photographed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on October 19, 2009

Ammon (or Hammon; Egyptian Amun, the hidden or veiled one). A god native to Libya and Upper Egypt. He was represented sometimes in the shape of a ram with enormous curving horns, sometimes in that of a ram-headed man, sometimes as a perfect man standing up or sitting on a throne. On his head was the royal emblems, with two high feathers standing up, the symbols of sovereignty over the upper and under worlds; in his hands were the sceptre and the sign of life. In works of art his figure is colored blue … His chief temple, with a far-famed oracle, stood in an oasis of the Libyan desert, twelve days’ journey from Memphis. Between this oracle and that of Zeus at Dodona a connexion is said to have existed from very ancient times, so that the Greeks early identified the Egyptian god with their own Zeus, as the Romans did afterward with their Jupiter; and his worship found an entrance as several places in Greece, at Sparta, Thebes, and also Athens … When the oracle was consulted by visitors, the god’s symbol, made of emerald and other stones, was carried round by women and girls, to the sound of hymns, on a golden ship hung round with votive cups of silver. His replies were given in tremulous shocks communicated to the bearers, which were interpreted by a priest.

Excerpted from A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities: Mythology, Religion, Literature & Art. Translated from German by Oskar Seyffert, revised and edited by Henry Nettleship and J.E. Sandys. Published by Macmillan and Company, New York, 1895.