Chapter 17 Dionysus, the God of Wine
The new companion was named Dionysus.
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He has been in Memphis for some time now.
Aroh noticed his presence as soon as he arrived.
Not only him, but other gods who were concerned about Memphis City also took notice.
Dionysus was a god, and like Aloh, he was a god who had not yet reached adulthood.
As his name suggests, he was not born in Egypt, but is a god from elsewhere.
For the Egyptian world, the appearance of gods from other worlds was nothing new.
However, this god named "Dionysus" is rather special.
He was still in his "infancy," far from the main god, not in his own world, properly fulfilling his divine duties and experiencing authority, but instead went to Egypt to "play," which is extremely rare.
Dionysus seemed to possess a special charm; after arriving in Memphis, he gained the following of many women in the city without using any divine power.
These women, abandoning their homes and work, followed Dionysus, wandering in groups through the mountains and forests, waving staffs and torches, dancing wildly, and shouting "Bacchus, oh ho!"
When this frenzy reaches its peak, they destroy everything they encounter.
If they encounter wild animals, or even children, they will immediately tear them into pieces and swallow them raw.
In their frenzy, they believed that this raw meat was a form of holy communion, and that eating it would unite them with God.
Of course, under the watchful eye of the guardian goddess Nephthys, the children were spared, but the women were punished.
Dionysus was also warned that if he continued to take the women of Memphis out for such revelry, he would be expelled.
Just kidding, those powerful gods, Nephthys couldn't do anything about them.
It's simply unbearable that a mere child god, who isn't even a main god and whose divine power is still growing, is so arrogant.
If it weren't for the fact that he had a powerful foreign god-king behind him, and that the Egyptian divine realm was on the eve of a major upheaval, Nephthys would never have let him go so easily.
So Dionysus temporarily abandoned his revelry and instead came to Aroha, relinquishing his divine status to become a fellow practitioner of the "Ptah" school.
Arakha did not refuse, because he remembered the name.
From the limited information he had about his past life, Aroh saw Dionysus, one of the twelve Olympian gods in Greek mythology, in a corner of his memory. The pronunciation of this god from a foreign land was the same.
Therefore, even though Araha did not know his past, he still accepted him into the family.
Once inside, they showed him Amun's study, the debate between the Desperate Man and Moses, and asked him questions.
"In your view, is the supreme essence conscious or unconscious, emotional or emotionless?"
Dionysus thought for a moment, then shook his head and said, "There's no point in dwelling on this."
"Whether it's a god or a human, just live your own life well. Why worry about the ultimate nature? If he is here, he won't bestow anything upon me; if he is not here, I won't lose anything."
After saying that, he took out two bags of wine wrapped in animal hides, handed one of the animal hide bags to Aroha, and then drank the wine by himself.
Aroha smiled, not minding at all, and drank with him.
"What delicious wine! It's better than any other drink I've had in Egypt!"
Upon hearing this, Dionysus danced with delight, saying as he danced, "Of course! In my own world, my sole divine role is that of the god of wine!"
"The god of wine?" Aroha looked at Dionysus. "It seems you're having a hard time in your world these days."
He observed that Dionysus, though not yet "adult," possessed considerable divine power and should be considered a deity with significant potential.
However, he only received the divine office and authority of the god of wine.
What future can one have in this kind of clergy?
Aroha was somewhat curious about how Dionysus later became one of the twelve Olympian gods.
So he inquired about the origins of Dionysus, the god of wine.
Dionysus did not hide his past, sometimes drinking and sometimes dancing, creating a lively atmosphere as he recounted it.
Araha was also drinking, but he had absolutely no interest in "dancing".
He even felt that Dionysus might have been more promising if he had been born in "India".
Through Dionysus's account, Araha gradually learns about his origins and why he traveled to Egypt.
His mother, Semele, was a princess of the newly born city of Thebes and the granddaughter of Ares, the god of war. However, she was chosen by Ares' father, the god-king Zeus, and became his lover.
The jealous goddess Nemesis instigated Hera, Zeus's wife and queen of the gods, to be filled with jealousy towards Semele.
So Hera became the princess's relative and encouraged her to ask Zeus to show her his complete divine form, in order to prove his love for her.
But how could a mortal bear the sight of a deity revealing its complete form?
Zeus, unable to refuse the princess's request, displayed his divine majesty, resulting in Semele being burned to death in a thunderbolt. Zeus rescued the premature infant Dionysus, sewing him into his thigh until he was full-term before taking him out.
Even after Dionysus grew up, Hera still wouldn't let go of this illegitimate son of the god-king, driving him mad and forcing him to wander everywhere.
During his wanderings across the land, he taught farmers how to make wine, thus becoming the god of wine.
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After hearing these words, Araha asked in surprise, "If I'm not mistaken, Zeus must have had quite a few illegitimate children, right? Why is Hera targeting only you?"
He didn't need to know much about Greek mythology to know all the legends about Zeus.
Dionysus seemed to have jumped until he was exhausted. He lay down on the ground, looked up at the sun in the sky, and said, "Because the Fates prophesied that I am destined to become the king of the gods, this makes Hera even more intolerant of me."
"I even suspect that Zeus tacitly approved everything, after all, he was the one who was most worried about the emergence of a new god-king."
"The previous goddess of wisdom, Metis, was prophesied to give birth to a son who would overthrow Zeus. Zeus swallowed her whole, not wanting the child to be born."
"Fortunately, the prophecy of the goddess of fate appeared relatively late, otherwise I probably would not have been born."
Arakha declined to comment on this.
He never actually met Zeus and Hera, let alone knew their specific psychology.
"Of course, the most important reason is that my mother is just a mortal, and her so-called maternal grandfather, the god of war Ares, dared not protect me at all."
"In Olympus, there is another god who was prophesied by the goddess of fate to be the king of gods, and he lives a much more comfortable life than I do."
When Dionysus spoke of "the other one," a rare hint of dissatisfaction appeared in his words.
"Which one?"
Aroha, being in Egypt, was also quite curious about what was happening in neighboring Olympus