Let’s start off with some basic assumptions. Mythology is not purely an invention of the human imagination out of whole cloth. There are grains of truth or reality within the tales. Humans are intelligent enough to separate basic facts from basic fictions, even if the facts are often embellished to make a good tale better, or misinterpreted. The mythological gods (including God) really existed. However, they weren’t really supernatural beings or deities. That’s the misinterpretation part. They were extraterrestrials. Now what did they look like?
*The ‘gods’ are, as far as we’re concerned, as close to immortal as makes no odds so they had no trouble getting from there to here.
*However, the ‘gods’ do age, and they can be hurt and killed. They are not invincible, nor invulnerable. Jesus Christ’s execution is proof of that; ditto Apollo killing the first generation of the godly Cyclopes.
*One trait, apart from quasi-immortality the ‘gods’ have is shape-shifting abilities.
*Is shape-shifting even possible? While it’s a common concept and ability within the pages and images of science fiction, it’s not exactly an ability you have. How often have we wished to be the proverbial ‘fly on the wall’? Yet, a newborn infant looks quite different from an 80 year old; a flounder undergoes a shape-shift to having both eyes on one side of the head; a caterpillar looks quite different than a moth or butterfly; an egg doesn’t resemble a chicken; a tadpole doesn’t look like a frog; a plant doesn’t resemble the seed from which it came, our embryo undergoes quite a shift in forms between fertilization and birth; a chameleon can undergo some drastic changes in appearance too. Then too, a human female of 18 has shape-shifted considerably from that of a human female of 8 – much to the appreciation of most males! Finally, baby faces in nearly all mammals are shaped differently (cuter?) than their adult counterparts. We’re attracted more to baby faces across the mammalian kingdom. So, no, I couldn’t rule out shape-shifting as an alien ability, especially if it might have been artificially augmented.
*Another puzzling feature regarding the ‘gods’ and related tales, or even tails is the half-and-halves.
*Most of the Egyptian ‘gods’ tend to have an animal head but a human body. Then you have the harpies (half human; half bird); centaurs (half human; half horse), the Minotaur (half human; half bull), satyrs (half human, half goat), the sphinx (half human; half lion), mermaids (half human; half fish). With no fossil evidence of any such hybrids, perhaps this is where mythology overrides reality. Perhaps it is just a natural pondering to wonder ‘what if’ human abilities could be combined with some other animal’s abilities.
*Half-and-halves are common throughout nearly all cultural mythologies, not just European and Egyptian ones, and other combinations have been realized.
*Are the ‘half-and-halves’ further evidence of shape-shifting? That’s probably unlikely. Perhaps they are further evidence of genetic and bioengineering experiments by the ‘gods’, the ‘gods’ own version of “The Island of Dr Moreau”. There are some accounts in mythology of half-and-halves involving the pairing of two differing animals.
*If the physical appearance of the ‘gods’, or at least one representative ‘god’ can not be reconciled with that of any living thing known to man, then that alone is suggestive of something not-of-this-Earth; an extraterrestrial in other words, or the catch phrase, an ‘ancient astronaut’. Let’s take as an example…
The Ancient Egyptian God Seth (Set):
*Speaking of strange non-terrestrial appearances of the ‘gods’ take the ancient Egyptian ‘god’ Seth (or Set). Here’s how various mythology texts describe him: “He was often depicted as a tall beast – perhaps a jackal or donkey – with a long muzzle”.
*”In art Seth (Set) was mostly depicted as a fabulous creature, referred to by Egyptologists as the Set animal or Typhonic beast, known as a Typhon, with a curved snout, square ears, forked tail, and canine body, or sometimes as a human with only the head of the Set animal. It has no complete resemblance to any known creature, although it could be seen as a composite of an aardvark, a donkey, a jackal. Some early Egyptologists proposed that it was a stylized representation of the giraffe due to the large flat-topped 'horns' which correspond to a giraffe's ossicones, but the Egyptians themselves distinguished between the giraffe and the Set animal. In the late period Set is depicted as an ass or with the head of an ass”.
*”When depicted in animal form, the god Seth is a very odd creature, with a long snout, short ears, and a pointy, upright tail. There have been many attempts to try to identify this creature with a known animal. The possibility remains that it is purely a mythological creature. To Egyptologists, it is known as ‘the Seth-animal.’”
*[Seth is] “depicted with floppy ears and an erect and divided tail”.
*”Set is represented as having the features of a fantastic beast with a thin, curved snout, straight, square-cut ears and a stiff forked tail. This creature cannot with certainty be identified and is commonly called the ‘Typhonian animal’. Sometimes Set is depicted as a man with the head of this strange quadruped.”
*”Seth’s bizarre appearance reflects his confusing nature. His human-form body is topped by a head that appears to combine the rounded snout of an aardvark (unknown to the ancient Egyptians) with curious, straight, flat-topped donkey ears. When represented in fully animal, four-legged form, he also displays a long neck, a dog-like body and an erect, curiously forked tail. It seems highly likely that this fantastic appearance is deliberately chaotic; composite deities such as Taweret might display a selection of body-parts culled from different species, but they are the recognizable parts of known animals, not of invented creatures. Nevertheless, Egyptologists have struggled valiantly to identify Seth’s component features: there is not enough space here to list all the suggestions, but the more imaginative include camel, long-nosed mouse, hare, antelope, pig, giraffe and boar.”
*If Seth (Set) was an ‘ancient astronaut’, by implication all his kin were too and by implication so were all the ancient Egyptian ‘gods’, and by implication the whole lot of the polytheistic ‘gods’
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