First, an update.
Things have been very busy these past few months, since about September. Lots of medical appointments and MRIs for my various chronic pain ailments (which take up a lot more time than you might think), taking care of my son, then the holidays came up, among other things. I haven’t even been able to keep up with my webcomic, let alone my blog. I can’t blame it all on that though. The time is there I just haven’t been utilizing it correctly. I just haven’t felt very motivated. Maybe it’s a bit of seasonal depression. I keep hoping I’ll bounce back and find that old creative drive again, but so far it hasn’t happened. At some point I realized that I was the only one who was stressing out about about sticking to the webcomic’s release schedule, so when I relaxed on that, I just kind of lapsed on everything. I miss doing my top songs of the month lists. Whenever I do it again I’ll have to include my top picks for December and January. I certainly haven’t stopped listening to new music, or making mixtapes. In fact this month marks the 25th anniversary of my first mixtape.
Anyway, onto the topic at hand. Even though I’ve been in this creative funk, I still feel like I have another novel brewing. Before I get serious about writing it though I need to finish that Oz book of mine. I don’t mind sharing excerpts here and there, either on this blog or the Alcatraz High blog, because it ties into the story of my webcomic. In any case, I’ve been writing my own version of Egyptian mythology. A retelling of the story of Set versus Osiris/Horus but from a more neutral perspective. I’m still acknowledging Set’s faults (he can be very dramatic and prone to rash decisions), but Isis wasn’t exactly devoid of fault herself, and is a bit of a manipulator who used underhanded tactics to put her husband and later her son on the throne. In this story, Set’s animal, the sha, is a real creature that existed once but has gone extinct.
So this is some detail on the sha:
The sha is a creature that was native to northern Africa when the Sahara was green and fertile. It belongs to the Orycteropodidae order, whose only surviving species is the aardvark. The sha split off from the common ancestor it shares with the aardvark millions of years ago, and through convergent evolution began to resemble a canine. They are characterized by a slender, greyhound-like body with catlike retractable claws on its paws, tall rectangular ears that are slightly wider at the top, a long drooping snout, red eyes, and a forked tail that is usually held upright. Each tail has a uniquely-shaped fork; males have two prongs, females have three. Males are larger and more robust than females, and grow manes of red fur, while the rest of the fur on their body can vary between greyish-brown and black. Their eyes have an extra, transparent eyelid to protect from sand.
Males are more rare than females as well, only about two of every five shas born are males. Shas are pack animals, commonly consisting of an alpha male (often the largest and strongest), a beta male (generally smaller and submissive), and 2-5 females. They seemingly make no preference in their sexual encounters, with very few exclusively heterosexual or homosexual.
As they evolved away from the common ancestor they share with the aardvark, they became omnivores and developed a diverse set of teeth that could handle both meat and plants. The sha can hunt when necessary but is normally a scavenger and gatherer of plants. Like lions, the females do most of the hunting and scavenging. Meanwhile the males gather plants, and protect their territory. One of their favorite foods is lettuce. Shas are highly intelligent creatures, surpassing that of any canine or feline, and comparable to that of a dolphin.
Decline and Extinction
The end of the last Ice Age spelled doom for the sha, as Northern Africa dried up. Shas began to adapt for life in the sand dunes with extra eyelids for protection, but it wasn’t enough. Sha populations began to plummet, with the last concentrations of them being near oases and along the Nile river. During the predynastic period of Egypt they became associated with the God Set, and in Lybia, the God Ash. Ash worship would later enter Egypt, Ash being the God of oases and wine, Set being the God of deserts, storms and chaos. During violent thunder storms or suffocating sandstorms the sha would stand tall and unaffected, standing atop hills or sand dunes and howling at the thunder. This led to the folk belief that shas caused storms, which worked its way into the worship of Set. Another folk belief that developed was that following a sha when you were lost in the desert would lead you to an oasis, which may have had some basis in truth, although it may be doubtful that a sha would deliberately lead a human to an oasis. This became one of the aspects of Ash, and one who was lost in the desert would pray to Ash to send one of his shas to lead them to safety. Ash and Set came to embody the two different aspects of the sha; benevolence and chaos. The area around the city of Nubt (later known as Ombos) had a sizable population of shas, hence it becoming a major center for the worship of both Set and Ash.
During the 4th Dynasty, the worship of Osiris spread. According to the Osiris cycle, Set is a villainous God who killed his brother and siezed control of Egypt, and later battled Horus, the son of Osiris, for the throne. As anti-Set sentiment gradually rose, especially by the end of the New Kingdom when he came to be associated with Egypt’s foreign enemies, people began killing the shas off. Some of the last of the shas became royal pets that were kept in secret lest an overzealous Osiris worshiper kill them. Sadly, by the late period and Egypt’s colonization by the Greeks and Romans, the people completely turned their backs on Set, equating him with evil and killing any animals sacred to Set, especially shas. And once Christianity was forced onto Egypt by Rome, any records of shas existing were destroyed at the Library of Alexandria.
In modern times, no confirmed remains of shas have ever been found, although if there were, it would be quite easy to mistake them for the remains of a jackal or other canine thanks to the similar bone structure.
