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Dedun (or Dedwen) was a Nubian god worshipped since at least
2400BC. There is much uncertainty about his original nature,
especially since he was depicted as a lion, but the earliest
known information indicates that he had become a god of incense.
Since incense was, at this point in history, an extremely expensive
luxury commodity, and Nubia was the source of much of it, he
was quite an important god. The wealth that the trade in incense
delivered to Nubia lead to him being the god of prosperity,
and wealth in particular.
However, he is said to have been associated with a fire that
threatened to destroy the other gods, leading many Nubiologists
to consider that there may have been a great fire, at a shared
complex of temples, to different gods, that started in a temple
of Dedun, though there are no candidate events known for this.
Although mentioned, as being a Nubian god, in the pyramid
texts, there is no evidence that he was worshipped anywhere
north of Aswan. Nethertheless, in the Middle Kingdom, during
the Egyptian rule over Kush, as god of incense, and so associated
with funerary rites, Dedun was said, by the Egyptians, to
be protector of deceased (Nubian) rulers.
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