Goddesses and Gods of the Ancient Egyptians

A Theological Encyclopedia
Henadology

Aker
An ambivalent God depicted in the netherworld literature as the foreparts of two lions
or two sphinxes (human-headed lions) facing away from one another, or as a strip of
earth with a human head at each end. He appears to represent the earth in the aspect
of receptacle of the dead and nexus of new life. The two heads represent either the
eastern and western entrances to the netherworld, or form the two mountains which
traditionally frame the site of the sunset on the western horizon in Egyptian
iconography.
Aker features prominently in the New Kingdom Book of Caverns and Book of the Earth,
i.e., of Aker, a title suggested for it in the absence of a surviving title from antiquity.
In the former, which treats of the passage of Re by night through a series of caverns
to visit Osiris, Aker, who has here seven assistants depicted as catfish-headed men,
protects or encloses the corpse of Osiris, transmitting to him the revitalizing energy
of Re, which renders the corpse ithyphallic in anticipation of its resurrection. In the
latter, which is broadly similar, we see the boat of Re traveling on Akers back, the
boats orientation reversed as if implying a reversal of time. At another point in the
same book we see Aker in anthropomorphic form as a man with a sceptre bending down
over his ba (manifestation or soul), in the form of a human-headed bird, which prays to
him. On either side is a burial mound containing a solar disk, out of which praying
Goddesses emerge. In the Coffin Texts Aker is referred to in the plural as a class of
Gods, the Akeru, earth Gods who threaten to seize the soul, but in the singular as the
God whose name is given to the hull or the mast socket of the ferryboat which is
needed to cross the Field of Rushes (spell 404, see also Book of the Dead spell 99).
The Akeru are referred to in spell 474 as fishermen who preceded Geb, the wellknown earth God, and who threaten to net the soul (see, similarly, Book of the Dead
spell 153). In spell 648 we learn that there are Akeru of the sky as well. In the Book of
the Dead, spell 96, the spittle of Aker appears, along with the marrow-blood of Geb, as
substances which appease Seth. Seth promises, however (spell 108, 111) to dispose of
the Akeru for Re so that he may set in the evening, and the soul of the deceased
undertakes to do the same in 149. In The Book of Overthrowing Apophis , however,
Aker assists in restraining Apophis, the divine embodiment of entropy, for it is said
that Aker has taken away his strength, (The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus III, p. 173;
27, 10) and again that Apophis is imprisoned in the arms of Aker, (The BremnerRhind Papyrus IV, p. 42; 29, 6)
Page 1 of 223

Amaunet
(Amunet) The Hidden (fem.), a Goddess belonging to the Hermopolitan Ogdoad but
who, unlike the other Goddesses in the group, had an independent cult as consort of the
God Amun. She is represented as a woman wearing the Red Crown of Lower Egypt and is
distinguished thus from Amuns other consort, Mut, who wears the double crown of
Egypt united. A certain degree of convergence between Amaunet and Mut can be seen
in the naming after Amaunet of a vulture amulet (Ritner 1993, 52), but Amaunet and
Mut remain distinct, as can be seen from instances where they are pictured together
with Amun in the same image. In a scene from Luxor temple depicting Amuns annual
procession to Luxor from Karnak at the festival of Opet, celebrating the union of Amun
and Mut, on the outbound journey from Karnak to Luxor Amun is depicted accompanied
by Mut, while on the journey back to Karnak he is depicted accompanied by Amaunet. In
a fragmentary demotic cosmogony involving the Ogdoad, it is said that the Ogdoad
transformed themselves, the four males coalescing into a single black bull, the four
females into a black cow, this bull and cow being none other than Amun and Amaunet,
who thus unite in themselves the potencies of the group as a whole (Sauneron and
Yoyotte 1959, 58).
Ritner, Robert K. 1993. The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice. Chicago:
The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
Sauneron, Serge and Jean Yoyotte. 1959. La Naissance du Monde selon lgypte
Ancienne. Pp. 17-91 in La Naissance du Monde. Paris: ditions du Seuil.
Amenhotep, Son of Hapu
(Amenophis, Amenotes) Amenhotep son of Hapu was born in Athribis in the fifteenth
century BCE and served in the local government and in the priesthood of Khenty-khety
before being called to the royal court at Thebes in his early fifties. He had an
extraordinarily distinguished career under Amenhotep III, holding the positions of
chief architect (he is credited with the temple of Soleb), chief scribe and secretary in
charge of recruiting, as well as steward to the kings daughter. Amenhotep son of Hapu
died at the age of around eighty. After his death he acquired a cult as a healer and an
intermediary of the God Amun, and was often worshiped alongside his fellow deified
architect and healer Imhotep, surpassing the latter in popularity in the vicinity of
Thebes. In a hymn inscribed on the temple of Ptah at Karnak, it is said of Amenhotep
son of Hapu and Imhotep that they have a single body and a single ba, soul or
manifestation, as if Amenhotep son of Hapu were a veritable reincarnation of his
colleague who had lived one thousand years prior. The spell Pleyte 167 of the Book of
the Dead is labeled as having been found by the Kings chief scribe Amenhotep the son
of Hapu He used it for him [the king] as protection for his body. Amenhotep son of
Hapu and Imhotep are mentioned in the Papyrus Boulaq (first century CE) as welcoming
the soul of the deceased: Your soul will go to the royal scribe and chief scribe of the
Page 2 of 223

recruits Amenhotep; your soul will be united with Imhotep you will feel like a son in
the house of his father, (Wildung 1977, 105). Amenhotep son of Hapu is depicted as a
scribe, often with palette and scroll, somewhat older and corpulent, with a fuller
hairstyle or wig than the standard kind, a short beard, and often wearing a long apron.
Votive inscriptions from a Ptolemaic chapel behind the upper mortuary temple of
Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari show that Amenhotep son of Hapu was still worshiped in
the second century CE, more than 1,500 years after his death.
Perhaps due to the similarity in name, Amenhoteps father Hapu is sometimes identified
in later texts with the living herald Apis, that is, the Apis bull, while his mother, Idit,
is referred to as Hathor-Idit, the justified, the mother of the helpful God who issued
from her on this beautiful day, the 11th of Phamenoth, in her name rejoicing, (Wildung
1977, 98-99). In addition to the divinization of his mortal parents, Amenhotep is often
characterized as the son of Amun, or of Ptah, or of Seshat and Thoth. A text dating
from the time of Tiberius refers to him as the youthful repetition of Ptah You give a
child to the sterile; you release a man from his enemy; you know the hearts of men and
what is inside; you increase the lifetime; there is no distress in you. You renew what has
fallen down; you fill up what was found destroyed, (ibid., 105).
Wildung, Dietrich. 1977. Egyptian Saints: Deification in Pharaonic Egypt . New York:
New York University Press.
Amentet
(Imentet) Amentet is the divine personification of the West, not as a geographical
orientation, but as the place where the sun sets, a symbol of death. Amentets name
comes from the Egyptian name for this mythical West, Amente (Amenti), the hidden
land. She is depicted anthropomorphically, with the hieroglyphic sign for the west on
her head, which in its earlier form shows a hawk on a standard with a single feather at
the front; later the symbol is simplified. Amentet wears in addition the red headband
of Hathor and Amentet is often simply an epithet borne by Hathor. Amentets
paradigmatic role is to welcome the deceased, as in PT utterance 254, where she is
called the Beautiful West: Behold, she comes to meet you, the Beautiful West,
meeting you with her lovely tresses, and she says, Here comes he who I have borne,
whose horn is upstanding, the eye-painted pillar, the bull of the sky! Your shape is
distinct; pass in peace, for I have protected youso says the Beautiful West to the
king.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Ammut

Page 3 of 223

Ammut, whose name means Devourer of the Dead, is a Goddess of the netherworld
depicted with the head of a crocodile, the front legs of a lion or leopard and the rear
of a hippopotamus. Ammut is generally known for her role at the famous judgment
scene (Book of the Dead spell 125), in which the heart is weighed against Maet, where
Ammut sits on all fours waiting to consume the heart which has not been purified. In
spell 168, however, she is said to keep the soul sound in the netherworld insofar as she
has received offerings from one while alive. Her hippopotamus hindquarters may allude
to the childbirth associations of hippopotamus Goddesses such as Taweret and Ipy.
Spell 863 of the Coffin Texts, the purpose of which seems to be to secure nourishment
for the deceased through an identification with the vulture Goddess Nekhbet, opens
with what seems to be a pun on Ammuts name, addressing Nekhbet with the
affirmation The dead are swallowed for you [em mut]. The spell goes on to identify
the deceased with Nekhbet, whose nourishment is unfailingly provided through this
absorption of the dead insofar as they are not subjects of resurrection.
Amun
(Amoun, Amon, Amen, Ammon) The Hidden, a Theban God who rose to the pinnacle of
national prominence, particularly in fusion with the Heliopolitan solar God Re as the
fusion deity Amun-Re. The main temple of Amun at Karnak remains the largest
religious structure ever built. Amun is depicted typically as a man with deep blue or
black skin, wearing a crown with two high segmented plumes, and sometimes ithyphallic.
His sacred animal is the ram with curved horns (Ovis platyura aegyptiaca, as distinct
from the ram associated with Banebdjedet, Arsaphes, and Khnum, Ovis longipes

palaeoaegypticus) and he can be depicted as a man with a rams head. Amuns consort,
aside from his female complement Amaunet, whose chief importance is in the context
of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad, is Mut and their son is Khonsu. Regardless of the political
factors which brought Amun to prominence as the city of Thebes became more
powerful, and which maintained his prominence for the rest of Egyptian history as a
symbol of national unity, Amuns ability to exercise such broad appeal can be traced to
the potency of the concept of a God of hiddenness as such, particularly at a time (the
Middle Kingdom and later) when Egyptian society was engaged in speculative thought of
increasing sophistication.
Amun is, by virtue of being hiddenness itself, ubiquitous, and the idea of hiddenness
implies potentiality as well as mystery and otherness. This ubiquity based upon the
concept of hiddenness was reinforced by the identification of Amun with the
omnipresent breath of life as well as the force of sexuality. Amuns appeal was by no
means abstract, however. Commoners, and especially the poor, could appeal to the
omnipresent Amun for justice and compassion (see especially the themes of social
justice in the prayers to Amun used as school texts in the Ramesside era, trans. in
Lichtheim 1976 vol. 2, 111-112), travelers for protection (as Amun-of-the-Road, see esp.
the Report of Wenamun in Lichtheim, ibid. 224-230) and kings to legitimize the
Page 4 of 223

extension of Egyptian sovereignty into foreign lands (see, e.g., the inscription of
Thutmose III in Lichtheim, op cit. p. 30, where Amun commands the king to extend the
borders of Egypt). Amun featured in juridical oaths, which is noteworthy inasmuch as it
is not Amun-Re but Amun who is invoked, and thus not simply the symbol of royal power
but the symbol of all-pervading justice (Widson 1948). Amuns ubiquity allows him to
witness everything that occurs and to hear all requests; stelae are dedicated to Amun
who hears, and a hymn from Hibis describes him as having 777 ears, with millions upon
millions of eyes, (Klotz 2006, 167, 169f).
The conjunction of Amuns association with sexuality and his self-sufficiency results in
the epithet of Kamutef, bull of his mother, given to his ithyphallic form, which
signifies that Amun has conceived himself upon his mother and is thus his own father.
BD spell Pleyte 167 calls upon the phallic potency of Amun to protect the body of the
spells possessor. The Kamutef concept is also embodied in Amuns complex relationship
to the Gods of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad. Amun is a member of this group of precosmic
Gods but also transcends them in two ways: first, at Thebes Amun is identified with
Kematef (He who has completed his time) and Irta (or Iri-ta) (Earth-maker),
mysterious primordial serpents that preexist the Ogdoad; second, Amun is identified
with the light which the Ogdoad bring forth into the world. Hiddenness (Amun) is thus
at once the origin of the cosmos, the medium through which it comes to be, and that
which expresses itself in the splendor of phenomena. A hymn to Amun (P. Leiden J 350)
which traces the involvement of Amun at each successive stage of the generation of
the cosmos says that after the creation of the heavens and Amuns withdrawal into
occultation or concealment, You returned in the fathers as creator of their sons. Two
rulers of the 18th Dynasty, Hatshepsut and Amenhotep III, claim to have been
conceived by the union of their mothers with Amun. In a hymn from Hibis to the ten
Bas, or manifestations, of Amun, the sixth is the Living Royal Ka, that is, the divine
potency in the king deriving from Amuns impregnation of the kings mother (Klotz
2006, 35f).
The alliance of the chief deities of Thebes and Heliopolis in the compound deity AmunRe, although it clearly served political ends, is not without theological subtlety. Re, as
preeminent solar deity, embodies all that is manifest, while Amun is that which is
concealed. Their combination results in a divine potency distinct from either alone. In a
variant of BD spell 15, Amun-Re crosses the sky, everyone seeing thee, as would be
expected of the sun. But the author adds thou prosperest; (and so do) they that row
thy Majesty, (for) thy rays are in their faces, though unrecognized. The rays of
Amun-Re are not simply sunlight, therefore, for those rays are hardly unrecognized.
The author goes on to explain that no tongue could understand its fellow except for
thee, indicating that the light which is bestowed by Amun-Re is, rather, a light of
understanding. In a sunrise hymn to Amun from Hibis temple, the Aten, the suns visible

Page 5 of 223

disk, is said to represent or stand in for Amun, through a pun on itn, the suns disk,
and idn, to represent or replace (Klotz 2006, 165-167).
Amuns hiddenness is the condition of his ubiquity, and vice versa. In another hymn
from the Hibis temple, it is said that Amun hides himself with his eyes, with his
brilliant visible forms, (Klotz 2006, 82-83) because one sees through his seeing,
(ibid., 154). Because Amun allows us to participate in his power of sight, we see
everything but his essential nature, which is precisely hiddenness. Thus vision itself is
Amuns invisibility. Amun is called protector of that which is and that which is not,
(ibid., 129) because hiddenness is common to both: that which is, has come to be from
the state of nonbeing, in which it was hidden, and it is through the concept of absence
or hiddenness that the nonexistent as such is conceivable. You support them ['that
which is made'] as you create them, the same hymn says, for during the whole of the
process by which things come into being, they are guided and supported by their hidden
potential.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Assmann, Jan. 1994. Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom: Re, Amun and the
Crisis of Polytheism. Trans. Anthony Alcock. London: Kegan Paul Intl.
Klotz, David. 2006. Adoration of the Ram: Five Hymns to Amun-Re from Hibis Temple .
New Haven, CT: Yale Egyptological Seminar.
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Widson, John A. 1948. The Oath in Ancient Egypt. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 7,
no. 3.
Anat
(Anath) The Semitic Goddess Anat was introduced into Egypt as a result of immigration
and royal patronage, first by the Hyksos and then by the Ramesside kings. Anat is a
virgin huntress and warrior, and is depicted armed with a shield, a lance and a club or
battle-axe. The warlike Ramesside kings seem to have sought her patronage for their
Levantine military adventures, Rameses II even naming one of his daughters Daughter
of Anat. Anat is depicted wearing a tall crown similar to the White Crown of Upper
Egypt, but with plumes on the side (indistinguishable, in fact, from the atef crown worn
by Osiris). Anat was regarded by Egyptians as fierce and androgynous. She was
incorporated into the pantheon as a daughter of Re and a wife of Seth, who receives
Anat, along with her fellow Levantine Goddess Astarte, as compensation for being
denied the kingship in his dispute with Horus, according to the Conflict of Horus and

Seth. This arrangement, in addition to acknowledging the tendency to identify Seth

with the Levantine God Baal (although Baal was also adopted into Egyptian religion in a
minor way), also allows Seths brute force, which is denied the position of governing
Page 6 of 223

principle, scope for expression in the aggressive expansion of Egyptian cultural

influence in the region. In addition to her royal patronage in the Delta, Anat also had a
following among commoners, perhaps due to the presence in the region of a significant
immigrant population, but also reflecting the positive attributes of strength and
combat prowess which Anat shares with Seth.
In a spell to exorcise demons, the operator affirms at one point that s/he has suckled
from the breasts of Anat, the big cow of Seth (Borghouts no. 24), perhaps as a way
of imbibing her fierceness. The mechanism of the spell involves drinking beer from the
big pitcher of Seth, from which the operator draws words to use against the
demons; it is possible therefore that Anats milk is here identified with beer. A
fragmentary magic spell recounts a myth of Seth and Anat in which Seth has a sexual
encounter with a beautiful female who proceeds to strike him with some kind of venom.
Seth takes to his bed while Anat goes to Re to seek help for him, upon which Isis
(somewhat surprisingly) volunteers to cure Seth, the spell unfortunately breaking off
here. Anat is described in this spell as the mighty Goddess, the bellicose maiden, who
dresses like a man and adorns herself like a woman, (Roccati, 156). Anats refusal of
motherhood and of feminine dress complement Seths own sexuality, which is oriented
toward both sexes and does not manifest in procreation. In a spell against crocodiles on
the river from the Harris Magical Papyrus (spell F ll. 14-16=col. 3/5-10), five Gods are
asked to seal what is in the river like the mouth of the vulva of Anat and Astarte, the
two great Goddesses who are pregnant without giving birth, is sealed. It is explained
that They were closed by Horus. They were opened by Seth, (Ritner 1984, 216). That
is, Seth opened or impregnated them, but their vulvas were closed by Horus, that
they might not give birth to, in the particular case, crocodiles, since Maga, the son of
Seth, is depicted as a crocodile .
Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Ritner, Robert K. 1984. A Uterine Amulet in the Oriental Institute Collection. Journal
of Near Eastern Studies Vol. 43, No. 3: 209-221.
Roccati, Alessandro. 1971. Une Lgende Egyptienne dAnat. Revue dgyptologie 24:
152-159.
Van Dijk, J. 1986. Anat, Seth and the Seed of Pre. Pp. 31-51 in Scripta Signa Vocis,
eds. Vanstiphout et al. Groningen: Egbert Forsten.
Andjety
A God worshiped in the ninth nome (or district) of Lower Egypt, whose name identifies
him with the city of Andjet (or Djedu), known to the Greeks as Busiris; hence
sometimes simply the Busirite. In utterance 224 of the Pyramid Texts, the king is
granted universal governance over the spirits as Anubis who presides over the
Westerners, as Andjety who presides over the eastern nomes [districts] (Faulkner
1969 p. 52; similarly in utterance 650). In utterance 364 it is said that Horus has
Page 7 of 223

revived the king in this your [the king's] name of Andjety, that is, the king is revived
in the form of Andjety or by virtue of an identification with Andjety. In spell 468 of
the Coffin Texts, one has power to immerse the waterways of the Field of Offerings
as Osiris and as Andjety, bull of vultures, an epithet referring to Andjetys sexual
potency, vultures being a term for certain Goddesses. Andjetys two-feathered crown
is sometimes replaced by a uterine symbol, associating him with birth. Over time
Andjety comes increasingly to be identified with Osiris, perhaps because the king is
associated at once with Andjety and with Osiris, and the Busirite becomes one of the
standard epithets of Osiris, e.g. in spell 185A of the Book of the Dead, where Osiris is
lord of joy as the Busirite. It is sometimes postulated that identification with
Andjety is the source of the attribute of sovereignty for Osiris, who is, according to
this theory, initially associated purely with natural phenomena (on this theory see
discussion in Griffiths, The Origins of Osiris). Andjety seems, at any rate, to have
exerted an important influence on the iconography of Osiris, three of whose
characteristic insignia apparently belonged in the first place to the Busirite God: the
shepherds crook, the flail (perhaps a fly whisk), and the atef crown, which resembles
the white crown of Upper Egypt in shape although the white crown is apparently made
of fabric or leather and the atef crown woven from plant stems (as can be seen from
its tip) and has in addition two ostrich feathers on the side which, in an Osirian
context, are taken sometimes to represent Isis and Nephthys (e.g., spell 14 in
Borghouts).
Antinous
A Greek from Claudiopolis in Bithynia (now Bolu in north-west Turkey), Antinous (born
111 CE) entered the service of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (reigned 117-138 CE) around
123 CE, while Hadrian was touring the region. Antinous became Hadrians lover, and in
130 CE accompanied Hadrian on the Emperors first visit to Egypt. On a lion hunt in the
Libyan desert in September of that year, Antinous was charged by a lion which was
slain by Hadrian. From the lions blood was said to have grown a novel variety of red
lotus named Antinoeios for Antinous. This incident formed the basis for an epic poem
by Pancrates. On October 28th, Antinous drowned in the Nile just south of Hermopolis.
At the site where his body was found, Hadrian founded the city of Antinoopolis (near
the modern village of Sheik Abade or Ibada) on October 30, 130 CE and instituted
parallel Greek and Egyptian cults of the divinized Antinous. Temples were consecrated
to Antinous in every part of the empire, and his worship continued for more than three
centuries. Little is known, however, concerning the peculiarly Egyptian side of the cult,
other than that in it Antinous was associated with Osiris. All deceased persons were
Osiris; there was a long history in Egypt, however, of regarding persons who had
drowned as saints, because their manner of death evoked the drowning of Osiris in the
Nile, which granted to the river its lifegiving potency. Examples of other such cases

Page 8 of 223

are the brothers Pedesi and Pihor worshiped at Dendur, and Isidora, a Greek woman
who died around the same time as Antinous and not far away (Graindor 1932).
Graindor, Paul. 1932. Inscriptions de la ncropole de Touna el-Ghebel (Hermoupolis).
Bulletin de lInstitut Franais dArchologie Orientale 32: 97-119.
Anubis
Anubis is the preeminent God of cemeteries and embalming, and hence the preeminent
agent of resurrection. Anubis is depicted in the form of a black canine of uncertain
species with a collar and sash around his neck, or as a man with the head of such a
canine. The canine in question is generally thought of as a jackal, but could be a
jackal/dog hybrid or desert hound of some kind. Greeks regarded Anubis as a dog, and
thus his cult center acquired the Greek name of Cynopolis, Dog City, which is to be
compared with the name given by Greeks to the cult center of the God Wepwawet,
namely Lycopolis, Wolf City. There is also a demotic spell ( PDM xiv. 422) which refers
to Anubis as son of a wolf and a dog. When in fully zoomorphic form, Anubis is most
commonly depicted on his belly atop a chest representing the place of embalming or of
interment. Anubis is also closely associated with the imy-wt totem (sometimes referred
to, by analogy with the Hellenic cult of Dionysus, as a nebris), a headless animal skin
(possibly bovine or panther) hanging from a pole which may be the forerunner of the
white crown of Upper Egypt. The imy-wt or nebris was sometimes thought of as a skin
into which the disarticulated limbs of Osiris were placed by Anubis and came together
again in a kind of rebirth, the cow being a typical maternal symbol in Egyptian thought.
Anubis is initially independent in his responsibility for the care of the corpse and the
transition of the deceased to a new life in the other world, only gradually being
incorporated in the Osirian mythos. In the Coffin Texts, for example, Anubis is said to
have been caused to descend from the sky to put Osiris in order, because he [Osiris]
was so highly regarded by Re and the Gods, (spell 908). The Greek author Plutarch
(45-120 CE) integrates Anubis into the Osirian mythos as the son of Osiris and
Nephthys (On Isis and Osiris 356 F). Plutarchs narrative is well-known, but reflects no
consensus in authentically Egyptian texts, in which Nephthys is only once attested as
mother of Anubis, and then by Re, not by Osiris. The Book of Caverns (section four)
refers to Anubis and Horus alike as sons of Osiris, and the Jumilhac Papyrus frequently
characterizes Anubis as the son of Osiris and of Isis, but this may be because he is
frequently identified with Horus in this text. Few, if any, of the familial relationships
between Gods in Egyptian religion are stable and invariant; instead, they follow from
the functions accorded to a deity in a given context. Anubis assumes the role of son of
Osiris, therefore, insofar as he takes on the role of the son, namely responsibility for
the proper embalming and entombment of the deceased, and insofar as he protects the
vulnerable Osiris from his enemies with genuine filial devotion. Anubis is at times
affirmed to be the son of Re, and has for mother sometimes Hesat or Bast, the former
Page 9 of 223

because of her connection with the nebris, the latter perhaps because of her
association with certain unguents utilized in the embalming process. [In regard to
Hesat, note also that Anubis is 'chief of the sacrificial bulls in Thebes' in the Jumilhac
Papyrus (VII), and 'the good oxherd' in the Demotic Magical Papyri].
Anubis plays a dominant role in the resurrection in the earliest Egyptian afterlife
literature, the Pyramid Texts. It is at the voice of Anubis in utterance 437 that the
king comes forth, and it is Anubis, along with the present king, who grants the
deceased king abundant sustenance of diverse kinds (utterance 667; see later spell
185D of the Book of the Dead). Anubis greets the king at his death (utterance 512,
603, 675) and in general seems adequate to everything pertaining to the corporeality
of the deceased and the transition to the afterlife, not just through the operations he
performs upon the deceased, but also through the deceased kings identification with
him. Thus the king has gone down [into the tomb] as a jackal of Upper Egypt, as Anubis
who is on his belly, (utterance 412; cf. utterance 677, your shape is hidden like that
of Anubis on his belly), and is said to arise as Anubis who is on the min.w shrine,
(utterance 437). [See also utterance 556, "Anubis of the min.w raises him," i.e. Osiris
the King, and utterance 419, "Isis has grasped your hand and she inducts you into the
min.w." The min.w (sometimes translated as 'baldachin' or ceremonial canopy) is perhaps
a forerunner of the shrine upon which Anubis is depicted crouching in fully canine form
from the New Kingdom period on, representing the secure resting place of the body as
a pivot, so to speak, for the process of resurrection; cf. utterance 311: "I know the Hall
of the Baldachin from which you (Re) go forth when you go aboard the Night-bark."].
The kings feet and arms are those of a jackal in utterance 556, and he stands and sits
as Anubis in utterance 581. The king spiritualizes (sakh) himself as Thoth and as
Anubis, magistrate of the Tribunal, in utterance 610. The king is said to cut out the
hearts of the followers of Seth in this your name of Anubis claimer of hearts
(utterance 535). The reference to the heart for which see also utterance 217, where
the king, in identification with Anubis, claims hearts, he has power over hearts
anticipates the role Anubis will later play in the famous Weighing of the Heart, on
which see below. The most important identification with Anubis comes, however, in
relation to the face and head of the deceased. In utterance 213 of the Pyramid Texts,
the body of the deceased king is identified wholly with Atum with the exception of his
face, which is said to be that of Anubis, and the king is repeatedly said to have the
face of a jackal in this text (utterances 355, 468, 677, 721; the face of the deceased
is that of Anubis in spell 181 of the Book of the Dead as well). Masks of Anubis were
apparently worn at certain times during the embalming process and during the burial
rites, but the association of Anubis with the face seems to be but one aspect of his
overall function of maintaining the integrity of the deceaseds persona, another aspect
of which is symbolized by the concern to keep the head united with the body.
Utterance 355, for instance, which says to the king that your face is that of a jackal,
affirms further on that your head is knit to your bones for you, and your bones are
Page 10 of 223

knit to your head for you. In the later afterlife literature known collectively as the
Book of the Dead, Anubis features prominently in spell 151, Spell for a Secret Head,
in which he delivers a speech divinizing each part of the deceaseds head. In a demotic
spell for sending a dream in order to persuade someone to do something, the operator
asks of Anubis to retrieve for Osiris his head. Akin to this seems to be the association
between Anubis and the neck or throat. Thus in utterance 217 of the Pyramid Texts
Thoth says that the king comes adorned with Anubis on the neck, while in spell 172 of
the Book of the Dead, another spell divinizing the various members of the body, the
throat and gullet of the deceased are said to be those of Anubis. The neck or throat in
such passages either is seen as fastening the head, or in connection with the ritual of
the Opening of the Mouth (on which see below), or as a passageway analogous to the
passage to the tomb or to the netherworld. Less explicitly corporeal forms of
identification with Anubis occur at times in the later afterlife literature. Hence among
the transformation spells of the Coffin Texts is a brief spell To Become Anubis
(546), and in spell 179 of the Book of the Dead, for going yesterday and returning
today, when one asks it of his limbs, the deceased affirms I take the Form of
Anubis.
The most crucial role played by Anubis, aside from the embalming, is in the ceremony of
the Opening of the Mouth, in which an officiant representing Anubis touches the mouth
of a statue of the deceased with an iron adze to render it a suitable habitation for the

ka, or spirit, of the deceased. This is represented as restoring to the deceased the
power to breathe, eat and speak. The ka statue thus empowered provides a focal point
for interaction with the living and in general acts as an idealized stand-in for the
deceased. The ceremony, which is similar to those which rendered the cult statues of
the Gods suitable for use by them, is the key moment of the resurrection as such, for
it makes a new life possible in the other world, and it may underlie the identification of
the deceaseds lips with Anubis in spell 42 of the Book of the Dead, as well as the other
corporeal identifications previously mentioned. The ritual of the Opening of the Mouth
is present already in the Pyramid Texts (utterances 20-22) and remains constant,
albeit growing more elaborate, for the rest of Egyptian history. The instrument used in
the Opening of the Mouth ceremony is referred to in spell 816 of the Coffin Texts as
having been broken loose from the sky by Anubis, possibly a reference to the
meteoritic origin of much Egyptian iron. [Anubis is initially thought of as a sky dweller.
In utterance 577 it is said that "Anubis who claims hearts claims Osiris the king
from the Gods who are on earth for the Gods who are in the sky." In utterance 699,
the king's ascension takes place by Anubis taking his arm, and in spell 908 of the Coffin
Texts Anubis is said to dwell "in the middle sky", descending from there to assist
Osiris.]
Anubis plays an important role in the judgment scene or weighing of the heart of spell
125 in the Book of the Dead, the heart representing for Egyptians the seat of thought
Page 11 of 223

and of the conscience. In depictions of this scene Anubis frequently escorts the
deceased, introducing him/her to the assembled Gods and acting as an intermediary,
questioning the deceased on their behalf. In the actual weighing of the heart Anubis is
said to announce the finding and Thoth to record it (Lichtheim vol. 3 p. 140). In one
version of the spell Anubis says, A man come from Egypt [the deceased] declares he
knows our road and our city, and I agree. I smell his odor as that of one of you [i.e. the
Gods], playing on the canine power of scent. Anubis is frequently thought of as having
searched out the parts of the dismembered Osiris, probably through this power, which
perhaps also enables Anubis (in the Jumilhac Papyrus) to penetrate all of the deceptive
forms assumed by Seth in his attempt to steal aspects of Osiris essence. Another
canine quality attributed to Anubis is wakefulness or vigilance, a function which is
sometimes delegated by Anubis to members of his retinue, such as the seven akhu, or
blessed ones, who are stationed by Anubis to stand vigil around the coffin of Osiris in
spell 17 of the Book of the Dead. In other texts these spirits under the command of
Anubis are increased in number so that they can take turns hourly watching over Osiris.
In the magical literature of the late period Anubis is frequently invoked in spells for
divination by lamp or vessel gazing (a good example being PDM xiv. 528-53). Here
Anubis is the bringer of light, with the wick of the lamp being identified with the
bandages Anubis uses to wrap Osiris (PDM xiv. 160-2; 540). The sequence of divinatory
visions begins in these spells with the vision of Anubis, who pierces the initial darkness
and then acts as an intermediary between the person seeking the divination and other
deities from whom the desired information is to be procured. Such spells probably
developed from the intermediary role Anubis plays in the judgment scene from the
Book of the Dead.
The longstanding popularity of Anubis meant that certain novel elements were
integrated into his iconography over time. Thus depictions of Anubis in the garb of a
Roman soldier or in the pose of a victorious Imperator appear during the Roman period
to update his image as protector of Osiris or of champion over the forces of entropy,
and Anubis becomes key-bearer when keys come into use, updating his basic function
as psychopomp to take into account new technology associated with the granting of
entry or the releasing of secrets (Grenier, pp. 34-40). Anubis has a consort, Anupet,
and Kebehwet is mentioned several times in the Pyramid Texts as daughter of Anubis,
but they do not form a familial unit.
Anukis
(Also Anqet, Anket) Anukis is depicted as a woman wearing a crown of ostrich feathers,
or in the form of her sacred animal, the gazelle. Mummified gazelles were also
dedicated to her at the town of Komir near Esna. The center of her worship, which
extended to both sides of the Nubian border, was her sacred island of Sehel at the
first cataract of the Nile. The primary aspect of Anukis seems to be the embodiment
Page 12 of 223

of the wild beauty of her region, as well as beauty and grace more generally. At
Elephantine and Aswan she is worshiped alongside Khnum and Satis, although the
relationship she is intended to bear toward them is unclear. Anukis may have been
regarded as the daughter of Satis, since Anukis bears the epithets beloved of her
mother and favorite of her mother, but no unambiguous evidence exists of the
nature of their relationship. Satis and Anukis are accorded specific functions with
respect to the Niles inundation, Satis representing the rising of the waters, Anukis
their withdrawal, which is the occasion for the sprouting of the seeds; Anukis can also,
however, represent the total phenomenon of the inundation herself. Anukis also shares
in the traditional function of Satis as protector of Egypts southern border against
hostile incursions, and as protector of the sacred shrine of Osiris at Biga, where Osiris
was entombed by Isis. The interpretation of the name Anukis also remains
problematic, although it has been suggested that it is related to a verb s-n-k, meaning
to suckle, and that Anukis may therefore have been thought of as the pharaohs divine
wetnurse (Te Velde, Some Remarks on the Structure of Egyptian Divine Triads, JEA
57 (1971), p. 85).
Anupet
Anupet (Anubet, Inpwt) is the female counterpart of Anubis and the Goddess presiding
over the 17th nome (or district) of Upper Egypt, known in Greek as the Cynopolitan
nome, for being the cult center of Anubis. Anupet is depicted in a famous statue
alongside the 4th Dynasty King Menkaure and the Goddess Hathor. Here she is
depicted in human form, with a reclining jackal on a standard above her head adorned
with a feather. This feather perhaps serves to distinguish the jackal standard of
Anupet from that of Anubis. At the temple of Hathor at Dendera, Anupet is depicted
as a jackal brandishing knives, and figures of a female jackal suckling pups have been
identified with Anupet.
DuQuesne, Terence. 2005. Jackal Divinities of Egypt I: From the Archaic Period to
Dynasty X. London: Dath Scholarly Services/Darengo Publications.
Anupet
Anupet (Anubet, Inpwt) is the female counterpart of Anubis and the Goddess presiding
over the 17th nome (or district) of Upper Egypt, known in Greek as the Cynopolitan
nome, for being the cult center of Anubis. Anupet is depicted in a famous statue
alongside the 4th Dynasty King Menkaure and the Goddess Hathor. Here she is
depicted in human form, with a reclining jackal on a standard above her head adorned
with a feather. This feather perhaps serves to distinguish the jackal standard of
Anupet from that of Anubis. At the temple of Hathor at Dendera, Anupet is depicted
as a jackal brandishing knives, and figures of a female jackal suckling pups have been
identified with Anupet.
Page 13 of 223

DuQuesne, Terence. 2005. Jackal Divinities of Egypt I: From the Archaic Period to
Dynasty X. London: Dath Scholarly Services/Darengo Publications.
Apedemak
A God of southern Nubia unknown in Egypt but depicted in an Egyptianizing style as a
lion-headed man, occasionally winged, holding a sceptre with a seated lion on it or as a
lion-headed serpent or as a lion, in virtually all cases wearing the elaborate hemhem
crown, also called the triple crown. This crown, whose name means war cry, consists of
three atef crowns or bundles mounted on rams horns with a uraeus (cobra) on either
side, and sometimes additionally with three falcons atop the bundles, each surmounted
by a solar disk. The hemhem crown was part of the insignia of the kings of Egypt
starting in the Amarna period, and Ptolemaic era kings are frequently depicted wearing
it, but it is virtually unknown in Egyptian iconography for a deity to wear this crown
(the only exception being Harsomtus). That Apedemak is consistently depicted wearing
this crown may therefore indicate that he is to be regarded as embodying the spirit of
the Meroitic dynasty. Principally a warrior God, Apedemak can also appear bearing a
sheaf of wheat, or in conjunction with solar symbols as indications of the breadth of
his providence. Apedemak also appears sometimes riding a lion, and in association with a
winged lion who may represent Apedemak himself or a divine agent of his. Apedemak
sometimes has the Egyptian Goddess Isis as his consort and Horus as his child.
Zabkar, Louis V. 1975. Apedemak, Lion God of Meroe: A Study in Egyptian-Meroitic

Syncretism. Warminster: Aris & Phillips.

Apis
(Also Hapy/'Hapi, but not to be confused either with Hapy (1) or (2) here) A deity
whose incarnation was a sacred bull living at Memphis, the worship of whom apparently
goes back as far as the First Dynasty. When this bull died, his successor was chosen
based upon a series of criteria. The bull had to be black, with a white triangle on his
forehead and wing-like markings on his back, a mark like a scarab under his tongue and
the hair of his tail divided into two strands. Once chosen, the bull was housed in special
quarters, complete with his own harem of cows, to be adored by worshipers, with
oracular pronouncements being derived through interpreting his behavior. At his death,
the Apis bull was embalmed and entombed in extravagant fashion alongside his
predecessors. The Apis bull had a special association with the king, and participated in
the Sed festival, at which the king periodically renewed his powers. The Apis bull was
conceived from a virgin cow and the God Ptah, and was thus regarded as Ptahs living
representative on earth. The cow from whom he was born was known as the Isis cow,
and was also venerated while alive and buried with elaborate ceremony. Apis also had a
divine child called Kem or Gem (Dieter Kessler, Bull Gods, in the Oxford Encyclopedia
of Ancient Egypt p. 212). When the Apis bull died, it became Osiris-Apis, just as the
Page 14 of 223

deceased human is Osiris-N. in the personalized afterlife texts; Osiris-Apis, however,

also manifests a unity contrasting with the succession of historical Apis bulls. It is
frequently asserted with great confidence that the Graeco-Egyptian deity Serapis is
Osiris-Apis, but this remains problematic. It was, however, a common identification in
antiquity, whether or not it came about in retrospect as an attempt to derive an
indigenous pedigree for Serapis.
In one of the ascension spells of the Pyramid Texts (utterance 539), the king says My
phallus is Apis; I will ascend and rise up to the sky. Funerary stelae show the Apis bull
carrying the mummy of the deceased on his back. In spell 31 of the Coffin Texts, the
deceased is granted the boon of seeing the birth of the Apis bull in the byres of the
dappled cattle, (Faulkner 1973 p. 20). Identification with Apis in the netherworld
seems to express the idea of flourishing. Thus in spell 162, the east wind opens a path
for the deceased into a field where s/he flourishes like the condition of Apis and
Seth, (ibid. p. 140), Seth being associated with vigor; in spell 203 (spell 189 in the

Book of the Dead), which is concerned with providing appropriate nourishment in the
spirit world, Seth and Apis apparently reap and thresh grain for the deceaseds
consumption; and in spell 204, similarly concerned with spiritual nourishment, the
deceased affirms I am Apis who is in the sky, long of horns far-sighted, farstriding, (ibid. p. 166), alluding to the bulls oracular prescience. The milk which is
imbibed by Apis from his mother is a purifying substance in CT 21/BD 169. The Apis
bull is mentioned, along with Mnevis, another sacred bull, in the twenty-fifth
instruction of the Demotic Papyrus Insinger, a text of ethical instruction, in a chapter
against retaliation. The author says that Apis and Mnevis abide at the window of
Pharaoh forever. They will do good to him who will listen to these words, i.e. they will
reward the person who knows better than to seek retaliation (Lichtheim vol. 3, p. 213).
Apophis
(Apep, Apopis) A serpent God embodying the primeval forces of disorder inimical to
life. Apophis is the eternal opponent of Re and attacks the solar boat, not only during
its nocturnal journey, but even during its journey by day. He is conceived as massive in
size (his name is sometimes interpreted with reference to Coptic oipe/ipi/aipi as
meaning huge or indeterminate in size, Wrterbuch 1: 67) and possessing a deafening
roar and paralyzing gaze.
Many different deities are said to assist Re in fighting off Apophis, but pre-eminent
among them is Seth, in his principal beneficent function. The vigor and vitality of Seth,
disruptive on one level, is nevertheless apparently uniquely suited to combat the
entropic assault of Apophis. The role of Seth in this drama underscores the distinction
between the spheres in which the conflicts associated with Re and those associated
with Osiris are situated. This is vividly illustrated in the depictions of the seventh hour
of the night in the Amduat book, the book of That Which is in the Duat, or
Page 15 of 223

netherworld. The hour is depicted, as is the form in this book, in three registers. In
the middle register, the boat of Re confronts Apophis, who has swallowed up the water
which the boat needs to proceed. At the head of the boat stand Isis and Seth, whose
exercise of magic (heka in Egyptian) wards off Apophis and permits the boat to
proceed despite the lack of water. The cooperation of Isis and Seth here stands in
stark contrast to the conflict between them in the Osirian mythos. Meanwhile, Apophis
is fettered by the Goddess Serket while others hack his body to pieces. In the upper
register Osiris is enthroned. Like Re in his boat, Osiris is encircled by the protective
serpent Mehen, for the first time in the book in this hour, as if the beneficent
counterpart of Apophis. Before Osiris are a series of bound captives, his own enemies,
depicted in human form, who are being decapitated by a demon with a cats head,
evoking spell 17 of the Book of the Dead in which Re (or alternately Shu) in the form of
a cat uses a knife to decapitate a serpent (identified with Apophis) who is coiled around
the sacred sycamore or persea tree in Heliopolis. In the lower register, a peaceful
procession of stars proceeds toward the eastern horizon, either untouched by the
conflict in the two parallel domains or their status secured by the overcoming of
Apophis. The magic which is performed in this hour is said in the text to be performed
likewise on earth, and who performs it, is present in the barque of Re, in heaven and in
earth, (p. 93 in Abt & Hornung 2003). Humans thus while alive can and do participate in
the drama of overcoming Apophis, and we have evidence of such rites directed against
Apophis, especially from a collection known as The Book of Overthrowing Apophis, in
which names and forms of Apophis written on papyrus or wax figures of Apophis are
destroyed.
In the sixth hour of the Book of Gates, another New Kingdom depiction of Res
nocturnal journey, the heads of those Apophis has swallowed are depicted rising up out
of his body in the upper register, paralleling a series of mummified corpses in the lower
register which lie atop a serpent-shaped bed, while the boat of Re passes through in
the middle register. Those who have been consumed by Apophis are thus able to regain
their forms through the grace of Re.
The same sort of scene depicted in the seventh hour of the Amduat book is narrated in
spells 39 and 108 of the Book of the Dead. In 39 we note that Isis is said to dismember
Apophis, evoking the dismemberment by Seth of Isis brother and consort Osiris. In
108 Seth hurls a spear of iron against Apophis, causing him to disgorge the water he
has swallowed, which has brought the boat of Re to a halt, not in the middle of the
night, as in the Amduat book, but just after midday. This victory, as ever only a
temporary one, allows Re to set in safety. Apophis can never be wholly eliminated
insofar as the forces of entropy are an implicit part of the cosmos. Thus just as Osiris
is dismembered but reconstituted, expressing the salvation of the mortal being, so the
very Goddess who reconstitutes Osiris, namely Isis, dismembers Apophis who
nevertheless reconstitutes himself.
Page 16 of 223

Arensnuphis
A Nubian God or else a product of Egyptian and Nubian syncretism, Arensnuphis is
almost always depicted anthropomorphically, wearing a crown of plumes, but is depicted
at least once (in the Osiris shrine at Philae) in the form of a lion. The name
Arensnuphis is interpreted as deriving from Iry-hemes-nefer, the good companion.
This interpretation derives from the most significant myth with which Arensnuphis is
associated, the myth of the so-called Distant Goddess, in which a wrathful Goddess
depicted as a lioness, most typically Tefnut, is brought from a place in the south,
broadly Nubia, to Egypt in effect, to wherever in a locality these ceremonies were
observed escorted by two male deities, undergoing a transformation through this
journey in which she is rendered beneficent. Arensnuphis features, along with Thoth of
Pnubs [Thoth of the noubs tree (the zizyphus or jujube)], as the escort of this Goddess
in the version of the myth as it is found at Philae and further south. Arensnuphis is also
depicted sometimes as a desert hunter, bearing a lasso and water-skin, or with a spear
and a slain oryx. Arensnuphis may also be depicted subduing a crocodile.
In the vicinity of Abaton, where one of the tombs of Osiris was located, an orgiastic
cult centering on Tefnut was celebrated, possibly involving Arensnuphis and celebrating
the pacification of the Goddess. This cult was censured at Elephantine in the 2nd
century BCE for profaning the sacred rites of Osiris at his tomb in Abaton, an event
which has been linked to the defacing of a relief of Arensnuphis at the temple of
Dendur. In the relief, Arensnuphis is featured with Isis and her son Harpocrates, but
his name has been erased and replaced with that of Osiris. Arensnuphis seems to have
been incorporated into the milieu of Isis and Osiris as a protector and substitute son.
Arensnuphis is also a representative of Nubia for Egyptians, bearing the epithet
Beautiful Medjay, a term which refers to a Nubian people who became clients of the
Egyptian state, serving as policemen in the desert regions.
In a spell from the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM XII. 182-89) whose goal is to obtain
favor, Arsenophre (Arensnuphis) is invoked as the means to obtain favor for the
universe and for the inhabited world. Heaven has become a dancing place for you Let
my outspokenness not leave me. But let every tongue and language listen to me. This
spell evokes the role of Arensnuphis in the myth of the Distant Goddess as the one
who persuades the Goddess to come with him to Egypt.
Betz, H. D. 1992. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. 2d ed. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [PGM, PDM]
Griffiths, J. G. 1980. The Origins of Osiris and his Cult. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Inconnu-Bocquillon, Danielle. 2001. Le Mythe de la Desse Lointaine Philae. Cairo:
Institut Franais dArchologie Orientale.
Trk, Lszl. 1997. The Kingdom of Kush. Leiden: E. J. Brill.

