>>27152327Whether we appeal to local folklore, to the proverbs of the nations of antiquity, or to the earliest legends that mankind has born from his mind and breast, we invariably encounter in the traditional animism, spirituality, and symbolism of humanity judgments and prejudices upon the frog which are more or less unanimous in representing it as a symbol of transition, metamorphosis, return, and, the most common of all, to fertility. In Ancient Egypt, beginning with the Early Dynastic Period (3150 BC – 2686 BC), and owing to their culture built around and wholly dedicated to flourishing life and its multiplication, the frog appears as a benevolent and auspicious symbol of reproduction.
This connection was so prominent, that the wise and observant mythmakers throughout the history of Egypt went so far as to characterize the water goddess Heket, or Heqit, either as a woman with the head of a frog, an anthropomorphic frog, or a frog in itself (Egyptian scribes would sometimes represent her role of fertility by depicting her atop an erect phallus, squatting upon it like a throne to her natural and masterful calling).
Midwife goddess Heqit ruled conception and birth, and from times before the unification of Egypt up to the suicide of Cleopatra, Egyptian women, during childbirth, would wear metal amulets in the shape and form of Heqit upon a lotus, in hopes of enlisting her good favor. She was the one who breathed life into the newborn body of Horus, and is thus depicted with not just birth, but resurrection, not to a faraway and eternal paradise, but back to the rich, fertile, and merry lands of ancient Egypt, whom the mythmakers deemed no world better than it, their own prideful homeland.
