LNH20/Meta: Library Lad?

Adrian J. McClure mrfantastic7 at gmail.com
Tue Feb 21 18:30:04 PST 2012

So I realized that I know absolutely nothing about ancient Egyptian
mythology and religion--and indeed less than nothing, because all I
know is popular-culture versions. So these were some interesting
points I gathered from a look through Thoth's Wikipedia article. (I'll
have to do a more in-depth investigation at some point):

The Ancient Egyptian pantheon in general has a very strong
hierarchical emphasis. They existed to maintain the precarious balance
cosmic order and prevent it from slipping into chaos. At the same
time, the lack of a well-defined body of stories means that we have a
less clear idea of them, and their portrayals in later fiction are
much less consistent. The different gods tend to shift over different
times and places and flow into each other. (This is actually true of
the Greek and Norse pantheons as well, but the way most of our
engagement with these pantheons has been literary rather than
archaeological means that we focus on that less.) So the Egyptian
pantheon is both very hierarchical and very fluid. Incidentally, the
Ancient Egyptians didn't necessarily literally believe their gods had
animal heads, and Thoth was sometimes represented as a baboon as well
as an ibis-headed man.

Thoth in particular was a keeper of order and balance, who maintained
the universe together with his female counterpart or wife Maat. (Maat
is basically the deified principle of order and justice--much more
benign than Master Workload.) Later he became associated with writing,
magic, and science; acting as a record keeper to the gods, judge of
the dead (which has interesting implications for future LNH20
storylines), and keeper of balance. It was said that without the words
of Thoth, the gods themselves would not exist. This suggests a
possible reason for the fall of Thoth and his pantheon: someone
(possibly Nyarlathotep, or whatever he's called in LNH?) stole the
relevant words from him.

Thoth was also not a particularly protagonistic sort of god. He was
called, and his role was often to judge the disputes between gods,
keeping the balance between order and chaos and ensuring that neither
had the upper hand. He was really more like Watcher or Metron than
Thor. On the other hand, keeping the balance between order and chaos
is something the LNH does a fair amount--see any story with Master
Workload. He might also have become more active because of both his
transformation into a mortal and the change in the nature of reading
and writing--Thoth's original reign as god was before the rise of mass
literacy, etc.

There were two goddesses who were said at various points to be the
wives of Thoth--the aforementioned Maat and Seshat, goddess of wisdom,
knowledge and writing. (The latter was also sometimes said to be his
daughter, an example of the indeterminacy I noted above.) We don't
know whether either of them was incarnated as well, or any of the
other Egyptian gods. (Set, AKA Sutekh, is probably a good bet because
in later periods he was thought of as an evil god, associated with
darkness and chaos, and he's the one who usually gets cast as the
villain. He wasn't alwasy regarded as evil, though.) Seshat,
obviously, would be most closely analogous to Librarian Lady, and Maat
to January Frost, who keeps order for the Earth-20 LNH.

Also, on Earth-20, he should actually be Egyptian, and he works on
both worlds to build and protect libraries in his homeland and
throughout the Middle East.

AJM (also, what exactly is the Mini-Fan of Thor, and why does Library
Lad have an artifact associated with a Norse god?)

More information about the racc mailing list