Page 17 of 223

Arsaphes
(Also Harsaphes, Herishef, Heryshaf) A God depicted as a long-horned ram or a ramheaded man, Arsaphes was, peculiarly, associated by the Greeks with their own
Herakles, and so his cult center, the Upper Egyptian city of Hnes or Ninsu, became
known to the Greeks as Herakleopolis. The name of Arsaphes means He Who is Upon
His Lake, referring to a sacred lake at his temple and, by extension, to Arsaphes as a
God emerging from the primeval waters and proceeding to the activity of creation. The
-shef element in his name was also interpreted by Egyptians as deriving from a word
meaning strength or bravery, which perhaps contributed to the Greek impression that
Arsaphes was akin to Herakles, who had also through the Orphic writings taken on a
cosmogonic function.
A remarkable stela dedicated by an official of the fourth century BCE named
Somtutefnakht at the temple of Arsaphes at Hnes was found during the excavation of
the temple of Isis at Pompeii, where it had been taken in antiquity. In this stela
Somtutefnakht expresses his devotion to Arsaphes, his divine patron, whom he praises
as Lord of Gods whose right eye is the sun-disk, whose left eye is the moon, whose
ba [manifestation] is the sunlight, from whose nostrils comes the northwind, to make
live all things, (Lichtheim 1980 p. 42). Somtutefnakht narrates how Arsaphes enabled
him to curry favor with the Persian king Artaxerxes III, who conquered Egypt in 341
BCE, then kept him safe as he witnessed at first hand the defeat of the Persians under
Darius III by the Greek forces of Alexander the Great. Arsaphes then appears to
Somtutefnakht in a dream, urging him to return through the turmoil of the Persian
collapse to Hnes. Somtutefnakht attributes his long lifetime in gladness (ibid. p. 43)
in the midst of such a turbulent age to the grace of Arsaphes: My heart sought justice
in your temple night and day, you rewarded me for it a million times, (42).
In spell 17 of the Book of the Dead (spell 335 in the Coffin Texts), the deceased (or an
operator reciting the spell while alive, inasmuch as the rubric to the spell remarks that
It goes well with one who recites them [the 'extollations' and 'commemorations' of
the spell] on earth.) affirms that s/he has been cleansed in the two great, stately
ponds that are in Herakleopolis on the day when the common folk make offerings to
this great God who is therein, the great God in question probably being Arsaphes,
although the gloss on the spell says it is Re himself. Similarly among a list of epithets
of Osiris in spell 142 we find Osiris the lord of the lake, Osiris the lord of
Herakleopolis. These kinships with Re and with Osiris are expressed iconographically in
the crowns worn by Arsaphes atop his horns, either the solar disk of Re or the atef
crown of Osiris. The spell in the Coffin Texts corresponding to this spell (335) glosses
the references to the cleansing in the two lakes as a reference to birth: It means that
his navel-string has been cut. Going out into the day It means that he was cleansed
after his birth, (Faulkner 1973 p. 267). In spell 420 of the Coffin Texts, the deceased
seeks the vision of Arsaphes in his pillared hall after bathing in the Lake of Natron
Page 18 of 223

(i.e. one of the sacred lakes mentioned above), praising him as potent spirit who dwells
in Ninsu, on whose head are the plumes of Soped and the atef crowns, which are
identified in one manuscript as the atef crowns of Re. This brief spell also
characterizes Arsaphes as lord of blood and flourishing of slaughter, referring
possibly to either of two myths associated with Herakleopolis, the first being that of
the slaughter of rebellious humanity by Sekhmet, which commences at Herakleopolis,
the other being the myth which is alluded to in spell 1 of the Book of the Dead, where
the deceased affirms that It was I who seized the hoe on the day of fertilizing the
earth in Herakleopolis, which seems to relate to the fragmentary extension of spell
175, where the blood of Osiris is said to fertilize the earth in Herakleopolis. The
references to slaughter in the epithets of Arsaphes therefore would seem to refer at
once to the blood of birth and to the sacrifice of the rebellious lower self implicit in
the purification rites performed at Hnes under the supervision of Arsaphes. Spell 47
of the Coffin Texts says, for instance, may your evil be purged in Ninsu. References
to the spilling of blood may also refer to animal offerings, which are consistently
distinguished symbolically from non-animal offerings.
Ash
(Sha) A God of the western desert region, including its fertile oases and their produce,
especially wine, Ash is depicted with the head of the same animal as the God Seth, or
with a falcon head, sometimes wearing an ostrich plume on his head. A late depiction of
him, however, depicts Ash with the heads of a lion, a vulture, and a snake who wears the
crown of Upper Egypt, and is captioned Ash of the many faces (A. Shorter, JEA 11
(1925) pp. 78-9). His early cult center was Nubet or Ombos, which also belonged to
Seth, and Ash may lay behind certain references to Seth where he is simply called the
Ombite. The name of Ash is often rendered Sha by metathesis. The Seth-animal
itself is called the sha; P. E. Newberry has argued that this animal was a type of wild
pig (JEA 14 (1928) pp. 211-225). CT spell 107, Recitation for going out into the day,
states on behalf of the deceased that Sha guards me in company with the Lords of
Upper Egypt. In BD spell 95, for being beside Thoth, the operator states that Ash
cools off opponents for me, in which it seems that Ash is to share in the
characteristic function of Thoth of calming wrathful deities, perhaps because of Ashs
association with wine.
Astarte
(Ashtoreth) An important Levantine Goddess adopted into Egyptian cult under a narrow
aspect as a Goddess of war, especially of the chariot. Like the Levantine Goddess Anat,
Astarte was regarded by Egyptians as a daughter of Re and a wife of Seth, although
Astarte is also sometimes regarded as the daughter of Ptah. Astarte is depicted in an
Egyptian context as an armed naked woman on horseback wearing the atef crown or a
bull-horned headdress.
Page 19 of 223

A fragmentary papyrus probably of the time of Amenhotep II recounts a myth involving

Astarte (trans. in Simpson, ed. 2003). In the myth the sea, Yamm, is ruler of the
cosmos and exacts tribute from his subjects, which apparently consists at first of the
produce of the harvest, since mention is made of Renenutet. Astarte is sent to deliver
the tribute to Yamm, and perhaps to intercede in some fashion on behalf of the other
Gods. Yamm refers to her as you furious and tempestuous Goddess. Nevertheless it
appears that the sea makes Astarte his wife, or some kind of co-ruler, for when she
next appears before the other Gods the great ones saw her and got up to meet her,
and the lesser ones saw her and lay down on their bellies. Her throne was given to her,
and she sat down. Extensive gaps make reconstructing the story a matter of
conjecture, but something is presented to Astarte, possibly a dowry to be offered to
Yamm as her husband-to-be. Some demand is made of the other Gods which requires
them to surrender their very adornments to Yamm; mention is made of beads from
around the neck of Nut (the stars?) and a signet ring of Geb. Subsequently a threat is
made by Yamm to submerge the earth; Seth enters the story and sits himself down
calmly, but the rest is lost. From scattered allusions elsewhere it would appear that
the story ended with Seth battling Yamm and putting an end to the seas insatiable
demands, a fragment near the end of the papyrus being reconstructed as And the sea
left. Of Astartes further actions in the myth nothing is however known.
Astarte is also mentioned in a spell against crocodiles on the river from the Harris
Magical Papyrus (spell F ll. 14-16=col. 3/5-10), in which five Gods are asked to seal what
is in the river like the mouth of the vulva of Anat and Astarte, the two great
Goddesses who are pregnant without giving birth, is sealed. It is explained that They
were closed by Horus. They were opened by Seth, (Ritner 1984, 216). That is, Seth
opened or impregnated them, and then their vulvas were closed by Horus, that they
might not give birth to, in the particular case, crocodiles, since Maga, the son of Seth,
is depicted as a crocodile.
Ritner, Robert K. 1984. A Uterine Amulet in the Oriental Institute Collection. Journal

of Near Eastern Studies Vol. 43, No. 3: 209-221.

Simpson, W. K., ed. 2003. The Literature of Ancient Egypt. 3d ed. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Aten
The term aten refers to the actual physical disk of the sun. The Egyptians were
perfectly capable of distinguishing between the God associated with a certain physical
phenomenon and that phenomenon itself. Thus Re is a solar God, but can be
distinguished from the actual disk of the sun; Nut is a sky Goddess, but can be
distinguished from the sky (pet). The Aten was aggressively promoted by Akhenaten as
the sole deity, in relation to which Akhenaten was apparently to be regarded as the
privileged intermediary for the rest of the universe. Akhenaten built his Aten theology
Page 20 of 223

on the existing foundations of the theology which had developed around solar deities
and which expressed a recognition of the supremacy of the sun in the system of the
cosmos and thus the capacity of the sun as a symbol to represent the order of the
cosmos and therefore its unity and totality. Akhenatens new theology eliminated the
particular Gods with whom this theology had been identified, leaving only the abstract
symbol of the Aten as a focus of worship upon which personal qualities of, e.g.,
benevolence, were superimposed. These qualities are, as it were, inferred from the
overall characteristics of the suns relationship to all the other elements in the cosmos.
(Alternatively, Goldwasser (2010) argues that the Amarna icon of the sun disk with
projecting rays is to be understood, not as any form of the sun per se, but as the
energy of light.) In support of his new ideology Akhenaten attempted to suppress the
worship of all other Gods, but after Akhenatens death he and his Aten cult were
repudiated. The Aten is invoked, alongside Re, in a spell to speed up childbirth (no. 63 in
Borghouts), presumably because the passage of the suns disk across the sky marks the
passage of time; the spell thus, in a sense, seeks to speed up time. The feminine form
of the word, atenet, is a common epithet of Goddesses exercising a cosmic providence,
as in a text from the Sokar chapel at Dendera where Nephthys is invoked as atenet
who ordains that which comes to be, (Dend. II, 149).
Goldwasser, Orly. 2010. The Aten is the Energy of Light: New Evidence from the
Script. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 46: 159-165.
Atum
(Tem, Temu) The great creator God of n, the city known to the Greeks as Heliopolis,
Atum is generally depicted anthropomorphically, wearing the dual crown of Upper and
Lower Egypt, sometimes leaning on a staff to indicate advanced age. Atums name
provides the key to his nature; it carries the sense of totality, of finishing, and of
negation. Atum is the totality which evolves or develops as a work upon itself and
through the interaction and articulation of its elements. Thus Atum begins the process
of the emergence of the Gods into the cosmos by an act of masturbation by which he
brings forth Shu and Tefnut, who then carry forward the process themselves. Atum is
also, however, as the origin of the cosmos, the one who more than any other
distinguishes himself from all there is, the one who by his very being negates all things,
and thus expresses his freedom and autonomy. His name has also the connotation of
finishing, because the totality is at any moment all that it can be; it is always at its
ultimate state. Atum is not in the first place a solar deity, but is so closely associated
with his fellow Heliopolitan God Re, who is the solar deity par excellence, that Atum
comes to be regarded as the sun in a particular aspect, either as source and origin of all
life, or as the sun in its singularity. In this latter aspect he is embodied in the sun at
its setting, at the moment when it begins its journey into the netherworld. Atum, who
was alone at the beginning of the cosmos, is manifest in the suns aloneness at the
threshold of transformation. In the Pyramid Texts (utterance 213) each part of the
Page 21 of 223

kings body is identified with Atum except for his face, which is identified with Anubis
all of the parts of the body which can be seen by oneself without a mirror, therefore,
are Atums.
Atums myth is well developed already in the Pyramid Texts. In the midst of the watery
abyss of indeterminacy, personified as Nun, Atum creates for himself a point of
determinacy, a mound that rises from the waters at the site of Heliopolis, a moment
which is also functionally identical to that in which Atum grasps his phallus in his hand.
The determinacy of place which comes with the emergence of solid ground in the Nun is
one with the determinacy achieved by a part of the body (the phallus) which expresses
Atums self-awareness. The place of the primordial hillock, which embodies the
beginning of everything and was represented at Heliopolis by the presence of a benben
stone, or pyramidion, is also a place which is everywhere. This moment of the
emergence of the primeval mound is also hardly to be distinguished from the first
sunrise, which is in turn each days sunrise. From here begins the close identification of
Atum and Re. The compound name Re-Atum is very common, either with separate
determiners indicating that the two are kept distinct even in fusion (e.g. in CT spell
673) or with Re subordinated to Atum, as in CT spell 266, where the operator says I
am Atum in his name of Re. Where one is to be subordinated to the other, it is Re who
is subordinated to Atum, for the sun can be regarded as merely one element in the
self-developing totality. Alternately, the sun itself, Re in the broadest sense, can be
the focus, relativizing Re in the narrow sense and Atum alike, as in BD spell 15A: Hail
to thee, Re at his rising, Atum at thy setting.
Having created Shu and Tefnut through his masturbatory acthis hand as partner in
this act is personified as the Goddess IusasAtum embraces them, his embracing
arms forming the hieroglyph for the ka, the spirit or double belonging to each living
being. In this act, Atum passes on to them his essence, that is, the monadic essence of
being an individual (PT utterance 600). To be each at once the totality and also a part
of the totalitythis is what Atum passes on to his children and to their children, who
fill the ranks of the ennead, or pantheon of nine Gods, of Heliopolis, consisting of
Atum, Shu, Tefnut, Geb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Seth and Nephthys, but ennead is also a
general term in Egyptian thought for a collection of Gods of whatever number. It is the
nature of a God as such in Egyptian thought to possess the capacity of self-creation
which is the essence of Atum; it is the nature of a God to be the totality. In PT
utterance 600, a prayer of protection for the king and his pyramid, it is said O you
children of Atum, extend his goodwill (lit. heart) to his child Let his back be turned
from you toward Atum, that he may protect this King. Here, the protective gesture
of having the deity at ones back is transferred from Atums children to Atum,
symbolizing the withdrawal from the world to the inwardness of the very wellspring of
individuality. The king, in turn, assists Atum, as we read in utterance 362: O my father
Atum in darkness! Fetch me to your side, so that I may kindle a light for you and that I
Page 22 of 223

may protect you. For the king to redeem his own selfhood is in itself to kindle a light
for Atum, to protect Atum; the two acts are not separate. Atum passes on, not only to
his children the Gods, but to humans as well, the birthright of selfhood, but humans
must activate this gift of Atums.
Noteworthy in PT utterance 215 is the opposition between Re-Atum and Osiris: ReAtum will not give you to Osiris, and he [Osiris] shall not claim your heart nor have
power over your heart, the affirmation being repeated with respect to Horus. It is not
a matter of the latter deities being actually a danger to the deceased, for even if
Osiris is, as lord of the underworld, conceivably an ambivalent figure, nevertheless this
cannot be the case with Horus. Rather, it is a question of Atums prior claim upon the
individual. In the same utterance, Shu and Tefnut tell the deceased to come into
being, an Atum to every God. Atum being that which grounds individuality as such, it is
natural that the maintenance of the integrity of one identity should have ramifications
for the totality; hence in utterance 465 the king demands of the Gods of the horizon
who are in the limit of the sky, that if you wish that Atum should live take my hand
and place me in the Field of Offerings. Similarly, Atum, as the totality, has the ability
to bring together the Gods in assembly: Ho all you Gods! Come all together, come
assembled, just as you came together and assembled for Atum in On, (utterance 599).
In BD spell 3, Atum is portrayed as speaking on the deceaseds behalf: O Atum speak
thou to the Ancestors: N. [the deceased] comes as one who is in their midst. The
aspect of negation in Atum is evident in PT utterance 606, which identifies the king
with Re, but also distinguishes the Atum-aspect of Re: you will draw near to them [the
Gods] like Re in this his name of Re; you will turn aside from their faces like Re in this
his name of Atum.
As the origin of form itself, Atum is naturally one of the Gods immediately confronting
Apophis, the giant serpent representing entropy; and BD spell 7 allows the deceased to
identify with Atum so as to escape the clutches of Apophis. In this spell, the deceased
says I am the one-faced one, for Atum represents the integrity of identity which
remains constant across transformations. Atum also confronts Apophis directly in
netherworld books like the Book of Gates. The Book of the Dead includes a spell (79)
for becoming the greatest in the Council, which is directed toward Atum. Here again
we see Atum, as the totality, associated with a collective entity, the Council of the
Gods. The deceased identifies himself here in striking fashion as this God who eats
men and lives on Gods. This claim evokes the famous utterances 273-4 of the Pyramid

Texts in which the king is said to be a God who lives on his fathers and feeds on his
mothers, to have been begotten by Atum but to be mightier than him, and to devour
the Gods. These surprising images serve to secure a place in the cosmic order for a
human as a unique and autonomous individual against all the forces, even beneficent
ones, which would tend to overwhelm and absorb him/her, and Atum is the God most
intimately linked to this critical moment.
Page 23 of 223

Another important appearance of Atum in the Book of the Dead is in spell 175, a spell
for not dying again, in which Atum speaks to Thoth about the turmoil generated by
the Children of Nut, i.e. Osiris, Isis, Seth and Nephthys, and engages in a dialogue
with the deceased, who questions Atum about the netherworld, the silent land, which
has no water and no air and is very deep and very dark and all is lacking, including food,
drink and sexual pleasures, to which Atum replies that blessedness and quietness of
heart have been granted by him in place of these things, and that at any rate thy face
sees, and I will not suffer thee to choke; the deceased is then granted a vision of
Atum face-to-face. The exchange is interesting in that all of the necessities and
amenities of life which are, throughout the afterlife literature, magically procured for
the deceased, are here dispensed with, not in contradiction to other parts of the Book
of the Dead, but in accord with the peculiarly primordial bond between the deceased
and Atum, as is signaled at the beginning of the spell by Atums private remarks to
Thoth about the Children of Nut, three of whom at any rate (Osiris, Isis and
Nephthys) are representative throughout the rest of the Book of the Dead of all that
is hoped for on behalf of the deceased in the other world; and indeed, throughout the
dialogue the deceased is, as in the rest of the Book of the Dead, designated as Osiris.
In the continuation of the dialogue, Atum explains that he shall someday return
everything into the abyss as it existed before the emergence of the cosmos, after
which I [Atum] shall survive together with Osiris, after I have assumed my forms of
other snakes which men know not and Gods see not. This is not, perhaps, so much an
apocalyptic prophecy as another demonstration of the ability of Atum (and therefore
the operator who successfully identifies with him) to set himself apart from all that is
and to subsist unsupported, as it were, in and through the abyss, the destruction of the
cosmos which is spoken of by Atum being, not one which is to occur in the distant
future so much as that which is immediate for the deceased and has, for him or her,
already in fact taken place.
Allen, J. P. 1988. Genesis in Egypt: The Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation

Accounts. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Baal
(Baal; also Bar, in accord with the inability of the earlier Egyptian script to distinguish
l from r) Important West Semitic deity who is adopted into Egyptian cult at the same
time and in the same context as other deities (Anat, Astarte) encountered by the
Egyptians as a result of their territorial incursions into the Levant and immigration
Page 24 of 223

from that region into the Delta. Baal is depicted anthropomorphically, with long hair
and a curved beard of Syrian style, wearing a conical crown with horns at its base and
with a sword at his belt, or wielding a club or spear made of the cedar or pine native to
Lebanon. Baal also wields the thunderbolt, for he is a God of the storm. Baal was
closely associated by Egyptians with their God Seth, storms having a completely
different connotation in the Egyptian bioregion, which was watered principally by the
Niles annual flood, from that which they had in a land like Syria, which depended upon
rainfall for its fertility: in Egypt, the storm was principally noted for its violence. The
name Baal means Lord or Master, and he is among the most important deities of Syria
and Palestine, but Egyptians regard Baal mostly as a God of battle, particularly, as
might be expected, battle waged in Syria and Palestine. He appears, however, alongside
Seth in spells of exorcism (e.g., spell 23 in Borghouts), both because his general combat
skills are appropriate to combating demons as well, and because the spells are
thoroughly infused with Levantine elements and may have arisen among the immigrant
population.
Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Babi
(Also Baba, Bebon) A God depicted as a baboon, often with a prominent phallus. In the

Pyramid Texts the door-bolt of the sky is referred to as the phallus of Babi
(utterance 313), and the king identifies himself with Babi, Lord of the night sky, Bull
of the baboons (320; similarly in spell 668 of the Coffin Texts, To become Babi in the
realm of the dead) but also requires protection from Babi, as in utterance 549: Get
back, Babi, red of ear and purple of hindquarters! In this spell it is said that Babi has
stolen a portion of sacrificial meat allotted to an unspecified Goddess. Babi (like Seth)
expresses the qualities of vigor and sexual potency in the fullness of their ambivalence,
always testing any established limits whether social or natural. In the Coffin Texts the
deceased says I am the phallus of Babi (822) and my protection is Babi (945), and in
spell 359 I am Babi, the eldest son of Osiris. Babi is also mentioned as having power
over water as the oar of Re, probably a phallic reference. The phallus of Babi, which
creates children and begets calves is the mast of the netherworld ferry-boat in spell
397, and several other parts of the boat are identified with him in 398. Once again,
however, Babi is ambivalent; for his phallus is also the mast of the boat of the
netherworld fishermen who threaten the deceased with their nets (473); however this
boat is given a positive value in the course of this spell insofar as the deceased is to be
a passenger on it. The boat itself, then, of which Babi is an integral part, can either be
a trap or a conveyance, depending upon the mode in which one engages it, hence the
importance in these boat spells of knowing the names of each of the boats parts,
which form a system of divine identifications that make of the boat a model of the
cosmos.
Page 25 of 223

Another instance of Babis ambivalence is his seeming potential to cause symbolic

impotence, which is implied by the reference in spell 548, a spell against being ferried
to the east (indicating perhaps counter-solar motion) or dying again in the realm of the
dead, to the phallus of Re which goes awry for him in uproar, the inertness of which
comes into being through Babi. In the version of this spell appearing in the Book of
the Dead, however (93), it seems as if the phallus of Re, which is more active than he
[Re] when passionate, transforms Res torpidity into that of Babi, implying either
that Re borrows Babis potency and therefore renders him torpid instead, or that Re
becomes no longer torpid, and thus like Babi. The deceased, at any rate, identifies with
this purely phallic power in order to grow more powerful thereby than the Powerful,
so as to threaten that if any harm comes to him/her then this phallus of Re shall
swallow the head of Osiris. This is another instance in which the deceased, generally
identified in the Book of the Dead with Osiris, identifies with forces transcending the
passive aspect of Osiris. Naturally the phallus of the deceased is that of Babi in spell
576 of the Coffin Texts, a spell to charge an amulet that empowers the deceased to
copulate in the other world. The reference to Babi of the horizon in 581 perhaps
identifies Babi as chief of the baboons who are traditionally depicted greeting the sun
at its dawning, or identifies Babis erection with this dawning, or simply applies his
strength to this task. In spell 682 the deceased is the Watcher who goes forth from
food-offerings, Babi who goes forth from the Castle, Babi perhaps being a symbol of
the power of the Gods to enforce their will. In the Book of the Dead, Babi is a member,
along with Shu, Re and Osiris of the great Council that is in Naref, a tribunal before
which Thoth defends the deceased against his/her enemies (18). In spell 63 Babi is
first son of Osiris, whom every God united to himself, as at Coffin Texts 359 where
Babi assembled every God, presumably because his phallic potency is common to all
the Gods. And yet the deceased must still ensure (spell 125) that the Gods rescue me
from Babi, who lives on the entrails of the elders, on this day of the great accounting.
Thus the texts are remarkably consistent in their depiction of Babi as a force of sheer
natural vitality whose disposition toward one is wholly dependent upon ones ability to
correctly harness it.
Banebdjedet
(Also Banebdjed, Ba-neb-Djedet) Banebdjedets name means the Ba who is Lord of
Djedet, a city in the Delta known to the Greeks as Mendes. Banebdjedet is depicted as
either a long-horned ram or, less often, as a ram-headed man, and hence is frequently
referred to as the Ram of Mendes. Greek texts, however, refer to the sacred animal
of Mendes as a goat. Banebdjedet was incarnate in a living sacred ram (or possibly goat)
kept at Djedet, comparable to the Apis bull. The term ba, which can be understood
either as soul, hence as a force implicit in something else, or as manifestation, hence
the phenomenon which shows forth the nature of something else, is also a sound-alike
word in Egyptian for ram. Banebdjedet is thus a ba in both senses. He is frequently
Page 26 of 223

regarded as the manifestation of four Gods Re, Shu, Geb and Osiris and can be
depicted with four rams heads, two facing forward and two backward, to symbolize
this quadripartite nature (also known in this form as Sheft-hat). These four Gods
represent a succession of divine sovereignty as well as the fourfold conditions making
life possible: the sun, the air, the earth and the Nile. Banebdjedet had as his divine
consort the Goddess Hatmehyt.
Banebdjedet plays a small but significant role in the Conflict of Horus and Seth
(Lichtheim vol. 2, pp. 214-23). When the matter of the Osirian succession is brought
before Atum, Thoth and Shu speak in favor of granting the sovereignty to Horus, while
Re speaks in favor of Seth, who promises moreover to make good his claim by superior
force. Atum is not committed to either side and summons Banebdjedet, the great
living God, to judge between Horus and Seth. Banebdjedet, who appears accompanied
by Tatenen, counsels that a letter be dispatched to the Goddess Neith and the Gods
abide by her decision. She advises that the sovereignty be granted to Horus, yet when
the issue is argued again, Banebdjedet displays reluctance to award Horus the
sovereignty. When Onuris and Thoth argue from the filial principle Shall one give the
office to the uncle while the bodily son is there? Banebdjedet responds by citing
Seths status as Horus elder, an argument running along the same lines as Seths own
appeal, which argues from his strength, that is, his capacity in the present, as
demonstrated by his victory over Apophis every day in defense of the solar boat. It is
a question posing the future against the present, legitimacy against ability, and the
establishment of a new order against the honoring of a pre-existing one. Banebjedet is
depicted as being poised at the crossroads of this decision with no strong leaning
either way. He clearly does not belong among the partisans of the new order, but he
has argued that the decision of Neith be respected. The fact that the issue is still
debated after Neiths intervention, however, indicates that her intervention is not
sufficient alone to settle the matter. Is his medial position in the conflict due to the
fact that as a God incarnate in a succession of mortal bodies, he is neither reflexively
associated with the immortal Gods nor with Osirian mortality?
Banebdjedet occurs again in close association with Tatenen in a text from the mortuary
temple of Ramses III at Medinet Habu. In the text, Tatenen states that he
transformed himself into Banebdjedet in order to father Ramses. A stela of Ramses IV
from Abydos also juxtaposes Banebdjedet and Tatenen, both in connection with solemn
oaths of some kind, affirming I have not sworn by Banebdjedet in the house of the
Gods; I have not pronounced the name of Tatenen; I have not taken away from his
food-income. The context is obscure, but it is to be noted that Isis swears by Tatenen
at one point in the Conflict of Horus and Seth (Lichtheim vol. 2, p. 216).
Banebdjedet is associated with a taboo of some kind in a spell for scaring away an
enemy, that is, for repulsing hostile magic which has been set against one (spell 10 in
Page 27 of 223

Borghouts). Here the operator refers to the name of the relics of Banebdjedet four
faces on one neck to which offerings are brought with a seal as a mystery of the
Great House (the temple at Mendes) which the operator denies having repeated;
rather, It is this magic that comes for NN born of NN that has said it, that has
repeated it. The spell launched against the operator is thus symbolically transformed
into an act of profaning the sanctuary of Banebdjedet, and hence presumably turned
back upon the one who would wield it.
In spell 125A of the Book of the Dead, the deceased says to Anubis I have come
hither to see the great Gods, that I may live on the offerings that are their
nourishment, while I am beside Banebdjedet. He lets me ascend as a phoenix [ benu] at
my word, when I am in the river. A further afterlife role for Banebdjedet is alluded to
in spell 17 of the Book of the Dead, where the deceased (or a living operator) affirms
I am his Twin Souls [bau] lodging in his twin progeny. A commentary appended to the
spell in antiquity explains that it refers to an event which takes place at Mendes. It
goes on to explain that the Twin Souls are Osiris and Re, with the Twin Progeny being
two forms of Horus, or the Soul of him who is in Shu and the Soul of him who is in
Tefnut. It is clear from this that the tradition of Banebdjedet being the ba of at
least two but more certainly four deities is stronger than the identification of which
deities are meant, although Re and Osiris seem to be constant. In this regard it should
be noted that the form in which Re is depicted journeying through the night to
rendezvous with Osiris (e.g. in the Amduat book) is that of a ram-headed ba.
Bast
(Bastet; the extra -t probably added by scribes to show that the final t, usually silent
in Egyptian, was to be voiced. The name is also sometimes written with an initial w, i.e.,

Ubast(t) a trace of the vocalization of which can be seen in the Greek spelling of the
name Petobastis.) A Goddess both protective and maternal, Bast is depicted originally
as a lioness-headed woman but later, increasingly, as a cat-headed woman or as a cat.
She is distinctive among Egyptian deities in exhibiting aspects of the feline nature
different from those conveyed by the lioness. Basts maternal aspect is exhibited in
icons in which she appears as a cat with kittens, or even as a pregnant cat-headed
woman. In authoritative representations Bast bears three characteristic items: a
sistrum or rattle; an aegis or breastplate, often adorned with a lions head; and a
basket. Bast sometimes wears a long robe decorated with geometrical motifs, a
garment perhaps Syrian in origin on account of the location of her cult center at
Bubastis near Egypts eastern border. Bast is associated with certain unguents utilized
in the embalming process, which perhaps explains the occasional identification of her as
mother of Anubis; more typically, she is regarded as the mother of Mihos or of
Nefertum.

Page 28 of 223

Bast always retains a wrathful, even dangerous aspect, as can be seen from PT
utterance 467, where the deceased king affirms that he has not succoured Bast
(sometimes translated as not having approached Bast, i.e., in observance of some
taboo, in order to avoid the surprising negative) or from BD spell 135, which promises
that its possessor shall not succumb to the heat of Bast. Similarly, a spell to protect
against various forms of demonic miasma (no. 18 in Borghouts) claims as its effect that
the (fire-)spewing of Bast will fail against the house of a man, and another, to
empower an instrument for purifying foods and spaces against the plague (no. 20),
enjoins Let your murderers retreat, Bast! A text known as The ritual of bringing in
Sokar states that As for a servant who follows his lord, Bast shall not have power
over him, (21, 2; The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus II, p. 14). A wrathful aspect is
similarly implied by depictions of Bast accompanied by a cat who is devouring a bird.
The wrathful aspects of deities, however, are also those potencies by virtue of which
they can offer protection to the individual as well as the cosmic order, and so Egyptian
theology finds no contradiction in a deity being at once wrathful and beneficent.
Basts beneficence is frequently expressed in maternal terms. In PT utterance 508, for
instance, the king states that My mother Bast has nursed me, she who dwells in
Nekheb has brought me up. In juxtaposing Bast and Nekhbet, the Goddess of Upper
Egypt, this text takes Bast, whose cult center Bubastis was in the Delta, as a symbol of
Lower (northern) Egypt. Bast is the wetnurse of Horus in a spell (no. 93 in Borghouts)
which says of him, A cat has nursed you in the house of Neith. Sometimes Bast is
conflated with Sekhmet, so that (e.g., in BD spell 17) Nefertum, generally the son of
Sekhmet, is regarded as a son of Bast, and CT spell 60, which identifies the deceased
with the fair of face Ptah-Sokar in the bow of your bark, affirms that Bast the
daughter of Atum, the first-born daughter of the Lord of All, she is your protection
until day dawns, where a reference to Sekhmet, Ptahs usual consort, would perhaps
rather be expected. BD spell 164 fuses the two Goddesses, invoking Sekhmet-Bast. It
is conventional, however, to contrast Sekhmet and Bast as wrathful and beneficent
Goddesses, as in the Stela of Sehetep-Ib-Re (12th Dyn.), where it is said of the king
that He is Bast who guards the Two Lands, he who worships him is sheltered by his
arm; he is Sekhmet to him who defies his command, (Lichtheim vol. 1, 128). Basts
combat prowess is equally well attested, however, as when Seti I describes himself as
valiant in the very heart of the fray, a Bast terrible in combat, (Scott, 6).
Frequent reference is made to Bast projecting her potencies in the form of seven
arrows, each of which is made up of a demon or group of demons. These seven demons
or demonic groups may be wielded by other deities, such as Nekhbet or Tutu (and
indeed, their connection with the latter is especially close; see Sauneron 1960), but
there are indications of a unique connection to Bast. Each arrow, in addition to its
complement of demons, is attributed to a certain deity. No complete list of the
tutelary deities of the arrows survives, but the most complete list, from Philae, lacking
Page 29 of 223

the fifth and seventh arrows, shows in its attributions a preponderance of associations
with Bast, attributing the first arrow to Bast, mistress of Bubastis, the second to
Nefertum, son of Bast, the third to Horus-Hekenu, a form of Horus local to Bubastis,
the fourth to Khonsu-Horus, son of Bast, master of joy, and the sixth to Wennut,
Eye of Re, (Rondot, 267). The demons actually making up each arrow are depicted at a
number of sites, with a certain degree of variation (Sauneron 1960, 281 supplies a table
with the principal versions).
Prohibitions associated with Bast are revealed by the affirmation of Ramesses IV that
he had not netted birds nor shot fierce lions on the feast of Bast, (Scott, 6).
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Faulkner, R. O. 1936-1938. The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus. The Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology 22-24.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Rondot, Vincent. 1989. Une Monographie Bubastite. Bulletin de lInstitut Franais
dArchologie Orientale 89: 249-270.
Sauneron, Serge. 1960. Le Nouveau Sphinx Composite du Brooklyn Museum et le Role
de Dieu Toutou-Tithoes. Journal of Near Eastern Studies Vol. 19, No. 4: 269-287.
Scott, Nora E. 1958. The Cat of Bastet. Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin Vol. 17,
No. 1: 1-7.
Bat
Bats name combines the common Egyptian theological term ba, soul or manifestation,
with the feminine suffix; hence her name means something akin to feminine potency or
the ensouled one. Bat is depicted frontally and only from the neck up, with a human
face, bovine ears and horns. Sometimes her head is surmounted by a configuration of
five stars, one at the tip of each horn, one atop the forehead, and one at the tip of
each ear. Generally Bats image forms a pendant, the top of a column, an ornamental
frieze, or, somewhat later, the top of a sistrum. The bat-sistrum becomes especially
popular in the cult of Hathor, largely replacing an earlier, plainer form of sistrum, and
Bats cult center in the seventh nome or district of Upper Egypt comes to be known as
Mansion of the Sistrum. Bats frontal, semi-bovine depiction as well as the bat-sistrum
are increasingly seen as attributes of Hathor in the Middle Kingdom and thereafter,
leading to Hathors assimilation of Bats nature. A Bat pendant is part of the regalia of
Page 30 of 223

a class of official in the Old Kingdom known as director of the palace, such officials
sometimes given the title hqa-bat, bat-governor (Fischer, 12f).
Bat is mentioned in PT utterance 506, the deceased king affirming I am Bat with her
two faces, referring perhaps to Bats visage on some portable object, such as that
seen on the famous Narmer Palette, from the Early Dynastic period (c. 3000 BCE),
where the king is depicted wearing an item on his belt on which Bat appears to be
depicted, while an image of Bat adorns the top of the palette itself. I am one who is
saved, the utterance continues, and I have saved myself from all things evil. Later in
the same utterance, the king affirms that he is a living soul who saved himself and
removed himself from those who disturb Her-who-does-what-has-to-be-done when
She-who-does-what-has-to-be-done, and who commands what-has-to-be-commanded, is
at rest. This string of female identities may refer to Bat, who is the only Goddess
named in the utterance. CT spell 334, for becoming Ihy, the sistrum-playing son of
Hathor, characterizes the pre-cosmic period in which the operator identifying with Ihy
came into being as that before the face of Bat was knit on. CT spell 411, for
remembering ones name in the netherworld, invokes Bat: O Bat, my name is Isis in the
sealed place; I am in my name and my name is a God; I will not forget it, this name of
mine.
Fischer, Henry G. The Cult and Nome of the Goddess Bat. Journal of the American
Research Center in Egypt 1, 1962 (pp. 7-18) & 2, 1963 (pp. 50-51).
Bes
A widely-worshiped popular religion deity across Egypt, and whose unmistakeable image
was disseminated internationally, Bes is depicted, almost always with bold frontality, as
a staring, bearded dwarf, naked or semi-naked, with a large head, broad face and short
legs. Bes unusual physical characteristics seem to be borrowed from a lion (Romano
1980): a lions ears, mane, and sometimes tail, flexed legs like a lion standing on hind
paws, protruding tongue, and sometimes a number of secondary leonine elements such
as a forehead groove and ventral mane. His variable iconography also includes a plumed
crown similar to that worn by Anukis and which is broadly associated with Nubia, knives
(or later a sword and shield), musical instruments (especially the tambourine, harp, or
double flute) or bouquets of flowers. Bes also frequently appears grasping snakes in his
hands or mouth, and may be accompanied by other animals, such as cats, monkeys or
frogs. Elaborate depictions of Bes from magical texts show an almost unlimited
profusion of features such as multiple animal heads, erect penis, wings, crocodile tail,
and so forth. Bes protects the living body in every situation of vulnerabilitypregnancy,
birth, childhood, sleepand also promotes procreation. Bes has a female counterpart,
Beset.
Bes specializes above all else in the protection of women from the hazards of
childbirth and he is almost invariably invoked, with Taweret, during labor and for all
Page 31 of 223

female concerns. Bes is also the general protector of children up to the age of puberty,
the mythic guardian of the Horus child (Harpocrates), and an intimate protector
throughout life, warding off demons of disease and venomous animals. He is also a God
of music, of dancing and of good cheer, especially in association with the Goddess
Hathor and her son Ihy. Hathors temple at Dendara hosted an annual festival for Bes,
and reliefs depict him playing music and dancing for Hathor, having accompanied her on
her return from Ta-Sety (a term for Nubia or for a mythical place to the south of
Egypt). Bes has the role, in particular, of appeasing Hathor in her wrathful aspect. In
accord with his association with the living body, Bes is not prominent in the afterlife
literature, although his image appears on coffins for infants. Bes is also the protector
of the sacred space of the temple, inasmuch as his images frequently appear in the
outer areas, which also served a demand for popular access to his images. Otherwise,
the image of Bes is usually to be found in the rooms of the temple dedicated to the
ceremonies pertaining to the birth of divine and/or royal infants. An increasing
theological significance accorded to Bes in the late period expresses responsiveness to
popular religious sentiment after the end of state sponsorship (on which see especially
Frankfurter 1998), as well as the symbolic potency of the assistance Bes renders to
infants when the infant is transposed into a symbol of cosmic renewal, at which point
Bes becomes the guardian of the cosmos, or even its pantheistic embodiment (for the
roots of the pantheistic Bes, see especially Malaise 1990). Due to his association with
the most immediate human concerns, in the late period Bes enters into fusion and
identification with many of the great Gods of Egypt. It is interesting to note that Bes
is depicted on amulets and furniture dating from the Amarna period, showing that he
escaped the monotheist pharaoh Akhenatens suppression of Gods other than the Aten
(Bosse-Griffiths 1977, 100-101).
The name Bes may derive from the word besa, meaning to guard or protect. In earlier
depictions the figure who came to be called Bes is called Aha, the fighter, and in later
times is also sometimes called Haty, Hity, or Hatiti, which may mean the dancer. The
universal designation of these figures by the name Bes is somewhat more a feature of
modern scholarship than of Egyptian practice. Bes is commonly depicted on cosmetic
items and household objects of every kind, imparting to them his protective power over
the bodys perimeter and on beds, as protection against nightmares or to encourage
sexual intercourse and procreation. He also appears on equipment used by magical
specialists, such as ivory magical knives and on the healing stelae known as cippi. Bes
also gives oracles, both by dreams and by direct visions, as in a spell from the Greek
Magical Papyri (PGM VIII. 64-110) in which Bes is identified with the magically potent
menstrual blood of the Goddesses Isis and Nephthys. The roots of the cult of Bes may
lie in the Egyptian reverance for dwarves already attested in the Old Kingdom. Thus in

PT utterance 517 the king affirms I am that pygmy, a dancer of the God, who pleased
the heart of the God in front of his great throne, while the sixth dynasty pharaoh Pepi
II sent a letter to Prince Harkhuf asking him to fetch such a dwarf of the Gods
Page 32 of 223

dances from Punt (eastern Sudan and Eritrea) in order that he perform at the court
(Lichtheim, vol. 1, 26-27).
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Betz, H. D. 1992. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. 2d ed. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [PGM, PDM]
Bosse-Griffiths, Kate. 1977. A Beset Amulet from the Amarna Period. Journal of
Egyptian Archaeology 63: 98-106.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Frankfurter, David. 1998. Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Malaise, Michel. 1990. Bes et les Croyances Solaires. Pp. 680-729 in Sarah IsraelitGroll, ed. Studies in Egyptology Presented to Miriam Lichtheim . Jerusalem: Magnes
Press.
Romano, James F. 1980. The Origin of the Bes-Image. Bulletin of the Egyptological

Seminar 2: 39-56.
Beset
Beset is the female counterpart to Bes, but since she appears typically on amulets
which seldom label the deities depicted on them, the name Beset is used to refer to a
general type of female divinity either closely resembling Bes or accompanying him.
Sometimes Beset looks so similar to Bes that some have spoken of a hermaphrodite
Bes rather than of a female counterpart to Bes (a thesis rejected by Ward 1972).
Other depictions of Beset are as a naked female, who is not a dwarf like Bes, but has a
lions ears and tail (see Bosse-Griffiths 1977); or, in contrast, as a female dwarf
without non-human characteristics, with a hairstyle typical of Nubians, usually nude,
and sometimes pregnant. This latter type sometimes carries Bes on her shoulders, and
sometimes stands atop an antelope, a frog or a papyrus stalk (see Bult 1991). Beset,
like Bes, may be shown holding snakes or mastering other dangerous animals, especially
on ivory magic knives. Sometimes Beset is suckling an infant baboon or a Bes-like
infant. Beset shares with Bes the function of protecting the health of the living,
especially women and young children.
An enigmatic cosmogonic text from the temple of Horus at Edfu seems to refer, if not
to Beset, then to a figure very much like her: A lotus came forth in which was a youth
who illuminates this land with his beams; and there was ejected a lotus bud in which was
a dwarf maiden whom the shining one delights to see, (Edfu I, 289/pl. 319). Similarly, a
fragmentary demotic text (Berlin demotic papyrus 13603, 2, 8) has been read to say a
Page 33 of 223

dwarf maiden has come forth from the lotus bud, (cited in Ryhiner 1986, 143 n. 7). The
cosmogony in which this dwarf maiden featured is not known other than from these
allusions, but the surrounding material at Edfu places it in a Hermopolitan context
involving the Ogdoad and Thoth. She invites comparison to Beset, not only as a dwarf,
but also because of the joy she brings to the shining youth, reminiscent of the role
Bes plays in entertaining Hathor and her son Ihy.
Bosse-Griffiths, Kate. 1977. A Beset Amulet from the Amarna Period. Journal of
Egyptian Archaeology 63: 98-106.
Bult, Jeanne. 1991. Talismans gyptiens dHeureuse Maternit. Paris: Editions du
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
Ryhiner, Marie-Louise. 1986. LOffrande du Lotus dans les Temples gyptiens de
lpoque Tardive. Brussels: Fondation gyptologique Reine lisabeth.
Ward, William A. 1972. A Unique Beset Figurine. Orientalia 41: 149-159.
Buchis
A living sacred bull worshiped at and around Hermonthis, the cult of Buchis is
comparable to that of the Apis bull. The Buchis bull delivered oracles as did the Apis
bull, but also participated in fights with other bulls, reflecting his association with the
warrior God Montu. The criteria for selecting a bull to be Buchis do not seem to have
been so tightly circumscribed as those for selecting the Apis bull, but he was said to be
a bull with a white body and black face. Macrobius, in his Saturnalia (I. 21. 20-1),
compares the Buchis bull to the sun, saying that, like the sun, his color seems to change
from hour to hour, and that his hair grows in the opposite direction to that of ordinary
bulls, just as the suns motion in the heavens is opposite to that of the stars.
Underscoring these solar associations, the name Buchis was sometimes interpreted in
Egyptian as bakhu, the Eastern one (the rising sun), as well as ba-akh, shining (or
beneficent) soul (or manifestation). The name was also sometimes read as ba-hr-khat,
the soul (or manifestation) in the body. Four bull-headed statues of Montu were found
at Medamud representing Montu as incarnate in the Buchis bull, conceived as ideally
present simultaneously at the four cities of Thebes, Armant, Medamud and Tod and
constituting the magical defense of Thebes; the quadripartite Montu/Buchis also
embodied the four male members of the primordial Hermopolitan Ogdoad, of whom the
inscriptions say They are united in effigy in their form of a bull, (Drioton 1931-2,
266).
Drioton, E. 1931-2. Les quatre Montou de Medamoud: Palladium de Thbes. Chronique

dgypte 6-7.
Mond, Robert and Myers, Oliver. 1934. The Bucheum. 3 vols. London: Egypt Exploration
Society.
Dedwen
Page 34 of 223

(Dedun) A Nubian God who features in Egyptian texts chiefly as a provider of incense, a
major Nubian export, and as a representative of Nubia generally. Dedwen is depicted
anthropomorphically, and is characterized in typical fashion in utterance 437 of the
Pyramid Texts as the youth of Upper Egypt who came out of Nubia; he gives you [the
king] the incense wherewith the Gods are censed. Dedwen is also referred to as
presiding over Nubia, sometimes in contexts where the limits of Egyptian sovereignty
are being symbolically established; hence in utterances 480 and 572 Dedwen is
juxtaposed to Soped, who is associated with the Sinai Peninsula, another region at the
limits of Egyptian control which was also a source of a precious commodity, namely
turquoise. In spells 345 and 346 of the Coffin Texts, it is said of the deceased that
Dedwen makes his perfume of what is in you, or from your skin, the sweetness of
aroma being a symbol for the reversal of the process of decay.
A Late Period hieratic papyrus concerning the cult topography of the Delta (Brooklyn
papyrus 47.218.84) incorporates Dedwen into a myth known from other sources in which
Horus, angered at his mother for freeing Seth, decapitates her. This version states
that in the wake of his misdeed Dedwen made Horus fly off into the sky and inflicted
the same thing upon him [Horus], i.e., decapitated him (Meeks, 26). It is perhaps to
be noted in this connection that Dedwen was worshiped near Oxyrhynchus as the son of
Taweret and Osiris (Meeks, p. 262), and that in the Late Period his name was
occasionally written Djed-wen, the enduring existent, indicating strong Osirian
associations.
Meeks, Dimitri. 2006. Mythes et Lgendes du Delta: daprs le papyrus Brooklyn

47.218.84. Cairo: Institut franais darchologie orientale.

Duamutef
One of the four sons of Horus, Duamutef, whose name means he who honors his
mother, is depicted as a jackal-headed mummy on the jar containing the stomach of
the deceased and in the assignment of the sons of Horus to the cardinal points is at
the east. Duamutef, together with Horus and Kebehsenuf, is said in CT spell 158/BD
spell 112 to be among the Souls [Bau] of Nekhen, or Hierakonpolis, a town in Upper
Egypt. In one text, Duamutef states to the deceased, I bring your soul before you, so
that it may move about [swtwt, 'walk about', 'promenade'] in the place of your heart;
may you repose with it for eternity, the heart serving as a place of excursion or
recreation for the ba (Lefebvre 1920, 227-228). Duamutef is the only one of the four
sons of Horus for whom an independent priesthood is attested; this may be an accident
of preservation, rather than indicating a special status.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Page 35 of 223

Phillips Ltd. [CT]

Lefebvre, Gustave. 1920. Textes du Tombeau de Petosiris. Annales du Service des

Antiquits de lgypte 20: 207-236.

