Banebdjed Sightings

A Princely Offering 1129BC - 1111BC
Ramses IX’s son Montuherkhopeshef (what a mouthful) makes offerings to Banebdjed for eternity, on the walls of his beautifully painted tomb in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor, Egypt. Check out the ram-headed vase the prince uses to pour water.
Don’t Touch This—Or Else 825BC - 773BC
Setting up Banebdjed’s new temple was serious business. A donation stela (a kind of legal paper carved in stone), showing how much land and resources had been given for temple reconstruction, included a curse on anybody who tried to keep any of the land or building materials for himself. Would you want this god mad at you?
Latin Lover 100BC - 1BC
Banebdjed’s priests provided services to Roman visitors, along with the priests of Isis. You could pick them out by their weird curly wigs and ram-head accessories, like in this bronze statue from Mendes.
Could it be… Satan? 400 - 2014
Greeks coming to Egypt misunderstood what kind of animal Banebdjed’s symbol was, and often referred to him as “the goat of Mendes” (instead of a ram). In later periods, this misunderstanding, and the knowledge that Banebdjed was a sex god, caused him to be confused with Baphomet. Baphomet was a scary-looking a goat-headed spirit that the Catholic Church accused the Knights Templar of worshipping as a form of Satan. Banebdjed’s not evil, or even mean, so the comparison’s not fair, but it stuck.