I don't understand why this should be such a mystery.
Show it to a biologist or naturalist (and without the horrendous dark blue background behind the black head – didn't anyone look at the article before it was published?!), and the first response would probably be: "aardvark!" (or possibly "anteater!").
The aardvark's range covers much of the African continent; conceivably, it could have extended to Egypt, several thousand years ago.
the problem is we have zero remains of aardvarks/anteaters in Egypt, nor any discussion of them being in the area. So it could be, but it could just as well be anything else.
Could it be that someone described an anteater but the artist had never seen one, especially if these are gods of another culture that have been adpoted? There are all sorts of lions, hippos and elephants in medieval illuminated manuscripts that are pretty clearly the result of a telephone game description of the animal.
fractallyte · · focus · HN ↗
Show it to a biologist or naturalist (and without the horrendous dark blue background behind the black head – didn't anyone look at the article before it was published?!), and the first response would probably be: "aardvark!" (or possibly "anteater!").
The aardvark's range covers much of the African continent; conceivably, it could have extended to Egypt, several thousand years ago.
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark
riffraff · · focus · HN ↗
EDIT: also, wrong tail.
kjs3 · · focus · HN ↗