Dunanwy
(Dunawy) Dunanwy, whose name means he of the outstretched wings, is depicted as a
hawk. Dunanwy is mentioned several times along with Horus, Seth and Thoth, e.g. in PT
utterances 25, 35 and 591, the four Gods representing the cardinal points, with
Dunanwy representing the east, Thoth the west, Seth the south and Horus the north.
The spells in question concern the offering of various substances incense, natron, an
unidentified plant in spell 354 of the Coffin Texts as well as the donning of the

shesmet, a belt with an apron of beads and tassels. In PT utterance 25, the four Gods
in question, along with Osiris and Khenty-irty, are each said to have, like the king gone
to (or with) his ka, that is, to have gone, like the king, to the other world and to share
his fate there, namely receiving pure offerings of the kind known symbolically as the
Eye of Horus. In PT utterance 246, Dunanwy is a sort of divine herald, perhaps on
account of his station at the east, announcing twice that the deceased king shall give
orders to the fathers of the Gods, that is, the other divinized kings. Similarly,
Dunanwy is called upon in utterance 217 to go and proclaim to the eastern souls and
their spirits: This King comes indeed, an imperishable spirit. Whom he wishes to live
will live; whom he wishes to die will die. In utterance 506 the deceased king identifies
himself with Dunanwy just after having identified himself successively with each of the
sons of Horus (Hapy, Duamutef, Imsety and Kebehsenuf), and in utterance 720
Dunanwy, along with an unidentified deity named Wadj-Merut, are second and third
respectively to the deceased king, who is ascending to the sky.
CT spell 383 refers to a House of Dunanwy which seems to be in the east or north of
the sky. This may refer to the constellation Cygnus, which can be called Dunanwy and
depicted as a hawk-headed man extending his arms and holding a lance or a rope
(Papyrus Jumilhac, p. 29). The name Dunanwy has also been interpreted as He who
extends his arms or claws/talons. The talons or claws would be those of the falcon, or
perhaps some other animal associated with Dunanwy a cheetah or griffin has been
suggested as an alternative theriomorphic identity for him. The extended arms of the
humanoid figure, with weapons, would thus suggest the talons or claws of the animal. In
spell 531 of the Coffin Texts, the back of the head is identified with Dunanwy, which
perhaps, along with his name, alludes to a form in which Horus can be depicted in
statuary (e.g., the famous statue of King Khafre in the Cairo Museum), namely as
tutelary deity of the king, perched upon his back and spreading his wings to cover the
back of the kings head. This function is alluded to in the Jumilhac Papyrus, where the
name of Dunanwy is given to Anubis when he transforms into a falcon, opening his arms
(i.e. wings) behind his father Osiris (IV, 2-3). Another commentary on the name
Dunanwy comes later in the papyrus, where it says that the name refers to Horus
Page 36 of 223

behind his father Osiris (VIII, 1). Further light is shed on the meaning of this gesture
by CT spell 532, a spell for fixing on the head. Although the translation has been
disputed, part of this spell has been read as Dunanwy renders me invisible with his
arms, (Papyrus Jumilhac, p. 31). Another interpretation of the gesture of the
outstretched wings is that it denotes taking flight. Thus, in the Jumilhac Papyrus,
Anubis, assuming the form of Dunanwy, extends his wings, in the form of a falcon, to
fly with them in search of his own eye, and he returns it, intact, to his master, (IV, 45), where the eye in question is the Eye of Horus, Anubis therefore identifying himself
here not only with Dunanwy but also with Horus (viz. his own eye). The gesture is again
one of taking flight at VII, 24, where Dunanwy, the falcon with wings outstretched, is
explained as Shu, when his soul [manifestation] takes to the sky, in the form of
Dunanwy, in the presence of his son Geb. Such passages are not to be taken to mean
that, e.g., Dunanwy is actually none other than Anubis or Shu, but rather as illustrating
the nature of Dunanwy through the lens, so to speak, of other Gods being interpreted
expansively and glorified through adopting the attributes of other deities.
If, as has been speculated, Dunanwy is not only conceived as a hawk, but also as a
cheetah perhaps given wings to convey the idea of its speed or as a griffin, then
Dunanwy may have contributed to the evolution of the symbol of the Eye of Horus, the

wedjat, inasmuch as this eye is depicted in a manner which has been thought to
incorporate elements of a human eye, a hawks eye, and a leopard or cheetahs eye,
elements which may have been fused in Dunanwy. The reference to outstretched wings
or, literally, arms, in Dunanwys name may also imply a myth analogous to that of Horus
recounted in CT spell 158/BD spell 113, for knowing the souls of Nekhen
[Hierakonpolis], in which the hands or arms of Horus are cut off by Isis and thrown
into the water, becoming fish, thus acting as the Gods operative limbs in the world.
Dunanwys outstretched arms might thus refer in similar fashion to his ability to
project his power into the world and intervene in its events.
Geb
God of the Earth, son of Shu and Tefnut, consort of Nut, father of Osiris, Isis,
Nephthys, and Seth, Geb is depicted anthropomorphically, wearing the Lower Egyptian
crown, with green skin or decorated with plants, often prone beneath the arching body
of Nut, Goddess of the sky, his erect phallus reaching up toward her, Shu standing
upright holding them apart. Among animals Geb is particularly associated with the
goose. In addition to representing the earth with all its bounty, Geb is regarded as
having transmitted the sovereignty over the cosmos from Atum and Shu to Osiris, and
plays a pivotal role in awarding that sovereignty to Horus in the conflict between the
latter and Seth.
Geb is thus the earth, neither in that sense in which it is merely part of the
architecture of the cosmos, nor in that sense in which it is the receptacle of the decay
Page 37 of 223

of the living (albeit occasionally, e.g. PT utterance 258: The King is Osiris in a dustdevil, earth is his detestation, and the King will not enter into Geb, an aspect,
however, which is more confidently attributed to Aker), but rather as the supportive
matrix of life. Geb embodies that continuity of life which, from a cosmic perspective,
constantly turns the clock back on death and decay, as in PT utterance 368, in which it
is said that Geb has caused Thoth to reassemble you [Osiris/the deceased king] so
that what was on you comes to an end, namely the process of decay. Hence the earth is
addressed in utterance 483: O earth, hear this which Geb said when he spiritualized
Osiris as a God. The special relationship between Geb and Osiris is emphasized in the
tendency to hypostatize it as the sonship: O Geb Osiris the King is your son; may
you nourish your son with it, may your son be made hale by means of it, (utterances
592, 640). This relationship is reciprocal: If he [Osiris] lives, you [Geb] will live; if he
is hale, you will be hale; you will have effectiveness, O Geb; you will have strength, O
Geb; you will have a soul, O Geb; you will have power, O Geb, (640). Whereas Geb
provides for Osiris continuity of existence through the continuity of lifes natural
matrix, Osiris provides for Geb a field for manifestation insofar as Osiris is the
personal being of mortal organisms. In spell 575 of the Coffin Texts, for instance, the
operator, no longer literally royal, affirms that I have collected the thrones of Geb
for him, and his souls which were in the Abyss [Nun] are united. The mortal being thus
fulfills an end which is inherent in Geb from the beginning. Sometimes it seems that
what Geb provides for the mortal being is something like elemental concreteness, earth
being a symbol of solidity: in utterance 570, the king asks Geb to equip me with my
shape. Gebs role in the reassembly of Osiris is spelled out in utterance 536, where
Geb fishes him out of the water, puts his bones in order, makes firm his soles and
cleans his fingernails and toenails. In this description, the parts of the body which are
firm and resistant like the earth are emphasized, as are the soles of the feet, whose
contact with the earth entails standing upright. Similarly, Geb is associated with the
back in utterance 539, a spell for the divinization of the members of the body. In some
texts it seems as if Geb is responsible in a comprehensive fashion for the resurrection,
at least for its more concrete corporeal aspects (see, e.g., CT spell 20).
Gebs identification with the continuity of life underlies his function of ratifying the
transition of sovereignty: the king occupies the throne(s) of Geb as his rightful heir;
indeed, insofar as he is a king, he is the seed of Geb (utterance 303), Geb being the
hereditary prince of the Gods (BD spell 142 var.). This attribute can be so salient as to
occasionally outweigh Gebs identification with the earth in the Pyramid Texts, which
are at once of purely royal application and oriented toward an afterlife in the sky;
hencein utterance 373 the king is taken by Horus to the sky, to your father Geb. Geb
is the source of sovereignty for those who reign upon the earth (the thrones of Geb)
and this function is dominant among his attributes from the earliest times. The
sovereign must identify with Geb as the source of this sovereignty, and hence it is
wished for the king that you may sit at the head of the Ennead as Geb, chiefest of
Page 38 of 223

the Gods, as Osiris at the head of the Powers, and as Horus, Lord of men and Gods,
(utterance 468), each of these instances of sovereignty being at once universal and also
delimitable from the others; similarly, the king appears to the Gods as Horus at the
head of the living, as Geb at the head of the Ennead [i.e., at the head of the nine Gods
of Heliopolis], and as Osiris at the head of the spirits, (utterance 690). The earth
being the place in which all divine activity is felt, Geb can say, in transmitting
sovereignty to the king, I bring to you the Gods who are in the sky, I assemble for you
the Gods who are on earth, that you may be with them and walk arm-in-arm with them,
(utterance 474); Geb has given you [the king] all the Gods of Upper and Lower Egypt
that they may raise you up; be mighty through them, (utterance 645A).
Geb is also the ultimate source of all offerings to the Gods, and thus it can be said that
he is the essence [ka] of all the Gods, (utterance 592). Offerings to the Gods being
known collectively as the Eye of Horus, it is said that Horus rejoiced at meeting his
Eye when his Eye was given to him in the presence of his father Geb, (utterance 478).
This appropriation of the earths bounty to the continuation of civilization is parallel to
the transmission of sovereignty: I will stand up when I have taken possession of my
blessedness just as Horus took possession of his fathers house from his fathers
brother Seth in the presence of Geb, (utterance 519). The sovereignty is nothing
other than the possession of the ordered cosmos, which can itself be referred to
simply as the Eye of Horus (e.g. utterance 587). The Upper and Lower Egyptian crowns
are similarly characterized as the eye [of Horus] <which> has issued from your [Geb's]
head, (utterance 592). Geb is thus responsible for the transcendence of the earthly
condition in the strict sense, for the spiritualization of the earths goods: Geb causes
me to fly up to the sky that I may take the Eye of Horus to him, that is, so that the
deceased may bring to the Gods that which has come from the earth and been made
into a divine offering (utterance 524). Thus Geb has raised on high the potent Eye of
Horus which is on the hands of his great souls and upon his ordinary souls, (utterance
689) these souls being presumably the earthly living beings themselves. Appropriately
in light of what has been said, Geb is a judge of the use to which the gifts of the earth
have been put; hence mention is frequently made of Gebs tribunal, the members of
which are listed in CT spell 627. The positive judgment of Geb is manifest, it would
seem, in the generation of offerings, and applies not only to humans but also to the
Gods. The paradigmatic case is that of Osiris, for whom offerings ascend at Gebs
command, (BD spell 185A); in the Pyramid Texts, however, the king promises any God
who assists him in ascending to the sky that his ka [double or spirit, representing here
the power of sustenance] shall be vindicated before Geb, (utterance 539).
A peculiar stress is laid at times upon Gebs use of his voice, which is perhaps a symbol
for resurrection as the earth rendering up that which is within it: O King, the mouth
of the earth is split open for you, Geb speaks to you, (utterance 697), and by the same
token when a cataclysm is threatened, one of its conditions is that Geb will not speak
Page 39 of 223

(utterance 254; cf. CT spell 619, the earth will not open, Geb will not speak). The
speech of Geb is at once the resurrection, the production of food, and the judgment
which accords offerings. References are made occasionally to the plumes of Geb, as in
PT utterance 669, you shall fly up and alight on account of the plumes of your father
Geb, or CT spell 682, If he [Osiris N] be weary (or inert), he will come to rest on the
plumes of Geb. These plumes may be the winds, or plant life, or related to Gebs
manifestation in the goose, whose voice may also represent the voice of Geb mentioned
above.
Ha
Ha personifies the western desert, both in a literal, geographical sense, and as the land
of the setting sun and hence of spiritualization. Ha is depicted anthropomorphically,
wearing the hieroglyphic sign for desert or foreign lands on his head (three hills) and
carrying a knife or bow, at once reflecting the harshness of the land and the warlike
nature Egyptians attributed to its people and representing the defense of Egypt from
its enemies to the west. In utterance 610 of the Pyramid Texts, however, Ha is already
associated with the west in a more symbolic sense: O earth, hear this which the Gods
have said, which Horus said when he made a spirit of his father as Ha, as Min, and as
Sokar. Here Horus represents the ritual operator who spiritualizes the deceased into
the forms of the deities named. Ha is frequently invoked in contexts where the
cardinal points are being secured, or wherever the direction of the west needs to be
indicated; hence in CT spell 162, the West Wind is the brother of Ha. In CT 313, a spell
for being transformed into a falcon, Thoth affirms to the operator that Those who
shall come against you from the West shall be doomed to Ha, Lord of the West. CT
636, Ha in the west is invoked, along with Soped in the east and Dedwen in Zetyland (i.e. the south), in order to bring to the operator his/her ka or double in the
netherworld. The netherworld ferry-boat in CT spell 398 has for its bow-piece the
brow of Ha (possibly because it is paradigmatically headed west). On the other hand,
the fisher boat from which the deceased requires protection has for its adze, chisel
and saw what is on the mouth of Ha (CT spell 479). In CT spell 545 Hathor is invoked
to protect one from the constriction or deprivation of Ha. When Ha is hostile, it is
presumably as a personification of the desert as such. By contrast, the operator
affirms in CT spell 695, a spell for burial in the West as a blessed one, <and for>
quelling strife in order that he may go down to his possessions which belong to the
West [i.e., to the land of the dead], that I am the child of Ha in his desert My seat
is his desert, the western desert is my horizon, and I am among those who are in it, the
kings of Egypt. Here the geography of the west, as the site of desert nomads as well
as the rich royal tombs, converges with its spiritual function as the netherworld. In CT
spell 36, it is said of the deceased that He knows those two sentences which Ha spoke
to Him on whom is the rams head, in which the ram-headed God to whom Ha speaks is
not identified, although the same term which is not without some uncertainty
Page 40 of 223

translated by Faulkner as rams head here occurs again in spell 163, where it is said
that the West Wind is the offspring of him who is in the rams head, who came forth
from between the thighs of the West, who makes a butchery of the herds reserved
for offering.
Hapy (1)
(Hapi) Not to be confused with Hapy, the God of the Niles annual flood ( Hapy (2)
here), nor with the God more commonly known as Apis, but rather one of the four sons
of Horus. Hapys name has been interpreted as runnersee, in this respect, CT spell
521: I am Hapy, and I have come to you [the deceased]. My father Horus said to me:
Run after my father Osiris and open his mouth, i.e., restore his power to breathe.
Hapy is depicted as a baboon-headed mummy on the jar containing the lungs of the
deceased, and in the assignment of the sons of Horus to the cardinal points Hapy is at
the north. Together with Horus and Imsety, Hapy is said in CT spell 157/BD spell 112 to
be among the Souls [Bau] of Pe, a district of the town of Buto in Lower Egypt.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Hapy (2)
(Hapi) Not to be confused with the son of Horus with the same name (see Hapy (1)
here), Hapy is the God of the Nile, or, more strictly, of the Niles annual flood or
inundation, which was responsible for Egypts agricultural productivity. Hapy is depicted
anthropomorphically, with blue skin or other color symbolic of the Nile, with drooping
male breasts and sometimes a pot belly, wearing a skimpy loincloth, generally with a
clump of papyrus reeds on his head and often carrying bundles of papyrus and lotus or
trays piled with offerings, representing the bounty of the Nile. Sometimes
representations of Hapy bear the facial features of the reigning monarch, identifying
the monarch as the source of the lands prosperity, not merely through the
performance of his ritual duties, but also through his just governance. Sometimes Hapy
appears doubled, wearing the heraldic papyrus of Lower Egypt and sedge of Upper
Egypt and tying these two plants together around the hieroglyph for union to
symbolize the role of the Nile in uniting Egypts north and south. The Niles inundation
was attributed to a quantity of water being released, at divine behest, from twin
subterranean caverns in the vicinity of Elephantine (although these caverns, like the
exact moment at which the inundation shall commence, are paradigmatic in Egyptian
thought for that which is secret); hence, in the Great Hymn to the Aten, the Hapy of
Egypt, who emerges from the underworld, is contrasted with the Hapy from heaven
for foreign peoples, that is, the rain upon which Egypts neighbors depended for their
Page 41 of 223

agricultural production (Lichtheim vol. 2, p. 99). Reference is also made to Hapy of the
Sky as maker of rain in a spell for water in the Book of the Dead (60). Hapys
emergence from these subterranean caverns is the source of Hapys affirmation, in CT
spell 318, that he fashioned the netherworld himself. In these caverns Hapy slumbers
during the off-season, rejuvenating himself: It is the house of sleep of Hapy, he grows
young in it in his time, (Lichtheim vol. 3, p. 97). Hapys flooding of the fields, which are
personified as the Goddess Sekhet, is envisioned sexually: Bounding up he [Hapy]
copulates, as man copulates with woman, renewing his manhood with joy, (the Famine
Stela, in Lichtheim vol. 3, p. 97). The extent of the inundation, whether adequate,
insufficient, or excessive, symbolized in Egyptian thought the very concept of the limit
or boundary and of the limits placed upon human life by such inscrutable phenomena as
the variability in the inundation; hence in the Instruction of Ankhsheshonq, it is said
that When Hapy comes he sets limits for everyone, (Lichtheim vol. 3, p. 173) and by
the same token One sets no limits for him, (Hymn to Hapy, in Lichtheim vol. 1, p.
207). Every year, it is said that Khnum fashions Hapy anew, that is, the body of the
inundation is a different one each time, both regular and variable, comparable and
incommensurable because it is only the present inundation which truly matters to the
people and other animals who depend upon it. Inevitably, the quantity of the inundation
was taken as an index of the virtue present in the population and in the government:
When free men are given land, they work for you like a single team; no rebel will arise
among them, and Hapy will not fail to come, (The Instruction Addressed to King
Merikare, in Lichtheim vol. 1, p. 103). Since all the produce which goes to the Gods as
offerings depends upon Hapy, it can be said that he gives sacrifice for every God,
(Hymn to Hapy, in Lichtheim vol. 1, p. 206) or even that he has made the Gods all
the Gods live according to <his> decree, (CT spell 321). Furthermore, since books are
written on papyrus all books of godly words exist through him (ibid., p. 207). In
spell 317 of the Coffin Texts, a transformation spell which allows one to become Hapy,
Hapy is said to be older than the primeval Gods of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad, and
perhaps in connection with this reference is made here to eight Hapys. In CT spell 320
Hapy affirms that he is in charge of births, because of his general function of
providing sustenance and/or because of an analogy between the Niles inundation and
the waters of birth.
Hathor
Hathors name means either House of Horus, implying an early and exclusive
association with Horus either as consort or son, or High/Heavenly House. Even if the
latter was originally the case, Hathors name comes to be written exclusively in the
form incorporating the name of Horus. Perhaps the most ubiquitous of Egyptian
Goddesses, Hathor is the preeminent solar Goddess in the Egyptian pantheon as well as
the Goddess of beauty, sexuality, pleasure, intoxication and ecstasy, music and dance,
as well as foreign lands and the luxury goods imported from them. She is also the chief
Page 42 of 223

executive of Re, his so-called Eyeirt, a pun on ir.t, doer or agent. The most active
element in the solar nature is always represented in Egypt as feminine, and Hathor
shares the title of Eye of Re with other Goddesses such as Sekhmet, Tefnut, and
Wadjet, to name just a few, but in the breadth of her functions Hathor perhaps
embodies it to the highest degree. Hathor is depicted as a woman wearing a headdress
with the solar disk, uraeus and cows horns, as well as a red headband; or in bovine
form, wearing a solar disk, uraeus and two plumes between her horns and often the
menit (or menat), Hathors characteristic necklace. The bovine Hathor is typically
shown emerging from a papyrus thicket, which evokes the role of the Hathor-cow as
wetnurse of Horus when he was hidden in the marshes. The eye of the bovine Hathor is
often rendered in the form of the wedjat, the composite human/hawk/cheetah eye
associated with Horus. A very distinctive mode of depicting Hathor, which seems to
have been transferred to Hathor from the Goddess Bat, occurs atop columns or
adorning sistra, showing her by face alone, frontal, with cows ears. In these depictions
Hathor does not wear a headband, but a thick wig or natural hair bound by fillets,
Hathors beautiful hair being one of her important attributes. Hathor is associated
with two objects in particular: the rattle or sistrum and the menit, a necklace of
turquoise beads with an elaborate counterpoise. One theory as to the function of the
sistrum (zeshshet) is that its noise resembles the rustling of papyrus in the marsh, one
of Hathors major festivals being that of rustling the papyrus ( zeshsh wadju)
(Bleeker, 88). Substances with which Hathor is particularly associated are goldthe
Golden is a common epithet of hersand turquoise, both perhaps evoking the sky.
Although especially associated with sexuality and with bringing lovers together, Hathor
is also strongly associated with maternity, and a group of seven Hathors is mentioned
as prophesying at the individuals birth (e.g., in the folktales of The Doomed Prince and
The Two Brothers (trans. in Lichtheim vol. 2). Hathor is herself the mother of Ihy as
well as Harsomtus, Horus the Uniter of the [Two] Lands, a cosmogonic form of Horus.
Hathor can be regarded as either mother or consort of Horus, as well as mother,
consort or daughter of Re, and can be posited in similar relationships to any number of
other Gods of the pantheon, none of these relationships being exclusive, evenindeed,
especiallythose instances in which she is mother, consort and daughter at once of the
same God, for Hathor embodies in a certain sense the very activity or presence of the
Gods with whom she is most intimately involved. A spell in the Coffin Texts for
Becoming Hathor (CT spell 331) affirms, I am Hathor who brings her Horus and who
proclaims her Horus I am she who displays his beauty and assembles his powers
Truly I am she who made his name. That this role governing manifestation extends, in
some sense, to the rest of the Gods is implied when the Goddess affirms, in the same
spell, there is no limit to my vision, there are none who can encircle my arms I am
the uraeus who lives on truth, who lifts up the faces of all the Gods, and all the Gods
are beneath my feet. Such statements are typical of Egyptian hymns, which generally
seek to express that unique sense in which the deity in question is indeed supreme;
Page 43 of 223

what is important in each case is the nature of the supremacy, its specificity, not the
generality of the attribution of supremacy to each and every God or Goddess, which is
a virtual ritual requirement. In the case of Hathor, her supremacy derives particularly
from her association with beauty itself. Thus a hymn invokes Hathor as the beautiful,
the lovely one, who stands at the head of the house of the beautiful; the Gods turn
their heads away in order to see her better, (Bleeker, 26).
Hathors most important roles in myth are as the nubile daughter and victorious
enforcer of Re, on the one hand, and as the wet-nurse and consort of Horus, on the
other. Her roles as mother of Re and of Horus seem more metaphorical than mythic,
but they are commonplaces of Egyptian theology. Hathor is a sky Goddess, but is
distinguishable from Nut inasmuch as Nut is the sky (or, rather, the divinity immanent
in the sky) whereas Hathor resides in the sky. Although the bovine Hathor, on account
of Hathors association with the sky, is often identified with the celestial cow who is,
strictly speaking, Mehet-Weret, Hathors cow is more characteristically a wild cow of
the marshes. This is vividly conveyed by a reported epiphany of Hathor in which a
cowherd, tending his herd in the marsh, sees Hathor in the form of a naked woman with
disheveled hair and, frightened, urges his herd homeward out of the marsh (Bleeker,
39). Living sacred cows of Hathor were kept at several sites in Egypt, perhaps the most
important one being at Momemphis in the southwest Delta, who was known as She who
remembers Horus, alluding to the myth in which the Hathor-cow suckles the infant
Horus in the marsh. The pharaoh may be depicted being suckled by the Hathor-cow as a
symbol of the transmission of sovereignty, or encircled by the Hathor-cows menit
necklace as a symbol of divine charisma. The office of the pharaoh involves a tight bond
with Hathor, and part of the reason why so many other Goddesses may be identified
with Hathor to varying degrees is because of Hathors tendency to absorb the
functions of other deities insofar as they touch upon this office. Hathor is depicted
presiding over the pharaohs birth, suckling him either in her bovine or human form,
presiding over his rejuvenation at the heb-sed festival, and ensuring his resurrection
after death. In turn, as the symbols appropriate to the pharaoh are increasingly taken
up by commoners over the course of Egyptian history, Hathors role in relation to the
pharaoh is generalized.
In the Book of the Celestial Cow, when Re, who has grown elderly reigning as immanent
sovereign upon the earth, learns that humans are conspiring in rebellion, he sends
Hathor, as his enforcing Eye, to strike the humans and kill them in the desert lands,
a task which she reports back to Re as having been sweet for my heart, (Piankoff,
28). Hathor can be Goddess of pleasure and executrix of divine wrath at once because
she embodies the potency of solar divinity as such. The term used in this text for the
place where Hathor strikes the humans is significant, inasmuch as it can mean either a
high place in the desert or a necropolis, and Hathor was strongly associated with the
western desert as the land of the setting sun and the entrance to the netherworld, and
Page 44 of 223

is often identified with Amentet, the personification of Amenti, the western or

Hidden land, bearing the sign for the west on her head. One of the important festivals
of Hathor was the beautiful festival of the desert valley, in which banqueting, dancing
and other festivities at the necropolis sought to bring joy to all the dead there
interred. It was also common in later times for deceased women in personalized copies
of the afterlife literature to be referred to as Hathor N., the same way that
deceased men and women alike are referred to as Osiris N..
Another important mythic episode involving Hathor occurs in the Conflict of Horus and

Seth. When Res efficacy has been called into question by the phallic God Babi, who
taunts him with the phrase, Your shrine is empty, Re withdraws from the divine
tribunal over which he is presiding and which is to decide whether to award the
kingship to Horus or to Seth. Hathor, bearing here the epithet Lady of the southern
sycamore, (Lichtheim vol. 2, 216), lifts Res spirits and induces him to return and
convene the tribunal again by displaying her genitalia to him. By awakening the desire of
the demiurge, Hathor acts as the engine driving the cosmogonic process. Barguet 1953
remarks on the similarity in shape between the counterpoise of the menit-necklace and
certain wooden plaques found in certain tombs of the 11th dynasty which depict in
simplified fashion a woman displaying her genitalia, and which are perhaps the basis for
the elaborate forms taken by later menit counterpoises. Later in the Conflict, when
Horus has had his eyes gouged out by Seth, Hathor, again characterized as Mistress
of the southern sycamore, milks a gazelle and pours the milk into his eyes, healing
them. In this way the same function of cosmic regeneration is expressed in radically
different symbolic forms linked by the common epithet borne by the Goddess in the
two episodes.
The word menit, with the boat determinative rather than the necklace and
counterpoise, means a mooring-post, and the verbal form mni, to moor, has a range of
metaphorical uses. The association between Hathors necklace and symbolic mooringropes appears to be exploited in CT spell 753, which refers repeatedly to the bark of
Hathor, the operator wishing that he might lift up the mooring-ropes, for I have tied
the knot for Hathor, (Gosline 1994, 42-5).
Texts also allude to a myth in which Hathor suffers an attack of some kind upon her
hair. Hathors beautiful hair is indicated by her epithets Lady of the tress or She of
the tress, and scenes of hairdressing have sometimes been interpreted as alluding to
the cult of Hathor. In a fragmentary spell from the Ramesseum Papyrus (XI), the
operator declares My heart is for you as the heart of Horus is for his eye, Seth for
his testicles, Hathor for her tress, Thoth for his shoulder, thus placing the episode of
Hathor and her tress alongside other well-known episodes in which some distinctive
part of a deity suffers injury: Horus, as a hawk, is distinctive for his eyesight, while
Seths sexual appetite is essential to him. The myth involving an injury to Thoths
Page 45 of 223

shoulder is not well understood, but it may refer to the wing of the ibis. In
attempting to reconstruct the myth concerning Hathors tress, Georges Posener
compares it to a similar incident in the Egyptian novelette The Two Brothers, in which a
supernatural female, suggestive in certain respects of Hathor, is walking by the sea
when it surges up toward her out of desire for her. She runs away, and the sea
commands a pine tree by the shore to seize her, but it only manages to pull off a lock
of her hair, which is carried by the sea to the place where the pharaohs wash is being
done. The pharaoh, smelling the delightful fragrance coming from the lock of hair,
decides to seek out the woman it came from. This tale also strongly resembles a myth
involving Astarte. Another tale which may echo the lost myth involving Hathors hair is
found in the Westcar Papyrus (5, 7). The pharaoh Sneferu goes boating on a lake with
twenty beautiful women as his rowers. The leader of the rowers, while fingering her
braids, accidentally causes a turquoise ornament to drop from her hair into the water.
The magician Djadja-em-ankh parts the waters and retrieves the ornament, to the
pharaohs great satisfaction.
Hathor is also said to reunite Atum with his children Shu and Tefnut in CT spell 331,
and a text from Dendara (Chassinat IV, 233-234; discussed in Daumas 1951, 381f)
connects this with the presentation to Hathor of a necklace of nine lotus petals,
representing the Ennead, or idealized totality of the Gods. In the Bremner-Rhind
Papyrus (xxvii), this reunion, effected here by Atums personified Eye, results in the
creation of humanity from Atums joyful tears, a play on the words remi, tears, and
romi, humans. Sometimes Hathor is depicted with four faces, in which case she is
particularly identified as Temit (or Temet), the feminine counterpart of Atum or an
epithet meaning the universal one: How beautiful is your visage when you appear as
Hathor with these four faces that Re loves to see. Turn you your visage toward the
west, Temit is the Lady of Sas. Turn you your visage toward the east, Temit is the
Lady of Bubastis. Turn you your visage toward the north, Temit is Wadjet, Lady of Pe
and Dep, Lady of Life at Pe and Dep, Wadjet who makes life flourish. Turn you your
visage toward the south, Temit is Nekhbet, Lady of Nekheb, at the head of the
beautiful ones who are found among the followers of the bark of Re and in the bark of
Khepri when you open the northern sky, (Papyrus Chester Beatty VIII, in Derchain
1972, 4).
See also: The Book of the Celestial Cow: A Theological Interpretation, Eye of the
Heart: A Journal of Traditional Wisdom, No. 3, May 2009, pp. 73-99.
Barguet, Paul. 1953. LOrigine et la Signification du Contrepoids du Collier-Menat.
Bulletin de lInstitut Franais dArchologie Orientale 52: 103-111.
Bleeker, C. J. 1973. Hathor and Thoth. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Daumas, Franois. 1951. Sur Trois Reprsentations de Nout Dendara. Annales du

Service des Antiquits de lgypte 51: 373-400.

Page 46 of 223

Derchain, Philippe. 1972. Hathor Quadrifons. Istanbul: Nederlands Instituut voor het
Nabije Oosten.
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Gosline, Sheldon Lee. 1994. The Mnjt as an Instrument of Divine Assimilation.
Discussions in Egyptology 30: 37-46.
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Piankoff, Alexandre. 1955. The Shrines of Tut-Ankh-Amon. New York: Bollingen.
Posener, Georges. La legende de la tresse dHathor. In Egyptological Studies in Honor

of Richard A. Parker, pp. 111-117.

o

Here is the complete spell, in R. O. Faulkners translation ( Ancient

Egyptian Coffin Texts, Vol. I, p. 255f):
BECOMING HATHOR. I am Hathor who brings her Horus and who
proclaims her Horus; and my heart is the lion-god, my lips are the sytyw
[word unknown], there is no limit to my vision, there are none who can
encircle my arms, every god will take himself off before me. I have
appeared as Hathor, the Primeval, the Lady of All, who lives on truth; I
am the uraeus who lives on truth, who lifts up the faces of all the gods,
and all the gods are beneath my feet. I am She who displays his [ref. to
Horus] beauty and assembles his powers, I am that Eye of Horus, the
female messenger of the Sole Lord, the like of whom shall not be again
[lit. 'who shall not be repeated'; ref. to Osiris]. Truly I am She who made
his name. I have flourished, I came into being before the sky was
fashioned, and it gives me praise; before the earth was released and it
exalts me, while I seek your [ref. Horus] saliva and your spittle [ ish and
tef]; they are Shu and Tefnet [Tefnut]. I have searched and sought out,
and see, I have fetched (what I sought); come with my horns and display
my beauty; come with my face, and I will cause you to be exalted. I have
smitten all with my hands in this my name of Hathor; I have given my
tears. I reduce (them) to order in this my name of She who is over
reducing to order; I make warmth for them in this my name of
Shesmtet. Such am I; I am Edj [Wadjet], I am indeed the Mistress of
the Two Lands.
(Note the familiar pun on rmwt, tears, and rmT, people.)

Hatmehyt
(Hat-Mehit) Hatmehyt was the principal Goddess of the city of Djedet, a city in the
Delta known to the Greeks as Mendes, and lends her name also to the nome, or district,
Page 47 of 223

in which it was located (the sixteenth nome of Lower Egypt). Her name means
Foremost among fish, and she is depicted as a woman with a fish emblem over her head
or sometimes as a fish. The specific fish with which Hatmehyt is identified may be the
Nile carp, the tilapia, or even the dolphin (argued particularly by Meeks 1973), and
perhaps there is no need for these identifications to be exclusive. The significance of
the dolphin, which was known to venture occasionally some distance up the Nile, would
lie in its position as the premier hunter of fish. Hence the Greeks referred to the
dolphin as king of the fish and ruler of the sea (Meeks 215 and n. 10). An Egyptian
calendar refers to the 28th day of the fourth month of the season of Akhet as a day
on which not to eat the eaters-of-fish in Mendes. Pliny the Elder speaks of dolphins in
the Nile as killing crocodiles with their sharp dorsal fins ( Natural History 8, 91), and
Seneca (Quaest. Nat. 4, 2, 13) speaks of dolphins and crocodiles fighting in the Canopic
mouth of the Nile. Such reports may reflect Egyptian ideas about the dolphin.
Hatmehyt is sometimes depicted in the solar boat, where her role may have been to
dominate the fish dwelling in the celestial sea. A wide-ranging symbolic value is
attached to fish and fishermen in Egyptian thought, as can be seen by symbolic images
of fishing in tombs and references in the afterlife literature to fishermen and fishnets which threaten the deceased, implying an identification between fish and mortal
souls as such and a concern that one be fisher rather than fish. In this regard it is
worth noting that the word mehyt, fish, can also mean drowned, and is a term used of
Osiris when he is cast into the Nile. The Nile carp, for its part, is otherwise important
in Egyptian religion as the fish who consumed the detached phallus of Osiris, requiring
Isis to craft a magical substitute phallus for the reconstituted Osiris in order to
conceive Horus. There may be a reference to this myth in the Lamentations of Isis and

Nephthys, where Nephthys addresses Osiris, asking him to come to Djedet, O lusty
bull O lover of women, come to Hatmehyt, (Lichtheim vol. 3, 119). Hatmehyt here is
the district, not the Goddess, but the sexual terms in which the appeal is posed allude
to the myth, in which Hatmehyts role seems to be to receive the phallus of Osiris on a
physical plane while Isis receives it on a metaphysical one. Hatmehyts consort is
Banebdjedet.
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Meeks, Dimitri. 1973. Le Nom du Dauphin et le Poisson de Mends. Revue
dgyptologie 25: 209-216.
Hauhet
The Infinite/Eternal (fem.), a Goddess belonging to the Hermopolitan Ogdoad. Consort
of the God Heh, they represent together the concept of neheh. There are two
concepts of eternity in Egyptian thought, neheh and djet, which are clearly
complementary, but precisely how has been a subject of controversy. Djet has been
interpreted as the static eternity of that which stands outside of time, the perfect,
Page 48 of 223

permanent, or timeless but also, in some respect, lifeless or at any rate timelessly past;
hence in a commentary on spell 335 of the Coffin Texts, djet is interpreted as night,

neheh as day, insofar as night preceded the first sunrise with which cyclical time or
neheh commenced. Neheh appears to have meant the eternity of cosmic time, embodied
in the orderly revolutions of the heavenly bodies; thus Heh and Hauhet are sometimes
depicted in the twelfth hour of the night welcoming the reborn sun.
Hauron
(Horon) Hauron is a Canaanite God imported into Egypt under the character of a divine
herdsman; hence a spell to be cast over the field, (no. 83 in Borghouts) asserts to any
predators who would attack the herd that Hauron has waived your threats, invoking
him as the victorious herdsman who can turn the wild animals aside, directing them to
feed instead on the desert animals. Hauron is generally depicted anthropomorphically,
bearing arms, but sometimes as a falcon. A settlement of Canaanite or Syrian laborers
near the Great Sphinx at Giza identified the latter with Hauron, and a temple of
Hauron was constructed nearby, but Hauron belongs properly to the Canaanite
pantheon.
Hededyt
Hededyt is depicted as a woman with a scorpion on her head or, possibly, as a scorpion
with a womans head. Her name perhaps means the White, linking her to certain species
of scorpion which are whitish yellow in color. Many images of scorpion Goddess figures
which are not labelled, and which are generally identified as Serket, may actually be
images of Hededyt or of an even lesser known scorpion Goddess, Weht, whom JeanClaude Goyon argues was the Lower Egyptian counterpart to the Upper Egyptian
Hededyt. In some depictions, Hededyt can be distinguished from Serket in the position
of the scorpion on her head. In Hededyts case, the scorpion is positioned further down
on the forehead, and appears to be in motion, whereas the scorpion of Serket is atop
the head, and appears fixed. The scorpion of Serket is also generally rendered
symbolically harmless by being only partially drawn. This difference in iconography may
derive from an initial difference in function. The sphere of activity of Serket is
determined as early as the Pyramid Texts to be the defense of the deceased, whereas
Hededyt is first conceived as part of the cadre of deities who form the defense of Re.
Hence Hededyt is referred to as daughter of Re and uses her venom against the
enemies of Re. The position of the scorpion on her forehead may therefore parallel the
position of the uraeus cobra at the forehead of Re and other solar (or solarized)
deities. The Hededyt scorpion, as cosmic defender, would not need to be neutralized,
as would the Serket scorpion which is to be depicted in the tomb. When Hededyt
acquires a role in defense of Osiris and Horus, it is through Isis appropriating her
functions, and the form comes to be known almost exclusively as Isis-Hededyt in the
later period.
Page 49 of 223

CT spell 283 (cp. BD spell 86), for becoming a swallow or, according to a variant, for
not dying again, invokes Hededyt on behalf of the deceased by way of the deceased
identifying him/herself with Re. The spell mentions Hededyt as the daughter of Re and
as a flame for N. [the operator of the spell, identified with Re] when he goes up from
the horizon. Hededyt is determined, however, not as a scorpion but as a swallow or
some other kind of bird. This central conceit in the spell might be explained by the use
in Egyptian hieroglyphs of the image of a swallow as the determiner for the word wer,
great, as well as perhaps a pun involving the name of the swallow, mnt, and not to die,
tm mt. CT spell 531 also mentions Hededyt, in the course of charging a funerary mask
for the deceased emblazoned with diverse divine potencies and which is to grant vision
to the deceased. The mask, which seems to be a sort of emanation of the solar disk
itself, since it is said that it has been given the supports of the sky by Shu, that is,
carried aloft just like the sun, is stated to be that which Re gave to Osiris for the
secret thing which was done against him, in order to end the injury by Seth against him
you are in front of N. [the deceased], and he will see by means of you. The mask in
question is said to have a braid of hair which is that of Hededyt, apparently comparing
the braided lock of hair to the scorpions jointed tail as well as granting to the bearer
Hededyts striking power. Hededyt also features in BD spell 39, for driving off Rerek,
an epithet of Apophis or else an ally of Apophis similarly depicted as a snake; the body
of the text does not refer again to Rerek, but only to Apophis; it is possible, therefore,
that Rerek, a threat to the deceased, is combated by use of a spell adapted from a
liturgy concerning the defense of Re against Apophis, his cosmic foe. Hededyt is
mentioned as having placed bonds upon Apophis, who is then punished by Maet and
apparently eaten by Hededyt (Apophis being, however, indestructible): O Apophis,
enemy of Re, more pleasing is thy taste than this sweet taste in Hededyt.
Goyon, Jean-Claude. 1978. Hededyt: Isis-Scorpion et Isis au Scorpion. Bulletin de

lInstitut Franais dArchologie Orientale 78: 439-458.

