![]() Scientists officially named it Phiomicetus anubis-a nod to Anubis, the jackal-headed god of ancient Egypt who accompanied dead pharaohs into the afterlife. this whale was a god of death to most of the animals that lived in its area,” lead author Abdullah Gohar, a Cetacean paleobiologist at Mansoura University in Egypt, tells Matthew Low of Insider. “We discovered how fierce and deadly its powerful jaws are capable of tearing a wide range of prey. Named after Anubis the god of death, this previously unknown amphibious species was about ten feet long with an impressive jaw that indicates a raptor-like feeding style, according to a new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. ![]() Finally, the goddess is referenced in the tragedy plays of Euripides and Sophocles, amongst others, and in Virgil's Aeneid where she acts as Sibyl's guide in the Underworld.A 43-million-year-old fossil of prehistoric whale with four legs and very sharp teeth has been found in the Egyptian desert. It was a common practice to place images of the triple goddess on city walls, in particular, at city gates, entrances to sacred sites and the doorways of private homes where it was believed she acted as a protectress and warded off evil spirits. The 2nd-century BCE Pergamon Altar of Zeus has a three-headed Hecate attacking a snake-like giant, helped by a dog. Known as hekataia, the first example of the triple-Hecate form is credited to a figure which guarded the entrance to the Acropolis of Athens, the Hekate Epipyrgidia ('On the Ramparts') by the 5th-century BCE sculptor Alcamenes. The goddess, though, usually appears with human heads. The historian Robert Graves notes that the heads could be of a dog, lion, and horse, which represented the constellations which cover the calendar year. In sculpture, her most striking appearance occurs in Classical and Hellenistic Period figures which have the goddess with three bodies and three heads (or a single body with three heads or three bodies and a single head), usually with halos of moonbeams. The goddess was especially appealed to by sorceresses for aid in their magic and spells and appears on surviving examples of curse tablets. The offerings to the goddess were made each month during the night of a new moon. A further canine connection may be with the Egyptian god Anubis who guided souls to the underworld, and the Greek three-headed hound of Hades, Cerberus, may be an earlier form of Hecate. The dog connection may be the fact that dogs were known to eat the dead if left unburied they also howl at the moon, of course. Hecate was also offered the sacrifice of dogs, especially puppies. ![]() These took the form of small cakes of eggs, cheese, bread, and dog meat, which were lit with miniature torches or, alternatively, a dish of red mullet, which was usually prohibited from offerings to the other gods. The goddess had unusual rituals performed in her honour in the Greek religion, which include the offerings of food - given at crossroads, road junctions, and any other sort of boundary or threshold - known as 'the supper of Hecate'. Her companions are the Furies (Erinyes), the winged creatures who punished wrong-doing, and her children are the Empusae, female demons partial to seducing travellers. Hesiod goes on to say that Hecate supports or is a protective goddess of warriors, athletes, hunters, horsemen, herdsmen, shepherds, fishermen, and children. For even now, whenever any human on the earth seeks propitiation by performing fine sacrifices according to custom, he invokes Hecate and much honor very easily stays with that man whose prayers the goddess accepts with gladness, and she bestows happiness upon him. Zeus, Cronus' son, honoured above all others: he gave her splendid gifts - to have a share of the earth and of the barren sea, and from the starry sky as well she has a share in honour, and is honoured most of all by the immortal gods. Hesiod describes the goddess in the following glowing terms: Intrinsically ambivalent and polymorphous, she straddles conventional boundaries and eludes definition. …outlandish in her infernal aspects, she is more at home on the fringes than in the centre of Greek polytheism.
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