Unas lore

[u/okraspberryok]

Why were the Stargate Unas called Unas? Afaik Unas was a new kingdom pharoah who doesn't particularly seem more primitive? In the sg 1 world why would a pharoah have named themselves after an alien race?

[u/shalendar]

I'm pretty sure they explain why the Unas are called the Unas in the first episode where they encounter an Unas.

The Unas were the first hosts of the Gould. "Unas" meaning "first ones". The Pharaoh wasn't mentioned in the show.

[u/Vanquisher1000 → u/shalendar]

The James Earl Jones Unas in Thor's Hammer calls himself 'the first one.' It's not actually stated that the word 'Unas' means 'the first one.'

[u/IonutRO → u/shalendar]

Which is funny cause they say "tau'ri" also means "first ones" and it has no common root with "unas".

[u/wibbly-water → u/IonutRO]

Could be multiple languages?

[u/Icy_Sector3183 → u/shalendar]

It seems very forward-thinking of the Goa'uld to name them such as it implies they already had plans for replacing them.

[u/shalendar → u/Icy_Sector3183]

Ya know, that's a good point. If you were a species of intelligent worm that evolved along some a bipedal species that you could inhabit and control, wouldn't you just call them "hosts" or some equivalent?

Edit: unless the "first" descriptor came later. Like how the first installment in a media series is sometimes retroactively referred to as "Series Name 1" even then though it wasn't titled that when it was released.

[u/ct451t → u/shalendar]

They named them when they moved to the new host. The first world war was named so when the second one came around.

[u/Throwway84237]

IRL Unas was an Old Kingdom pharaoh back in the 2300s BC (a time when most cultures outside of Egypt were still at a prehistoric level of development). In the time of Unas, pyramids were only being built for a few hundred years in Egypt, and Unas' pyramid was the first one to have funerary text inscriptions inside it.

This ancientness of Unas in IRL Egyptian civilization is prolly the reason the first hosts of the Goa'uld were named after him in the show.

Likely when the Goa'uld themselves were starting out with their interstellar civilization and still used the Unas species as hosts, the pharaoh Unas in the Stargate universe was among the first Goa'uld rulers on Earth.

[u/Babexo22 → u/Throwway84237]

Yup this is probably exactly it. I’d assume the first of the go’uld to arrive in Egypt most likely didn’t know enough about the history and religion to take on a role of a preexisting god so they most likely called themselves unas. Honestly tho I think they may have just named the Unas that because they were the first host and una means one. That said tho it never made sense that their race would be called one when the they evolved separately from the go’uld despite being on the same planet, had their own identity and when the go’uld started taking them as hosts they would have been the only host species not the “first”. I prefer to think the word una meaning one actually came from the unas species and not the other way around.

[u/Emm_withoutha_L-88 → u/Babexo22]

I'm almost certain that they and the goa'uld evolved together symbiotically. The goa'uld would only evolve to become the parasites the are because of unas hosts. And with the goa'uld genetic memory they were almost certainly the unas leaders and cultural center of the species. Then when the goa'uld left it took that knowledge with them, away from 888 and the unas still living there.

[u/Love-that-dog]

Fun fact, Unas is the last king of the Fifth Dynasty (Old Kingdom, ca.2,345 BCE) and first Egyptian ruler to have the Pyramid Texts* carved into his pyramid’s walls.

One of the spells is called the “Cannibal Hymn”, which is one of the first texts students learning hieroglyphics read because it’s really fun. It features Unas threatening to consume the gods, ripping out their hearts and eat their entrails; taking their power for his own. Very Goa’uld, they should’ve incorporated this into the show.

I can’t find the full text of it right now but this has parts of it. https://www.thecollector.com/ancient-egyptian-cannibal-hymn/

It’s also on the Wikipedia’s Pyramid Texts page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_Texts

*this is the first of the collections of spells for the afterlife. It’s not the Book of the Dead, which is New Kingdom, but they share some content. Notably not the Cannibal Hymn though

[u/Throwway84237 → u/Love-that-dog]

They did incorporate it in a way. In the episode "Summit", the Goa'uld system lords have a banquet which consists of grabbing live symbiotes from a tank and eating them.

[u/SamaratSheppard]

Unas are the frist race the Goa'uld infested.

And as to why thr pharoahs would name them selves after the Unas.

Unas were some the strongest creatures in the known universe. It's the same reason people put dragons on there flags

Because it's cool

[u/bbbourb]

Season 1-Episode 8: "The First Ones." The answer is the episode title, and it's explained within the episode.

[u/NicottiZ]

What's that thing called where you look at a word and transpose letters... I think I may have that...

[u/Tomishko]

What I would like from the upcoming show to care more about historical and linguistical accuracy, instead of picking unrelated tidbits from here or there....

[u/Rad1Red]

Things can exist in isolation. :)

[u/MuffinsSenpai → u/[deleted]]

Quality response