Heh
Heh, whose name denotes an incalculable number, personifies unlimitedness, especially
in the sense of unlimited time as reckoned by heavenly cycles. Along with his consort
Hauhet, he is one of the Gods of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad, whose name Hehu,
Infinites (often translated Chaos-Gods), is the plural form of the same word. Because
unlimited time is regarded as a boon, however, Heh does not share in the ambivalence
which generally attaches to the Hehu as a group. Heh is depicted anthropomorphically,
usually kneeling atop a collar of beads which is the sign for gold, regarded as an
incorruptible metal, and grasping in each hand a notched palm-branch representing the
marking off of time, and sometimes with a palm branch on his head. The palm branches
may be augmented with the shen sign, a loop of rope signifying eternity in the sense of
a closed (encircled) totality, which is also familiar as that within which the names of
Page 50 of 223

kings are written, in which case it is commonly known as a cartouche, and ankhs, the
signs for life, may hang from his arms or hands.
In late period temple inscriptions, the symbol of Heh is shown being offered by kings
to Gods or Goddesses in a manner similar to the offering of Maet (J. F. Borghouts,
Heh, Darreichen des, in Helck and Otto). Typical recipients of the symbol are Shu, as
bearer of the heavens, or Hathor, as embodying the heavens. The symbol of Heh
received by the God is described as their own image; that is, the king, granted an
infinite reign, would offer to the Gods in return an image of themselves, upholding the
cosmic order just as they do. The Heh symbol thus becomes a medium for identification
between the king and the Gods. In earlier scenes of investiture, the king receives the
Heh symbol as an expression of the eternity which is manifest in a kings perfect
fulfillment of his role in relation to the state, the world and the Gods. Often the Heh
symbol is conceived metaphorically as air or the breath of life, and as a bouquet of
eternal fragrance, an apt symbol for the permanence which is obtained for even that
most fleeting of beings through its participation in perfection.
In CT spell 335, the affirmation I am that great Phoenix which is in Iunu [Heliopolis],
the supervisor of what exists, has appended to it an ancient commentary which says,
As for what exists, it is eternity [neheh] and everlastingness [djet]. As for eternity, it
is day; as for everlastingness, it is night. This implies that neheh and djet are not
synonyms, but are, taken together, inclusive of the whole of being. The manner in which
to differentiate them is subject to dispute. Jan Assmann (2002, 18-19) has interpreted
neheh as the cyclical time generated by the movement of the heavenly bodies, and
therefore an eternity of motion and of ceaseless coming-to-be and transformation,
whereas djet is the eternity of immutability and permanence, the eternity of that
which is perfect and for which time has, as it were, either stopped or never begun.
Heka
(Sometimes Hike, possibly in closer accord with the actual pronunciation) The Egyptian
word heka is generally translated as magic, and the God Heka is the anthropomorphic
divine personification of this power. Occasionally Heka may be depicted holding a snake
in each hand. Being a personification does not mean that Heka was without his own cult
in diverse places (e.g., at Esna as the child of Khnum and Menhyt), but his relationships
to other deities are conceptual rather than mythical.
Heka is one of the key concepts of Egyptian religious thought. Gods and humans alike
draw upon the power of heka, and it is a constitutive force in the cosmos. The word

heka contains as its principal component the word ka, which is frequently translated
either as spirit or as double, the latter because the ka of an individual is sometimes
depicted as their twin. Ka is the force of vitality or of will in the individual, comparable
to the Roman concept of the personal genius, of varying strength depending upon the
Page 51 of 223

individuals degree of accomplishment or self-realization, while heka is the

instrumentalization of that force. Although to go to ones ka means to die, ones ka is
what supports one all through life as well as beyond. Food-offerings for the dead were
directed to their kas, just as offerings to the Gods were directed to their kas. Since
the ka is the source of sustenance and vitality, heka is in some sense the primary
activity, the mobilization of vital energy as a movement of will prior to all other modes
of activity. Ones ka is both ones innate nature, and also the best that one can be, and
heka manifests the striving to actualize the potential of ones ka. The ka can also be
understood as ones luck or fortune, and heka as the effort to affect this element of
destiny or to deploy it as an effective force in the moment, in the now.
In PT utterance 539, the king, asserting his right to ascend to the sky, makes a series
of what appear to be threats directed to the Gods if they do not assist him, the
threats concerning for the most part the withholding of offerings. He states, however,
that It is not I who says this to you, you Gods, it is Heka who says this to you, you
Gods. This is not in the nature of a refusal of responsibility any more than the threats
are an attempt at coercion. Rather, the invocation of Heka identifies the lack of
offerings which the Gods will experience if the king is not helped to ascend as a
function of the very structure of the cosmos. If the king is not able to ascend to the
sky, then the cosmic project resulting in the cult of the Gods has in essence come to
naught and all that has been invested in the constitution of the human spirit shall be
lost rather than being recovered and returned to the Gods who are its origin. Heka is in
this sense synonymous with the cosmic order and the will of the Gods themselves. The
king threatens the Gods, therefore, with nothing more than their own failure to carry
out their own will, which is meant to be manifestly impossible.
Spell 261 of the Coffin Texts is for becoming Heka, and reveals much about how the
Egyptians conceived the exercise of heka. Here, Heka is identified with the primordial
speech of Atum when he was yet alone, at the very moment in which the differentiated
cosmos begins to emerge, and as the ongoing protection of that which Atum has
commanded. Heka is thus at once the means by which the cosmos comes forth as well as
the means of its maintenance and preservation. Heka says, I am If-he-wishes-hedoes, the father of the Gods, the effective will being essential to the nature of a God.
Indeed, Heka here identifies himself as the son of Her who bore Atum, thus placing
himself prior even to the eldest among the Gods, who was born without a mother. This
paradox, typical of Egyptian religious thought, expresses that heka is essential to the
nature of the Gods and is therefore in a sense prior to them, albeit not in a generative
sense, but simultaneous to their own, timeless existence. The relationship between

heka and ka is underscored in Hekas styling himself Greatest of the owners of kas,
the heir of Atum, and in the reference to the two functions of the mouth of Atum,
the august God who speaks and eats with his mouth. In spell 945 of the Coffin Texts,
a spell for the divinization of the members of the body, the eyes are identified with
Page 52 of 223

Heka, and correlatively, a spell against crocodiles (no. 124 in Borghouts) affirms that
their eyes are blinded by Heka. Heka can symbolize the powers of perception and
cognition combined, as can be seen from the tendency for Heka to appear sometimes in
place of Hu and Sia, the Gods representing the faculties of thought and perception
respectively, in the boat of Re as it travels through the night in the Amduat books. In
the Teaching for Merikare, it is said that heka was made by the divine for humans as
a weapon to oppose the blow of events.
Hemen
Hemen is depicted as a hawk-shaped idol of wood or stone, or as a mummified hawk.
Hemen is mentioned in PT utterance 231, a spell occurring in a series dedicated to
repelling dangerous serpents, where an unidentified creature is told, Your bone is a
harpoon and you are harpooned, followed by some material of doubtful interpretation,
and finishing off with the affirmation, That is Hemen. Although the context of the
spell would tend to imply that the unnamed creature is, similarly, a snake, in light of
other evidence it is assumed that Hemen wields a harpoon against a hippopotamus, a
harpoon apparently made itself of hippopotamus bone. A text from the tomb of
Ankhtifi at Moalla also associates Hemen with a hippopotamus. An inscription from this
tomb says that the door of the tomb has been brought from Elephantine like the
hippopotamus who was enraged against the lord of the South, the latter being
identified with Hemen in this context (Moalla, 232). This text, in turn, suggests
another in which a net or trap which captures Seth, who is himself sometimes
associated with the hippopotamus, is called the mysterious of form, which Hemen
provides, (BD spell 17). In PT utterance 483, the earth is being addressed: O earth,
hear this which Geb said when he spiritualized Osiris as a God; the watchers of Pe
install him, the watchers of Nekhen ennoble him as Sokar as Horus, Ha, and Hemen.
In CT spell 397, the cable of the netherworld ferry-boat is identified with the

nu['smooth']-serpent which is in the hand of Hemen, alluding to Hemens power over

serpents and suggesting an alternative interpretation for PT utterance 231. CT spell
415, which is extremely short, consists simply of the affirmation, I have gone up into
Pe, I have gone down in Dep, and Hemen is he who has done this work with me. In CT
spell 580, Not to walk head downwards, i.e., upside down, one of a genre of spells to
prevent the deceased consuming products of excretion and decay, reference is made to
a house of Hemen. In CT spell 659, Spell for landing, the deceased affirms that
s/he shall go aboard the bark which is to take him/her to the northern sky like Hemen
who knows no weariness. Spell 660 incorporates references to the same bark, as well
as to not traveling upside down or coming into contact with excrement, and refers to
the fire with which the deceased shall bake his/her bread in the netherworld as the
tears of Hemen. A tantalizing reference to Hemen occurs in a medical spell to ease
childbirth (Ramesseum Papyri IV, plate 18) which refers to Nephthys bearing a
daughter by Hemen: Hemen had intercourse with his mother Isis, he made pregnant
Page 53 of 223

his mother Nephthys with a daughter, but no daughter of Hemen or Nephthys, for
that matter is otherwise attested, and it seems rather that the spell identifies the
woman in labor as a child of Hemen and Nephthys; BD spell 17, an ancient commentary
upon which mentions Hemen, includes the affirmation by the operator, I conceived
through Isis; I begot through Nephthys.
Henet
A Goddess depicted with the head of a pelican; in translations, generally simply the
Pelican. In PT utterance 318 (first T-text), it is said that the Pelican [nt] is the
Kings mother and the King is her son. In CT spell 225 (BD spell 68), the deceased is
assured that the mouth of the Pelican is opened for you, the mouth of the Pelican is
thrown open for you, the Pelican has caused you to go out into the day to the place
where you wish to be, where Faulkner (Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts, vol. I, p. 178)
suggests the mouth of the Pelican to be a figurative way of referring to the doors of
the tomb; but variants read the Pelican opens your mouth, implying instead a divinity
active in the drama of resurrection.
The Pelicans mouth may be the source of a prophetic utterance or judgment, as we see
in PT utterance 254, where the king states, amidst threats for cataclysm if a place is
not made for him by the Lord of the horizon, that the nt-pelican will prophesy, the

pst-pelican will go up. But CT spell 484 states, with a clearly positive connotation,
the Pelican prophesies, the Shining One [ pst] goes forth, the dress of Hathor is
woven, a path is prepared for me that I may pass by. CT spell 622 repeats the formula
the pelican will prophesy, the shining one will go forth. In both PT utt. 254 and CT
spell 622, we find the threat that the earth will speak no more preceding the pelican
prophecy formula; is there an implicit substitution here of the Pelican for Geb? Or an
inversion of the normal state of affairs?
The enigmatic CT spell 243, for opening up the West and for acquiring ftt of the
West in the realm of the dead,ftt is an unknown abstract noun also occurring in
spell 259, Being introduced to them [viz., certain snakes] in the horizon: I open ftt
on the hands of that God who gives orders in accordance with what he knowshas the
formula I am the Pelican who saw your birth, I have come that I may inspect my nest.
Similarly, spell 263 has I am the Pelican who saw your birth, who saw your birth when
you were born. I have come here seeking my fledglings. Spell 264 perhaps clarifies the
you in the former: O Great One, loud of voice, this being a common epithet of Seth,
N is the Pelican who sees your headi.e., behind himHe [N] has come here that he
may seek his fledglings.

CT spell 622 indicates a reciprocity between the deceased and Henet established in
ritual action while alive, with the formula I have affixed my head to my neckan
image of resurrection, comparable to opening of the mouthand my neck is on my
Page 54 of 223

trunk in this my name of Affixer-of-head, by means of which I affixed the head of the
Pelican on the day of the head-festival of the Bull.
Leitz, Christian, ed. 2002. Lexikon der gyptischen Gtter und Gtterbezeichnungen ,
Vol. 5. Leuven: Peeters.
Heqet
(Heket) A Goddess depicted either as a frog-headed woman or as a frog, Heqet is
associated with the development of the fetus in the womb, with birth and with
resurrection. Some of these associations may have come from witnessing frogs
emerging from the mud after prolonged hibernation, an image evoking the idea of
spontaneous generation in a manner somewhat akin to the life cycle of the scarab
beetle as interpreted through the God Khepri.
In an ascension spell from the Pyramid Texts (utterance 539), the hinder-parts of
the king are identified with Heqet, perhaps because of the frogs talent for jumping. In
CT spell 175, the operator affirms that I am the Great One whom Heqet created, who
gathered together these bones of Osiris, identifying the formation of the body prior
to birth with the reconstitution of Osiris, which takes place in a marshy setting. In
spell 234, reference is made to the four basins of Khepri and Heqet, to which breads
are offered which symbolize the mooring-post, the bow-warp and the stern-warp.
These basins have been identified with sacred lakes in the area of Saqqara and Abusir,
across which the funerary procession would have crossed on the way to the cemetery.
In spell 258, a spell for not perishing forever, Heqet is pluralized: the Ennead [the
nine Gods of Heliopolis] conduct to him [the deceased] the Heqets who bore Re, they
serve for you your great kas [spirits] in the midst of the horizon. The eastern horizon,
where Re is born, is conceived as a marsh and as the vulva of Nut, hence as places to
which Heqet is appropriate both as frog and as divine midwife. Heqet is also referred
to in the plural as a group of frog-Goddesses who attend Hapy, the God of the Niles
inundation. She is paired with Khnum, for he shares both her association with the
formation of the body and with the Nile, and with Haroeris (the elder Horus), either
as consort or as mother. A spell for the divinization of the members of the body ( CT
945) identifies Heqet with the anus, for reasons which are obscure. In addition to
amulets for protection during childbirth, Heqet appears frequently on ivory magical
wands, indicating that she is a protector of health and home in general.
In the Westcar Papyrus, Heqet is one of the deities (the others being Isis, Nephthys,
Meskhenet and Khnum) who are sent by Re to hasten the delivery of the royal mother
Ruddedet. The Goddesses disguise themselves as dancing girls, Khum as their porter.
Arriving at Ruddedets bedside, they assist her in giving birth to triplets, who are to be
the first three kings of the fifth dynasty. Heqets specific role is to hasten the births,

Page 55 of 223

while Isis names the children, Meskhenet prophesies in regard to them, and Khnum
grants health to their bodies (Lichtheim vol. 1, p. 220).
The biographical inscription of Petosiris (4th-3rd c. BCE) refers to an incident in which
Petosiris, a high priest of Thoth, witnessed a festival of Heqet in which the statue of
the Goddess being taken on procession halted at a spot outside of town where a temple
of Heqet had formerly stood but had been washed away entirely by the Niles annual
flood. Interpreting the behavior of the statue as a desire on the part of the Goddess
that her temple be rebuilt, Petosiris recounts that he financed the reconstruction and
rededication of the temple, this time with a rampart around it to protect it from the
waters (Lichtheim vol. 3, pp. 47-8).
Heqet is depicted in reliefs from the temple of Hathor at Dendera participating in the
resurrection of Osiris, and from dynasty 18 or 19 on a frog ideogram is sometimes
added to the phrase wehem ankh, repeating life, i.e. born again or resurrected
(Gardiner p. 475). The association of the frog with resurrection persisted even among
the Christians of Egypt, a lamp having been found with the figure of a frog on it which
proclaims, in Greek, I am the resurrection, (Budge, vol. 2, p. 137).
Hermopolitan Ogdoad
A group of eight Godsfour Gods and four Goddesseswho feature in a cosmogony
originating from the city of Shmun (Khemennu), lit. Eight City, known to the Greeks as
Hermopolis. They represent a stage of the cosmos prior to the appearance of the land
and the light, and in addition to being referred to as the Eight, are also known as the
Hehu, or infinites, often translated Chaos-Gods. They are: Nun and Naunet, the
Abyss; Heh and Hauhet, Infinity/Formlessness; Kek and Kauket, Darkness; Amun and
Amaunet, Hiddenness. Occasionally Tenem and Tenemuit are substituted for Amun and
Amaunet, the latter being increasingly distinguished from the rest of the Ogdoad as
Amun rose to prominence as a God of national significance. Tenem, coming from a root
meaning to go astray or become lost, is sometimes translated Gloom, but is perhaps
better understood, in accord with the generally privative character of the members of
the Ogdoad, as the Nowhere (J. P. Allen, 20). Other substitutions in the membership
of the Hehu for Amun and Amaunet are Gereh and Gerhet, Night/Cessation, and Niau
and Niaut, Emptiness. The four Gods in the Ogdoad are represented with frogs heads,
the four Goddesses with snakes heads.
The original cosmogony involving the Ogdoad is unclear in its details, but as Siegfried
Morenz has remarked it appears to represent a system concerned with cosmic matter,
not with organic life, and he notes that the stress laid on the physical qualities of the
primeval substance in the Hermopolitan cosmogony testifies to the existence of a
scientific spirit, (175). Whether the qualities which the Hermopolitan cosmogony
attributes to the primeval substance are physical may be questioned; but clearly this
Page 56 of 223

cosmogony emphasized the nature of substance rather than other possible creative
principles. The principal stages in the cosmogony involving the Ogdoad are typical of all
Egyptian cosmogonies: the appearance of solidity amidst the watery abyss, in the form
of a primeval mound of earth, followed by the coming forth of light. In the purest form
of the Hermopolitan cosmogony, which may have existed at an early period or only
developed later with the progress of speculative thought, the Gods and Goddesses of
the Ogdoad are themselves the agents of cosmogenesis: They step upon the primeval
mound and create light, as fathers and mothers who made the light, indeed, as the
radiance of their hearts, (Sethe 96, 100); they are the fathers and mothers who
came into being in the beginning, who gave birth to the sun, who created Atum, (Sethe,
100). Appropriations of the Hermopolitan cosmogony, however, generally treat the
members of the Ogdoad as more akin to the material of cosmogenesis than its agents,
in accord with their manifest attributes of indefiniteness and inertness. A catalyst of
some kind is thus posited for whatever coagulation or reaction among the Ogdoad leads
to the next stage in the creation, culminating in the advent of light at a mythical place
known as the Isle of Flames, Iu-Neserser. Among the figures conceived as catalysts or
first movers in relation to the Ogdoad are the serpents Kematef (he who has
completed his time) and Irta (earth-maker), who are generally taken as forms of
Amun, as well as a number of major deities, especially Amun (transcending his own
membership in the Ogdoad), Ptah, Tatenen, Atum, and Re.
The role of the Ogdoad as transitional creators or proto-demiurges is often expressed
in the symbolism of a primordial egg or lotus which is their proximate creation, an
intermediate creation or matrix of transformation, a vessel in which the subsequent
stages of cosmogenesis can, as it were, incubate. The lotus or egg may be created by
the Ogdoad, or merely fertilized by them, or it may simply embody the moment at
which they come to be in a determinate place, this determinacy being in itself a stage
in the cosmogenesis. A version of the cosmogony from Karnak emphasizing Amun, for
instance, states that The land was yet in the depths of the waves. Amun gained a
foothold upon it and it dissipated all the torpor that possessed him, when he installed
himself upon its surface, (Sauneron and Yoyotte 1959, 71). The removal of Amuns
torpor or inertness is synonymous with his activation, and the unleashing of the
creative potencies which were, so to speak, adrift in the abyss. The difference
between the lotus and the egg as symbols of this primordial creative matrix seems to
be that the egg represents a substantial precondition for the existence of what comes
from it in a way which renders the egg an ambivalent symbol; hence in CT spell 76, Shu
affirms his own self-sufficiency by stating I was not built up in the womb, I was not
knit together in the egg. By contrast, the pharaoh is frequently depicted offering to
the Gods images of the lotus wrought of precious metals and gems, and many of the
surviving references to the Ogdoad occur specifically in the context of such scenes.
The Ogdoad do not necessarily represent in themselves a problematic predetermination
of divine autonomy due to their negative character; at any rate, it is a commonplace of
Page 57 of 223

Egyptian theology that deities recapitulate the conditions of their own emergence. The
lotus in some sense expresses this very capacity, as in one text depicting the offering
of the lotus, which is said to have sprung forth from the body of the Ogdoad and to
be the sum of the ancestors, (Sauneron and Yoyotte 1959, 59).
Since the cosmogony involving the Ogdoad originated in Hermopolis, a prominent role
was probably accorded to Thoth in early versions of the cosmogony. A text from Edfu
(I, 289) seems to preserve elements of such a version. It states that the Ogdoad, the
august ones who came into being before the Gods were engendered in the Nun, and
born in the flood. A second stage of the creation involves the emergence of the
radiant lotus and the activity of Shu, from whose thought Thoth is begotten in the
form of an ibis. It is said of Thoth that his work is to create life, and the notion of a
transition to a new level of cosmic organization perhaps underlies what follows, in which
it is said that the God completed his first creative plan, and did not let it be known. He
buried the Ancestors [the Ogdoad] after the completion of their span of life. He
ferried over with them to the western district of Djme, the netherworld of Kematef.
And Shu crosses over to them bearing offerings every day. Inasmuch as the members
of the Ogdoad preexist the first real event in the cosmos, namely the advent of light,
they could be regarded from a viewpoint within the constituted cosmos as being, in a
peculiar sense, deceased, and they did indeed possess a necropolis cult at Djme
(Medinet Habu) along with Kematef. The notion that the members of the Ogdoad were
in some sense deceased expresses their incorporation into the framework of the
evolved cosmos as passive or inert elements: thus another text from Edfu (II, 51)
states of the Ogdoad that [t]heir time on earth was completed [ kem, as in 'Kematef'],
and their Ba [soul or manifestation] flew heavenwards His majesty [Re] gave
command that their bodies should be interred in the place where they were. Shu,
however, crosses over to the Ogdoad, maintaining a link to the primordial stages of
the formation of the cosmos.

PT utterance 301 refers to two of the pairs, Nun and Naunet and Amun and Amaunet,
as protectors of the Gods, who protect the Gods with their shadow, i.e. rendering the
Gods ineffable through their formlessness. In CT spells 76 and 78-80 the Ogdoad is
said to have been created by Shu. This could be justified, among other ways, with
recourse to the sense of Shus name, Void. In these spells the Gods of the Ogdoad
seem to have been produced from the state of formlessness in which Atum, Shu and
Tefnut existed at the beginning of the cosmos by giving names, and thus order, to the
attributes of this state. The first stage in cosmogenesis, therefore, according to this
version, is the acquisition of personality and intention by the primeval matter. The
Ogdoad is sometimes seen playing an active role in cosmic maintenance, helping Shu to
support the heavens, visualized as a great cow each of whose legsthe pillars of
heaven or cardinal pointshas two of the Hehu supporting it. Sometimes, inasmuch as
they represent a phase of the cosmos prior to the existence of form, they embody
Page 58 of 223

hostile forces of dissolution. Thus in the Book of Gates, some would interpret as the
Ogdoad the children of weakness who are the allies of Apophis, in accord with an
unambiguous reference to the Hermopolitans under this name in a commentary on CT
spell 335/BD spell 17 (J. P. Allen, 70 n. 118). In CT spells 493 and 494, spells to permit
a persons soul to go out from or come into the netherworld as they wish, reference is
made to trappers who take away souls and constrain shades, who [i.e., the trapped
souls] are put in the slaughterhouse of the Hehu. In CT 494, it is said that Sia, the
God personifying perception, goes up into the shrine, for he has heard the sound of my
soul saving itself from the trappers, indicating that the achievement of perception is
conterminous with avoiding the slaughterhouse of the infinites, that is, the abyss of
formlessness. In CT spell 107, Recitation for going out into the day, the Hehu and Nun
(God of the precosmic abyss) are together asked to make for the operator a way to go
forth and see men, and that the plebs may worship me. The Hehu and Nun are invoked
here specifically as powers of formlessness, as can be seen from the spells opening
formula, which identifies the operator with natural symbols of vigor but also turmoil:
The crocodile and the pig have slept, the pig has passed by. Do they perish? Then I
perish. The operators rhetorical questionthese forces will not perish, for one thing
because they disrupt other things and cause them to perishsignals his/her
appropriation of the durability of chaotic forces ordinarily thought of as hostile, an
example of the tactical inversions typical of Egyptian magical practice. Sometimes the
Ogdoad are conceived as having presided over the cosmos during a Golden Age in which
order (Maet) came from the heavens and was united with those who were on the
earth and there was no evil, scarcity, or suffering (Sauneron and Yoyotte 1959, 54).
This could, however, express an anticosmic sentiment sometimes found in Egyptian
thought, as for instance in BD spell 175, in which Atum complains to Thoth of the
turmoil and carnage committed by the children of Nutthat is, Gods such as
Osiris, Isis and Seth who are associated with the most complex aspects of the cosmos,
a complexity which, because it entails a mixture of good and evil, can appear from a
certain perspective simply as evil.
A spell (no. 53 in Borghouts) to treat two unidentified maladies (for one of which
epilepsy has been suggested as an identification, see Borghouts p. 104, n. 127) calls
upon the members of the Ogdoad as you eight Gods there who came forth from Nun
and who have no clothes, who have no hairas for their true name, it is a fact that it is
not known, followed by certain untranslatable hieroglyphs perhaps expressing the
inscrutable name. The Ogdoads lack of clothes and hair here symbolize their
formlessness. Another spell (no. 126 in Borghouts) called a water song invokes the
Ogdoad to repel hazards (e.g., crocodiles) from a boat. A clay egg is fashioned, to be
thrown upon the water from the boats prow if anything surfaces, the egg having been
charged as the egg-shells of the Ogdoad Gods. The mechanism in the spell is thus a
correspondence between the watery abyss of Nun and the earthly waters; since that
which emerged from the mysterious waters of Nun was beneficent, the egg ensures
Page 59 of 223

that what emerges from the river will be harmless. Another spell against lions on the
desert-plateau, crocodiles in the river and all snakes that bite in their holes (no. 125 in
Borghouts) is to be recited over an image of Amun with four faces on one neck, drawn
on the ground, a crocodile below its feet and the Ogdoad at his right and his left side,
adoring him.
Allen, James P. 1988. Genesis in Egypt: The Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation

Accounts. New Haven, CT: Yale Egyptological Seminar.

Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Morenz, Siegfried. 1973. Egyptian Religion. Tr. by Ann E. Keep. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Sauneron, Serge and Jean Yoyotte. 1959. La Naissance du Monde selon lgypte
Ancienne. Pp. 17-91 in La Naissance du Monde. Paris: ditions du Seuil.
Sethe, Kurt. 1929. Amun und die acht Urgtter von Hermopolis. Berlin: W. de Gruyter.
Hesat
(Hesis) Hesat is depicted as a cow, intended as a wild cow if her name means, as has
been suggested, the wild one. Her name is also closely related to an Egyptian word for
milk. In utterance 485A of the Pyramid Texts, the king addresses Re, saying I have
come to you, O Re, a calf of gold born of the sky, a fatted calf of gold which Hesat
created. In spell 175 of the Coffin Texts the deceased says I am the white bull whom
Hesat suckled, (similarly in spell 343, 344). Hesat features particularly in connection
with the Field of Offerings in the netherworld. In a spell from the Coffin Texts for
becoming Hetep, Lord of the Field of Offerings [ hetep] (467), the deceased says, I
close my eye, yet I shine on the day of Hesat; I have slept by night, I have restored
the milk to its proper level [i.e. replenished it], and I am in my town. In a similar spell
(468, similar to BD spell 110) Hesat is called Lady of the Winds. In spell 826, Hesat is
the provider, not only of milk, but of beer in the other world (unless the phrase beer
of Hesat in this spell is simply a metaphor for milk). A son of Hesat is mentioned in
utterance 696 of the Pyramid Texts, which is unfortunately fragmentary and does not
allow us to identify who this son might be. In spell 605 of the Coffin Texts, a spell to
create a bed in the other world, the operator says, I am a son of Hesat. In general, to
be a son of Hesat is to be well provided for, the cow being the preeminent embodiment
of maternal solicitude in Egyptian symbolism. The sons of Hesat in a somewhat more
literal sense were the sacred Mnevis bulls, and Hesat was sometimes regarded as the
mother of the Apis bulls as well. A living sacred cow of Hesat and Isis is attested, and
the bond between these two paradigmatically maternal Goddesses is strengthened by
the tendency to occasionally write Hesats name in a manner so as to incorporate the
Page 60 of 223

hieroglyph for Isis. Anubis was sometimes regarded as the son of Hesat. One reason
for this may be on account of the connection between Hesat and the imy-wt or nebris.
The nebris, an animal hide possibly bovine totem, is associated with Anubis and may
also have been the symbolic antecedent for the white crown of Upper Egypt, which
may have been fashioned out of leather. The nebris is said, unsurprisingly, to be born
of Hesat in utterance 688 of the Pyramid Texts, where this leather is a component of
the ladder upon which the deceased king is to climb to the sky. A myth about the
origins of the nebris, however, from the Jumilhac Papyrus, although enigmatic, is more
informative. Here the origin of the nebris is traced back to the regeneration
performed by Hesat upon Nemty, who has been skinned alive. Hesat restores his flesh
with an unguent made of her milk, an act which is described as a rebirth, it having been
explained earlier in the text that flesh and skin come from the mothers milk, while
bones come from the fathers semen. Hesat thus becomes a new mother to Nemty.
While the text is enigmatic about the exact relationship of this story to the nebris,
one can infer that the nebris is a symbol of regeneration, perhaps originating in
ceremonies on behalf of slaughtered cattle, and is under the care of Anubis because he
uses it to reconstitute Osiris. The domesticated dogs employment in herding cattle
may also have played a role in the association between Anubis and Hesat, Anubis being
sometimes called the good oxherd.
Horit
The name Horit is simply the feminine form of the name Horus, but it appears that, at
least in certain contexts, it designates a deity irreducible to a mere abstract
complement.
The term is occasionally attested as an epithet of other deities, in particular Hathor,
as well as of certain queens, particularly in the Ptolemaic era (Meeks, Mythes et
Lgendes du Delta, pp. 49-50). A hieratic mythological papyrus, however, makes
reference to a unique mythic cycle pertaining to Horit, and the deity featured in this
cycle must be strictly distinguished from casual occurrences of the female Horus title.
This Horit is the daughter of Osiris and mother, by him, of five sons, whom the text
(Meeks, Mythes et Lgendes, 24) names as (1) Humehen; (2) the Son of the Two
Lords, analogous to Thoth; (3) Horus of Medenu (Philadelpheia in the Fayum); (4) Horus
of the Upper Royal Child Nome (Im-Khent or Prince of the South, the 18 th nome or
province of Lower Egypt); and (5), somewhat paradoxically, Horus-son-of-Isis.
Of Humehen, the first child conceived by Osiris upon Horit, the text tells us little
except that Horit was a virgin (her first time, 24 [X, 2]), she lamented the event,
and that Houmehen was born in unusual fashion. The text is enigmatic, but simply
refers to Horit expelling her egg [X, 3] and states, cryptically, that this was as it
came about previously for Tefnut. The egg is perhaps expelled into the water, for it
immediately departs for the Western Wadj-Wer (Lake Mareotis?).
Page 61 of 223

Horit gives birth to her second child by Osiris in the Upper Royal Child nome. This child
is abducted by a lioness, who eats him. Horit searches for him throughout this district,
finding his remains at Bubastis, being protected by a serpent called Great-of-Strength
(this name being given to the leader of the demon collective often attached to Bast and
known as the Seven Arrows (Rondot, BIFAO 89, p. 270 n. 45)). Thoth and Nephthys
catch and flay the lioness, wrapping the remains of the child in her skin, which the text
identifies at once with a womb and with a sacred chest associated with Bubastis,
whence he is reborn as Horus-Hekenu, referred to elsewhere in this text as the Divine
Body of Horus (23 [IX, 8]).
Horit couples with Osiris again and gives birth to Horus of Medenu (Harmotes or
Harmotnis; note that Horus of Medenu is said in an inscription from Edfu ( Edfou IV,
192, 4) to be the son of Bitjet, i.e. Tabithet). Osiris succumbs to the attack upon him
by Seth and Horit hides with Harmotes in the marshes, raising him to become the
avenger of his father. Harmotes succeeds in capturing and binding Seth, but Harmotes
mother frees Seth. Harmotes then decapitates her, after which the text states that
Dedwen made Horus fly off into the sky and inflicted the same thing [decapitation]
upon him.
With regard to the fourth and fifth offspring of Horit the text is somewhat confusing.
On the one hand, Horus-Hekenu has already been identified as the child of Horit born
in the Upper Royal Child nome. On the other hand, the text recounting the story of
Horits children interpolates into the account of Harmotnis an account of the
posthumous conception by Isis of Horus at Mendes (24, XI, 1-3). Since this Horus is
explicitly identified in the text not as the son of Horit, but of Isis, this Horus ought to
be the fifth son of Horit, identified in the prologue as the son of Isis, evidently in a
different respect.
The remaining son of Horit is according to the text (25) the product of an assault by
Seth upon Horit in the Lower Royal Child nome, that is, Im-Pehu, the 19 th nome of
Lower Egypt. This child is identified earlier as the Son of the Two Lords because he
is Thoth as the child of Horus and Seth, who are the typical referents of the phrase
the Two Lords. The text identifies this child as none other than Thoth who emerges
from the forehead (XI, 4). This refers to the episode, best known from the Conflict
of Horus and Seth (11-13), in which Seth attempts to implicate Horus in a passive
homosexual encounter, but ends up ingesting the semen himself and giving birth from
his forehead either to the lunar disk Thoth bears on his head, or apparently in some
versions to Thoth himself. Thoth is thus on such an account the son of Horus and Seth,
Seths seed having passed into Horus hand (in the version from the Conflict text)
before being ingested by Seth himself. (Note that Horus hand plays a similar role in
this respect to that of Atum, personified as Iusas.) The text concerning Horit states
that she became pregnant from his [Seths] seed which has also become for him Thoth
Page 62 of 223

who emerges from the forehead, (Meeks, Mythes et Lgendes, 25 [XI, 4]). In this
version, however, Horit gives birth prematurely (without having completed her time
[XI, 4]), ejecting her egg (same terminology as above [X, 3]) into the water, where it is
found by the black ibis, the less common variety of Thoths sacred bird. This child, the
text states, has the form of a foetal monkey, a reference presumably to Thoths
baboon form, but possibly also to certain perceived characteristics of a human foetus,
the text stating that he [Horits child] has not been born like the other Gods.
A further episode related of Horit concerns her imprisonment, possibly by Geb, at
Sebennytos (capital of the 12th nome of Lower Egypt). Meeks regards this episode as
pertaining, not to Horit as such, but to Tefnut, in reference to a rarely-attested myth
concerning Gebs rape of her. Elsewhere, however, the present text has stated that
the beloved of Ptah who is in Memphis is Horit the great one of Osiris. This is
Sekhmet of Sebennytos whom one calls the daughter of Re. Her son suffered after he
acted against his father, (31 [XII, 11-XIII, 1]). The father mentioned here is
doubtless not Ptah, and so the text must refer, strictly speaking, not to Sekhmet but
to Horit. If it is Horit as Tefnut, then we may say, with Meeks, that it is a question of
Tefnuts son Geb suffering for a wrong committed against Shu. On the other hand, if
the son is one of the sons of Horit, then the father is Osiris, and elsewhere the same
text recounts that Horus, in using a net to trap certain bau, that is, souls, that have
appeared in the form of birds in a sandy place near Letopolis, accidentally catches the

ba of his father Osiris as well and injures him (19). In any case, the text states that
Horit was imprisoned in Sebennytos and that her son Onuris kept his distance from
that which his father detests and what Seth had done to his mother, (32 [XIII, 45]). The introduction of Onuris as her son fails to resolve the ambiguity, inasmuch as
Onuris is often identified on the one hand with Shu, which brings him into proximity
with Tefnut, but not as her son; and on the other hand with Haroeris and thus with a
form of Horus potentially identifiable as one of the troubled sons of Horit, who
furthermore has already been recounted to suffer an attack from Seth. The text goes
on to speak of a ritual celebration at Behbeit of the liberation from captivity of this
Goddess, who has come of age while she was imprisoned: They say, May she be free!
when she is liberated The women strip and splash themselves with fresh water,
making purification, purifying this Goddess, chasing away all evil, (33 [XIII, 7-9]).
Whatever complicated web of theological transpositions in which Horit may be
participating in a text such as this, the remark here about a coming of age seems
appropriate as an end to the series of mythic tribulations this text has attributed to
Horits symbolic adolescence.
Though not identifying her as Horit, a spell in the Pyramid Texts (utterances 482 &
670) refers to either Osiris or Horus having an eldest daughter in dm (an unknown
locality): He [Horus] smites him who smote you [Osiris], he binds him who bound you,
he sets him under your [var. 'his'] eldest [or 'great'] daughter who is in dm.
Page 63 of 223

(Alternately, it has been suggested that the unknown deity is an originally feminine
form of Imsety.)
Meeks, Dimitri. 2006. Mythes et Lgendes du Delta: daprs le papyrus Brooklyn
47.218.84. Cairo: Institut franais darchologie orientale.
Horus
(Sometimes Heru, or in compounds Hor-, Har-, Her-) Among the most ubiquitous of
Egyptian Gods, Horus embodies kingship, victory, righteousness, and civilization. Horus
is depicted either as a hawk-headed man or as a hawk, probably a peregrine falcon,
except when he is depicted as a child (Harpocrates) in which case he is depicted
anthropomorphically. From the earliest period, the king of Egypt was identified to some
degree with Horus, and each pharaoh bore a Horus name to which was later added a
Golden Horus name. The Eye of Horus, known as the Sound Eye or wedjat, from the
word w-dj- (cf. Wadjet), meaning healthy, flourishing, or prosperous, or, as a verb, to
proceed or attain, ranks as one of the most important and recognizable symbols in
Egyptian religion. The typical consort of Horus is the Goddess Hathor, whose name
means House of Horus. (In magical contexts, however, Tabithet and/or similar
Goddesses may be his consort.)
The two primary aspects of Horus from which the rest can be derivednot as an
historical matter, but for conceptual purposesare Haroeris and Harsiese. The former
is the Hellenized phonetic rendering of the name Hor-Wer, Horus the Elder or Horus
the Great, the latter the phonetic rendering of Hor-sa-Ise, Horus son of Isis.
Haroeris is conceived as the sky, with the sun and the moon as his right and left eyes
respectively, but we may regard forms of Horus which strongly emphasize his solar
aspect (often expressed by fusion with Re, on which see below) as pertaining generally
to this side of his character. This aspect of Horus is relatively autonomous in relation
to the Osirian mythos and may represent the form of Horus worshiped in the earliest
period before he was fully incorporated into the Osirian narrative, if indeed there ever
was such a time. The purpose of drawing such a distinction is not to make this claim, but
simply to facilitate the analysis of the many aspects in which Horus is manifest.
Harsiese, by contrast, is the son of Isis and Osiris, who, with his mothers help,
vindicates his father (hence he is called Harendotes, from the Egyptian Hor-nedjatef[-f], Horus-savior-of-[his]-father) and is awarded the cosmic sovereignty after a
lengthy conflict with his uncle Seth. This conflict, in which Horus receives constant
assistance from Isis, is fought on many levelsmagical, juridical, cosmic, medicaland
is, aside from the conflict between Re and Apophis, the principal symbol of conflict as
such in Egyptian religious thought. When Egypts pharaoh strives against enemies
foreign or domestic, it is as Horus against Seth; when a person suffers from an illness
or from the poison of a snake or scorpion, the spells which are applied identify the
sufferer with Horus and the forces against which s/he strives with Seth. Animal
Page 64 of 223

products offered up to the Gods, because of the violence involved in their production,
are linked to the recovery of the Eye of Horus stolen by Seth in the form of a wild
animal (paradigmatically an oryx). When Horus and Seth fight, Horus receives an injury
to his eye, Seth to his testicles (see, e.g., BD spell 99, O Ferryman, bring me this
which was brought to Horus for his eye, which was brought to Seth for his testicles.)
The Eye of Horus or wedjat is one of the most multivalent symbols in Egyptian thought
even being used to represent Egypt itselfbut its many functions have at their
center the notion of the wedjat as representing the beneficial power contained within
offerings to the Gods of every kind. Whatever is the substance offered, once it has
been made a divine offering it becomes the Eye of Horus. The wedjat is also a symbol
for any helpful substance or object, and is a general term for any amulet, itself of
course a very common amulet, expressing the double nature of Horus both as healer
and as one who has been healed, for the Eye of Horus refers virtually always to the
eye which was wounded and healed, not to the other one (see, e.g., PT utterance 301,
Behold, the King brings to you [Horus] your great left Eye in a healed condition; accept
it from the King intact; but see Harsomptus, below). Thoth is frequently credited
with accomplishing this regeneration, which forms the basis of a ritual bond between
these Gods. Often the Eye of Horus is identified with the moon, its waning expressing
the damage done to Horus by Seth, its regeneration expressed in the moons waxing
cycle. Egyptians also denoted the most common fractions of the grain measure by using
the several portions of the stylized wedjat, the form of which seems to incorporate
aspects of the eyes of a human, a hawk, and a leopard or cheetah.
A form of Horus which may be regarded as belonging to the side of Harsiese is
Harpocrates, the Greek phonetic rendering of the name Hor-pa-khered, Horus as a
child. Harpocrates is depicted as a naked boy with a long braided lock of hair draped
over one ear, suckling at the breast of his mother Isis or seated on a lotus blossom
representing the emergence of the cosmos from the primeval waters, with his finger in
his mouth implying, not silence, as was sometimes thought by foreigners, but probably
having only just been weaned from the breast. Harpocrates often wears crowns typical
of the monarch and holds symbols of sovereignty such as the crook and flail.
Harpocrates features prominently on magical stelae called cippi. These plaques show
Harpocrates, often surmounted by a head of the God Bes, grasping snakes, scorpions,
and other dangerous wild animals in his hands and standing atop crocodiles, and signify
the Gods dominance over these symbols of mortal danger (spell no. 123 in Borghouts
serves to empower such a stela). Such stelae were erected in public places such as the
forecourts of temples and appear to have been used typically by pouring water over
them which was collected at the bottom and drunk. The infant Horus, hidden by Isis in
the papyrus thickets of the Delta for fear of his uncle Seth, is the object of diverse
attacks on his life, and hence spells used to ward off or to treat snakebites or scorpion
stings, as well as diverse illnesses, or to secure one against other sorts of hazard, are
Page 65 of 223

frequently linked to this episode in the myth, often by taking the form of an appeal to
Isis on behalf of Horus, with whom the patient is identified (e.g. spells no. 90-94, 96 in
Borghouts). The identification between the individual and Horus in these spells can be
seen as paralleling, in some respects, the identification between Horus and the pharaoh.
Harpocrates is not the only form of Horus as a child, however; as Harsomtus
(Harsomptus), Horus the uniter or Panebtawy (Lord of the Two Lands), he is the child
of Haroeris and Hathor. Harsomtus embodies the cosmogonic aspect of Horus, and is
frequently depicted either as a mummiform hawk on a pedestal, or as a serpent rising
from the primordial lotus blossom, in this serpent form being also known as Sata (Sato),
son of the earth. Harsomtus is associated with the right eye, i.e., the sun, and hence
with its cycles of night and day, latency and activation, introversion and creation (on
Harsomtus in general see El-Kordy 1982).
The effectiveness of Horus in spells does not come only from identification with him.
Horus is a potent magical operator in his own right; in spell 96 in Borghouts, a
conjuration of a scorpion, Horus is urged to sit down, Horus, and recite for yourself!
Your own words are useful for you, and another spell (103) praises at length the power
of the words of Horus: they ward off death, extend life, heal disease, alter ones
destiny, protect from attack and soothe emotional turmoil. In spell 139, the magical
operator claims to have slept in the embrace of Horus during the night and to have
heard all he said. Horus, who grasps a viper one cubit long in one hand and treads on
another snake of twelve cubits, says that he was taught to speak when Osiris was still
alivethat is, before he was even conceived. After this, the operator affirms that it
is Horus who has taught me to speak! Accordingly Horus himself is sometimes called
the physician (e.g. spell 99).
An important form of Horus which may be regarded as belonging to the side of
Haroeris is Horakhty (Harakhty), i.e. Hor-akheti, Horus of the horizons, often fused
with Re to produce the combined form Re-Horakhty. The name, in its reference to the
eastern and western horizons, expresses the suns successful journey both by day,
through the world of the living, and by night, through the netherworld. Horakhty is not
to be confused with Harmachis, from Hor-m-akhet, Horus in the horizon, i.e. the
western horizon alone. The Great Sphinx at Giza is an image of Harmachis. This form of
Horus was also frequently fused with Re to form the compound deity Re-Harmachis.
These forms, common iconographically, have little myth associated with them. Another
form of Horus which belongs to the Haroeris side of his character, but which has more
of a role in myth, is Horus Behdety, Horus of Behdet (or Behudet), the city more
commonly known as Edfu. Horus Behdety is depicted as a winged solar disk, a familiar
symbol on many Egyptian temples and which was, after the Persian occupation of Egypt,
incorporated into the iconography of Persian religion as well. This winged diskwhich
was sometimes identified with the Morning and Evening Star (Fairman pp. 35-36 [12,4
Page 66 of 223

