The Opet Festival of Ancient Egypt: Has it been derived from the Jagannatha Rathyatra of Puri, India? By Bibhu Dev Misra (IIT, IIM)

An interesting piece of information caught my attention during my journey across the sacred sites of Egypt during early 2010. During the light and sound show in the magnificent temple complex of Karnak, I heard a voice booming over the loudspeakers: “I am Amon-Ra...The waters of the Nile sprout from my sandals.” This immediately reminded me the Vedic Creator God Vishnu. In the typical depiction of Vishnu in Hindu iconography, the sacred river Ganges is always shown emerging from the toe of the Vishnu, while in Egypt, we find a very similar imagery associated with Amun. But who was this Amun? I knew that Amun was the presiding diety of Karnak, and he was worshipped there as the Creator God, along with his wife Mut, and his son Khonsu. The next day, while discussing about the light and sound show with my tour guide, he suddenly gave me another piece of information that I was not aware of, and that took me completely by surprise: “Amun was always depicted in funerary art and temple inscriptions with a ‘blue skin colour’ and having two feathers in his headdress.”  Now, if anyone ever travels to India, and he talks to the people there about a god having a blue skin colour, with a couple of feathers in his headdress, and from whose sandals or toes a ‘sacred river’ emerges, he will get a single answer: Vishnu, or more correctly, his incarnation Krishna, for it is Krishna who was always depicted with two ‘peacock’ feathers in his headdress. link