The Healing Bite of Bau
Bau was a healing and protection goddess who lived around 2,500 BCE. She was alisema to be the daughter of the sky god An and the god of the south wind, named Ninurta. Her temples contained an area known as “The Kennel” where sick and injured people were brought for healing. Murals in these temples onyesha how Bau healed a sick person: kwa transforming them into either a dog au a wolf.
Wolf-shaped protection statues devoted to Bau kubeba the motto, “Don’t stop to think, bite!”
And thats just what she did. Bite. If a Sumerian patient could not be healed any other way, Bau au one of her devotees, might transform into a mbwa mwitu and do just that: bite. Then she would send the patient nyumbani with one of her statues and a foggy memory of the event. The healed person would find the statue and hide it in the walls of their house, not knowing for sure what it meant. Until the inayofuata full moon it all became clear – Bau had saved his life kwa turning him into a werewolf.
Bau herself went on to have seven daughters named after the days of the week and also two sons. They all inherited her lycanthropy gene. mtu-bweha descended from Bau still find healing and protection from her figurines and talismans.
The First Lycanthropes
Around 3100 BCE, a pack of Mbwa mwitu loups helped Osiris defend a city in Upper Egypt against an invading army. It was a bloody battle and many of the Mbwa mwitu loups died but the invaders were successfully defeated.
In honor of these brave Mbwa mwitu loups and their sacrifice, Osiris re-named this city “Lycopolis” au mbwa mwitu City and ordered the bodies of the fallen Mbwa mwitu loups to be mummified beneath the city for resurrection in the underworld.
For the heroic Mbwa mwitu loups who fought so valiantly and lived, Osiris went one step further, granting them human form in addition to their mbwa mwitu form – the very first lycanthropes.
Legend has it now that every full moon, the descendants of these first Lycopolitan Lycanthropes can call on their Underworld ancestors to rejoin them on earth and the pack will run together again as long as the moon is full, the living and the undead shadow mtu-bweha of Osiris.