12, 6])represents the assistance Horus offers to Re in combating his enemies during
the Egyptian seasons of akhet and the first half of peret, roughly from our late
summer to the winter solstice (Fairman pp. 32 [9, 8], 33 [10, 2], 34 [10, 14]). Horus
Behdety is analogous, in this respect, to Goddesses known as the Eye of Re (e.g.,
Sekhmet, Tefnut) who similarly assist Re in his time of need. A long text inscribed on
the walls of the great temple of Horus at Edfu, illustrated with numerous reliefs,
recounts the battles waged by Horus Behdety against the enemies of Re, who take the
forms of crocodiles and hippopotami. Horus Behdety is assisted by numerous followers,
called mesenu, or harpooners, armed with iron spears and chains. When Seth makes
common cause with the enemies of Re, Horus Behdety and Horus son of Isis join forces,
the text thus emphasizing at once their distinctness as well as their parallelism. This
text, in addition to its seasonal significance, includes formulae for the king to identify
himself with Horus Behdety on the day on which trouble and strife occur, the king
reciting four times, I am the Gods avenger who came forth from Behdet, and Horus of
Behdet is my name, (Fairman 36 [12, 8 - 12, 11]). The conflict of Horus-son-of-Isis
with Seth was the subject of a lengthy narrative cycle with many episodes, the most
significant surviving treatment being from the Chester Beatty papyrus (trans. in
Lichtheim vol. 2, 214-223). In this text Re (notwithstanding that he is almost always
referred to in the text as Re-Horakhty) does not initially side with Horus in his claim
to the throne, due to the assistance Seth provides him in his battle with Apophis. The
text portrays the conflict between Horus and Seth as turning upon the question of
whether the source of sovereignty should be legitimacy or force, the Gods deciding in
favor of the former when they award the sovereignty to Horus.
Although Egyptian texts usually make little effort to distinguish Haroeris from
Harsiese, the Coffin Texts do feature, among the genre of spells for transforming into,
or invoking, particular deities, separate spells for Becoming the Elder Horus ( CT spell
280) and for Becoming Horus (i.e., the son of Isis) ( CT spell 326). In the latter, the
operator states that There is tumult in the sky, and we see something new, say the
primeval Gods, referring to the advent of Horus. Having assumed the solar power as
Lord of the sunlight, Harsiese/the operator states I have taken possession of the
sky, I have divided the firmament, I will show the paths of Khepri [the God of
formation or change], and the dwellers in the netherworld will follow me. The ideas of
a new element entering into the cosmic order, of the transfer of sovereignty, and of
conflict at once generated and resolved, point to Horus son of Isis. An alternative
version of CT spell 326 elaborates: N. [the operator, identified with Horus] has made
the Enneads,the other Gods, organized into an indefinite number of pantheons each
ideally of nine membersto vomit,i.e., to yield up something additional of their
substance to the cosmosN. has subdued the elder Gods, N. has come that he may
stop the tumult N. seats himself. By contrast, CT spell 280, cast in the second,
rather than the first person, addresses the deceased as the elder Horus who took sail
at nightfall he who mourns in the mansion of Osiris your eye is Re, for he has
Page 67 of 223

assumed the solar potency, your head is Iunmutef, pillar-of-his-mother, for he has
redeemed the faith of Isis in him, you have judged between the rivals, namely the two
who would destroy the sky, that is, Harsiese and Seth (this ordinarily being the role of
Thoth). Note the echo, in this statement, of the other spells reference to tumult in
the sky caused by the advent of Harsiese. The spell ends, You have given judgment in
this sky for Re, light and dark are at your will you are the Elder Horus, one who has
become the Elder Horus, in which the perfected nature of the judgment and of the
transformation, and the successful exercise of both light and dark, allude to a
distinction between the younger and the elder Horus somewhere between one of person
and one of phase or aspect.
Horus is the culmination of any process in which he takes part, and hence is not usually
connected in a strong way with offspring; Ihy, for instance, is more the son of Hathor
than of Horus, and is himself often identified with Harsomtus. Another exception
which to some degree proves the rule are the four Gods known as the sons of Horus,
who, although sometimes regarded as children of Haroeris and Isis, are also treated as
semi-autonomous potencies of Horus himself, or as independent powers appropriated,
so to speak, by Horus son of Isis in the settlement of claims between he and Seth.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Fairman, H. W. 1935. The Myth of Horus at Edfu I. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
21.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Gardiner, Alan. 1957. Egyptian Grammar. 3d ed. Oxford: Griffith Institute, Ashmolean
Museum.
el-Kordy, Zeinab. 1982. Deux tudes sur Harsomtous. Bulletin de lInstitut Franais
dArchologie Orientale 82: 171-186.
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Horus, Sons of
The four sons of HorusDuamutef, Hapy, Imsety and Kebehsenufare best known for
their appearance on the jars in which the internal organs of the deceased were
preserved. Each of these Gods protects a specific organ, is linked to one of the
cardinal points, and is posited in relation to a tutelary Goddess. Canonically, the
relationships are as follows: Duamutef, jackal-headed, the stomach, the east, and
Neith; Hapy, baboon-headed, the lungs, the north, and Nephthys; Imsety, humanheaded, the liver, the south, and Isis; Kebehsenuf, hawk-headed, the intestines, the
west, and Serket. In CT spells 157 and 158 (BD spells 112 and 113), the cities of Pe in
Page 68 of 223

Lower Egypt and Nekhen in Upper Egypt are linked, respectively, to Imsety and Hapy
and to Duamutef and Kebehsenuf; these Gods are, respectively, together with Horus,
among the Souls [bau] of Pe and the Souls of Nekhen in these spells, although in PT
utterance 580 the Souls of Pe and of Nekhen are clearly distinct from the children of
Horus, inasmuch as they receive different portions of the sacrificial ox. In BD spell 17,
the four sons of Horus are identified with stars in the northern sky somewhere in the
vicinity of Ursa Major. In CT spell 157 these four Gods are specified to be the sons of
Isis and Haroeris, the elder Horus, while in PT utterance 688 they are said to be the
children of Horus of Khem, or Letopolis, who is usually identified with Khenty-irty.
The canonical disposition of the sons of Horus in relation to the organs is the final
stage in a process of development in the earlier stages of which neither the animalheaded forms of the sons of Horus, nor their correspondence to discrete organs,
directions and Goddesses, was fixed. Prior to the New Kingdom, the children of Horus
assisted the deceased in ways less rigidly determined. PT utterance 33 says that
Horus has caused the children of Horus to muster for you [the king] at the place
where you drowned, drowning being a general symbol for death in the manner of Osiris.
Elsewhere the children of Horus are said to carry or raise up the deceased: Horus has
given you his children that they may go beneath you and none of them will turn back
when they carry you (utterance 368); in utterance 688, the children of Horus prepare
a ladder upon which the king is to climb to the sky. It is said that Horus has attached
himself to his children, and the deceased is urged to join yourself with those of his
[Horus'] body, for they have loved you (utterance 370). In PT utterance 506, the
deceased identifies himself with each of the four children of Horus successively. The
children of Horus share with Shu and Tefnut the function for the deceased of
preventing hunger and thirst in PT utterance 338 (the four Gods reap on behalf of
the deceased, who speaks of them as his/her surviving children in CT spell 751). They
could also be identified with different parts of the body or spatial dispositions than
they later were. Hence in PT utterance 215, the kings hands are identified with Hapy
and Duamutef and his feet with Imsety and Kebehsenuf, while in utterance 359 the
children of Horus, along with Horus himself, are at the right side of the deceased,
while Nephthys, Seth and Khenty-irty are at his left side. In PT utterance 505, when
the deceased is being ferried to the Field of Reeds, the children of Horus are with
him, two on one side, two on the other, with no further specification of their
distribution. In another ferryman text (PT utterance 522), the children of Horus are
asked to bring me [the deceased king] this boat which Khnum built, which serves to
indicate that the netherworld ferry-boat is a vehicle corresponding to ones own body,
since Khnum is famously depicted moulding the infants form on his potters wheel. In
CT spell 397, the children of Horus are said to steer the ferry-boat, while in spell 466
they are said to row the boat of Hetep, Lord of the Field of Offerings.

Page 69 of 223

The relation of Horus himself to his children is highlighted in PT utterance 690, which
says that Horus has come to the deceased king provided with his [Horus'] souls,
namely Hapy, Duamutef, Imsety, and Kebehsenuf. The children of Horus thus seem
thus more like emanations of Horus himself. In PT utterance 670, the king is said to
have been raised up by the four Gods, who are characterized as the kings childrens
children, apparently on account of the king being identified with Osiris and the four
Gods as children of his child Horus. Interestingly, utterance 670 also refers to Hapy,
Imsety, Duamutef and Kebehsenuf as those whose names you [the deceased king] have
made, indicating some process of appropriation. CT spells 157 and 158 can be
interpreted as stating that the four were originally independent from Horus. Referring
to the cities of Pe (Buto) in Lower Egypt and Nekhen (Hierakonpolis) in Upper Egypt
linked, respectively, to Imsety and Hapy and to Duamutef and Kebehsenuf, in spell 157,
Horus the son of Isis asks of Re, Give me two in Pe and two in Nekhen from this
company, referring to the four Gods who are to be known as the sons of Horus. In CT
spell 158 (BD spell 113), Horus says I have placed Duamutef and Kebehsenuf with me
so that I may watch over them, for they are a contentious company, and implies that
their presence in Nekhen, which has been granted to Horus, is of the nature of an
imprisonment. This may indicate that when Horus is given charge of these four Gods
their allegiance is being transferred to him from Seth, these spells having the overall
form of settlements granted to Horus in his dispute with Seth over the cosmic
sovereignty. Indeed, it is indicated in spell 158 that Seth will complain over the fact
that Duamutef and Kebehsenuf are with Horus (and, presumably, the deceased or the
operator of the spell). In BD spell 18, the deceased is vindicated before the great
council that is in Pe and Dep, the two parts of the city of Buto in Lower Egypt. This
council is explained as consisting of Horus, Isis, Imsety and Hapy, while the great
council that is in Washermans Shores in the same spell consists of Isis, Horus, and
Imsety. It is unclear why Imsety is singled out in the latter. The setting of the latter
council, as befits its watery name, is this night when Isis lay awake, mourning for her
brother Osiristo which one should compare the early spells from the Pyramid Texts
linking the children of Horus to the scene of the drowning of Osiris. The setting for
the great council in Pe and Dep is this night of erecting the sanctuary of Horus when
was confirmed to him his inheritance, namely the possessions of his father Osiris, a
sanctuary which the commentary explains Seth directed his followers to erect. This
would seem to allude once again to the children of Horus having been acquired by him
as a result of his dispute with Seth.

CT spells 520-523 take the form of four speeches, each by one of the children of
Horus. Although these spells already accompany the canopic jars, the identification of
the four Gods with particular internal organs is not stressed, except possibly in the
case of Hapy, who is asked by Horus to split open the mouth of his father Osiris, that
is, to perform the ritual of Opening the Mouth, a ritual more typically associated with
Anubis, which permits the deceased to breathethis being appropriate for Hapy, who
Page 70 of 223

secures the jar holding the lungs. In general, the four Gods are addressed in these
spells through word play with their names: Imsety as he who smoothes/pleases; Hapy
as runner; Duamutef as he who honors his mother; Kebehsenuf as he who
refreshes. The four Gods can also still be identified with different parts of the body
than those corresponding to the jars: hence in a spell for assembling a spirits
members, we read that your arms are the two sons of Horus, Hapy and Imsety, your
fingers and your finger-nails are the Children of Horus your feet are Duamutef and
Kebehsenuf.

BD spell 168B, which represents part of an originally independent work called The
Gods of the Caverns in the Mysterious Netherworld, (Allen 1974 p. 162 n. 271),
involves the performance of certain ritual actions by the four children of Horus, who
are represented by their images, placed around the deceased. Kebehsenuf (whose
image is to be placed on the right) presents himself first as the son, and then as the
father, of the deceased. The relationship between Osiris N., that is, the particular
individual for whom the spell is being activated, and Osiris himself, is emphasized here:
He whose magic is hidden, Osiris, may he open the mouth of Osiris N., before
Kebehsenuf says to Osiris N. I am your son; then Kebehsenuf says, I am thy father,
O Osiris N., because of what thou hast done for Osiris. The spell making constant
reference to offerings made on earth, that is, by living operators or by the deceased
when alive, it seems that the spell intends here to speak of the relationship of the
living to the deceased ancestors. Duamutef (whose image is placed on the left)
identifies himself throughout as the son of Horus. The speech of Hapy (whose image is
placed again on the right) is fragmentary. Imsety (whose image is placed on the left
again) says I have grown blessed and mighty in thy womb, O mother of Osiris N.,
seeming to gesture toward a reconstitution of the body of the deceased through the
womb from which it was born in the first place.
An elaborate ritual in the Book of the Dead (BD spell 137A) is to be said over four
flames held by four men with the names of the children of Horus written on their
upper arms, the flames then being extinguished each in its own bowl of milk (note that
in PT utterance 580, milk is apparently the offering made to the children of Horus).
The spell exhorts the children of Horus to protect the deceased as Osiris against Seth
and to rescue him/her from decay. Smite Seth for him [Osiris], it urges them, and
save N. from him [Seth] from dawn on, even though Horus is able to save his father
Osiris himself. Him who did this against your father, dispossess ye him. Interestingly,
the spell urges its user to Be very careful not to use it for anyone except thy own self
even thy father or thy soninasmuch as it is a great secret of the west [i.e., the land
of the setting sun and of death], a mystery of the netherworld.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Page 71 of 223

Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Hu
Hu is the anthropomorphic divine personification of hu, a complex concept which
involves both authority and utterance, that is, both the authority to speak and the
exercise of that authority. In some texts it is only possible by context to distinguish
this sense of hu from the similarly written hu, meaning food, which is sometimes
personified as well. In at least one text, the two senses of hu converge completely. In a
text from the temple of Horus at Edfu detailing a ritual for offering meat to a living
sacred hawk kept at the temple, but which A. M. Blackman speculates to have been
adapted from a ritual originally performed by the king prior to a sacred meal, the
dinner table, as well as the hawk or king, is identified with the God Atum, while Shu,
who provisions the table, is identified with Hu: May he [Shu] dedicate to thee [Atum]
all that he hath enchanted, for he hath become Hu, (Blackman, p. 59; 153, 10). Hu, God
of food, and Hu, God of authoritative utterance, are here virtually fused, since the
product of Shus enchantment or authoritative utterance is in fact food for the
sacred table. It is possible that one has here two aspects of the same divine potency,
that is, the power of taste, which is also the power of judgment, akin to the
metaphorical sense given to the term taste in English. Hu frequently appears together
with Sia, perception or understanding, helping to guide the boat of Re. In this pairing it
seems as if the Egyptians regarded Sia as superior, insofar as Sia is specified (e.g., in
PT utterance 250) as being at the right hand of Re, perhaps indicating that to
perceive and to understand must come prior to utterance or action.
The personification of hu permits Egyptian theologians to speculate upon the sources
of authority or authority of utterance. In PT utterance 401, the king states that he
has seen the Great Serpent and received the Great Serpent, as a result of which he
is able to say that Hu has bowed his head to me, and I cross his canal with my serpent
behind me. The Great Serpent here is perhaps to be identified with Wadjet. In CT
spell 759, however, the operator says I know the dark paths by which Hu and Sia come
in with the four dark snakes which are made bright for those who follow them and
those who precede them, hinting at the dark and obscure origins of hu and sia. In PT
utterance 627, in a particularly complicated formulation, it is said that authority [ hu]
is given to the king from [or 'as'] Him whose face suffers greatly in the presence of
Him who is in the Abyss. Since Atum is typically Him who is in the Abyss it seems as if
authority derives either from being able to bear the discomfort of meeting Atum
face-to-face, or accrues to the king instead of one whose suffering in the encounter
with Atum made him unsuitable as a bearer of authority. A mythical account of the
origins of Hu and Sia is given in a commentary on BD spell 17. Here, an appeal is made to
Page 72 of 223

the Ancestors: Give me your hands. It is I, who came into being through you. The
ancient commentary states that this refers in some fashion to the drops of blood which
came from Res phallus when he set about cutting himself, which became the Gods
that are in the presence of Re. They are Hu and Sia. More interesting, perhaps, than
the myth itself (for, being such intimate faculties of Res as the powers of perception
and of authoritative utterance, Sia and Hu might be expected to have their origin from
within Res own body) is that it stands as a commentary on a rather straightforward
statement about the dependence upon the ancestors: it is the connection with the
ancestors, it would seem, which constitutes these powers of understanding and of
authoritative speech for the individual.
A similar note is perhaps struck by the several references to Hu in BD spell 78, which
is entitled Spell for Assuming the Form of a Divine Falcon, i.e. Horus, embodiment of
sovereignty over the idealized spiritual territory of Egypt. First Geb is appealed to for
authority (hu), which is followed by the wish that the Gods of the netherworld be
afraid of me when they see that thy [Geb's] catches of fowl and fish are for me,
alluding perhaps to lordship over other, subordinate souls, which are at times
represented by fish and fowl caught in nets, but also playing upon the two senses of hu.
Later in the same spell, the operator, having taken for myself the Gray-haired ones
(compare the reference in spell 17 to the Ancestors), proceeds to Them That Preside
over Their Pits at the house of Osiris, to inform them that he [Horus] has taken
over Authority [hu] and that Atums symbols of Might have been provided for him.
Finally, at the end of the spell, Atum passes on to the operator what Hu has told him,
consisting of a series of praises of Horus. Here Hu gives weight to Atums speech as a
perfect expression of the truth and a confirmation of the sovereignty of Horus from
Atum the Mighty, sole one of the Gods who changes not. The praise of Horus which
Atum delivers in the voice, as it were, of Hu, comes as the culmination of the efforts of
the operator.

CT spell 325 is for becoming Hu. A variant manuscript titles the spell becoming
Heka, which indicates the tight bond between authoritative utterance and magically
effective utterance or heka (cf. spell 1130: Hu is in company with Heka, felling yonder
Ill-disposed One for me). Unfortunately, the contents of the spell are rather obscure,
but it seems to associate Hu with the pacification of the fiery Eye of Re, a role
typically accorded to Shu or Thoth. The close relationship between Thoth and Hu is to
be expected; accordingly, Thoth is asked at CT spell 617 to commend me to Hu. That
hu plays a role in supplementing sia is indicated by CT spell 469, in which it is said that
the weary (or inert) Sia sends for the two Hu-Gods possibly the two senses of hu
mentioned above, since it is said that they shall permit one to eat magic who
accordingly shall have power over Sia the weary, who is not equipped with what he
needs. It is perhaps this partial independence of hu from sia which is indicated by a
statement like that in CT spell 1136 that Hu who speaks in darkness belongs to me.
Page 73 of 223

Also related to this may be the characterization of Hu in PT utterance 245 as having

for companion the Lone Star that is, a star visible when no others can be seen,
hence either Venus (Hesperus) or Jupiter ( Journal of Near Eastern Studies 25, 160f).
Something of the nature of hu can be discerned from BD spell 84, where the operator
says What Hu tells me, that have I said. I have not told lies yesterday and truth
today. It is not simply that hu is inconsistent with lying; rather, hu seems to be a
consistent ground for what one says. This accords well with the image presented in
Egyptian didactic literature of the sage as a person of few words, but those wellchosen.
Blackman, A. M. The King of Egypts Grace Before Meat. Journal of Egyptian

Archaeology 31, 1945, pp. 57-73.

Igai
Igai is a God associated with the oases of Egypts western desert, bearing the title
Lord of the Oasis, and often occurs together with Ha, the God of the western desert.
Igai is depicted as a man with two was (uas) scepters over his head, the sign of his
name. In PT utterance 377, a snake who lives on the hearts of those Gods who are in
n [Heliopolis] is neutralized by the play on words, may you be overturned ( gaa) in
your name of Igai, perhaps referring to the oasis sunken in the desert. CT spells 755
and 756 cite Igai, together with Ha, in a similarly punning formula: Do not become
hemmed in/choke (gwa) in this your name of Igai; do not become decayed (hwa) in this
your name of Ha; the formula may refer to Igai as the oasis hemmed in by the
desert.
Fischer, H. G. 1957. A God and a General of the Oasis on a Stele of the Late Middle
Kingdom. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 16: 223-235.
Ihy
The son of Hathor and Horus, Ihy is depicted as a naked boy wearing the childs
braided side-lock, with his finger to his mouth, or as a calf, in accord with Hathors
depiction as a cow. Ihy is characteristically depicted playing the sistrum, and his name
is sometimes interpreted as sistrum-player, although it seems more likely that it is a
diminutive of the word ih, bull. Musicians are seen in reliefs impersonating Ihy in
celebrations of Hathor, identifiable by the menit necklaces they wear and the sistra or
clappers which they hold. These are perhaps among the class of priests of Hathor who
bear the name of Ihy. Horus son of Osiris is said in CT spell 51 to impersonate Ihy in
jubilation.
Tomb reliefs of the Old Kingdom depict allegorical scenes of herdsmen fording a
stream with their cattle. A herdsman carries a calf, identified with Ihy, across the
Page 74 of 223

stream on his shoulders, enticing the other cattle to follow. Here Ihy seems to
represent the call to resurrection, to cross over to a new life. Ihy seems not, however,
to feature explicitly in the afterlife book of the Old Kingdom, the Pyramid Texts. From
the time of the Coffin Texts, however, he seems to grow in prominence. In CT spell 36,
Ihy is said to bear the living waters in his hands. In spell 146, Ihy is said to be the
protector of the deceased. In spell 271, a spell for becoming an unidentified type of
bird, the operator says I am he who saw the Unclothed One, the son of Hathor,
meaning Ihy, while in spell 326, for becoming Horus, the operator is said to have seized
Ihy and thus to have gained control over Sia, perception. Spell 334 is for becoming
Ihy; the spell identifies Ihy as the son of Hathor but also of Nephthys (a reference
earlier in the spell to the womb of my mother Isis and another similar one later
perhaps refers rather to the operator of the spell, who subsequently affirms that I
desire my name to be on their lips [the living] as Ihy, son of Hathor). Ihy is said here
to be brotherly to men and Gods and to hear, i.e. to be responsive to prayers. Ihys
power of hearing is mentioned more literally in the so-called Negative Confession of BD
spell 125, where one affirms to Ihy who came forth from the Nun,that is, from the
precosmic oceanic abyssthat one has not been loud voiced (i.e., violent). Ihy is
referred to as a child in the speech of those who govern, that is, to be important
even though a child, is characterized again as a protector, to protect the patricians
from the Gods and vice versa. Such statements indicate that Ihy is seen as an
intermediary between humans and the other Gods. To this might be related CT spell
457, for entering to the Gods to whom a man desires to enter, in which it is said that
the fly is ushered into n (Heliopolis) for Ihy, indicating that Ihy has the power, like
a fly, to penetrate the tightly sealed sanctuaries of the other Gods, gaining admittance
for the operator.
Ihy describes his birth in graphic terms in spell 334: I am indeed the Great Seed, I
have passed between her [Hathor's] thighs in this my name of Jackal of the Sunshine.
I have broken out of the egg, I have floated on its white, I have glided on its yolk, I am
the Lord of blood. The special emphasis laid upon Ihys birth underscores his ability to
help one invoking him to break out from the womblike darkness; thus in spell 563, the
operator says I will see a path with the vision of my eye like Ihy, the son of Hathor,
her beloved. In spell 334 Ihy identifies his place of birth as Punt (Somalia), perhaps in
connection with this land as a source of perfumes, for he goes on to identify himself
with the incense with which Hathor is censed, as well as the oils with which she rubs on
her skin, the menit necklace with which she is adorned, the sistrum with which she is
serenaded, her clothes and so forth. Ihy thus expresses the totality of Hathors
pleasure and everything which pleases her. Spell 484 is for giving a dress to Hathor and
then for donning it, in the process of which the operator affirms that Ihy is in my
body, and at the end of the spell the operator is envisioned as Ihy sitting in Hathors
lap, the ultimate worshiper of Hathor, as it were. In BD spell 47, for not letting Ns
seat and throne be taken away from him in the Gods domain, the operator addresses
Page 75 of 223

the seat, saying that it is my Father who made you for me while I was in the retinue of
Hathor, for I was the priest there, Ihy as musician of Wennofer [Osiris]. CT spell
588, a very brief spell for being in the presence of Hathor, consists almost entirely
of the appeal, O Ihy, Ihy, I will be in the suite of Hathor. From all this it is clear that
one of the principal, if not the principal role of Ihy is to provide access to Hathor.
In CT spell 368, the deceased is identified with Ihy in order to avoid eating excrement.
Such spells use eating excrement to symbolize partaking of impurity and decay in
general. Ihy is appropriate to this context because he is the paradigm of youth, and
hence of rejuvenation. Similarly, in spell 495, the deceased is said to have fled with Ihy
from certain slayers and carvers strong of arms who would presumably have as their
goal the recycling, so to speak, of the souls constituents. In spell 698, Ihy is said to
turn back him who comes to close a mans mouth, that is, to prevent the resurrection.
In spell 1011, another spell against eating excrement, it is affirmed that the statue of
the shrine of Ihy is firm in front of Ihy, the arms are firm in front of Ihy, and Ihy
goes round about, referring perhaps to Ihys unimpaired ability to receive offerings
through the medium of his statue. In BD spell 149, Ihy, lord of hearts, is invoked
from the first of the mounds of the house of Osiris in the Field of Rushes and called
upon to reconstruct my bones and make fast the double crown of Atum, the double
crown being the symbol of universal sovereignty.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Imhotep
(Imouthes) Imhotep is the most prominent example of an Egyptian saint, that is, an
historical figure who achieves divine or semi-divine status posthumously. Imhotep was
the vizier and overseer of works for the third dynasty king Djoser, distinguishing
himself especially as the architect of Egypts first pyramid, the so-called Step Pyramid
at Saqqara. He was also a priest of Ptah, and hence his divinization consisted in being
regarded as the son of Ptah by a mortal woman, Khreduankh. Imhotep was also
worshiped as a full deity, however, his mother then being usually Sekhmet, but
occasionally Mut. Apparently a man of considerable intellectual achievement in his
lifetime, Imhotep came to be regarded as a patron of learning in general, but especially
medicine. Imhoteps temple at Memphis functioned as a hospital and school of medicine.
Imhotep appeared in dreams to those who solicited him, bestowing advice on virtually
any matter upon which he was consulted, but especially medical concerns, the dream
either resulting in an immediate cure, or by way of some treatment or ritual action the
God recommended. Hence Imhotep came to be known as the good physician of Gods
and men, kind and merciful God, assuaging the sufferings of those in pain, healing the
Page 76 of 223

diseases of men and giving peaceful sleep to the restless and suffering, (Hurry 1926,
54). Imhotep also advises on and guarantees the proper form for rituals. Imhotep is
depicted as a man, usually seated, in the garb of a priest or scribe, or sometimes nude,
wearing a skullcap or with shaved head, frequently unrolling a papyrus scroll from which
he reads. One votive statue of Imhotep bears the inscription, Every scribe pours out
to you a libation from his water bowl, (ibid., 103).
A cycle of festivals were celebrated in honor of Imhotep through the year, celebrating
his birth, his appearance before Ptah and Sekhmet, his death, and his resurrection in
the company of his father Ptah. A hymn to Imhotep is inscribed upon the temple of
Ptah at Karnak, alongside one to another saint, Amenhotep son of Hapu, who is often
worshiped together with Imhotep. In the hymn Imhotep is said to share in the
offerings which are presented to the Gods, who are referred to are your brothers,
the elder Gods, in addition to the offerings which made to him directly, and in turn to
feed the worthy spirits with your surpluses, that is, to distribute his surplus to the
worthy deceased persons. As a healer, Imhotep is said in the hymn to renew your
fathers [Ptah's] creation, and to exist in the closest alliance with Amenhotep son of
Hapu, who loves you, whom you love your bodies form a single one (Lichtheim vol. 3,
104-6).
Hurry, Jamieson B. 1926. Imhotep. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1980. Ancient Egyptian Literature. Vol. 3. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Imsety
(Amset) One of the four sons of Horus, Imsety, whose name means perhaps he who
smoothes/pleases, is depicted as a mummiform human on the jar which contains the
liver of the deceased. In the assignment of the sons of Horus to the cardinal points,
Imsety is at the south. Together with Horus and Hapy, Imsety is said in CT spell
157/BD spell 112 to be among the Souls [Bau] of Pe, a district of the town of Buto in
Lower Egypt. Sometimes Imsetys name is written in a manner (i.e., with terminal -t,
Imset) that would generally indicate feminine gender; it has been suggested that this
lies behind a possible reference in PT utterance 482 to Horus having an eldest [or
'great'] daughter who is in dm. (Alternately, the text would identify the unknown
female as the eldest/great daughter of Osiris.)
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Page 77 of 223

Ipy
(Ipet, Opet, Apet) Ipy is depicted in a fashion indistinguishable from Taweret
(Thoueris), that is, as a female hippopotamus standing upright, with leonine paws and
feet, the breasts and belly of a pregnant human female, and the back and tail of a
crocodile. She is invoked in PT utterance 269 as my mother Ipy and asked to give her
breast to suckle, with the result that as for yonder land in which I walk, I will neither
thirst nor hunger in it for ever. Ipys name perhaps means wet-nurse or midwife,
from which came the word for harem, which is also the root of the name of the city
Thebes, Ta-ipet, and Ipy may be to some degree the divine embodiment of Thebes
itself, which is the harem of Amun as his beloved and the receiver of his potency.
Local cult made the temple of Ipy at Thebes out to be the place where Osiris was
reconstituted. Ipy was frequently known as Ipy the Great, Ipet-Weret, from which
came her Greek name, Eporis or Ephuris. A spell for divination by lamp in the Leyden
Papyrus (col. VI, ll. 18-19) juxtaposes Nut, as mother of water to Ipy, as mother of
fire. Similarly, the vignette (illustration) for BD spell 137B, for kindling the flame
for the deceased, shows Ipy, lady of magical protection setting fire to a bowl of
incense. An ostracon (inscribed pottery fragment) invokes Ipy as a protector against
nightmares who massacres the demons responsible for them. Ipy also gives her name to
the next-to-last month of the Egyptian calendar, Epiphi.
Isis
A Goddess of enormous popularity within Egypt, Isis is also alone among the Gods of
Egypt in having achieved widespread international popularity in antiquity, her worship
extending to the furthest reaches of the Roman Empire and even beyond. The name
Isis comes from an Egyptian word meaning throne, and she is characteristically
depicted as a woman bearing the sign of a throne on her head. In later times, however,
it is very common for her to bear the solar disk with cows horns and uraeus cobra, a
crown classically belonging to Hathor, but which becomes as characteristic of Isis as
the crown which is peculiar to her. (Strictly speaking, Hathors crown associates Isis
with the wider defense of the cosmic order (Re), beyond her strict focus on the
defense of the mortal (Osiris).) Also typical of Isis, although not restricted to her, is
the vulture headdress which belongs strictly speaking to Nekhbet, but which is
appropriate to any Goddess strongly linked to Upper Egypt. Her own avian
identification, however, is with the black kite or kestrel, in which form she may be
depicted. She is also frequently depicted in human form but for a pair of outstretched
wings extending along the line of her arms. Isis is associated as well with the scorpion;
a group of seven of them, who are even individually named, escort her and Horus in a
spell to treat a scorpions sting (no. 90 in Borghouts). Among the most popular amulets
in Egypt was the tyet, which is associated with Isis. The amulet, sometimes known as
the Isis knot, has the form of a vaguely human-shaped knot and is colored red or
carved from a red stone to embody the power of her menstrual blood, as we read in BD
Page 78 of 223

spell 156, which charges the amulet with the words, Thou hast thy blood, Isis; thou
hast thy power, Isis; thou hast thy magic, Isis. In Graeco-Roman statuary, Isiac
priestesses are depicted with a knot of this shape in their robes.
Mythically, Isis is the daughter of Nut and Geb, the sister and wife of Osiris, and the
mother of Horus. Her other siblings are Seth and Nephthys. Isis has a depth of
familial connections unrivalled in the Egyptian pantheon, even after one takes into
account that we tend to see her family through the lens of Plutarchs highly
narrativized treatment, which is distinctly un-Egyptian in that respect. Her roles as
wife, as mother, as sister, come through strongly in the primary texts, and thus Isis
stands at the juncture of nearly all the relationships which defined Egyptian society;
only her own parentage is largely undeveloped. She is the paradigmatic mother whose
child, Horus, represents the pharaoh, but also the success of right and legitimacy over
brute strength. She is the paradigmatic wife, whose husband is also her brother,
evoking the Egyptian custom of spouses addressing each other as brother and sister.
But her bond with Osiris is about far more than kinship. Since every mortal being is
Osiris, Isis is the deity who more than any other represents the power to transcend
mortality through love and wisdom, as represented by her successful conception of
Horus by Osiris after Osiris death. Isis and Nephthys are sisters inseparable in
adversity, and Isis even seems to share a sibling bond with Seth, the murderer of her
husband. In the narrative of the conflict of Horus and Seth (9; trans. Lichtheim vol. 2,
p. 219), when Horus and Seth are battling in the form of hippopotamuses, Isis calls
back the harpoon she has cast at Seth after his appeal: Do you love the stranger more
than your maternal brother Seth?. While these familial ties are illustrative of the
basic values which Egyptians expected to be embodied in these institutions, all of them
are multivalent symbols allowing of interpretations having nothing to do with the
familial sphere. So too, the image of extraordinary initiative and agency which Isis
presents must be assessed, not only for what it says about the image of women in
Egyptian culture, but also for what it tells us about Egyptian ideas concerning all of the
spheres in which Isis is active.
To delimit her spheres of activity is not easy, insofar as her steadily growing popularity
through the course of Egyptian history means that in the last analysis, nothing falls
outside her scope Isis becomes the ubiquitous Goddess. However, the principal
elements in her character are evident virtually from the beginning, namely conjugal and
maternal love on the one hand and wisdom on the other, her wisdom expressing itself
especially in the practice of magic, but also in a very human cleverness. It is the
universal applicability of these skills which provides the possibility for the devotee to
appeal to Isis for assistance in any sphere of life. The key moments in the body of
symbol and myth identified with Isis are what one might call her passion, that is, her
mourning for Osiris and her quest to recover his body, culminating in her magical
conception of Horus; the perilous infancy of Horus, which provides the setting for many
Page 79 of 223

of the magical spells in which she is the protagonist; and her advocacy on her sons
behalf, which belongs both to the effort to vindicate Osiris as well as to a broader
cosmogonic project in which Isis, like all of the other Gods, participates.
In this project she does not always act purely on behalf of Osiris and Horus, as can be
seen when she stands side by side with Seth to defend the boat of Re against the
attacks of Apophis. The project to which Isis lends her abilities begins with her greatgrandfather Atum, although it is questionable whether the Egyptians ever intended the
family tree of the Gods to be thought of in such literal fashion. The idea of the Ennead
(or Nine Gods) of Heliopolis as an integral divine group, however, was clearly defined
from early times. Within this divine organization, Atum stands at one extreme and
Horus at the other, the continuum between them linking the human social order to the
most primordial forces in the universe. Isis, as the link between the last two members
of this chain, stands in some respects closer to humans and their concerns than to
certain of her fellow Gods. Hence she sometimes seems to act according to different
rules than the others, most notably in a myth which comes down to us in the form of
another spell to treat a scorpions sting (no. 84 in Borghouts). In this spell, Isis crafts a
serpent to poison Re and thus force him to tell Isis his secret name, so that she may
undo the poison not, indeed, as a matter of blackmail but of magical necessity: A man
lives when one recites in his name, (p. 53). This means, however, that a balance of
power in the cosmos shifts decisively, and shifts in the direction of humanity. Re in
some sense delivers over his individuality in this act. In the afterlife literature, to be
able to keep ones name secret is a symbol of the integrity of ones person; it is to be
able to retain ones individuality. Hence in CT spell 759 the operator says It is I who
see your births, but you do not see my birth. I am one whose name is secret, who is in
the boundary of the Gods. To retain ones name secret is the same as to reserve the
power to survey others objectively, to see their births, but not to be entirely an object
to them, for they do not see ones birth. To be invested with this power is to possess
some degree of autonomy even from the Gods, hence to be at their boundary. The
access by Isis to this most powerful formula in the cosmos is illicit not because it is
going to be exercised by her the spell says of Isis that [t]here was nothing she was
ignorant of in heaven or on the earth like Re, who takes care of the needs of the
earth, thus explicitly comparing her to Re and rendering her worthy of exercising the
power granted by knowing his secret name but because it is going to be exercised by
humans through her, as the context of the spell makes abundantly clear. In this sense
it is a Promethean act, albeit one for which Isis suffers no consequences. Similarly, in
the narrative of the conflict of Horus and Seth (5; p. 216 in Lichtheim, vol. 2), Isis
shows that she considers herself to be bound, at most, by the letter, and not the
spirit, of the decrees of the other Gods. This is not a matter of a clash of
personalities, but of the inevitable distance between divine commandments whose scope
of application extends to the whole of nature and the equally divine power of human
intelligence and ingenuity which possesses the power to stand apart from these enough
Page 80 of 223

to question them. This is illicit from one viewpoint, but from another it is the
culmination of the efforts of all the Gods toward the evolution of the cosmos.
In a certain sense, the difference of Isis from the elder Gods (albeit temporality has
no actual sense here) is given by the fact that she loves Osiris, who is both a God and
mortal, in the sense that he undergoes an involuntary transformation and transposition
into an utterly different mode of existence. Isis is therefore tied to a realm in which
what passes away is irreducibly important, despite the fact that it has, in some sense,
been doomed by the very structure of the cosmos. Isis is essentially transgressive in
this sense. To recover the body of Osiris, Isis, alone among the Gods of Egypt, leaves
the very borders of Egypt albeit in a myth recounted by Plutarch and hence possibly
late (Isis and Osiris 357ff) retrieving it from distant Byblos, symbolizing the
international spread of her cult, which began even prior to the conquests of Alexander
the Great through the composition in Greek of aretalogies of Isis, short texts written
in the first person in which Isis enumerates her attributes and, in effect, advertises
herself for the benefit of prospective devotees. Further testimony to the popularity
of her cult outside of Egypt is her prominence in the romances of the Hellenistic and
Imperial periods, most notably the Metamorphosis or Golden Ass of Lucius Apuleius.
The effort to retrieve and to reconstitute the dismembered Osiris, like all mythic
action, is ongoing, if the itinerant Goddess of the myth be seen as the driving force
behind the diffusion of her image and cult.
What Isis accomplishes can be discerned in a short spell from the Coffin Texts (760).
Here Horus is said to be the lord of the solar boat, and to have inherited the sky.
The boat itself is said here to have been brought into being by the word of Isis
herself. It is a matter here not of a primary, but of a secondary creation; hence Horus
has become the repetition of the Lord of All since he entered into it [the boat], so
that it is this Horus son of Isis who presides over all the skies and their Gods who are
in them, (trans. mod.). The ultimate significance of all this, however, is stated by what
comes next: As for any spirit who knows the name of the Shining Sun, he knows his
own name. That is to say, by passing the sovereignty on to Horus, the child of
mortality itself, Isis has secured the cosmic sovereignty for each and every individual:
her power is their power.
Iunyt
(Iunet, Iunit) Goddess of Hermonthis (Armant), the city known in Egyptian as Iunushem. Iunyts consort is Montu, with whom she forms a triad with Tjennet.
Iusas
(Ius-aes, Yusas) Iusas (whose name the Greeks transcribed as Saosis) is the Goddess
personifying the masturbatory act of Atum, with which he sets in motion the process
Page 81 of 223

of the emergence of the cosmos. She is thus, in effect, the consort of Atum and the
mother of Shu and Tefnut. Although often identified with Atums hand, Iusas is
depicted anthropomorphically, typically with the sign of a scarab beetle over her head.
Iusas is also known as Nebet-Hetepet, Mistress of Hetepet, a cult site in the vicinity
of Heliopolis. This epithet also, however, has the meaning of Mistress of the Vulva as
well as Mistress of Offerings, thereby expressing a conception of divine offerings as
that which brings forth the latent potency of the Gods into generative expression. The
epithet Nebet-Hetepet is frequently borne by Hathor as well, who is the Goddess of
sexual satisfaction in a broader sense. Iusas and Nebet-Hetepet sometimes appear to
be distinct Goddesses; closer investigation, however, tends to reveal that when the
distinction between Iusas and Nebet-Hetepet is genuine, it is because it is Hathor to
whom the epithet Nebet-Hetepet is being ascribed (Vandier 1964-66).
In PT utterance 519, in order to gain access to an astral ferry-boat, the deceased king
states I am the son of Khepri, born [the king, not Khepri] in Hetepet under the
tresses of the Goddess of Iusas-town [i.e. Iusas], north of n, who [Iusas]
ascended from the vertex of Geb. Earlier in the same utterance, the operator
addresses the Morning Star, asking it to give me these your two fingers which you
gave to the Beautiful, the daughter of the great God, when the sky was separated from
the earth, when the Gods ascended to the sky, the epithet the Beautiful here
probably applying to Iusas as well. In being said to ascend from the head of Geb,
Iusas is posited as occupying the space between Geb and Nut when they have been
separated, which would be appropriate to her association with offerings. While the
tresses in question may be an anatomical reference in accord with the reading of
hetepet as vulva (Vandier [4] n. 7), they may also be those of a sacred tree (or grove)
associated with Iusas, for we find occasional references to an acacia sacred to Iusas
(e.g., CT spell 660, which twice mentions the acacia of Iusas-town north of Souls-ofn). The reading which would see here a sacred tree or grove would accord well with
the reference to ascending from the vertex of Geb, to be understood therefore as a
hill or mound; the two readings are, in any event, not mutually exclusive. We perhaps
find further reference to a sacred tree of Iusas in PT utterance 574, an address to a
sacred tree, in which the tree, enjoined to gather together those who are in the
Abyss and assemble those who are in the celestial expanses, is said to bend over to
shade Osiris like her who presides over Hetepet [i.e. Iusas] who bows to the Lord of
the East.
Iusas is invoked in a healing spell (no. 145 in Borghouts) as the hand of Atum which
dispelled the fury of heaven, the disturbance which was in Heliopolis, the combative
and victorious one, protecting its lord, the powerful one, the defender of Re on that
day of the great fight to the north and to the west of the House of the Uraeus, Iusas
She has come and driven out all bad ailments, all bad impurities that is in any limb
of this man who is suffering.
Page 82 of 223

Vandier, Jacques. 1964-66. Iousas et (Hathor)-Nbet-Htpet. Revue dgyptologie

16-18.
Kauket
Darkness (fem.), a Goddess belonging to the Hermopolitan Ogdoad.
Kebehwet
(Qebehwet, Qebhut) Kebehwets name is interpreted as the Celestial Serpent, from

kbhw, translated firmament or celestial waters. Kebehwet is said at PT utterance 515

to be the daughter of Anubis. The deceased king declares I am bound for the Field of
Life, the abode of Re in the firmament, I have found Kebehwet. She meets the king
with four jars of some refreshing substance, cleanses him and burns incense before
him. In utterance 690 this cleansing is said to occur upon the causeway in the
meadow, presumably a location in the sky. In utterance 674 Kebehwet is said to
freshen your heart in your body in the house of her father Anubis, and a further
connection with Anubis is to be presumed from the recurring formula your front [or
face] is that of a jackal, your hinder-parts [or midsection] are Kebehwet [or 'is that of
Kebehwet'], (utterances 582, 619, 674, 691 B). Kebehwet is mentioned, not by name,
but simply as daughter of Anubis and companion of Thoth in utterance 304, where
she opens the windows of the sky to permit the king access by a ladder.
It has been suggested that a subtle allusion to Kebehwet is to be found in an incident
from the Tale of Two Brothers (13f), when the brother named Anubis places the heart
of his brother Bata in a bowl of cool water to resurrect him; for the significance of the
libation of cool (bw) water, see Delia (1992).
Delia, Diana. 1992. The Refreshing Water of Osiris. Journal of the American
Research Center in Egypt 29: 181-190.
Kebehsenuf
(Kebehsenuef, Qeb-) One of the four sons of Horus, Kebehsenuf, whose name is
interpreted as he who refreshes, is depicted as a falcon-headed mummy on the jar
containing the intestines of the deceased and in the assignment of the sons of Horus to
the cardinal points he is at the west. Kebehsenuf, together with Horus and Duamutef,
is said in CT spell 158/BD spell 112 to be among the Souls [Bau] of Nekhen, or
Hierakonpolis, a town in Upper Egypt. An occurrence of Kebehsenuf alone occurs in BD
spell 161, for smashing an opening in the sky, in order to gain access to the solar
disk but also that the four winds may enter the nose of the deceased and return
respiration to him/her. In the spell the litany Re lives, the turtle dies recurs four
times once for each of the four winds; the third time, presumably corresponding to the

Page 83 of 223

west wind, it says Re lives, the turtle dies, strangled by the flesh of Kebehsenuf (for
the ambivalent symbolism of the turtle in Egyptian theology, see Gutbub 1979).
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Gutbub, Adolphe. 1979. La tortue animal cosmique bnfique lpoque ptolmaque et
romaine. Pp. 391-435 in Hommages la Mmoire de Serge Sauneron I. Cairo: Institut
Franais dArchologie Orientale du Caire.
Kek
Darkness (masc.), a God belonging to the Hermopolitan Ogdoad.
Khensut
(Khensyt, Khensit) Khensut is prominent in the ancient city of Per-Soped (Saft elHenneh) as the consort of its primary God, Soped. She is apparently mentioned in
utterance 301 of the Pyramid Texts, an address to the rising sun, in which it is said,
You [the sun] shall raise up the kings ka [vitality, spirit-double] for him at his side,
even as this khensut-wig of yours mounted up to you. Some have disputed a reference
to the Goddess in this reference to a type of hairstyle or wig, but it would accord with
other existing references to Khensut in which she is associated with the royal diadem:
Khensut who is upon the head of Re, great of decisions as Judge, (Barguet 1950, 3).
At Saft el-Henneh she is similarly Khensut who is upon the head of Soped, (ibid.). In
an inscription from the temple of Horus at Edfu, it appears that Khensut is associated
with the two plumes on Sopeds headdress, for in a passage concerning the
consecration of the double-plume it states, O Horus, your two eyes are given to you
so that you are provided with them, O Soped, provided with your Khensut, (ibid., 4). A
reference to Khensut has also been alleged in CT spells 137 and 142 (again disputed), in
which she is responsible for a decree reuniting the deceased with his/her family; in the
similar CT spell 134, which does not mention her by name, she is perhaps referred to as
mistress of the crowns/ornaments (nebet khu; alternately, lady of appearances,
i.e., when the king appears on the throne or in procession, from the verb khi, to rise
[like the sun], in which regard note Sopeds identification with the east and the rising
sun). In her apparent association with the executive acts, so to speak, which give order
to the cosmos and secure justice for mortals, Khensut may be said to battle Seth:
Khensut the Great seizes you [Seth], her flame has power over your body, (Barguet
1950, 5). Khensut is depicted anthropomorphically, usually in the manner of Hathor,
with the headdress of a solar disk between bovine horns, or sometimes wearing the
plume of Maet.

