This week’s theme:

Mysterious Places – Ancient Egypt

Fact of the day:

Ancient Egyptians believed in more than 2,000 deities! They had gods for everything, from dangers to chores!

Resources list:

Paper and pens; card; Youtube; green clothing; card, tinfoil, string, glue, biros, paint; card, wire or pipe cleaners, buttons/bells/metal washers/ring pulls, Y twig.

Activity 1:

Ancient Egyptians had gods for everything, each had different responsibilities and needed to be worshipped so that life could be kept in balance. As you can see here many deities had the head of one animal and the body of another. Draw some mixed-up deities of your own by swapping different creatures about, maybe draw a bears head with frogs legs, a dog’s body with a cat’s face, a cow’s face with spiders legs, or any combination of your own! If you have any old magazines, cut out one person’s or animal’s head and glue it on somebody else’s body. Take a picture and share with us your weird and wonderful deities; you can share them on our Facebook, Instagram or Twitter or send it to melanie@purplepatcharts.org and we’ll put it online for you!

Make yourself an animal mask to give yourself the face of a deity.

Activity 2:

Ra, the Sun God was the most important God to the Egyptians. Egyptians believed Ra created all forms of life, and he was the supreme ruler of all Gods. Ra is depicted as a man with a hawk’s head and headdress.

Try move No.1 of the Sun Salutation yoga poses here or try the seated Sun Salutations here.

Activity 3:

Sobek was the Crocodile God of power and strength, he was one of the most prominent Gods of Egyptian mythology. Sobek is depicted an ordinary man with the head of a crocodile and he wears a crown with ram horns. Egyptians kept live crocodiles in temples and pools to honor Sobek.

Dress in any crocodile-green clothes you have and have a crocodile rock-out to this song; you could snap your crocodile jaw shut by clapping your extended hand and arms together, or build up your power and strength by dancing whilst holding cans of beans!

Activity 4:

Thoth was popular as the Egyptian God of wisdom, knowledge, moon, and magic. Thoth was the inventor of hieroglyphics and patron of science, scribes, and writing. Thoth is depicted in ancient Egyptian art as a human with the head of an Ibis.

Practice slow moon-walking to this song.

Activity 5:

An amulet is an object believed to have certain positive properties, like a good luck charm. They were worn a lot in Ancient Egypt to transfer their powers directly to the owner. Often amulets were pierced or featured a loop, which allowed their use as pendants on a necklace, for example.

Make your own good luck pendent using string glued into a pattern on a card disc, with tin foil to cover it over, see here. A particular good-luck symbol in ancient Egypt was the Scarab beetle. The rich colors used in the scarab design had meaning: Red signified the god, Ra, Touches of yellow were used to symbolize the sun and the desert, Blue symbolized the Nile, Green was the symbol for growth. You could make a beetle design on your amulet, and colour the foil using these colours of biro. If you don’t cover the amulet with foil, you could pain the string and cardboard in these special colours.

Activity 6:

In Ancient Egyptian art, goddesses were depicted playing the ‘Sistrum’, an ancient instrument.

Make your own version of this instrument (similar to a rattle) it could look like this, this, or this, using anything like buttons, jingle bells, beads, rig pulls, or metal washers.