.
The second god,Re, namedthree times to define the sun: dawn, noon, and evening.
Thoth is described as the “thrice-great god of wisdom”.[3]
The second god,Rê, namedfive gods and goddesses.[12]
Thoth addedfive days to the year by winning the light from the Moon in a game of gambling.[13]
It tookfive days for thefive children ofNut andGeb to be born. These are Osiris,Nephthys, Isis,Set andHaroeris (Horus the Elder) - not be mistaken withHarpocrates (Horus the Younger), who defeated Set in battle.[14]
A boasting mage claimed to be able to bring thePharaoh of Egypt to Ethiopia and by magic, have him beaten with a rodfive hundred (five timesfive timesfive times four) times, and return him to Egypt in the space offive hours.[15]
An Ethiopian mage comes to challenge Egypt's greatest mage—to reading of a sealed letter—five hundred (five timesfive timesfive times four) years after the atrocity depicted in it occurred.[16]
^ According toPlutarch. "Osiris, the murdered god,"A History of Religious Ideas, Vol. 1: From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries,Mircea Eliade, page 97, note 35. University of Chicago Press, 1978.