Page 84 of 223

Barguet, Paul. 1950. La Desse Khensout. Bulletin de lInstitut Franais dArchologie

Orientale 49: 1-7.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Khenty-irty
(Khenty-ierty; sometimes with an initial m-, Mekhenty-irty; sometimes with a medial n-, e.g., Khenty-n-irty) Khenty-irty, whose name probably means foremost of
eyesight, is depicted as a hawk, and had his cult center at the Egyptian city of Khem
(sometimes written Sekhem), known to the Greeks as Letopolis, the modern Ausim; he
is frequently known as Khenty-Khem, foremost one of Khem. Khenty-irty is sometimes
regarded as an aspect of Horus, particularly Haroeris, the elder Horus, with his two
eyes the sun and the moon. Some have argued that the khenty in his name should be
translated as in front, and thus the whole name read as with two eyes in front, i.e., in
his face, and that when the name is written with a medial -n-, Khenty-n-irty, it should
be read as without two eyes in front, that is, as blind, and the God thus understood as
having a dual nature, sighted and blind, with the latter corresponding, e.g., to the nights
of the dark of the moon as well as to the primordial darkness at the beginning of the
cosmos, before the first sunrise. This thesis must be treated with caution. Some would
in addition link Khenty-n-irty with a form of Horus called Horus khent-n-maa, Horus
foremost without sight, i.e., most adept in the dark, depicted as a shrew-mouse. HorusMekhenty-n-irty can be depicted as a mongoose, as in the Book of Caverns, fourth
section (Hornung 1999, 87). Whether on account of blindness or excellence of eyesight,
Khenty-irty is associated with the night, insofar as he is spoken of in connection with a
night ritual performed at Khem enacting the burial of Osiris. According to BD spell 17
on this night a council consisting of Anubis and Khenty-n-irty punishes the enemies
of the Lord of the Universe; in BD spell 18 this council consists of Thoth and Khentyirty. Perhaps related is a remark in BD spell 83, for assuming the form of a phoenix,
the operator saying at one point, O Osiris, I am Thoth in this lawsuit between the
presider over Letopolis [presumably Khenty-irty] and the souls of Heliopolis. The idea
of Khenty-irty as some kind of judge is reinforced by BD spell 125, in which a line from
the so-called negative confession reads O flinty[or 'fiery']-eyed one who came forth
from Letopolis, I have not done crooked things. Could the keen eyesight of Khenty-irty
made him able to see the intentions in a persons mind? Reference is also made in
funerary contexts to the children of Khenty-irty, who play a role akin to the four sons
of Horus.
Khenty-irty occurs a number of times in the Pyramid Texts. He is one of six Gods
mentioned in PT utterance 25, the chant that says of Horus, Seth, Thoth, Dunanwy,
Osiris and Khenty-irty in turn that they, like the deceased, have gone with his ka, his
Page 85 of 223

spirit or double, while in utterance 447 the chant is repeated with just Osiris, Seth and
Khenty-irty mentioned, and in utterance 568 with Khenty-irty alone, indicating his
importance in this formula. The face of the deceased is identified with that of Khentyirty in PT utterance 215, to which might be compared CT spell 106, in which the
deceased states, My eyes are opened for me by the Eyeless One, the great star,
joined to Khem, and I see with them. My ears are opened for me by this Falcon to whom
men do not speak, and I hear with them. In PT utterance 424, the deceased king is
assured the protection of Khenty-irty, your herdsman who looks after your calves,
and again in utterance 659 Khenty-irty is referred to as your herdsman, of whom it is
said, if you do not know him, in order to stop your efflux [decomposition] lie in his
embrace as your calf. In PT utterance 359, Khenty-irty joins Nephthys and Seth at
the left side of the deceased, corresponding to the four sons of Horus and Horus
himself on the right side, for the crossing of the Winding Waterway to the eastern
side of the sky, in order to dispute with Seth about this Eye of Horus. Khenty-irty
has, for some reason, a consistent orientation to the left of Osiris/the deceased, as in
CT spell 296, which states what is in Khem has been allotted to N. [the deceased]; it
means that obeisance has been made at the left hand of Osiris, and in CT spell 314 the
deceased states, May I be with Horus on the day of greeting the left arm of Osiris
who is in Khem, and in BD spell 1 the deceased affirms I was with Horus as savior of
that left shoulder of Osiris that was in Khem.
In PT utterance 519, the deceased claims to have been between the thighs of Khentyirty on that night when I flattened bread and on that day of cutting off the heads of
the mottled snakes, a cryptic reference to some series of ritual actions. The same
snakes, at any rate, are referred to in CT spell 4, which lacks any reference to Khentyirty, and in which the deceased is said to have knit on for yourself the heads of the
mottled snakes in n [Heliopolis], that is, to have taken on their shape. The posture of
being between the thighs refers perhaps to being at the foot of the Gods throne; PT
utterance 553 says of the deceased king, may he sit on the great throne on the thighs
of his father Khenty-irty. CT spell 398 speaks of seven Gods of whom the deceased
states, I found them bowed down reaping emmer I gathered together what was
between their thighs for invocation offerings for them there when travelling
downstream to Khem or upstreammay he see. Does the cryptic remark at the end
refer to Khenty-irty? At CT spell 397 it is Min of Coptos and Anubis the Controller of
the Two Lands who are found celebrating their festivals and reaping their emmer, and
the ears of corn with their sickles between their thighs, and I will make loaves for
you [the netherworld ferryman Mahaf] therefrom. CT spell 681 affirms of the
deceased that he will not immerse [drown] the great warrior of Khem as on the first
occasion of attaching the thigh, i.e. of Osiris? The motifs of the thigh and of
immersion arises also at 479, in which a charm against the netherworld fish-trap
identifies the traps doors, ribs, sandals and mooring-post as the calves and thighs of

Page 86 of 223

Horus pre-eminent in Khem on that night of the greatest of those who are inert,
presumably a reference to the night ritual at Khem for the dead.
In a spell to protect the tomb (PT utterance 534), Khenty-irty is one of four Gods, the
others being Isis, Nephthys and Thoth, who are said to respect the deceased. The
latter part of this same spell involves a series of formulae designed to prevent a
number of ordinarily beneficent deities from appropriating the tomb; the negative
formula for Khenty-irty is the name Spittle, which sends him back to Khem. Possibly
related is the reference to the one who presides over Khem as one whom the spittle
protects, causing Babi, a phallic God of ambivalent disposition, to stand up upon
meeting him. Khem is the location of magical action of some kind on the deceased kings
behalf in utterance 688, which affirms that the hindering arms which were on this
king have been removed by the Repeller of Wrong in the presence of Khenty-irty in
Khem. Khenty-irty is presumably intended in utterance 469, in which the deceased
kings ka is said to dispel the evil before him and behind him as with the throwsticks of
Him who presides over Khem, evoking both the ka chant of utterances 25, 447 and
568, as well as the references to Khenty-irty as a herdsman, for whom the throwstick
would be an appropriate weapon. In PT utterance 610 it is said of the deceased king,
Your eyes are opened by the earth, your severed parts are raised up by the Lord of
Rebellion; He who presides over Khem raises you. Does the association of Khenty-irty
here with some manner of rebellion relate to the reference at BD spell 83 to a lawsuit
between the presider over Letopolis and the souls of Heliopolis?
The Coffin Texts contains a spell (322) for becoming [invoking] Khenty-Khem, which
clearly refers to Khenty-irty. Here he is described as the Golden Falcon who snatches
things in the voids of the sky, and who eats from the slaughterhouse of Horus. The
operator who is invoking or identifying with Khenty-Khem states, I am a soul who eats
his navel-string, who lives on his friends of his foreskin and who eats of his
companions, referring to two points at which the bodys integrity is at once threatened
and secured, namely birth and circumcision. Appropriate for one whose name means
foremost of eyesight is the affirmation in this spell, I am one who travels by night
and who hides by day.
A tendency to identify Khenty-irty with Horus is apparent already in the Pyramid
Texts. In utterance 438, the king is urged to live the life, for you have not died the
death, just as Horus Khenty-Khem ['who presides over Khem'] lives, while in utterance
688, the four sons of Horus are referred to as the children of Horus of Khem, a spell
which at its end also mentions Khenty-irty. In a spell for protection which takes the
form of an adoration of Horus (no. 123 in Borghouts), the operator refers to spells and
conjurations which Horus has been taught by the Majesty of Khenty-Khem.

Page 87 of 223

The children of Khenty-irty are charged with the protection of Osiris, especially during
the fifth through the eighth hours of the vigil, over which they preside. They are
generally reckoned as four in number, named Heqa, Ruler (sometimes Haku,
Plunderer), Iremwa, Who acts violently (sometimes Ithemwa, Who takes violently),
Maitef, Who sees his father, and Irrenefdjesef, Who makes his own name. Iremwa
is sometimes replaced by Kheribaqef, Who is under his moringa-tree. Occasionally just
two of these will appear alongside the four sons of Horus, and sometimes Heqa/Haku
and Maitef are fused into a single deity named Heqa-Maitef. The children of Khentyirty are usually depicted anthropomorphically, holding lizards or snakes (references in
Egberts 1995, vol. I, 125-127).
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Egberts, A. 1995. In Quest of Meaning: A Study of the Egyptian Rites of Consecrating

the Meret-chests and Driving the Calves. 2 vols. Leiden: Nederlands Instituut voor het
Nabije Oosten.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Griffiths, J. Gwyn. 1958. Remarks on the Mythology of the Eyes of Horus. Chronique
dgypte 33: 182-193.
Hornung, Erik. 1999. The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife . Trans. David Lorton.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Khenty-khety
(Khentekhtai) The translation of the name Khenty-khety, whose name is rendered in
Greek as Kentechthai, is uncertain, although the meaning of the khenty- element is
clear; it means head or chief, and is found in numerous divine names and epithets.
Khenty-khety, who had his cult center at Athribis (Tell Atrib) in Lower Egypt, is
depicted as a crocodile, or a crocodile-headed man, or, later, as a hawk-headed man. His
consort is Khuyet (Khuit). A calendar cites the 23rd day of the month of Khoiak as the
day on which was found the heart [of Osiris] which was in the possession of a crocodile
who watched over it: this is Khenty-khety. He had hidden it under his own heart at
Athribis, (Papyrus Jumilhac 136). Similarly, in a spell to heal a cat (no. 87 in
Borghouts), the operator affirms You cat hereyour heart is the heart of Khentykhety, the lord of Athribis, the chief of the Gods who keeps hearts and breasts firmly
in their places. He has kept your heart in its place, your breast in its frame.
Accordingly, Khenty-khety is sometimes associated with the judgment of the deceased
by the weighing of the heart in spell 125 of the Book of the Dead. Khenty-khety is
often fused with Osiris or with Horus as Horus-Khenty-khety, Khenty-khety-Osiris or
Page 88 of 223

Osiris-Khenty-khety, or even with both at once, under the names Horus-Khenty-khetyOsiris-residing-in-Athribis or variants.
Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Vandier, Jacques. 1961. Le Papyrus Jumilhac. Paris: Muse du Louvre.
Khepri
(Khopri, Khepera) Khepris name comes from the Egyptian verb meaning to become, a
word which also yields a noun meaning transformation or simply form. For anything to
take on any form whatever is thus to participate in the divine potency of Khepri. Khepri
is depicted as a scarab beetle, one of the ubiquitous symbols in Egyptian culture. The
actual life-habits of the scarab beetle are less important than the way in which the
Egyptians conceived them and drew upon them to create the symbol of Khepri. The
Egyptians saw the scarab beetle as rolling a ball of dung, the basest of materials, that
which embodied the inert end of every life process and the exhaustion of the object of
metabolism. From this dead end, however, a new beginning was fashioned, for the
female beetle lays her eggs in this ball, which thus gives the appearance upon their
hatching of having fostered spontaneous generation. The ball of dung rolled by the
beetle thus becomes identified with the sun, and Khepri with the primordial sunrise at
the inception of the cosmos and every days sunrise, as well as with all emergence of
novelty, spontaneity, and potentiality within that which is inert, its impulse exhausted
or which has reached a condition of static perfection or completion and therefore
transforms itself in order to continue as a vehicle of life. Khepri thus expresses a
fundamental element of the Egyptian worldview, in which no beginning is ever from
nothing, but is always really some manner of transformation. Hence Atums position at
the beginning of the emergence of the cosmos is functionally identical to the position
of the deceased awaiting resurrection. The sun, too, is conceived by Egyptians as
Khepri at sunrise, Re at midday, and Atum at sunset, the waning of the day being thus
identified with the absolute beginning of the cosmos, insofar as such an absolute,
unique or linear beginning to it can be conceived, while the beginning which is everpresent, because it is identical with change itself, has its image in the sunrise. This
viewpoint allows the moment of the emergence of the cosmos to be always present in
the now, and by extension allows all of the moments of myth and all of the symbols of
divinity to be appropriated and used by ritual operators at any time.
In one of the earliest programmatic statements of the Heliopolitan cosmogony, PT
utterance 527, it is said that Atum is he who came into being, who masturbated in n.
He took his phallus in his grasp that he might create orgasm by means of it, and so
were born the twins Shu and Tefnut. The first part of the sentence reads Atum

kheper pu, in which the use of the verb kheper provides the model for statements like
those in utterance 587, Hail to you, Atum! May you come into being in this your name
of Khepri, or in utterance 606, They [the Gods of the Ennead] will bring you [the
Page 89 of 223

deceased king] into being like Re in this his name of Khepri, which also adds a
conjugation of Re and Atum: you will draw near to them [the Ennead] like Re in this his
name of Re; you will turn aside from their faces like Re in this his name of Atum. The
characterization of diverse Gods names as if they were names of some other God is
not to be taken literally, insofar as they are often built on wordplay, but such usages,
common in Egyptian religion, do indicate the Egyptian sense of each God as a sufficient
totality Him- or Herself as well as one among many.
Khepri is generally depicted in full scarab form, to which often has been added the
wings of a hawk, the hawks talons usually gripping the looped rope which is the sign for
shen, eternity in the form of a closed loop. In PT utterance 624, reference is made to
climbing on the wing of Khepri, and in CT spell 548 to the horns of Khepri, both
presumably referring to actual features of the beetle. Reference is made sometimes to
the boat (or bark) of Khepri, which seems at times to be simply a synonym for the boat
of Re, but sometimes a particular vehicle, viz. in CT spell 423, for not dying a second
death: I will be raised up from the hnhnw-bark to the bark of Khepri, he will let me
enter to see what is there, I will recite his words to the judges, and he will let me
converse with those four mighty spirits who move to and fro and live after they have
died. In CT spell 261, a spell for becoming Heka, the personification of magic, Heka
says that he came forth from the mouth of Atum when he [Atum] spoke with Khepri
that he [Atum] might be more powerful than he [Khepri], where Khepri seems to
personify change and flux, mastery of which is to be granted through the exercise of
magic, heka. Similarly, in CT spell 548, the operator threatens to bind the horns of
Khepri to prevent being taken and ferried over to the east to be slain, i.e. to die
again. Here the threat is to arrest change itself.
An amulet in the form of a scarab beetle plays an important role in BD spell 30B, in
which it represents the heart of the deceased, not as a physical but as a spiritual
entity. The heart thus constituted is beseeched in this spell not to bear witness
against the deceased in the judgment. In addition to its amuletic functions, the scarab
beetle lends its shape to a sort of calling card. Scarab beetles carved in semi-precious
stones are inscribed on their undersides with the names and titles of officials or kings,
or to commemorate auspicious events such as a royal wedding or jubilee.
Kherty
Kherty, who is generally depicted in the form of a ram or ram-headed man, is also
depicted in later times as a lion. Kherty is associated with Osiris in a passage from the

Pyramid Texts (utterance 264) belonging to a genre of spells in which Osiris is

conceived as a threat to the deceased king, who affirms that He [Re or Horakhty;
both are mentioned but not equated] has saved me from Kherty, he will never give me
to Osiris, for I have not died the death. A ritual operator, identifying himself with
Horus, affirms to the deceased king in utterance 665 that I have saved you from
Page 90 of 223

Kherty who lives on the hearts of men, while in utterance 667A, the ritual operator
similarly says of the deceased king that I have begged him from Kherty and I will
never give him to Osiris. PT utterance 264 is one of a genre of spells which concern
crossing the sky to the horizon on reed-floats. In utterance 300, by contrast, Kherty
of Nezat is the ferryman of a bark made by Khnum which the deceased king calls for
in the name of Sokar. Since Khnum is known for shaping the body, the ferry-boat of
utterance 300 and the reed-floats of 264 could be taken to refer to different
netherworld vehicles of the deceased, the former more corporeal and chthonic
relative to the latter. In utterance 334, Kherty and Shesmu are juxtaposed, the
deceased king affirming, I have traversed Pe as Kherty who presides over Nezat, I
have crossed Kenmut as Shesmu who is in his oil-press bark. Kherty is a protector of
the tomb in utterance 534. One of the centers of Khertys worship was apparently
Khem (Greek Letopolis); in utterance 580, which concerns dividing up a sacrificial ox
among a number of Gods, Kherty and fellow Letopolitan Khenty-irty share the shanks of
the ox. In utterance 581, the deceased is urged to go after your spirit in order to
catch the winds like the hand of Kherty who is pre-eminent in Nezat.
Khnum
Khnum is depicted as a man with the head of a ram with horizontal undulating horns,

Ovis longipes palaeoaegypticus. This is thought to be the original Egyptian species,

apparently supplanted over time by Ovis platyura aegyptiaca, the type of ram
associated with Amun. Some Greek writers, ignorant of the older species, mistake the
ram associated with Khnum, Banebdjedet and Arsaphes as a goat. In later depictions
Khnum is sometimes shown with both kinds of horns together. Khnum is seen most
characteristically sitting at a potters wheel upon which he moulds the form of a child.
Upon this wheel Khnum shapes the forms of all living beings, the word for ram, ba,
being a homophone of the word ba meaning soul or manifestation. Among the several
words with which Khnums name is linked is khnm, to unite, later taking on the meaning
to form, create. Khnums formative role with respect to living beings has special
reference to his control over the Niles annual flood. It is Khnum who releases the
vivifying floodwaters from the subterranean caverns in which they were symbolically
stored; a connection is thus sometimes postulated between his name and the word
khnmt, meaning a spring or well. Several times in the Coffin Texts (spells 51 and 53-6)
one encounters the phrase, Khnum is glad, referring to the resurrection, but also
punning on the name Khnum and khnm, meaning to be glad.
A hymn to Hapy, the divine personification of the Niles inundation, states that Khnum
fashions Hapy anew each year (p. 206 in Lichtheim, vol. 1). Khnums role of fashioner of
the bodily form was not completed once and for all before birth, but continued
throughout life. Hence, in the famous Famine Stela from Sehel Island, Khnum appears
to King Djoser in a dream and states, I am Khnum, your maker! My arms are around
you, to steady your body, to safeguard your limbs, (p. 98 in Lichtheim, vol. 3). Khnum
Page 91 of 223

goes on to promise Djoser that he will prosper the land of Egypt on his behalf: I shall
make Hapy gush for you, no year of lack and want anywhere, plants will grow weighed
down by their fruit. In BD spell 30B, an appeal by the deceased to his/her heart, the
heart is called the Khnum who prospers my limbs. The heart was for Egyptians an
entity as much moral as corporeal. Hence the Instruction of Amenemope (chap. 9) says
of the heated or quarrelsome personality, If only Khnum came to him, the Potter to
the heated man, so as to knead the faulty heart, (p. 154 in Lichtheim, vol. 2). Similarly,
in the statue inscription of Djedkhonsefankh, Djedkhonsefankh praises Khnum for
having fashioned me as one effective, an adviser of excellent counsel. He made my
character superior to others, he steered my tongue to excellence, (p. 15 in Lichtheim,
vol. 3). Nevertheless, Khnum was also responsible for simple physical beauty; in the
Tale of Two Brothers, for instance, Re-Harakhty asks Khnum to fashion for the man
Bata a wife, of whom it is said Khnum made a companion for him who was more
beautiful in body than any woman in the whole land, for every God was in her, (p. 207 in
Lichtheim, vol. 2) such being the power of Khnum. Khnum is hymned as the cosmic
creator, due in part to the identification of the Niles annual inundation with the Nun,
the primordial watery abyss which pre-exists the cosmos.
In PT utterance 300 Khnum is said to have been the maker of a netherworld ferryboat, strongly implying that these boats are at least in certain cases to be understood
as equivalent to the bodily vehicle. In utterance 522, the bringing of the boat is
juxtaposed with the healing of the Eye of Horus. The deceased appeals to the
ferrymen Mahaf and Herefhaf, saying behold, I have come and have brought to you
this re-knit Eye of Horus which was in the Field of Strife; bring me this boat which
Khnum built. In the later Coffin Texts the ferry-boat spells are much elaborated. In

CT spell 397 we read that the boat which Khnum put together has been taken to
pieces and placed in the dockyard, and directions are given for its reassembly (see also
BD spell 99). Khnums role in the afterlife literature seems aptly expressed by the
appeal in utterance 324, Hail to you, Khnum May you refashion me. In one case,
however, his role is ambivalent. CT spell 214 seeks to repel Khnum who brings feces in
order to make what is in the two districts. Here, the raw material of which bodies are
made is conceived as dung, just as Khepri fashions new form from dung; the spell ends
with another appeal to the ferryman Herefhaf.
In the Great Hymn to Khnum from Khnums temple at Esna (pp. 111-115 in Lichtheim,
vol. 3), Khnums work fashioning all the parts of the body in accord with their functions
is carefully evoked. Here it is a matter of the formation, not of some individual or
other, but of all the species of creatures. Next, the hymn proceeds to explain how
Khnum has fashioned all the different peoples, each with their own language, as well as
precious commodities for each region that they may trade. He is responsible, thus, for
mineral abundance as well: He opened seams in the bellies of mountains, he made the
quarries spew out their stones, (p. 114). Through his control over the produce which
Page 92 of 223

forms their offerings as well as the materials out of which their cult statues are
fashioned, Khnum can be praised as having engendered the Gods, (ibid.). In a magical
spell (no. 128 in Borghouts), Khnum is referred to as image of an infinity of infinities
[heh n hehu] only son, the one who was conceived yesterday and who was born today
who has 77 eyes and 77 ears. Reference is made sometimes to seven Khnums created
by Khnum: It is Khnum who made the seven Khnums, Builder of Builders who created
what exists, (Esna III, no. 378, 18); Khnum who made the seven Khnums, who created
the craftsmen, Builder of Builders, (Esna V, no. 367, 14-15).
Khnums consort is Menhyt, their union producing Heka, the divine personification of
magic.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Sauneron, Serge. 1959-75. Esna. Cairo: Institut franais darchologie orientale.
Khonsu
(Khons, Khensu, or spellings with Ch-) A complex and enigmatic deity, Khonsu is
depicted in either of two forms, as a boy with the braided side-lock of youth or as a
hawk-headed man, in either case generally bearing the lunar disk and crescent on his
head. In his anthropomorphic depiction, Khonsu usually wears a close fitting or
mummiform garment similar to that worn by Ptah and an elaborate necklace like the

menit of Hathor. Khonsu was worshiped at Thebes as the son of Amun and Mut.
Khonsu has a single occurrence in the Pyramid Texts which is nevertheless notable
insofar as it is said here (utterances 273-4) that It is Khonsu who slew the lords, who
strangles them for the King and extracts for him what is in their bodies, for he is the
envoy who is sent to punish, [trans. mod. in accord with Lichtheim, vol. 1, p. 37] the
passage going on to describe how the deceased king eats their magic and gulps down
their spirits. The role of Khonsu as envoy is perhaps echoed in his name, usually
derived from the transitive verb khenes, to travel through or traverse, as in CT spell
806, You travel to and fro as Khonsu, or in a healing spell (no. 78 in Borghouts) which
states that Khonsu-in-Thebes-Neferhotep travels through all the lands every day.
Another theory as to the meaning of his name, more speculative, would interpret it as
royal placenta, the placenta being regarded in some other East African cultures as a
Page 93 of 223

still-born twin, which would ostensibly account for Khonsus lunar associations on the
principle that if the pharaoh is solar, his twin must be lunar (Frankfort 1978 pp. 70-2).

CT spells 187 and 195 speak in cryptic terms of an encounter by the operator with
Khonsu, who is either going to or coming from Punt (present-day Somalia). Khonsu
proceeds either to cause the operator to be acclaimed in some fashion by large
numbers of family members and fellow-citizens who are raised up (187), or to join
with them, perhaps at a festival of the new moon (195). In a similar vein perhaps is the
operators affirmation in CT spell 334 that acclamation is given to me in this my name
of Khonsu, or in BD spell 153B that Khonsu is in me I have sought the warmth of the
multitude. Khonsu seems to be one who generates respect in CT spell 257, To become
one honored with the king: Prepare a path for me that I may pass on it, for I am one
honored of Khonsu, I issue from his mouth [i.e. he speaks of me] in the presence of Re.
The violent side of Khonsus nature in the passage from the Pyramid Texts is
reinforced in later texts. Hence in CT spell 945 the operator affirms that My
striking-power is Khonsu, and spell 310 calls Khonsu the raging one. Some of Khonsus
belligerence is to be attributed to his lunar nature, for the moon battles the darkness
on behalf of the sun and dominates the night sky. Thus a hymn to Khonsu ( La Lune,
Mythes et Rites p. 43) states that He takes the place of the sun when that one
descends into the netherworld. Also presumably testifying to Khonsus wrathful aspect
are statements such as those in CT 311, that Khonsu lives on hearts, and 994 that he
lives on heads. This terminology is relatively common PT utterance 665 has the
resurrected king living on the hearts of certain spirits, utterance 273-4 on the
hearts and magic of the Wise Ones and it is impossible to determine whether it
is to be understood in the sense of eating, as would be a straightforward rendering of

ankh m , or as some kind of metaphor. Similarly, in CT spell 311 the operator

becoming Khonsu affirms that s/he has bread consisting of men and offerings
consisting of children. Spells 310 and 311 in the Coffin Texts are for becoming Khonsu
in the realm of the dead. Their content seems to have been largely absorbed into spell
83 of the Book of the Dead, which has however the title Transforming into a benu, or
phoenix, and retains only a single reference to Khonsu. The operator invoking Khonsu
claims here to have penetrated into all the limbs of Osiris perhaps infusing them with
new life as the moon waxes to have grown as do plants, and to have covered
him/herself as does a tortoise, that is, with a protective shell, perhaps analogous to
the dark moon; similarly, a hymn says that Khonsu comes as a child, head down, hidden
in his crescent, that is, at the new moon (La Lune, p. 43). Hymns to Khonsu emphasize
in his nature the contrast between the waxing and waning phases of the moon. Thus one
hymn states, He [Khonsu] is conceived the day of the new moon, he is brought into the
world on the second day of the month, he becomes an old man after the fifteenth day,
(ibid.). The same hymn also compares Khonsu to a shining bull in the moons waxing
phase and to an ox (i.e., a castrated bull) in its waning phase, and states that as the
Page 94 of 223

waxing moon Khonsu make the bulls erect, makes the cows pregnant, and fortifies the
egg in the body. In CT spell 310, the operator becoming Khonsu affirms that he does
not die on this day of the rams, when the sperm was taken away from this spirit, which
has been interpreted as referring to the loss of virility symbolized by the waning moon.
Healing deities in Egyptian religion are also frequently violent, because they must do
battle with the demons who cause sickness. Sekhmet is the classic example, and spell
311 compares the flame which comes from Khonsus mouth to the knife wielded by
Sekhmet. The crescent moon was apparently also compared to a knife. Khonsus
effectiveness as a God of healing is recorded by the Bentresh stela, which tells the
story of a foreign wife of Ramses II whose younger sister Bentresh falls ill and is
cured by Khonsu. One of the interesting features of this stela are its reference to the
interaction between two different forms of Khonsu, Khonsu-in-Thebes-Neferhotep
and Khonsu-the-Provider (or perhaps Khonsu-Determiner-of-Fate, pa ir sekher or iri
sekheru). The king reports Bentreshs illness to Khonsu-in-Thebes-Neferhotep, who
himself proceeds to Khonsu-the-Provider, the great God who expels disease demons,
and dispatches him to the land of Bakhtan, where Bentresh lives, to cure her. When
Khonsu-the-Provider returns, having accomplished his task, He [Khonsu-the-Provider]
placed the gifts of every good thing which the prince of Bakhtan had given him before
Khonsu-in-Thebes-Neferhotep, without giving anything to his own house, (p. 93 in
Lichtheim, vol. 3).
Reference is occasionally made to the three Khonsu, which apparently refers to
Khonsu-in-Thebes-Neferhotep, Khonsu wen nekhu, or the protector, and Khonsu-theProvider. This trinity is sometimes depicted with Khonsu-the-Protector and Khonsuthe-Provider as baboons sitting to the right and left of the anthropomorphic Khonsu.
Another aspect of Khonsu we know of is Khonsu heseb ah, Reckoner-of-the-Lifetime.
This function may be alluded to in texts referring to something written by Khonsu
which seems to pertain to the culmination of life. Thus in CT spell 649, an unidentified
Messenger is asked to open a path for me [the operator], for I am Khonsu about to
write what is true, and in the Dispute Between a Man and His Ba, the man attempting
to convince his ba, or soul, to go along with his wish to end his life, swears May Khonsu
defend me, he who writes truly! (p. 164 in Lichtheim vol. 1).
That Khonsu may have played a role in adolescent initiation is suggested by the
statement from CT 310 that to me [Khonsu] belong the two braided locks which are
upon the shorn ones, for this refers to the side-lock, which would have been cut and
dedicated to a deity upon coming of age. However, this sentence also been linked to CT
spell 154 (BD spell 115), for knowing the souls of Heliopolis, which refers to a man
with a braided lock in Heliopolis, perhaps representative of a class of priests (J.
Zandee, Bibliotheca Orientalis 10, 1953 p. 112). The crescent moon may have been
represented by the braided lock, or even the markings colloquially known as the man
Page 95 of 223

(rabbit, etc.) in the moon. An unusual reference to Khonsus side-lock occurs in CT spell
1007, To open the gate of the horizon, in which Khonsu is asked to throw open the
great door. I will swim by means of you, the operator says to Khonsu, I will fill my
mouth with the braided lock of the God. Ho! Lift me up! Ho! Raise me aloft!
apparently intending to take the side-lock in his/her teeth and let Khonsu lift him up
into the sky.
Kolanthes
Kolanthes is the son of Min and Triphis. The hieroglyphic form of his name appears to
have been Qlndja, but there is no consensus on an interpretation, and some possibility
that the name is of foreign origin; cf. qrnati, a Libyan word for the foreskin or a phallus
sheath (Wrterbuch 5, 60f), an interesting possibility in light of Mins ithyphallic
depiction.
In a Roman-era stele in the Berlin Museum (22489), Kolanthes is depicted with the
forelock of a youth and a finger to his lips, wearing the triple- atef or hemhem crown, in
a long garment, with a scarab necklace and grasping a bird and the ankh in his right
hand.
Maet
(Maat, Maat, Mat; note that there are two vowel sounds in the name) The
personification of the multivalent Egyptian concept of maet, that is, justice, truth and
order, Maet is depicted as as a woman wearing a tall ostrich feather (or sometimes
two) on her head, frequently with wings extending along her arms and usually carrying
the ankh, sign of life.
Maet expresses a broad range of concepts: justice in an ethical, social or legal sense,
but also the balance and harmony of natural systems or of anything well-crafted; thus
what is maet is both beautiful and right. Maet is also truth in a sense encompassing
both the real or actual and the ideal or what should be. Hence the common phrase mae

hru, true of voice or justified, is appended to the names of deceased persons to

express their transposition to a perfected state of existence. In temple images, the
pharaoh is frequently depicted offering a tiny seated figure of Maet to the Gods in
exactly the same gesture with which he offers food or any other item, for the Gods
are said to live on maet. The royal presentation of Maet can be thought of as
encompassing all other offerings, as an expression of the kings legitimacy and his
intention to be a just ruler, for just governance places human society in its correct
relationship to the Gods and the natural world. The Instruction of Kagemni urges one
to do maet for the king, for maet is what the king loves. Viziers wore a Maet
pendant, and priests of Maet seem to have been involved in the judicial workings of the
government. Maet is literally the basis on which the Gods stand, insofar as statues of
Page 96 of 223

the Gods stand upon a plinth which has the shape of the hieroglyph that forms the
sound mae.
As a Goddess, Maet is especially closely associated with Re, for as the demiurge of the
cosmos it is Re who primarily establishes maet for all things. Thus Maet is said to
stand behind Re, (PT utterance 586) or to be the daughter of Re, not in a mythical
sense, but in the sense that the state of maet is that of being in harmony with the
order of the cosmos, and is thus the ultimate result of the efforts of the demiurge,
the inherent goodness of the Gods being manifested in the goodness of the cosmic
order. In CT spell 80, Maet is said to be the daughter of Atum in a manner which
seems again to be more conceptual than mythical, for she is said to be the air and food
of her father and seems to be parallel with, rather than added to, his children Shu and
Tefnut. It is often said that maet is the food upon which the Gods live. Hence in BD
spell 65, a spell for going forth by day and overcoming the enemy, the deceased says
to the Gods, if thou dost not let me go forth against that enemy of mine and triumph
over him in the Council of the great God in the presence of the great Ennead, then
Hapy [God of the Nile's annual flood] shall ascend to the sky to live on maet, and verily
Re shall descend into the water to live on fish. The state of injustice and disorder
which would exist if the deceased were not allowed to prevail over his/her enemy is
here symbolized by the inversion of the natural order, but there is more than a simple
inversion here, since fish are associated with the corpse (the Egyptian word for corpse,

khat, incorporates an Oxyrhynchus fish) and with those helpless ones among the
deceased whose fate is to be trapped in the nets of the netherworld fishermen (as in
CT spells 473-481). Injustice for the deceased, therefore, would literally mean that
the Gods, rather than living on justice, live on the helplessness of mortal souls, which
is what the spell affirms is not the case.
For reasons which are not evident, Egyptian religious texts frequently refer to the
Two Maety. Thus in PT utterance 260, the king affirms that the Two Truths have
commanded that the thrones of Geb shall revert to me, and the famous scene of the
weighing of the heart, that is, the judgment of the deceased in BD spell 125, takes
place in the Hall of the Two Truths, or Maety, and Maet actually appears doubled in
illustrations of this chapter. Depictions in which Maet wears two feathers rather than
her usual one may also illustrate this idea. In the pivotal scene where the heart of the
deceased is weighed against maet the Goddess is singular, squatting in one pan of the
scale while the heart rests in the other.
The image of weighing implies that there should be a substantive difference between
exceeding maet and falling short of it, being over- and under-weight, so to speak, but
we know of no such distinction. Nor are the long series of affirmations and denials
presented in BD spell 125 to be regarded as a moral code, but rather as an extended
formula for purifying the heart; hence the introduction to the spell states that its
Page 97 of 223

purpose is cutting N. off from all the forbidden things he has done, and seeing the
faces of all the Gods. A better indication of what it means to be in the state of maet
is to be found in the genre of didactic or wisdom literature, the various instruction
texts bearing the names of legendary sages such as Ptahhotep, Amenemope or
Ankhsheshonq. Another important source of information about the idea of maet is
autobiographical funerary inscriptions. In these autobiographies, it is conventional for
the deceased to affirm that he has done and spoken maet, and then to specify what
the doing and speaking of maet is, for instance (all from Lichtheim 1992): I never did
what was hurtful to people, I never let a man spend the night angry with me about
something, (9); I used to tell the king what serves people, I never told an evil thing
against people to the majesty of my lord, (10); I have made this tomb from my
rightful means, and never took the property of anyone. All persons who worked at it for
me, they worked praising God for me greatly for it. I never did anything by force
against anyone. As the God loves a true thing, I am one honored by the king, (10-11); I
judged two parties so as to content them, I saved the weak from one stronger than he
as best I could, (14); Having done what people love and Gods praise I answered evil
with good in order to endure on earth and attain reveredness, (21); I am one who
spoke the good, repeated the good, and settled matters for the best. I am the beloved
of his father, the praised of his mother, loved by his siblings, kind to his kindred, (22).
To do maet meant specific things in specific professions; thus a physician affirms I
have done rightness in my conduct, when I probed the heart and assessed a payer
according to his wealth (30-31), while a fighter states that he has done maet by
having rescued the weak from the strong I marshaled the towns young men in order
to increase its forces I saved my town on the day of plunder I was its wall on the
day of its combat, (27-28). In a conventional formula, the deceased affirms I have
given bread to the hungry, clothes to the naked, but also, more metaphorically, I
landed one who was stranded I made a boat for the boatless, to which should be
compared this appeal to the netherworld ferryman in PT utterance 517: O you who
ferry over the righteous boatless as the ferryman of the Field of Reeds, I am deemed
righteous in the sky and on earth, I am deemed righteous in this Island of Earth to
which I have swum and arrived, which is between the thighs of Nut. It is sometimes
explained that one does the right thing so as to raise up Maet to the great God, the
lord of sky, (20). Through ethical conduct and the fulfillment of their potential,
mortals play a cosmogonic role; thus in PT utterance 249, the deceased king, in the
form of Nefertum, the lotus-bloom which is at the nose of Re, proclaims I have come
into the Island of Fire, the place where light is born and reborn in the cosmos and
from which the divine flame projects, I have set Right [ ma'et] in it in the place of
Wrong.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Page 98 of 223

Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1992. Maat in Egyptian Autobiographies and Related Studies .
Fribourg: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Gttingen.
Mafdet
Mafdet is depicted as a predator of uncertain species, with the cheetah, lynx, civet and
mongoose all being candidates. Indeed, it may well be the case that at different times
and in different places she was identified with different animals, all having the single
quality in common of killing snakes. Spells which pit Mafdet against hostile netherworld
snakes frequently associate her with the Mansion of Life, e.g., pre-eminent in the
Mansion of Life, (PT utt. 297); the Great Fetterer who dwells in the Mansion of Life,
(PT utt. 384). This term is usually taken as a designation for the scriptorium of a
temple; however, it has been argued (Gardiner 1938) that in texts such as these the
term actually refers to the royal residence, and that these spells reflect a conception
of Mafdet as either a real or imaginary creature kept for the purpose of hunting
venomous snakes in the living-rooms of the royal palace, (p. 89). A text of uncertain
interpretation may refer to Bast as Mafdets mother (Guilhou p. 59 and n. 35). Mafdet
is associated with an instrument which appears to be a shepherds crook with a packet
of some kind lashed to it and a projecting knife. The former design appears as a
hieroglyph in words meaning to follow or accompany, indicating that the object was
perhaps carried by the attendants of early chieftains. It has been interpreted either
as an expeditionarys traveling kit, consisting of a portable tent and flint knife lashed
to a staff, or as a symbolic device for punishing criminals, and its name, shemeset, is
therefore sometimes translated as the instrument of punishment. Mafdet is
occasionally depicted running up this instrument, which is referred to in PT utterance
230, where a snake is threatened: your mouth is closed by the instrument of
punishment, and the mouth of the instrument of punishment is closed by Mafdet.

