In the eyes of quite a few people, ancient Egypt could be a bit creepy. As per History, most scholars agree that ancient Egypt "began" when the fractured lands around the Nile River were united around 3100 B.C.E. and ran, with a couple of significant interruptions, until a Macedonian named Alexander the Great strolled into town with conquering on his mind in 332 B.C.E. However you put it, that's a lot of time for a civilization to develop a set of increasingly complicated beliefs, some of which may put modern folk in an uneasy state.
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Of course, classics of ancient Egyptian culture, like animal-headed gods and mummified kings, probably seemed pretty natural and decidedly un-creepy to them. If these practices are raising the hair on the back of your neck, then try to remember that they were considered everyday by a lot of Egyptians. For instance, a mummy was considered necessary for that person's soul to exist comfortably in the afterlife, according to the Smithsonian. Creepy or not, the "double" portion of an individual's soul, the ka, needed to hang around the tomb and receive the (hopefully) perpetual offerings and prayers provided by mourners and priests.
Still, over the course of its long history, the land of the pharaohs came up with a few things that are pretty odd to us today. Here are some of the creepiest things you would find in ancient Egypt.
Though ancient and modern religions still associate their deities with animals, few people have taken this idea to quite the extreme established by the ancient Egyptians. Some of their most enduring gods sport animal heads, in enduring and, for some, pretty creepy fashion.
According to the Reading Museum, animals often presented interesting features to the ancient Egyptians. Who wouldn't want to be fearsome like the crocodile, strong like the hippo, or as elegant as a cat? Other creatures, like the maternal cow, were evocative not just of a mother's love but of the romance that would have made her a mother in the first place. It makes sense for animals to be associated with gods, like when, as per Britannica, the fertility goddess Hathor was shown as a divine cow.
Britannica reports that Horus, a sky deity, was frequently shown with a falcon's head atop a man's body. Anubis, who was in charge of everything to do with dead people, sported a jackal's head. Historians suspect that early Egyptians may have seen wild jackals ghoulishly scavenging graveyards, leading to the association between them and the funereal Anubis. Two gods, the ram-associated Amun and the falcon-headed Re, were even combined to become one of the most powerful and widely worshipped deities in later ancient Egypt, known as Amun-Re.