PT utterance 295 pits Mafdet against a netherworld snake, leaping at its neck as one
would expect of a mongoose. In utterance 297, Mafdets claws strike the face of the
unspecified attacker, while 298 says it is the knife in her hands which will decapitate
the threatening serpent; in 385 she attacks the snake with her bare hands and in 390
steps on it. The manifold hostile snakes of the netherworld in the Pyramid Texts
eventually become the Apophis or Rerek of the Book of the Dead, against whom Mafdet
prevails in BD spells 39 and 149. In PT utterance 519 the points of a harpoon which is
to be used to cut off the heads of the adversaries who are in the Field of Offerings
are identified with the claws of Mafdet. In CT 479, a spell for evading capture by the
fishermen who ply the waters of the netherworld with their nets, in which the various
parts of the nets and the boat are identified with beneficent deities, the boats oars
are said to be the hand of Mafdet which rescued the leg from the rage of those who
Page 99 of 223

ate the Great Ones. The leg may refer to the crescent moon; a chapel of the leg at
Edfu is consecrated to Khonsu, a lunar God (La Lune, p. 44). Perhaps Mafdet rescues
the moon from the darkness which threatens it, retrieving the crescent or leg. CT
spell 663 says that the deceased has abundance through the fledgelings of Mafdet,
in which the fledgelings are possibly the instrument associated with her, inasmuch as
the deceased is said also here to have power over him who escaped from those who
follow him and to lasso him who would escape him, the abundance therefore being
derived by the deceased from the followers or attendants whose service s/he is able to
compel.
A curious spell (no. 59 in Borghouts) invokes Mafdet to cure a person of an illness
attributed to the malicious spell-casting of an enemy. A cake is to be baked in the
shape of a donkeys phallus, inscribed with the name of the enemy and his parents,
wrapped in fat and fed to a cat. The cat thus incarnates Mafdet, who is asked to Open
your mouth wide against that enemy, the male dead, the female dead and so on, the
attack having likely been carried out through necromancy. The spell refers to an
unknown myth, calling upon the ejaculation of the Furious One, which Mafdet seized in
that room wherein Isis rejoiced when the testicles of Seth were cut off. The Furious
One (imy-nehed-ef) is presumably Seth, the donkey phallus cake eaten by the cat
evidently the embodiment of the ejaculation Mafdet seizes. Mafdet and Seth were
pitted against one another in a myth of which we possess only a single fragment stating
that Seth intended to eat Mafdet in the presence of her mother Bast, (Papyrus
Louvre 3129); the latter part could also be read in the presence of Mut and Bast.
Here Mafdet is clearly not an ally of Seth, but it is interesting that the ejaculation of
the Furious One is nevertheless, together with that of Horus, called upon in the spell
to fight the demonic miasma afflicting the patient. There is possibly some reference
here to the myth of a homosexual encounter between Horus and Seth, as recounted in
the Conflict of Horus and Seth. Since ejaculation is typically used in magical spells like
this one to refer to the miasma itself (see, e.g., nos. 40 and 73 in Borghouts)though
this would never be the case with anything specifically linked to Horusit would seem
that Mafdet is here accorded the ability to turn a demonic agency to a beneficent
purpose.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Bernot, Denise et al., eds. 1962. La Lune: Mythes et Rites. Paris: ditions du Seuil.
Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]

Page 100 of 223

Gardiner, Alan. 1938. The Mansion of Life and the Master of the Kings Largess.
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 24.
Mahaf
Mahaf, literally ma-ha-ef, whose sight is behind him, is also known as Herefhaf, whose
face is behind him. Mahaf is the celestial ferryman, and he is depicted in his boat,
looking back over his shoulder. In PT utterance 270, the deceased asks Mahaf to ferry
me across in this ferry-boat in which you ferry the Gods, and demonstrates his
worthiness by affirming that no one living or dead makes accusations against him (the
deceased), nor does any duck or ox, who are cited either to represent collectively the
creatures of the water, the air and the land or because they are animals frequently
eaten by humans and thus have a right to accuse (see Griffiths 1991). In utterance
359, it is made clear that the journey in question is to the eastern side of the sky, the
side of dawn. This explains the address to Mahaf, Awake in peace, O Mahaf, and
perhaps his backward-looking gesture, for the journey in the ferry-boat represents a
rejuvenation, a virtual rolling back of time. The journey in the ferry-boat is from the
southern to the northern sky, across the Winding Waterway, which has been
identified with the ecliptic, to the imperishable circumpolar stars, which never set.
Sometimes references to the ferry-boat occur as a formalized element in
autobiographical funerary inscriptions. Hence the Sixth Dynasty autobiography of
Harkhuf (Lichtheim, vol. 1, p. 24), in addition to the standard elements, namely I have
given bread to the hungry, clothing to the naked, includes the statement, I brought
the boatless to land. Similarly, in BD spell 125 the deceased affirms that he has
supplied a ferry-boat to the boatless. The term which is used to refer to ferrying
someone across the river is literally to unite the land, i.e. to bring the two shores
together, is also used often to mean to bury. Hence to be ferried is in itself a symbol
of passing into the netherworld.
Later versions of the ferryman spells (e.g. CT spells 395-403 and BD 98-99) take the
form of an elaborate dialogue between the deceased and Mahaf. Mahaf quizzes the
deceased, sometimes in very cryptic terms, about his/her ritual or magical
qualifications, intentions, and esoteric knowledge, to which the deceased responds in
equally cryptic or ritualistic fashion. Particularly noteworthy about these spells are the
lengthy recitations of the parts of the boat and their identification with diverse
deities or divine potencies. These are usually introduced by a statement that the boat
has been disassembled, and in effect require the deceased to magically construct the
boat, part by part, out of the images and attributes of the Gods. The vehicle for the
deceased therefore is to be constructed out of his/her knowledge of myth and
iconography as well as his/her grasp of its significance. This understanding is
manifested in the ability to apply this esoteric knowledge to the practical purposes
symbolized by the construction of the boat. The ferry-boat spells therefore represent
in some sense the deceaseds appropriation for him/herself of the religious imagery and
Page 101 of 223

narratives taught to them, and is but one of the manifold expressions in the afterlife
literature of the fundamental Egyptian theme of the resurrection as being
accomplished through the summoning forth of the deceaseds own initiative or volition
from out of the inert passivity of death. A new perspective on such passages may be
offered by the Demotic Book of Thoth, a fragmentary speculative or initiatory text
which draws upon the afterlife literature without itself belonging to that genre. At one
point in the text (Jasnow and Zauzich, p. 306, 309-310), the aspirant to occult wisdom,
called the one-who-loves[or 'desires']-knowledge, recounts having received from
certain animals certain items which are identified with parts of a boat, a procedure
which appears to be the reverse of the one in the ferry-boat spells from the Coffin

Texts, as though the passage in the Book of Thoth equips the living with the parts to
be used to construct the ferry-boat after death.
In CT spell 474 (BD spell 153), Mahaf is not the ferryman, but rather the leader of the
fishermen who threaten to trap the deceased in their nets. This genre of spells
(represented by CT spells 473-481) is similar to that of the ferry-boat spells inasmuch
as it involves a more or less detailed identification of the parts of the fishing-boat and
the net with a series of deities or mythic images. They differ, however, from the
ferry-boat spells in that there is no dialogue between Mahaf and the deceased, or
between the deceased and any of the fishermen, due to the adversarial relationship
which is posited in these spells. Here, the ability to appropriate esoteric knowledge to
ones own purposes is demonstrated, not in the ability to constitute a vehicle for
oneself, but to transform something hostile into something beneficent. It should also
be noted that CT spell 548 and BD spell 93, without mention of Mahaf, refer to the
ferry-boat itself in a negative context, for they seek to prevent being taken and
ferried over to the east in order to carry out wrongful slaying on me in the festival of
those who rebel against me. These brief spells involve no discussion of the boats parts
or interaction with the ferryman.
Another change between the Pyramid Text version of the ferry-boat spell and that
found in the Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead is that in the latter it is actually a
figure named Aken who is to bring the ferry-boat once Mahaf has consented to rouse
him. This takes the place of the appeal in the version from the Pyramid Texts for
Mahaf himself to awake in peace and allows for the dialogue between Mahaf and the
deceased which is not a feature of the earlier text. In spell 775 in the Coffin Texts
Horus is in need of a ferry-boat, which is supplied by Isis, who also provides him food,
echoing the standardized autobiographical formula of having given food to the hungry
and a ferry-boat for the boatless. In this spell, however, it is Isis whom Horus asks to
come and row me, come and ferry me over, come and bring me to land at the great city
before Re.

Page 102 of 223

Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Cruz-Uribe, Eugene. On the meaning of Urk. I, 122, 6-8. In Egyptological Studies in
Honor of Richard A. Parker. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1986.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Griffiths, J. G. 1991. The Accusing Animals. In Religion und Philosophie im Alten
gypten. Leuven: Peeters.
Jasnow, Richard and Karl-Th. Zauzich. 2005. The Ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth.
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Mandulis
(Merwel, Merul) Mandulis is a Nubian God depicted anthropomorphically wearing the

hemhem crown, consisting of three atef crowns or bundles mounted on rams horns
with a uraeus (cobra) on either side, each surmounted by a solar disk, or as a humanheaded bird like the symbol for the ba or soul, wearing the same crown; he can also be
depicted as a child. A devotional inscription in Greek on the portico of the temple of
Mandulis at Talmis testifies to one Roman pilgrims experience of the God. The author,
one Maximus, recounts that, having beheld some radiant signs of thy [Mandulis']
power, he meditated on them, wishing to know with confidence whether thou
[Mandulis] art the Sun, (Nock, p. 366). Meditation, ascesis and incense offerings
resulted in a vision of Mandulis: Thou didst show me thyself going through the
heavenly vault; then washing thyself in the holy water of immortality thou appearedst
again. This vision was apparently followed by other manifestations: Thou didst come
at due season to thy shrine, making thy rising, and giving to thy image and to thy shrine
divine breath and great power. Noteworthy is the epithet Maximus applies to Mandulis,
Ain pantokrator, All-powerful Eternity.
Nock, Arthur Darby. 1972. A Vision of Mandulis Aion. Pp. 357-400 in Essays on
Religion and the Ancient World, Vol. I. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Mehen
Mehen, whose name means coiled one, is depicted as a serpent protectively encircling
Re or, by extension, Osiris. In the Amduat book, Mehen appears in the seventh hour,
that is, at approximately midnight in the nocturnal voyage of the solar bark,
surrounding Re in the middle register and Osiris in the upper register while they
oversee the punishment of their enemies. Mehen continues to encircle Re through the
Page 103 of 223

subsequent hours of the voyage. In CT spells 493 & 495, the deceased, claiming
knowledge of the secret matters of Mehen (a variant reads, after the great battle
of Mehen) is thereby empowered to guard the prisoners, that is, those who have
rebelled against the cosmic sovereignty. In the Book of Gates, Mehen is seen encircling
Re in each hour. In the so-called Enigmatic Book of the Netherworld from the tomb of
Tutankhamun, a large-scale mummiform figure in section A is depicted with a Mehen
serpent circling him at the head and at the feet. Both Mehen serpents are shown with
their tails in their mouths, an image which in later Western occultism would come to be
known as an ouroboros. In section B, six mummiform figures are encircled by Mehen
serpents as they receive illumination from disks immediately in front of them.
Spells 758-760 of the Coffin Texts speak of Mehen in a manner which makes him seem
virtually synonymous with Re. In the first place, reference is made to the bark of
Mehen where one might expect the bark of Re. Second, the Shining Sun, with paths
of fire around it, is said to guard the paths for the great bark of Mehen, whose bow
is said to be turned around. It is said that the bark of Mehen makes a circle in myriads
of myriads of years. If there is any sense to be made of a text which we perhaps
simply lack the skills to read properly, it could seem that the bark of Mehen embodies a
contra-solar motion on a period much longer than the daily or annual motions of the sun,
longer perhaps even than any of the known astral cycles. In a similar vein are the
descriptions in 759 of Mehens vast size. Res association with Mehen is underscored in
spell 759, which states As for this Mehen, he is the Mehen of Re, and Re is this
myriad of years, or eternity, heh. To link Re to Mehen in this fashion is perhaps to
stress the non-identity of Re and the sun, which facilitates one of the goals which
seems to be at the heart of much of the afterlife literature: mediating the opposition
between Re and Osiris, where Re represents the solar/celestial and Osiris the cthonic
realm, but more trenchantly where Re represents the cosmic and universal, Osiris the
individual and mortal, aspect of existence. Spell 760 supports this line of
interpretation, insofar as it speaks of Isis having brought Mehen to her son Horus,
upon which he becomes the repetition of the Lord of All. This epithet is frequently
applied to Re but is especially characteristic of Atum, and in CT spell 1130 it seems to
be Atum, under the name of Lord of All, who relates four good deeds which my own
heart did for me within Mehen in order that falsehood might be silenced. These four
are making the four winds that everyone might breathe in his time, making a great
flood, i.e. the Niles annual inundation so that the poor as well as the great might be
strong, making every man equal to his fellow, and forbidding them to do wrong, but
their hearts disobeyed what I had said, and finally making their hearts not to forget
the West, that is, to be aware of their mortality, the direction of the setting sun
being the symbol for mortality in Egyptian thought, in order to make offerings to the
Gods of the districts, that is, so that humans would maintain the traditional cults.
Mehen appears here as the vessel of a special aspect of Atums providence, one which

Page 104 of 223

stresses the equal access of all humans to the means of existence (the air to breathe),
prosperity (the abundant productivity of the earth), mutual respect, and divinity.
The name of Mehen was also applied to a board game in Egypt, the point of which seems
to have been to enact passing through the coils of Mehen to emerge reborn; hence the
deceased king affirms in PT utterance 332 I am this one who emerged from Mehen
(trans. modified in accord with Robert K. Ritner in JNES, Vol. 50, No. 3 (1991), p. 212).
A reference to the game itself has been discerned in PT utterance 659, where Ritner
reads (op. cit.), Take to yourself these white ivory pieces of yours belonging to the
Mehen game. Go around them with/as an arrow in this their name of arrow, in which
the phrase translated white ivory pieces is literally white teeth; thus in BD spell
172, in a passage divinizing various members of the body, Your teeth are the two
heads of the Mehen game with which the Two Lords played, would obviously refer to
the game pieces as well. The use of heads here could also suggest a connection to the
Mehen game for passages in the afterlife literature where the taking of heads is
mentioned.
Mehenyt
At several points in the Book of the Dead (spells 64, 168A, and 185K) a female
counterpart of the God Mehen is mentioned. Mehenyt, it would seem, is the Mehen
serpent belonging to Osiris rather than Re, as does Mehen. In spell 185K, Mehenyt is
associated with a ritual which is distinctly Osirian, namely the adorning of Osiris with
strips of linen in four colors. In spell 168A Mehenyt is invoked among the Gods of the
eleventh cavern of the netherworld, who veil the inert one while remaining secreted,
having been offered a portion on earth, i.e. while the deceased was alive or by the
living on his/her behalf, to make Osiris (N.) holy in the netherworld forever, while
They that are with Mehenyt, depicted as four female figures, having been similarly
supplied with offerings, are asked to let Osiris (N.) move about freely in the sacred
seat, that he may be beside the followers of Horus. In the twelfth cavern, where the
Gods are united with their visible forms, the Gods who are with Mehenyt, the same
provisions having been made as to their offerings, are asked to let Osiris (N.) be in any
place where his spirit wishes to be, while later in the same cavern the Gods who are in
the folds of Mehenyt, whose name, like Mehens, means the coiled one, are asked to
give sight of the disk [i.e. the sun] to Osiris (N.), offerings having been made to them
on earth by Osiris (N.) as a blessed one controlling his cool water. In spell 64, the
deceased asks his soul (ba) rhetorically Where, pray, art thou on blacked-out-moon
day while the corpse is silent? then goes on to affirm that I have come to see HimWho-Is-With-His-Mehenyt face to face and eye to eye. The wind rises at his ascent,
and torpidity stares me in the face. To be with his Mehenyt seems here to express
being at the very heart of the Osirian mystery, at the symbolic dark moon, at the
moment just prior to the resurrection, symbolized by the rising wind, when all is yet
utterly silent and still. Mehenyt can also be identified with the uraeus, the fire-spitting
Page 105 of 223

female cobra that sits on the brow of Re and other solar deities; on this identification
see David Lorton, The Invocation Hymn at the Temple of Hibis, Studien zur

Altgyptischen Kultur 21, 1994, pp. 179-181.

Mehet-Weret (Methyer)
Mehet-Werets name literally means Great Flood or Great Swimmer, and she
embodies the celestial waters navigated by the heavenly bodies, for Egyptians saw the
upper atmosphere and the heavens as a body of water with the horizons as its banks.
Mehet-Weret is usually depicted as a cow, with the solar disk between her horns, lying
on a reed mat or atop a shrine, with a blanket draped across her back and other marks
of divinity (e.g. a flail), but also as a cow-headed woman. Spell 17 of the Book of the

Dead describes Re as being born each day from between the buttocks of MehetWeret, and Mehet-Weret is also said to lift Re up between her horns. Mehet-Weret is
also mentioned in plural form, as the Celestial Cattle which are referred to in CT spell
407, for knowing the seven knots of the Celestial Cattle, the knots in question
perhaps being knots in a rope mooring the netherworld ferry-boat which are identified
with seven cattle addressed one by one in the spell, perhaps so as to untie the knots
and release the boat. These knots (thesu) may be understood as a herd of celestial
cattle descending from Mehet-Weret, and also as certain celestial potencies, in accord
with the wide semantic range of words based on the root thes- in Egyptian, for instance
vertebra, in light of a passage in spell 407 reading O you seven knots of the Celestial
Cattle may you grant supports for my bones, and also speeches, the seven stages
in the ordering of the cosmos brought about by the words of a demiurge, the range of
possible interpretations of the term corresponding to an inherent flexibility in Egyptian
cosmogony. Elsewhere these seven speeches are characterized as divine beings
devoted to the protection of Mehet-Weret (Esna, vol. 5, p. 268). In CT spell 691,
appeal is made to a Falcon rising from the Abyss, lord of the celestial cattle, who are
at first referred to as Mehet-Weret in plural form and later in the spell referred to as
seven knots. The knots/cattle are here wrathful deities who, if properly grasped
May you know me even as I know you, may you know my name even as I know your
names can nevertheless be beneficent, both after death and during life: May you
assign me to the life which is in your hands and the dominion which is in your grasp, may
you destine me to annual life, perhaps a reference to the annual birth of the calves?
may he [possibly the Falcon mentioned above] cause many years to be added to my
years of life many months many days many nights until I depart. MehetWerets own demiurgic activity consists in giving birth to Re and lifting him up between
her horns, this latter act sometimes characterized as having saved him from his
rebellious subjects; the more abstract aspects of the cosmogony associated with
Mehet-Weret are typically accorded to Neith, with whom Mehet-Weret is closely
linked.

Page 106 of 223

See also: The Book of the Celestial Cow: A Theological Interpretation, Eye of the
Heart: A Journal of Traditional Wisdom, No. 3, May 2009, pp. 73-99.
Mehyt
(Mehit, Mekhit) Mehyt, whose name is related to the word meaning full or to fill
(Coptic mouh)a term which is used to refer to the making full (again) of the wedjat,
or Eye of Horusand thus means the full one or who makes full, is depicted as a
lioness or lioness-headed woman. Mehyt features with her consort Onuris in what may
well be the original version of the important, although still not totally understood, myth
of the Distant Goddess, which involves a God bringing a Goddess back to Egypt with
him from a distant and semi-mythical land to the south, although this myth comes to be
more commonly articulated through the figures of Tefnut and Shu. Mehyt also displays
many characteristics typical of Goddesses such as Tefnut or Sekhmet who bear the
title Eye of Re and who wield destructive forcessymbolized variously by flames,
arrows (Mehyt is sometimes depicted wielding bow and arrow), demon hordes or simply
a deadly gazein defense of the cosmic order embodied by Re as solar sovereign; such
Goddesses may also be engaged in the defense of the integrity of mortal beings, as
symbolized by Osiris. These two modes of activity of wrathful Goddesses in Egyptian
theology, though often deliberately conflated, always remain distinct in principle.
Relative to this polarity Mehyt, although encompassing both, seems to be associated
more with the protection of Osiris than the protection of Re, and hence with the Eye
of Horus and the moon rather than the Eye of Re and the sun. Mehyt sometimes bears
the sign of the wedjat over her head.
A hymn to Mehyt from the temple of Horus at Edfu (Cauville) states that she protects
the regenerating manifestation [swadjba]. Swadjba is a frequent epithet of Shu, who
is identified with Onuris in versions of the myth of the Distant Goddess. Swadjba
incorporates the word wadj, green or healthy, which is the root of the term wedjat,
the healthy or restored Eye of Horus, thus swadjba means literally the ba [soul or
manifestation] who makes green/healthy <again>. This epithet is appropriate both to
Shu, who is the breath of life, as well as to Onuris, whose name identifies him literally
as the one who brings back the distant one. The hymn also fosters the identification
of Mehyt with Tefnut, Shus consort, by playing upon an alternate meaning of mehyt as
the north wind: thus Mehyt is a soul [ba] who resides in the north wind, who sails
toward the nose of her brother [i.e., husband], who refreshes the throats of humans.
In this hymn Mehyt is also fury in hand-to-hand combat and queen of the guardian
demons, who goes out from her temple to do battle against the enemies of the cosmic
order and of her mortal worshipers alike, then returns to be appeased by incense,
which holds a special significance in this context because incense and perfume
ingredients were characteristically imported from lands to the south of Egypt, that is,
the region from which the Distant Goddess is brought back, and also because Mehyts
Page 107 of 223

destructive power comes partly from her control over the nefu, a kind of airborne
miasma (Cauville p. 117f).
At her chapel at Edfu, Mehyt is associated with the Ennead [i.e., company of Gods]
who watch over Osiris and specifically with Nekhbet and Nephthys. Her protective
function is universalized when it is stated that her flame consumes the enemies of Re,
calcines the opponents of Horus [i.e., of the pharaoh], and roasts the adversaries of
Osiris, (Edfou I, 315). Mehyt is also named here as one of the four uraei, together
with Menhyt, Sekhmet and Nephthys. The uraeusprincipally the form of the Goddess
Wadjetis the fire-spitting cobra which symbolizes sovereignty, here distributed onto
diverse planes. The subtlety with which Egyptian theology articulates the notion of
divine wrath can be seen from the joyfulness attributed to Mehyt and other wrathful
Goddesses. Thus in one scene at Edfu, Mehyt is said to bestow upon Horus an ecstasy
exempt from sadness, (Edfou I, 460) while elsewhere it is said of her that her rage is
joyous, (Edfou II, 106), she is mistress of carnage, but who loves joy, mistress of
terror, but who loves to be appeased, (Edfou IV, 116).
Mehyt is also sometimes identified with the lepidotus fish, an identification fostered
by the similarity between her name and the word mehyt, fish, (cf. Hatmehyt), but the
significance of which is clearly not exhausted by the wordplay, and suggests a linkage
between the myth of the Distant Goddess and the myth of Osiris, in which a fish
consumes the Osirian phallus. One function of such myths appears to have been to
symbolically regulate the role of animal foods, such as fish, in human life. Mehyts
consort Onuris, in his role as divine hunter, features often in such a myth, involving the
desert hunt of an oryx which has stolen the Eye of Horus; Mehyts identification with a
fish may thus imply a parallel myth concerning fishers as hunters of the riverine
environment.
Cauville, Sylvie. 1982. Lhymne Mehyt dEdfou. Bulletin de linstitut franais

darchologie orientale 82: 105-125.

Menhyt
(Menhit) A Goddess depicted as a lioness-headed woman, Menhyts name has been
interpreted either as the Slayer or as She of the papyrus thicket, a reference to the
swamps emblematic of the Nile delta region in the north of Egypt. In the dual
organization which structures the symbolic conception of Egyptian sovereignty, Menhyt
is among the Goddesses invoked as principles of northern sovereignty and as defenders
of that sovereignty. In CT spell 952 Menhyt is called pre-eminent in the Mansions of
the Red Crown [i.e. of northern or Lower Egypt] who herself strews well-being, who
protects the Gods from those who would harm them. This power is transmitted to the
operator of CT spell 672, to open up the desert of the knives, where the operator is
said to have appeared in the presence of them of the West, the two Menhyts, and as
Page 108 of 223

a result cuts short the raging of any God, any spirit or any dead. In addition to her
role in the national pantheon, Menhyt has an important local role at Esna, where she has
Khnum as her consort, their child being Heka, the divine personification of magic. In a
hymn to Menhyt from Esna (Esna, vol. 5, p. 107), Menhyts name is esoterically
interpreted by a play on the words men, to remain, abide and hai, to shine, radiate,
which are taken together to allude to her as one of the Goddesses conceived as the
fire-spitting uraeus cobra on the brow of Re: She abides and streams with light upon
the head of Re, in this her name of Menhyt. Menhyt is never actually depicted as a
cobra; rather, her general posture as defender of the divine order evokes an
association with the primary Goddess of the uraeus, Wadjet.
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Sauneron, Serge. 1959-75. Esna. Cairo: Institut franais darchologie orientale.
Meret
(Merit) Meret, whose name means beloved, is the divine singer or musician, frequently
depicted as twins, the Merety, who may in turn be identified with pairs of Goddesses
such as Isis and Nephthys (for instance in CT spell 920) or Wadjet and Nekhbet.
Meret plays an important role in all manner of ceremonies, and her function therefore
transcends the strictly musical to encompass all the harmonies and rhythms of the
cosmos, arousing the Gods to action and accompanying their activities. In a certain
sense, Meret embodies the entire performative aspect of ritual. A degree of
uncertainty surrounds the apparent occurrence of the Merety in several spells from
the Coffin Texts (spells 440-443, 450) for driving off the mrwty, who are
companions of Re and who make health for Re daily (443), but who also threaten to
take away the deceaseds magic, or powers, or soul. To avoid this, it is apparently
necessary to identify with Re as well as to placate the Merety, as in spell 440: I am Re
I am the lord of these two mrwt You noble companions of Re who make Re healthy,
you possess what you have requested, you possess your joy. Drioton 1955 argues that
the Merety are to be understood in these texts as Res lovers, who would seduce and
disable their victim on Res behalf. The corresponding spell in the Book of the Dead (BD
spell 37) interprets the Merety as uraei, divine fire-spitting cobras dedicated to the
defense of Re, from whom the deceased secures protection (as in BD spell 41B as well)
by identifying with Horus, son of Osiris. In BD spell 58, a shortened version of a ferryboat spell, the ferryman asks, Who is that with thee? to which the deceased
responds, They are the two Merety, (similarly in BD spell 122).
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Drioton, Etienne. 1955. Le Mythe des Amies de R. Bibliotheca Orientalis Vol. 12, No.
2: 62-66.
Page 109 of 223

Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Meretseger
(Meresger) Meretseger, whose name means She who loves silence, is the Goddess of
the Theban necropolis, the Valley of the Kings. She is particularly embodied in the
mountain peak dominating the complex, from which she derives her common title the
Western Peak. Meretseger is depicted variously as a woman with a serpents head, a
serpent with a womans head, a serpent headed sphinx, or a serpent with auxiliary heads
of a woman and a vulture, and with a similar diversity of crowns. Most of what we know
of her cult comes from the testimonials of artisans who worked upon the royal tombs,
who testify to her at once wrathful and forgiving nature. A sacred serpent appears to
have been kept in honor of Meretseger, as is attested by the sarcophagus of one
(Lexikon vol. 4, p. 80).
Helck, Wolfgang and Eberhard Otto, eds. 1973. Lexikon der gyptologie. Wiesbaden:
Otto Harrassowitz.
Meskhenet
(Mesekhnet) Meskhenet is depicted anthropomorphically, with the sign of a stylized
bovine uterus above her head, or as the personification of the brick on which Egyptian
women traditionally squatted to give birth, in which case the brick itself is depicted
with a womans head. Meskhenet is associated with the destiny bestowed upon an
individual at birth, as is vividly demonstrated in a tale from the Westcar Papyrus. When
Lady Ruddedet is about to give birth to three sons who are to become the first three
kings of the Fifth Dynasty, Re sends Isis, Nephthys, Heqet, Meskhenet and Khnum to
preside over the births. Heqet facilitates the delivery, Isis gives to each child his
name, and Khnum bestows health upon them. Meskhenets role is to approach each child
as he is born and foretell his destiny: A king who will assume kingship in this whole
land, (Lichtheim, vol. 1, pp. 220-1). The Satire on the Trades, a text whose purpose is
to promote the scribal profession, states that the Meskhenet assigned to the scribe
promotes him in the council, (Lichtheim, vol. 1, p. 191). Here, ones Meskhenet is
apparently a talent one possesses innately. The Great Hymn to Khnum speaks of four
Meskhenets who accompany four forms of Khnum to repel the designs of evil by
incantations, (Lichtheim, vol. 3, p. 114) presumably at the time of birth. A series of
dedications at Hermopolis by Hatshepsut, attested in her Speos Artemidos inscription,
mentions Heqet, Renenutet and Meskhenet as having joined together to form
Hatshepsuts body; it has been postulated that in this grouping, Heqet is responsible
for initial conception, Renenutet with growth in the womb, and Meskhenet with the
delivery of the infant.

Page 110 of 223

A role in the afterlife as well for Meskhenet is implied by a fragmentary and cryptic
passage from the Pyramid Texts (PT utterance 667C) which speaks of something which
Meskhenet your [i.e., the deceased king's] mother has made, urging the deceased king,
whose seats are hidden, to Raise yourself collect your bones, gather your members
together, to Turn yourself about, and to overthrow the ramparts. Meskhenet must
either be presiding over a literal new birth for the deceased here or is continuing to
administer posthumously the destiny she bestowed upon the individual at birth. In a
spell for protection against infectious disease (no. 16 in Borghouts), the operator seeks
to repulse hostile powers by invoking a wrathful aspect of Meskhenet, affirming that I
am the horror that has come forth from Dep [Buto], Meskhenet who has come forth
from Heliopolis.
Mestjet
A Goddess mentioned just once, on a stela from the necropolis at Abydos, where she is
depicted as a lioness-headed woman wearing the crown of the solar disc and uraeus
(illustration in Quirke, p. 32). She bears the epithet Eye of Re, but any other
information about her is lacking except for what might be derived, albeit quite
speculatively, from her name.
The name Mestjet appears to be the same as a word for daughter that occurs notably
in utterance 263 of the Pyramid Texts, in which the king states I am ferried over to
the eastern side of the sky, and my sister is Sothis, my offspring [mstjwt] is the dawnlight [dwawt]. Mestjets evident solar associations could make her a plausible candidate
for this daughter, i.e., for the dawn, but on the stela she is referred to as Henut-

Mestjet. Henut, mistress, ruler (fem.), is usually followed by a genitive, so her

name/title would be Mistress of Mestjet. If it is not a question here of an unusual
intransitive usage of henuthence, Mistress Mestjetand if Mestjet is not the name
of a place, as it does not appear to be, then the title would seem to designate her as
the ruler of the daughter in question, and thus as Mistress of the Dawn.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Quirke, Stephen. 2001. The Cult of Ra: Sun-Worship in Ancient Egypt . New York:
Thames & Hudson.
Mihos
(Mahes, Miysis) Mihos is depicted as a lion or lion-headed man, and when depicted as a
lion, frequently holds a knife in his paws and sits in front of a clump of lotus flowers. In
his fully leonine form Mihos may also be depicted mauling a captive enemy. Mihos, who
is conceived as the son of Sekhmet or of Bast, appears frequently as a guardian on the
jambs of temple doorways. In one such place, the accompanying inscription reads, To
Page 111 of 223

be said by Mihos: I enter against them [i.e., entities or forces inimical to the temple's
function], my hands holding the knife, in this my name of Raging Lion, (Zabkar, p. 56).
A late period amulet bears an inscription in Greek to Mihos, who is referred to as
flashing and thundering God, Lord of darkness and of the winds, acting quickly; a God
who listens, most glorious, lion-shaped, whose name is Mihos, Mihos, Harmios (HorusMihos), Osiris-Mihos, Re the great God, light, fire and flame. The references to
Horus- and Osiris-Mihos may refer to the practice of keeping a sacred lion in honor of
Mihos, who while living was Horus-Mihos and at death became Osiris-Mihos, since we
know that at Leontopolis there was a sacred tomb of the lions, (ibid., p. 150 n. 99).
Zabkar, Louis V. 1975. Apedemak, Lion God of Meroe: A Study in Egyptian-Meroitic

Syncretism. Warminster: Aris & Phillips.

Min
(Menu; in older literature sometimes incorrectly Amsu) Min is depicted as a man
with a large erect penis which he holds with his left hand while his right arm is raised,
with a flail poised over it. While it might be expected that his raised arm is brandishing
the flail, in fact the flail (in Egyptian nekhakha) is never shown gripped in his hand. It
has been suggested, therefore, that the flail represents a power emanating from Mins
upraised hand itself, a common epithet of Mins being who raises his arm. While earlier
generations of scholars inferred from Mins erect penis that his principal function was
fertility, it has recently been argued that Mins upraised arm and erect penis are, in
fact, both manifestations of his protective function, a form of display known as phallic
intimidation (Ogdon 1985). The same flail is also seen poised over images of the
recumbent Anubis or recumbent bovine-form deities, as well as occurring in the
hieroglyphic determinative for nobility, which shows a seated or kneeling man grasping
the flail. Min wears a crown with tall plumes atop it and streamers hanging from its
back, and is dressed in the wrappings of a mummy. The plumes on Mins crown also
appear to be paradigmatic, for we read in CT spell 335, I am Min in his goings out, I
have set the two plumes on my head, and again in 371, my plumes are on my head like
Min of Coptos. The latter spell is for eating bread in the netherworld, and thus the
plumes could represent the stems of wheat or barley plants, pointing to an association
of Min with agricultural fertility. In a passage from the Pyramid Texts (PT utterance
667A), however, the plumes seem to be represent the power of flight: the deceased
king is urged to raise yourself as Min; fly up to the sky and live with them [the Gods],
cause your wings to grow with the feathers on your head and your feathers on your
arms.
One of Mins most important associations is with the eastern desert, where Egyptians
went to quarry stones of every kind under Mins protection, in particular from the
often-hostile tribes of the region. This association with the eastern desert means that
Min is frequently invoked as representing the direction of the east in general and the
Page 112 of 223

eastern horizon. The sunrise therefore probably contributes to the symbolism of Mins
erection and of his raised arm as well. In PT utterance 673 it is said that you [the
deceased] give orders to the sun-folk as Min who is in his house, while the general
sense of rising is conveyed by BD spell 170, for raising the bier, which states O
Osiris N., Min of Coptos lifts thee, and the Gods of the shrine adore thee. Min is
frequently depicted housed in his own shrine, perhaps alluding to his role as guardian of
the gates and doors of temples. It has been suggested that an enigmatic symbol
associated with Min from the earliest period of Egyptian history represents a doorbolt, and indeed in PT utterance 313 the door-bolt of the doors of the sky is imagined
as the phallus of Babi, a similarly ithyphallic deity (Wilkinson 1991). Min is also known as
protector of the moon during its vulnerable dark phase ( La Lune, 46-48).
Min is frequently identified with Horus, either as Horus-Min or Min-Horus, or by simple
substitution. Hence the ancient commentary on the passage from CT spell 335, quoted
above, identifies Min in his goings out as Horus, Protector of his father, and his
two plumes as his [Horus'] two great plumes variant manuscripts read his great
uraeus or uraei (fire-spitting cobras) which were on the head of his father [i.e.,
Horus' ancestor] Atum. The identification of Min and Horus means that Min is
frequently characterized as the son of Isis. In one magical spell (no. 95 in Borghouts),
however, Min is said to be the son of the White Sow who is in Heliopolis, which may
refer to Isis or to an archaic Goddess originally associated with Min whose identity
eludes us. Min is particularly identified with Horus in an episode from the Conflict of
Horus and Seth, in which Seth, after attempting to prove his superiority over Horus to
the divine tribunal by implicating Horus in a homosexual encounter in which Seth was
the dominant partner, is instead tricked into consuming the semen of Horus himself.
When called forth by Thoth, the semen shows its presence by a solar disk appearing
over Seths head. Thus an offering scene at Edfu urges Min to cause your seed to
enter the body of the enemy, that he may be pregnant, and that your son may come out
from his forehead, (Ogdon, 33f). The characteristic offering to Min is lettuce, the
milky juice of which Egyptians compared to semen. Hence, in the scene from Edfu cited
above, the pharaoh is depicted offering lettuce to Min and says to him, Take for
yourself the beautiful green plants which are with me, that you may cast the sacred
fluid which is in it.
It is interesting to note that although one might expect Min to be an essentially
masculine deity, CT spell 967, which comes from a womans sarcophagus, affirms that
My phallus is that of Min.
Ogdon, Jorge. 1985. Some Notes on the Iconography of the God Min. Bulletin of the

Egyptological Seminar 7.
Wilkinson, Richard. 1991. Ancient Near Eastern Raised-arm Figures and the
Iconography of Min. Bulletin of the Egyptological Seminar 11.
Page 113 of 223

Mnevis
Mnevis (written in Egyptian Mer- or Men-Wer), is one of the great sacred bulls of
Egypt, along with Apis and Buchis. Like these others, the God Mnevis was incarnate in a
living bull who supplied oracles as a herald of the Gods while he was alive and who was
upon death interred with great ceremony and worshiped in Osirianized form. Upon the
death of the previous sacred bull, a new one was selected based upon certain criteria.
In the case of Mnevis, the bull was to be completely black. Aelianus ( De Natura
Animalium XII, 11) states also that the Mnevis bull, which he knows under the name
Onuphis, was of exceptional size, that its hair grew the opposite way to that on
ordinary bulls, and that it was fed on alfalfa. The sacred bull had also a bovine harem,
which in the case of Mnevis consisted in particular of principal wives identified with
Hathor and with Iusas. The mother of the sacred bull was herself seen as divine, and
the mother of the Mnevis bull was identified with Hesat. The center of the cult of
Mnevis was Heliopolis, and Mnevis was regarded as the herald of Re. For reasons which
are unknown, it appears that the cult of Mnevis continued to receive state sanction
during the reign of the heretical pharaoh Akhenaten, who attempted to stamp out the
cults of the traditional Gods in favor of his single God, the Aten or visible disk of the
sun.
A mythological text from the Delta (Brooklyn papyrus 47.218.84, 5) accords to Mnevis
the role of transporting the gathered members of Osiris from Athribis to Heliopolis, a
journey in the course of which Osiris is reconstituted. Something more akin to
incarnation than transportation is suggested, however, by the statement at one point
that his [Osiris's] members are inside him [Mnevis]. Elsewhere the text states that
the members of Osiris are bound to Mnevis, his name being interpreted in this context
as mr-wr, the firmly bound one. When the text speaks of the Osirian members as
bound to Mnevis, it states that they are wrapped in a panther skinthe ritual
garment the sem-priest wears on his shouldersand the skin of a khens[ui] bull, and
identifies them with the four sons of Horus.
The deceased king identifies himself with Mnevis in PT utterance 408 when he says
What is desired, of which is given, is what I give, for I am the Bull of n [Iunu,
Heliopolis]. In PT utterance 485A, the king states, I have come to you, my father, I
have come to you, O Re, a calf of gold born of the sky, a fatted calf of gold which
Hesat created. In CT spell 404, a spell to constitute the netherworld ferry-boat,
various leather portions of the boat are said to be made from the skin of the Mnevis
bull. Since the ferry-boat is a soul vehicle, this has virtually the same meaning as the
straightforward identification, albeit in more colorful form. In spell 784, To go out
into the day, the Souls of Heliopolis say, O N., our son, our beloved, we have
commanded that you go in to us and rest in our peace. Mnevis grants ascent to the sky
and the Netherworld is opened up for the term of eternity. Mnevis is mentioned
several times in the Greek Magical Papyri. At PGM IV. 140 he is mentioned, along with
Page 114 of 223

Apis, in an erotic spell; at IV. 2994, an herb-gathering spell, the fibers of the plant to
be picked are identified with the bones of Mnevis; and at XIXa. 7f, another erotic
spell, Mnevis, Apis and Buchis are invoked together, all in Osirianized form (hence
Osor Mneuei, Osarapi and Osor Nobchis,) along with Onuphis (Osor Nophris),
generally regarded as identical to Mnevis. Apis and Mnevis are mentioned together in
the Instruction of Papyrus Insinger, in a chapter teaching against seeking retaliation.
The person who has been wronged is advised instead to seek justice from the Gods and
from the authorities, for Apis and Mnevis abide at the window of Pharaoh forever.
They will do good to him who will listen to these words, (Lichtheim, vol. 3, p. 213).
Plutarch (Isis and Osiris 364c) records that some regarded Mnevis as in some sense
the father of Apis. It has been claimed that Mnevis and Apis are to be understood by
the reference to the two bulls in Egypt, identified with the sun and moon, of the late
Gnostic text On the Origin of the World (122) (Lexikon 4, p. 166).
Betz, H. D. 1992. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. 2d ed. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [PGM, PDM]
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Helck, Wolfgang and Eberhard Otto, eds. 1973. Lexikon der gyptologie. Wiesbaden:
Otto Harrassowitz.
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Meeks, Dimitri. 2006. Mythes et Lgendes du Delta: daprs le papyrus Brooklyn

47.218.84. Cairo: Institut franais darchologie orientale.

Quirke, Stephen. 2001. The Cult of Ra. New York: Thames & Hudson.
Montu
(Month) Montu is usually depicted as a hawk-headed man, wearing a crown with two tall
plumes, a solar disk and uraeus, and often wielding the scimitar or khepesh. Warrior
kings of the New Kingdom frequently identify themselves with Montu, for example in
the famous inscriptions of Ramses II describing the Battle of Kadesh against the
Hittites in Syria (trans. in Lichtheim, vol. 2, pp. 57-72), where the king is repeatedly
compared to Montu or identified as Montus son. A fragmentary papyrus gives a
putatively first-person account of Montus intervention on behalf of Tuthmosis III in
battle against the Syrians, a trinity of Montu Gods coming to the pharaohs aid in the
form of a wind: Let one of the hostile winds come to me, while three Montus are in it,
being hidden Montu, lord of Hermonthis, was at my right arm; Montu, lord of Djerty
[Tuphium] at my <left?> and Montu, lord of Thebes, exterminated them in front <of
me>, (A Fragment of the Story of a Military Expedition of Tuthmosis III to Syria (P.
Turin 1940-1941), Giuseppe Botti, JEA 41 (1955), p. 66). Montu was also incarnate in
Page 115 of 223

the sacred Buchis bull. Montus consorts are Tjennet, Iunyt, and Raettawy. The
modern name of the town of Armant (Coptic Ermont), where Montus primary cult
center was located, preserves his memory.
The earliest references to Montu speak of him not as a warrior God, but as a God of
the sky and stars. PT utterance 503 affirms, When Montu is high, I will be high with
him; when Montu runs, I will run with him, and utterance 555 says I have gone up to
the sky as Montu. Utterance 412 combines the astral theme of transposing the
deceased king to his new life among the stars with a suggestion of the martial potential
of Montu: after identifying the deceased king with Orion and Sirius, the spell says,
May the terror of you come into being in the hearts of the Gods like the lock of hair
which is at the head of the Montu-stars, (trans. mod; Faulkner sees in the passage a
reference, rather, to the hairstyles of certain similarly-named tribesmen). Even after
Montus image as a warrior God was firmly established, his celestial aspect is recalled in
his occasional characterization as son of Nut, (Notes sur le dieu Montou, Fernand
Bisson de la Roque, BIFAO 40 (1941), p. 23). Montu is sometimes joined with Seth:
Montu and Seth are the magical protection to the right and the left of the king,
(ibid., p. 25).
A spell (no. 2 in Borghouts) to repel a physical attack invokes Montu. The operator
addresses a clump of earth in his hand, calling Montu, the star of the Gods, to come
to him, identifying himself with Montu, and then, presumably speaking in the voice of
Montu, promising to take away the opponents strength and to put it into my hand,
that is, like the clump of earth. The God who lends to the pharaoh his prowess in
combat could thus be invoked to do the same on behalf of an ordinary person.
Mt
Mut, whose name means mother, is usually depicted either anthropomorphically,
wearing a vulture headdress and the double crown of Egypt united the only Goddess
to wear this crown regularly or as a lioness-headed woman. Although the hieroglyphic
sign of the vulture forms her name, she is not a vulture Goddess like Nekhbet; rather,
the vulture headdress serves, as in the case of other Goddesses who wear it, to signify
her maternal quality. In the Instruction of Papyrus Insinger, the author remarks that
the work of Mut and Hathor is what acts among women, (Lichtheim, vol. 3, p. 192)
expressing his attitude that the contrasting maternal and sexual drives dominate the
female psyche. Muts consort is Amun, with whom she is the mother of Khonsu. From
the time of Hatshepsut onward, Mut is also regarded as the mother of the pharaoh.
She almost always bears the epithet weret, or great, which, interestingly, when
combined with mut can be read as grandmother. Mut is said to be the mother who
became a daughter, or the daughter-mother who made her begetter, expressing a
power of self-creation similar to that expressed for Amun by the epithet kamutef, bull
of his mother, meaning one who is his own father. Related to this aspect of Mut may be
Page 116 of 223

depictions of her with an erect penis, indicating her capacity to create herself anew as
her own daughter. BD spell 164 is to be said over such an image, specifically an image of
Mut having three faces one like the face of Pakhet, that is, the face of a lioness,
wearing twin plumes, another like a human face wearing the White Crown and the Red
Crown, Muts normal aspect another like a vultures face wearing twin plumes and
a phallus and wings, with a lions claws. This image of Mut is to be flanked by a pair of
dwarfs, each of whom has the faces of a human and a hawk, an erect penis and
brandishes a flail in his upraised arm, these two elements echoing the iconography of
Min and of Amun-Kamutef. Muts cyclical aspect is linked to the cyclicality of the lunar
God Khonsu, who is each month conceived the day of the new moon brought into the
world on the second day of the month, [and] becomes an old man after the fifteenth
day, (La Lune, p. 43). Hence Mut is said to be the mother of her father who brought
forth the light anew, i.e., at the new moon. But if Khonsu is impotent in the waning
phase, as a hymn to Khonsu makes clear when it affirms that he is a bull in the waxing
phase and an ox, i.e., castrated, in the waning phase ( La Lune, ibid.), Mut must
supplement the phallus herself. This would be analogous to the act of Isis magically
supplying the missing phallus of Osiris in order to conceive Horus. In another phallic
connection, PT utterance 205 affirms that the deceased king has copulated with Mut,
written with a determiner indicating fluids which connects her with a word for semen.
An extraordinary work undertaken in honor of Mut is the so-called Crossword Hymn to
Mut, designed to be read in three directions. In this long hymn, Mut absorbs the
attributes of many other Goddesses. Her distinctive character of mother/daughter
emerges, however, in passages like these: His [Amun-Re's] daughter lives in his sight,
she having appeared as his mother, and he being protected because of her, (19
vertical). The protective function exercised by Mut here is both essentially hers, in
common with other deities envisioned as lionesses, wrathful deities who defend life and
the cosmic order, and a result of her identification in this hymn with the uraeus, the
protective cobra perched upon the brow of Re as his special protection. Characteristic
of Mut are the explicit references to her rejuvenation of herself: Her limbs are
rejuvenated Re of Heliopolis recognizes her as his daughter, (20 vertical); her
name of She who becomes rejuvenated, (54 vertical). Particular to Mut as well is the
juxtaposition between the hiddenness of her consort (Amun, literally the Hidden) and
her own manifestness: The lord of eternity sits while she acts by means of her word,
(13 vertical). She is the manifest energy of the sun itself: The Ennead sees by means
of her rays every day, (44 vertical); Indeed, she is this light of day, the great one
who endures through her name, i.e. of Mut, mother (46 vertical); the noble sun-disk,
who is in the heart, the sole one, whose face is the light, (54 vertical).
One of Muts most important epithets is Mistress of the Asheru [or Ishru]. The term

asheru refers to a crescent-shaped sacred lake in which wrathful Goddesses were

appeased. While the most famous asheru was Muts at Karnak, there were also asheru
Page 117 of 223

of Wadjet near Memphis, of Bast at Bubastis, and of Sekhmet at Memphis (H. te

Velde, Towards a Minimal Definition of the Goddess Mut, Jaarbericht Ex Oriente Lux
26 (1979-80), p. 7).
Naunet
The Abyss (fem.), a Goddess belonging to the Hermopolitan Ogdoad. Naunet is the
feminine complement to Nun, occurring together with him in contexts such as PT
utterance 301, where the two of them are said to protect the Gods with your shadow,
or utterance 606, in which the resurrected king, identified with the sun, is enthroned
with Shu to his east, Tefnut to his west, Nun to his south and Naunet to his north.
Naunet is possibly regarded as personifying the nether sky, the sky traversed by the
sun through the night. References in the Pyramid Texts to a place called nnt include PT
utterance 218, in which the kings authority in the afterlife is affirmed over earthdwellers of the west, east, south and north, then over those in the nnt; utterance
222, in which the king is urged by the officiating priest to go down with Atum,
discern the needs of the nnt and succeed to the thrones of Nun; and utterance 548,
in which the king crosses the Winding Waterway (thought to designate the ecliptic)
to the Field of the nnts, or nether skies, which are situated temporally and perhaps
spatially before the Field of Reeds, which in turn lies temporally just prior to the
sunrise, and so the nether sky or nether skies would presumably, in lying before it, lie
deeper in the night. Naunet is also sometimes characterized straightforwardly as
mother of Re.
Allen, J. P. 1989. The Cosmology of the Pyramid Texts. In J. P. Allen, et al., eds.

Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Nebtu
(Nebetu; not to be confused with Nbd(w), an epithet meaning Noxious One, e.g. in
spells 138 and 152 of the Book of the Dead, which is however sometimes written
Nebtu) Nebtu, whose name means Mistress of the region/district, perhaps with the
sense of countryside, is the consort of Khnum at Esna together with Menhyt. Her
litany from the temple at Esna (Sauneron, Esna VIII, pp. 27-31) seems to associate her
especially with the growth of all edible plants and the nourishing function of the land.
Sauneron, Serge. 1982. Esna VIII: Lcriture Figurative dans les Textes dEsna . Cairo:
IFAO
Nefertum

Page 118 of 223

(Nefertem) Nefertums name is most likely to be interpreted as that which is

beautifully completed, that is, perfected or actualized (the - tum ending is the same as
the name of Atum). The consistent element in his iconography is the blue lotus,
Nymphaea caerulea, which was highly popular in Egypt for decoration, for its fragrance,
and as offerings to the Gods. It has also recently been alleged that the blue lotus may
have been used as a narcotic, though this has now been disputed (Counsell 2008).
Whatever may be the truth of this claim, the smelling of the lotus flower is used in
Egyptian iconography to symbolize the enjoyment of sensual pleasure in its most
exalted form. In PT utterance 249 Nefertum is the lotus-bloom which is at the nose
of Re, who will issue from the horizon daily and the Gods will be cleansed at the sight
of him. In this utterance the deceased king identifies himself with Nefertum: I am
this zeshzesh-flower [lotus] which sprang up from the earth [BD spell 174: "I am this
lotus that shines in the earth"] and I am at the nose of the Great Power. The lotus,
as a flower that grows in water, symbolizes the emergence of the cosmos from the
watery abyss and the beauty of the forms borne upon its ever-shifting surface.
Regarding these forms, the Egyptians do not emphasize their aspect of impermanence,
but rather their aspect of being always new, and therefore signify them through
deities depicted in the form of children. PT utterance 307 speaks of the formative era
when Re was ruler of the Two Enneads and the ruler of the plebs was Nefertum. Here
Res sovereignty over the Gods (signified in the unknown number of their totality by
the idealization Two Enneads) is paralleled in the realm of mortals by the sovereignty
of Nefertum during the childhood of humanity. However, it may be the implication of
impermanence, of fleetingness, that makes of Nefertum at times an object of
apprehension. Thus in CT spell 335, Re is asked to save the operator from that God
whose shape is hidden who puts bonds on the evildoers at his slaughterhouse, who
kills souls, which is explained in one of the ancient commentaries as referring to
Nefertum, son of Sekhmet the Great [or 'son of Bast' in one of the glosses from the
version in BD spell 17], he who uses his arm, i.e. to smite. Nefertum can be depicted as
a man wearing a lotus headdress or as a child seated on a lotus, or as a lion-headed man
or a lion devouring an enemy. In these leonine forms Nefertum has often a hawk on his
head which itself wears the lotus headdress. Nefertum may also be mummiform, or
carrying a curved sword or khepesh, or standing on a recumbent lion. He is most often
considered the son of Sekhmet and Ptah, but also frequently of Bast, a connection
which is probably responsible for his occasional depiction accompanied by a cat.

CT spell 295, for becoming a scribe of the altars of Hathor, names this scribe as
Ihmos, son of Nefertum. The association with Nefertum makes sense for one who is,
as it were, tallying the things consecrated to the Goddess of beauty and pleasure. CT
spell 571, To build a mansion among the waters, states that As for these mansions
among the waters of sky and earth, if my wish to come to them be not granted, sky and
earth will be trodden down, and the hebennet which is in front of the house of
Nefertum will be trodden down, the hebennet being a type of offering-cake
Page 119 of 223

(mentioned as well in CT spell 39 and PT utterance 158). The point in such a statement
is not to pose a threat, but to establish an equivalency. The permanent position which
the operator seeks amidst the waters is itself the offering which is rendered to
Nefertum; its impossibility would render impossible, in turn, the recognition of
Nefertums divinity, if we understand him to embody the idealized beauty and
perfection of things in themselves impermanent. Assuming the form of the lotus, which
is smelled and enjoyed by the Gods themselves, is to constitute this offering. Hence
BD spell 81, for assuming the form of a lotus, has the operator affirm that I am this
pure lotus that has ascended by the sunlight and is at Res nose. I spend my time
shedding the sunlight on Horus. I am the pure lotus that ascended from the field.
Here the lotus of Nefertum is an intermediary between Re, the principle of cosmic
order, and Horus, the principle of social order, vindicator of his father, that is, of the
mortal as such. To identify with the lotus in this context is thus to identify with what
is most noble and holy in mortal being, and which gratifies the Gods themselves.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Counsell, David J. 2008. Intoxicants in Ancient Egypt? opium, nymphea, coca and
tobacco. Pp. 195-215 in A. R. David, ed., Egyptian Mummies and Modern Science.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT].
Nehebkau
(Nehebu-kau) Nehebkaus name means either He who harnesses/yokes the kas, or,
more conceptually, Bestower of dignities or Appointer of positions; sometimes his
name is written with ka in the singular. The term ka is frequently translated as double,
for it may be depicted as a twin, or as spirit, but it has a wide semantic range, from
the most concrete, e.g., food, to the most ideal, e.g., the essence or nature of
something (or, more typically, someone), with its most representative usages falling
somewhere in the middle of this continuum. Somethings ka is the source of its being
what it is and of its continuance in the state of being what it is, whether this source be
viewed in a more refined sense, which yields the notion of somethings essence or
someones personality, or in a more immediate and tangible sense, which yields the
notion of ones livelihood, or the set of circumstances allowing for one to be successful.
Nehebkau is depicted as a serpent of indefinite species (but in any event not an uraeus
cobra) or as a serpent-headed man, or as a serpent with human arms and legs.
Sometimes the serpent form of Nehebkau is shown with two heads at the front and a
Page 120 of 223

head where his tail would be. In his humanoid form, Nehebkau may hold a snake in each
hand. His typical consort is Serket, who is also sometimes regarded as his mother;
otherwise, Renenutet is identified as his mother. Nehebkau is also linked conceptually
with Nehmetaway, inasmuch as she bears the epithet nehbet-ka, the feminine form of
Nehebkaus name but for ka being in the singular, in her function as Goddess of justice.
Nehebkau sometimes appears on the thrones of statuettes of Sekhmet and Bast,
indicating that his functions literally support theirs.
In PT utterance 229, the fingernail of Atum is said to have pressed down on the
vertebrae of Nehebkau, and thus to have stilled the turmoil in Unu [Heliopolis]. In PT
utterance 263, four divinities who are possibly the four sons of Horus, are to tell my
good name [the deceased king is speaking] to Re and announce me to Nehebkau, so that
my entry may be greeted. PT utterance 308 could be interpreted as stating that
Nehebkau is understood as the son of Serket; at any rate, the affirmation, which is
directed to the two daughters of the four Gods who preside over the Great Mansion,
is that I have looked on you as Nehebkau looked on Serket, and stands parallel to
affirmations that I have looked on you as Horus looked on Isis and as Sobek looked
on Neith. But since the divinities in question are simply to come forth at the voice to
me [the deceased king], being naked, it cannot be said with authority what the king
intends to do with them, and the relationship between Nehebkau and Serket could be
sexual rather than filial. In PT utterance 510 the deceased king identifies with
Nehebkau, multitudinous of coils. In PT utterance 609, the four divinities of
utterance 263 will raise up this good utterance of yours to Nehebkau when your
daughter has spoken to you, and Nehebkau will raise up this good utterance of yours to
the Two Enneads, i.e. all the Gods, represented by the doubling of the ideal number
nine. In PT utterance 727, Nehebkau apparently takes the poison of a snake instead of
the deceased king, for it is said that Nehebkau burns with the poison.

CT spells 84-88 are particularly important for understanding Nehebkau because they
belong to the genre of transformation spells (i.e. for invoking the God). Spell 84 refers
to Serket again, although some variants substitute Seshat (an error?). Serket is said to
have become pregnant by the operator, who is identified with Nehebkau. She is angry
with him, and possibly attacks him. The operator claims to have made something
between the Goddesss thighs as [like] Him-whose-head-is-raised, a term for a
serpent, indicating either Serket/Seshats pregnancy, state of arousal or, if it is
indeed Serket, who is depicted as a scorpion, perhaps her preparedness to strike. The
result for the operator, however, is beneficial: I have surpassed the spirits, I have
surpassed the sages, and I have said that they shall make for me a standing-place by
reason of it. CT spell 85 refers to a motif frequent in connection with Nehebkau, the
idea that he swallowed seven uraei (the cobras who spit fire in defense of Re); CT spell
374 states that these uraei became seven of Nehebkaus vertebrae. A more abstract
theme which emerges in these spells is of Nehebkau as one who in some fashion
Page 121 of 223

embodies the collective powers (kas) of the Gods. Thus in CT spells 86 and 87,
Nehebkau is the great Ennead of Atum, that is, the manifold of Gods proceeding from
Atum, or the Bull [a pun, for ka='bull'] of the Tribunal of Atum or of the Enneads,
that is, the manifold-of-manifolds of Gods. Similar is spell 88s claim that Nehebkau
obeys no magic.

CT spell 762 conceives Nehebkau as the son of Renenutet and Geb, and articulates
further Nehebkaus conceptual relationship to the other Gods: You [the deceased as
Nehebkau] are indeed the ka of every God Stand up; Horus has greeted you, for he
recognizes you as the ka of all the Gods; there is no God who has not his ka in you.
Nehebkau thus embodies something, perhaps the very concept of the ka as such,
without which the Gods could have no kas; it is a matter of a necessary condition, if not
the sufficient condition, for the Gods mode of being. Similarly, CT spell 647 affirms
that Nehebkau grants souls, crownings, kas and beginnings. In CT spell 1076, this is
expressed by stating that Nehebkau eats his fathers [and] his mothers, and
swallowed the Hehu, that is, the Chaos-Gods who constitute the members of the
Hermopolitan Ogdoad and who represent the state of formlessness prior to the
emergence of the cosmos.
The Book of the Dead mentions Nehebkau as present in the day bark with Re ( BD spell
15A1), thus lending his powers to the maintenance of cosmic order. Nehebkau is also
among the deities cited in the so-called Negative Confession of BD spell 125; Allen
translates the denial delivered to him as O uniter of attributes [i.e., Nehebkau] who
came forth from the city, I have not made distinctions (of others) from myself, (p.
99) perhaps with a degree of speculative excess. In BD spell 17, the deceased says, I
fly as a hawk, I have cackled as a goose, I destroy eternity like Nehebkau. The first
part of the formula, involving the hawk and the goose, is familiar from a variety of
contexts, while the reference to destroying eternity perhaps means that identifying
with Nehebkau grants the deceased a power of persistence and renewal more durable
than eternity itself.
Nehebkaus occurrence in amulets and magical spells indicates that he was assumed to
exercise a protective function for the living individual as well. A spell against infectious
disease (no. 18 in Borghouts) is to be said over Sekhmet, Bast, Osiris and Nehebkau,
drawn in myrrh on a bandage of fine linen, and applied to a persons throat. In another
spell (no. 87), Nehebkau is characterized as prominent in the Palace, who restores
people to life with the work of his arms, a phrase which is interesting insofar as the
hieroglyphic sign for ka is a pair of outstretched arms.
Shorter, Alan W. 1935. The God Nehebkau. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 21: 4148.
Nehmetaway
Page 122 of 223

(Nehemet-awai, Nahmauit) Nehmetaway is depicted anthropomorphically, usually in a

fashion similar to Hathor, sometimes with a sistrum over her head, and frequently
nursing an infant identified with Horus. Her consort is Thoth, and her close association
with him can sometimes lead to Nehmetaway being depicted as ibis-headed. In his
biographical inscription, Petosiris of Hermopolis, a high priest of Thoth (late fourthearly third century BCE) records having built a temple to Nehmetaway, the one whomade-what-is, (Lichtheim, vol. 3, p. 47). Her name means Rescuer of the one who is
robbed. For this reason some have seen a reference to Nehmetaway in the deity
Plutarch refers to as the first of the Muses at Hermopolis, whom they call Isis as
well as Justice [Dikaiosun], (Isis and Osiris 352B). The earliest known reference to
Nehmetaway is in the Speos Artemidos inscription of the pharaoh Hatshepsut, in which
Hatshepsut expresses a special bond with her, calling her nehbet-ka-i, bestower of my
position, who said: Hers [i.e., Hatshepsut's] is heaven and earth! (Goedicke, 63). This
epithet links Nehmetaway conceptually with Nehebkau.
Nehy
(Neheh) Nehy is depicted, in what has been argued by Alan R. Schulman to be the sole
surviving pictorial representation of him, as a guinea fowl with a solar-disk-and-uraeus
headdress, being worshiped alongside Ptah. In PT utterance 301, the deceased king
petitions four of the primeval Gods of Hermopolis (usually thought of as an ogdoad), as
well as Atum, Shu and Tefnut, to allow him, since he has made the proper offerings to
them, to permit him to cross over to Nehy at the horizon, Nehy being called Lord of
the Year the Ready Fighter, Horus who is over the stars of the sky who brings Re
to life every day; he refashions the King and brings the King to life every day. In CT
spell 307/BD spell 153B the deceased affirms I am a guinea fowl; I am Re who came
forth out of the Nun in this my name of Khepri, and later in the version from the
Coffin Texts, I am invoked in the Ennead [i.e. the Egyptian pantheon in general, but
especially the group of nine major deities worshiped at Heliopolis] in this my name of
Nehy, this time with the divine determiner at the end. The spell, which is perhaps
more informative with respect to Nehy in the Coffin Texts version, nevertheless makes
it difficult, because of its syncretic character, to ascertain which elements of its
content apply specifically to Nehy, but one suggestive passage states, I am the Soul
who created the Nun, who made my seat in the realm of the dead; my nest will not be
seen nor my egg broken, for I am the Lord of those who are on high, and I have made
my nest in the limits of the sky. Schulman cites as well two Ptolemaic-era texts from
Dendera which refer to the sky which bears Nehy and to seeing Nehy in the sky.
The epithet Lord of the Year or Lord of Years likely derives from the similarity of his
name to n-h-h, eternity (see Heh), which is often written with the guinea fowl sign
whose phonetic value is n-h; indeed, the texts from Dendera cited by Schulman spell
the Gods name N-h-h rather than N-h-y as in the passages from the Pyramid Texts and
the Book of the Dead, and these would be read simply as personifications of eternity if
Page 123 of 223

the content did not seem to offer other possibilities. A possible pun on n-h-h and n-h-y
occurs in the aforementioned CT spell 307, where the deceased, identifying with Nehy,
states, I am the eldest of the primeval ones [the Hermopolitan Ogdoad?], the soul of
them of the Temple of Eternity [n-h-h]. The word n-h-y, it should also be noted, means
to pray or wish for, or a prayer. An allusion to this may be seen in BD spell 153B: I
entreat as a bull, I lament as the Ennead, in this my name of Nehy, i.e., the one-whoprays. As to what celestial phenomenon Nehy is identified with, the morning star, the
evening star, and the star Sirius have all been suggested.
Schulman, Alan R. 1964. The God NHJ. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 23, no. 4:
275-279.
Neith
(Net) Neith, whose importance in Egyptian religion as a deity at once intimately involved
in the formation of the cosmos but also engaged in its ongoing maintenance can be
judged from the frequency with which the epithet the Great is applied to her, is
depicted anthropomorphically, often with a pair of crossed bows over her head, echoing
her early cultic emblem of crossed arrows; she is also depicted wielding bow and arrow
as huntress and warrior. Neith typically wears the crown of Lower Egypt. Her
association with this crown is especially close inasmuch as its name when it is not
simply referred to as the deshret, or red is virtually indistinguishable, at least as it
is written, from her own. Neith is one of the representative Goddesses of Lower Egypt;
her city, Sas, is the site of the House of the Bee, a temple of Neith which becomes a
symbolic shorthand for Lower Egypt in general. Mother of Sobek and of other related
crocodile Gods, Neith is sometimes depicted suckling a pair of crocodiles at her breasts
or as crocodile-headed. Besides crocodiles, Neith is associated with the click beetle
(Agrypnus notodonta), with the Nile perch, a fish venerated at Latopolis, and with the
cow, although the latter seems to come about chiefly through her association with
Mehet-Weret.
Neith is a principal figure in a cosmogony in which she is closely associated with MehetWeret and is the mother of Re. Neiths function in this cosmogony seems to be to carry
forward the creative impulse of Mehet-Weret into greater determinacy and
articulation and to be the bearer of Mehet-Werets primordial authority in these latter
stages of the cosmos; hence Neith is regent of Mehet-Weret, ( Neith, p. 54) and the
cow Mehet-Weret is there [Sas] as Neith, (55). For her own part, however, Neith
personifies the creative potency of the primordial waters, not as a passive substrate
but as the very agent of the emergence of the cosmos, in particular through an
identification between the flow of the primordial waters and the flow of time. A hymn
from Esna states that Neith fashions the world in her form of Goddess who reaches
to the limits of the universe, in her material form of the liquid surface, in her name of
unlimited duration, (Esna, vol. 5, p. 111); the extension of the water which makes
Page 124 of 223

eternity [heh], the stream which fashions everlastingness [ djet], (ibid., p. 114 n. i).
Neiths independence and autonomy are emphasized in her demiurgic activity. Thus it is
often said that Neith is both feminine and masculine two thirds masculine, one third
feminine, (Esna, vol. 5, p. 110) both mother and father, who inaugurated birth when
birth had not yet been, (Lichtheim, vol. 3, p. 38), having appeared from herself,
(Esna, vol. 5, p. 253). The primordial register in which Neiths cosmogonic activity
occurs can be seen from the fact that, in the version from Esna, Neith brings forth
both Re, the principle of cosmic order, and Apophis, the principle of entropy.
Every deity whom the Egyptians regard under the aspect of a demiurge fulfills this
function in a distinctive manner; Neiths creative activity seems to consist especially in
separating the elements of the cosmos out from their initial state of fluid confusion. In
the primordial waters, Neith separates islands from shores, ( Neith, p. 62). The Gods
acclaim her for having separated for us the bright dawn from the night, made for us a
ground upon which we may take support, separated for us night from day, ( Esna, vol. 5,
p. 257); she also distinguishes the units of time (Neith, p. 62) and is said to perform
her work of cosmogenesis in eight hours which pass in the space of an instant, ( Esna,
vol. 5, p. 259), through four speeches or formulae (akhu) which at once embody the
early stages of the creation and from which can be unfolded the future course of
events (ibid., pp. 259-261). The potency of Neiths creative intelligence and spoken
word is emphasized: All that her heart conceived was realized immediately, ( Esna, vol.
5, p. 256); She created the thirty Gods by pronouncing their names, one by one,
(257). Neiths demiurgic activity is sometimes expressed in terms of another activity
with which she is associated, namely weaving. Thus she is the Goddess who divided the
comb of her loom [alternately, 'the threads of her weft'] among the five who inhabit
the heaven and the earth, (Esna, vol. 5, p. 111). Neiths association with the primordial
waters as well as with the complex formulae of creation allows her sphere of activity to
encompass the production of perfumes and pharmacological mixtures such as the two
kinds of stimulating drugs mentioned in an inscription from Medamoud ( Neith, doc.
224).
In the Conflict of Horus and Seth, when the sovereignty of the cosmos is to be decided
between Horus and Seth, the assembled Gods summon Banebdjedet as judge, who
advises that a letter be sent to Neith and that the Gods abide by her decision. Thoth
drafts the letter, to Neith the Great, the divine mother, who shone on the first face,
who is alive, hale, and young, (Lichtheim, vol. 2, p. 215). Neith responds, in her own
letter, that the office of Osiris should be given to his son Horus, and that Seth should
receive in compensation Anat and Astarte as wives. The assembled Gods agree with
Neiths decision, although they are unable to implement it straightaway. Significant in
this myth is the exalted status Neith is accorded by the assembled Gods, and also her
distance from them, which is signified by the deferred manner in which she is selected
to judge the dispute, and especially by the necessity of a letter. The myth thus
Page 125 of 223

illustrates an important aspect of Egyptian religious thought, namely the hierarchical

structure of the pantheon, with powers distributed on several relatively autonomous
planes. This relative autonomy is also demonstrated by the impossibility of simply
putting Neiths judgment into effect without further ado. This aspect of Egyptian
religion is balanced by the possibility of recentering the pantheon at any time around
any deity who is selected as the object of worship.
Neith not only establishes the cosmic order but fights in its defense, combating its
enemies on every level, on behalf of Re, of Osiris, of Horus, and of the pharaoh. In the

Pyramid Texts Neith is already one of a quartet of Goddesses, the others being Isis,
Nephthys, and Serket, who are protectors of the throne, (PT utterance 362) that is,
guardians of the sarcophagus and the chests containing the vital organs of the
deceased. These Goddesses are thus the counterparts in some sense of the four sons
of Horus, a relationship which becomes systematized over time. Neiths most
distinctive role in the service of Osiris is as provider of the linen for the bandages in
which he is wrapped and of the oils with which he is anointed: You are mistress of the
oil of unction as well as of the fabric, (Esna, vol. 5, p. 111). The fabric, in particular, is
itself understood as a kind of protection; in charge of it may be Neiths children, the
Sobek twins (Neith, p. 73). Neith is accorded her own Ennead or pantheon of Gods,
consisting of Khnum, Nebtu, Menhyt, Heka, Tutu, Sobek, Osiris, Isis, and either Thoth
or Re (Neith, p. 143f). She is also closely associated with the hemesut, a plural entity
usually written with the same determiner as Neith herself. The hemesut are associated
with sustenance and virtue through a connection to the formative moments of the
cosmos. The hemesut are similar in many respects to the ka, and perhaps represent a
parallel tradition (ibid., pp. 145ff), but are apparently envisioned literally as standing
underneath one, as in PT utterance 273, where they are under the deceased kings feet.
In this connection it is significant that in CT spell 407 Neith is asked to come under
ones feet. The hemesut seem therefore to embody the primordial land which arose in
the midst of the waters of the abyss due to Neiths activity ( Neith, p. 147f). Possession
of the hemesut therefore seems to express a connection to this pre-cosmic
territoriality.
Hendrickx, Stan. 1996. Two Protodynastic Objects in Brussels and the Origin of the
Bilobate Cult-Sign of Neith. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 82, pp. 23-42.
Sauneron, Serge. 1959-75. Esna. Cairo: Institut franais darchologie orientale.
el-Sayed, Ramadan. 1982. La desse Neith de Sas. Cairo: Institut franais
darchologie orientale.
Nekhbet
(Nekhabit) Depicted either as a vulture or anthropomorphically, wearing a vulture
headdress, Nekhbet is the Goddess of Upper (that is, southern) Egypt, counterpart of
Wadjet, Goddess of Lower (northern) Egypt. The two Goddesses together thus
Page 126 of 223

represent the sovereignty of Egypt united and are often juxtaposed in heraldic fashion.
Nekhbet has an independent set of associations as well, however. Some of these derive
from the ideas Egyptians had about the vulture. In PT utterance 570, for instance, the
deceased king places himself under the protection of Nekhbet with an unusual appeal:
I will never swallow the Eye of Horus so that men may say: He [Horus] is dead because
of it. I will never swallow a limb of Osiris so that men may say: He [Osiris] is dead
because of it. The vulture, because it feeds on carrion, is, so to speak, a predator free
from blame, a condition which the king wishes to share (compare J. Gwyn Griffiths
remarks, in relation to PT utterance 270, on the hostile interpretation of animal
sacrifices which was so marked a feature of Egyptian religious thought, in Griffiths
1991, 153). The association of the vulture with purity of food underlies the
identification of the deceased with Nekhbet with regard to nourishment in CT spell
863: If N. be hungry, Nekhbet will be hungry; if N. be thirsty, Nekhbet will be
thirsty. That the role of Nekhbet here follows from the nature of the vulture is clear
from the spells opening line, The dead are swallowed for you, as well as from a
passage near the end which refers to the vulture of whom the Gods are afraid and
whom the souls fear in N.s abode, just as they are afraid of the Eye of Horus. The
hieroglyphic sign of the vulture stands for the word mut, mother. This symbolism
bears especially upon the Goddess Mut, of course, but it affects Nekhbet as well, who
is more closely identified with the vulture than Mut is. Nekhbets maternal quality is
manifest in her role as the nurse of Horus. CT spell 16 says of Horus, for instance,
Isis bore him, Khabet [Nekhbet] brought him up, while the ferry-boat of CT spell 398
has for its aft mooring-post Nekhbet with her arms about Horus. A spell to ease
childbirth (no. 61 in Borghouts) invokes Nekhbet the Nubian, among other deities, in
order to charge a clay figure of a dwarf (cf. Bes) which the operator uses to conjure
the woman giving birth. Nekhbet is also spoken of as the guide of Re on his daily
journey to the west, rising opposite him at the sunrise and hovering over him at what is
his daily birth (P. Carlsberg I, B. I, 24-27/Neugebauer and Parker vol. I, pp. 45-46).
Since the sun was thought of as rising opposite the land of Punt (Somalia), this might
explain Nekhbets association with Nubia in the childbirth spell.

CT spells 956 and 957 are, effectively, spells for transforming into or invoking
Nekhbet, albeit spell 957, which is much better preserved than 956, bears the title
To become Maet. In both spells the operator affirms I have ascended to the upper
sky, and I have fashioned Nekhbet; I have descended to the lower sky, and I have
fashioned Sekhmet, but in 957 has been inserted I have traversed the middle sky
because I am Maet in these manifestations of hers which are upon and in the middle of
Nekhbet, the complete Vulture. Maets inhabitation within Nekhbet seems to parallel
the operators statement in both spells that Nekhbet has installed me in the midst of
herself <lest> Seth should see me when I reappear. Nekhbet seems to mediate here
between Maets function, which pertains to the order and harmony of the cosmos, and
the personal protection afforded to mortals by Sekhmet in the so-called lower sky,
Page 127 of 223

i.e., the sky of the underworld. A spell to ward off infectious diseases (no. 14 in
Borghouts) invokes Nekhbet, who lifted up the earth unto the sky for her father.
Nekhbets father here is presumably Re. Do come, the spell continues, that you may
tie the two plumes closely around me. Then I will live on and be sound. The spell is to
be said over a pair of vulture plumes and the person to receive protection is to be
stroked by them.
At Nekhbets cult center Nekheb (el-Kab; known to the Greeks as Eileithyiaspolis),
inscriptions make reference to seven arrows of Nekhbet, these being the same
arrowsthat is, demonic potencieswielded at other places by Bast or Tutu. At elKab, Nekhbet delivers seven speeches charging each arrow to the protection of the
pharaoh. These arrows are, in effect, forces normally malevolent, but whom the
Goddess is able to enlist to act according to her own will. Several of the demons shown
at el-Kab have the head of the animal associated with Seth, showing the ability of
Nekhbet to marshal Seths powers against, among others, the demons of disease and
misfortune under the control of Sekhmet and known as her murderers (for a
complete account of the arrows of Nekhbet at el-Kab, see Capart 1940).
Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Capart, Jean. 1940. Les Sept Paroles de Nekhabit. Chronique dgypte 15/29: 21-29.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Griffiths, J. Gwyn. 1991. The Accusing Animals. In Ursula Verhoeven and Erhart
Graefe, eds. Religion und Philosophie im alten gypten. Leuven: Peeters.
Neugebauer, Otto, and Richard A. Parker. 1960-9. Egyptian Astronomical Texts.
Providence: Brown University Press.
Nemty (Anty)
There is some dispute over the proper reading of this Gods name, insofar as it is
usually written with an ideogram rather than phonetically. In older Egyptological
literature his name was read Anty, but the consensus leans now in favor of Nemty, the
wanderer, although there remain good arguments for reading the name Anty, meaning
with claws. The God may be referred to in PT utterance 302, in which the king,
assuming the form of a hawk, states that my claws ( nwt) are the talons (wekhau) of
Him-of-Atefet, i.e., the 12th Upper Egyptian nome or district (in the vicinity of Deir
el-Gabrawi), a center of the worship of Anty/Nemty. (Note that this locality is often
referred to in Egyptological literature as the Viper- or Cerastes-Mountain nome.)
Nemty is depicted as a hawk, often perched on a crescent-shaped boat.

Page 128 of 223

Nemty features as a ferryman in an episode of the Conflict of Horus and Seth. Seth
demands that Isis be excluded from the place where the judgment between Horus and
himself is to be rendered. Re orders the judgment to take place on an island (possibly
the same island in the midst of the Nile Hellanicus of Lesbos calls Tindion, which
Philippe Derchain reads as a corruption of the Egyptian name Ta-Anty, Place of Anty,
in turn possibly the same place Diodorus of Sicily calls Antaeum (Diodorus I, 21)) and
directs Nemty not to ferry Isis across. Isis changes her appearance, however, to that
of an old woman carrying a bowl of flour which she claims she must deliver to a boy
tending cattle on the island. Nemty resists, and Isis offers him at first a cake ( wekhat,
cp. wekhau, talons in PT utterance 302), and then her gold signet ring, which he
accepts and ferries her across. When the Gods learn what Nemty has done, they punish
him, as a result of which he forswears gold, saying that Gold shall be an abomination to
me in my town, (Lichtheim vol. 2, 218). This is apparently in reference to the custom of
crafting Nemtys cult-statue not of gold as was usual but of silver. The importance of
silver in his cult, as well as the shape of his boat, suggests that Nemty may have had
lunar associations.
In CT spell 473, for escaping from the net and fish-trap in the netherworld, the
operator states with respect to the Winding Waterway, i.e., the ecliptic, which the
soul seeks to cross in order to reach the Field of Offerings in the northern sky, I
have glittered as Nemty on its middle, I have glittered as Nemty on its top, referring
perhaps to the moons motion on the ecliptic. Nemty is associated particularly with the
east bank of the Nile and with the East in general; CT spell 607 calls the Goddess
Sekhet, who personifies the marshes, the flesh of the East-land, the assistant of
Nemty, and Nemty is Lord of the East, in a stela from the Sinai ( Jumilhac, p. 27).
Another myth, from the Jumilhac Papyrus, also seeks to explain the exclusion of gold
from Nemtys cult. Nemty, for unexplained reasons, decapitates Hathor, and is
punished by the Gods by being skinned alive, for his flesh and his skin his mother
created with her milk; as for his bones, they exist by virtue of the semen of his father.
Thus, let be taken away from him his skin and flesh, his bones staying in his possession,
(Jumilhac, p. 124). Since gold is associated with flesh, and silver with bones, gold is
taboo in Nemtys district and his statue is made of silver. Hesat proceeds to
regenerate Nemtys flesh with an unguent made of her own milk, however, and Hathors
head is fastened on again by Thoths magic. Nemty is effectively reborn, and is
identified with the infant Horus: His mother, Isis, regarded him as a newborn child,
after he was reborn in this district, (ibid.). A similar myth is told of Horus in the
aforementioned Conflict of Horus and Seth, in which Horus decapitates Isis for calling
off an attack upon Seth, an act which accounts for a headless statue of her. Seth
subsequently plucks out Horus eyes, which Hathor regenerates by applying the milk of
a gazelle (Lichtheim vol. 2, 219). CT spell 80 also refers to these events, when Shu
affirms that he makes firm the head of Isis on her neck. The relationship among
Page 129 of 223

these myths is obviously complex, and with respect to Nemty the myths we possess are
obviously several stages removed from their original forms and involve his gradual
assimilation with Horus. Another passage from the Jumilhac Papyrus states that the
limbs of Nemty were wrapped in bandages after he was skinned for his crime (p. 120).
Nemty therefore evidently featured in a localized mythology concerning death,
mummification and rebirth. It has been suggested that a peculiar compound deity called
Antywy (the two with claws), rendered Antaios by the Greeks, who is depicted as a
man with two hawks heads, and who is often regarded as a fusion of Horus and Seth, is
in fact a fusion of Horus and Nemty (Jumilhac, 68f), or rather, Horus and Anty, as the
Gods name would have to be read in this case. In the aforementioned stela from the
Sinai in which Nemty is called Lord of the East, however, Nemty is depicted with the
head of the Seth-animal.
Nemtys punishment for ferrying Isis across is said in the Conflict to have been that
the Gods removed his toes, (Lichtheim, p. 218). This may imply a myth analogous to
that of Horus recounted in CT spell 158/BD spell 113, for knowing the souls of Nekhen
[Hierakonpolis], in which the hands of Horus are cut off by Isis and thrown into the
water, becoming fish, thus acting as limbs of the God in the world. It has also been
proposed that Nemtysor rather, Antystoes would have been replaced by claws, in
reference to the reading of Anty as with claws; the loss and replacement of parts of
the divine body is a common motif in Egyptian myth. CT spell 942 says of an
unidentified Goddesspossibly named later in the spell as Wennutthat she has taken
away the flame of the sunshine, she has shaved the side-whiskers [or 'forelocks'?] of
Nemty, who is adorned on the text unfortunately breaking off here; possibly the
side-whiskers or forelocks of Nemty refer to the moons rays, complementing the
reference to the flame of the sunshine. Does the shaving or trimming here echo
Nemtys mutilation in the myth from the Conflict? An alternative interpretation of the
name of Nemty is as the shortened one (Broze, 52 n. 123). A certain kind of trimming
is associated with Tindion, the island in the midst of the river mentioned by Hellanicus
of Lesbos, who recounts that within a temple on this island grew several acacia trees,
atop which were wreaths woven of the flowers of acacia, pomegranate and grapevine,
which were perpetually in flower, but the Gods removed the wreaths when they
learned that Babys, that is, Typhon [i.e. Seth] was king of Egypt, (quoted in Broze, 51).
Another reference to Nemtys hair comes from the aforementioned CT spell 473, for
escaping the net and fish-trap of the netherworld, in which the deceased states at
one point that You shall not catch me in your nets in which you catch the dead
because I know the name of its four tufts; they are the tufts which are in the birdtrap of Sobek, which is behind the coiffure of Nemty. Sobek is juxtaposed with
Nemty later in the same spell, where both Gods are said to glitter atop the Winding
Waterway.

Page 130 of 223

A myth similar to the one in the Conflict involving Nemty is recounted in an Egyptian
calendar, which attaches to the 13th day of the third month of the season of Akhet a
story in which Seth pays gold to Nemty, who is again a ferryman, to ferry him across
the river to the West (i.e., to the necropolis), where Seth and his allies perpetrate
some violence upon the body of Osiris; in punishment, Nemtys tongue is cut out and as a
result, gold is forbidden in his cult (Broze, 69).
A different sort of boat altogether is associated with Nemty in CT spell 649, in which
an unidentified Jackal-man is asked to open a path for me, for I am Nemty
perambulating the henu-boat, the sacred bark associated with Sokar.
Broze, Michle. 1996. Les Aventures dHorus et Seth dans le Papyrus Chester Beatty I .
Leuven: Peeters.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Vandier, Jacques. 1961. Le Papyrus Jumilhac. Paris: Muse du Louvre.
Nepry
(Neper) Nepry is the divine personification of grain. He is depicted
anthropomorphically, sometimes in a very similar fashion to Hapy, the God of the Niles
annual inundation, that is, as a scantily-clad man with sagging breasts and belly, but
Nepry, unlike Hapy, is covered with dots representing the granules of wheat or barley
in which he is immanent, or else holds sheaves of wheat or has them in his hair. Nepry
can also be depicted as a normal adult male holding sheaves of wheat. Neprys mother is
Renenutet, Goddess of the harvest, and he may also be depicted as an infant at her
breast. The pharaoh, as the guarantor of sustenance for the nation, may be depicted as
Nepry, especially in this latter form.

CT spell 330 is for transforming into Nepry, an interesting choice inasmuch as Nepry
(or the operator invoking him) affirms in the spell that I live and I die, a rare
embrace of mortality as such. The key to the desirability of the invocation, however,
clearly lies in the statement I have fallen on my side, the Gods live on me, for it is in
offering oneself as the equivalent of the grain offering, and thus being absorbed into
the nature of all the Gods, that the identification with Nepry assures a form of
immortality. Hence the spell is able to assert, what might otherwise seem
contradictory: I live and I die, for I am emmer [alt. 'barley'], and I will not perish.
Thus the operator states I have entered into maet, I have upheld maet, for I am a
possessor of maet, i.e., order, balance, truth. Perhaps a similar point is made in CT
Page 131 of 223

spell 1001, where Nepry is asked to open the gates for me, open out the ritual book for
me, for I have come so that those whose mouths are hidden may have abundance. So
too, in spell 269, the deceased is this bush of life which went forth from Osiris to
grow on the ribs of Osiris, feeding commoners, Gods, and spirits alike, and thus the
desire of N. [the deceased as Nepry] is in sky and earth, in the waters and in the
fields, the fertility of the environment being seen as a desire to bring forth grain so
as to provide the basis for all that grain makes possible through civilization. The
invocations of Nepry do not neglect the aspect of securing for the deceased a supply of
grain for his/her own consumption, but they also always involve the theme of
identification with the grain, unless this latter is simply a momentary identification on
the part of the ritual operator who in this way conjures the food on behalf of the
deceased. Another theme which recurs in spells involving Nepry is allusion to smoked
grains, perhaps because its fragrance conveys nourishment to spirits. CT spell 99, for
instance, states that It is this God of smoked grain [Nepry] who lives after his death
and who takes you [the soul of the operator/the deceased] to see yonder man wherever
he is, in my shape, in my form, in my wisdom, the offerings of a living spirit. In this
spell, it seems that the speaker in the first person is acquiring the power to send their
soul as an apparition in or through the smoked grain to a person (yonder man) who
invokes the spirit of the deceased. That some such purpose is intended seems clear
from the spells opening line: Go, my soul, that yonder man may see you; stand opposite
him in my shape and form, that is, presumably, the shape and form which the deceased
had during life. The similar spell 100 stresses this by adding he will see you with his
real eyes. Certain variants of the spell (e.g., spell 102) change yonder man to yonder
God, with appropriate shifting of the content to go along with the apparition being
before the Gods rather than a human operator, but Nepry retains his critical role in
bringing about this manifestation. In spell 101, for sending a man and his soul, it
seems almost as if the sense is not so much that of an apparition, but of coming to
embodiment in the first place: Nepry, who lives after death removes you from the
portal of the sunshine, and you go forth from it by means of the efflux of my flesh and
the sweat of my head referring here to the grain itself? in the presence of the
lifting up of the shape of the Lord of All, i.e., Atum, the divine embodiment of
individuality. It can thus be seen that while Nepry is grain in the most concrete and
tangible sense, this does not mean that he is not the bearer of complex and farreaching religious doctrines.
Nephthys
Sister of Isis and her constant companion, Nephthys name, Nbt H[w]t, means Mistress
of the House. Nephthys is depicted anthropomorphically, identifiable by a headdress
composed of the two hieroglyphs which make up her name, or, along with Isis, as a small
bird of prey, a kestrel or kite. A paradigmatic depiction of the two sisters shows them
at either end of the bier upon which lays Osiris, with Isis at the foot and Nephthys at
Page 132 of 223

the head hence PT utterance 505, in which the deceased affirms, Isis is before me
and Nephthys is behind me. In this icon the sisters are at once mourning their brother
and also preparing his resurrection, which takes the form of the conception by Isis of
Horus as successor and avenger of his father; and just as Nephthys assisted Isis in the
search for Osiris, so she assists Isis in rearing Horus and protecting from the many
dangers which threaten him as an infant. There is something in the disposition of Isis
and Nephthys before and behind Osiris which transcends the funerary sphere: Isis and
Nephthys assume the same positions before and behind lady Ruddedet when they assist
at the delivery of the royal children (Lichtheim vol. 1, 220). Nephthys has Seth for
consort as Isis has Osiris, and the pair is representative of Upper Egypt as Isis and
Osiris are of Lower Egypt (e.g., PT utterance 217). A close attention to the sources is
required to discern those qualities appertaining to Nephthys alone rather than to
Nephthys and Isis together.
Myths tend to make somewhat more of Seths connection to foreign Goddesses like
Anat and Astarte, but Nephthys seems to share some of Seths qualities. Combat
prowess, for instance, is implied by PT utterance 222, the deceased king affirming,
Nephthys has favored me and I have captured my opponent, and CT spell 44 asks on
behalf of the deceased that Nephthys put the terror of you into the spirits as when
Re rises from the Double Gates. In a non-funerary spell to bring protection, the
operator affirms I am among Gods Seth is on my right, Horus on my left, Nephthys
is in my embrace, (Borghouts, no. 115). On the other hand, Nephthys is said to act
against Seth. In a hieratic text (MMA 35.9.21), Nephthys speaks of having kept Seth
away from Horus, of having refused to recognize the face of Seth on Horus behalf,
as well as of having lied to Seth and walled up his cavern (Goyon, Pap. Imouths), while
another text speaks of Nephthys returning to Heliopolis certain divine relics that had
been in Bs (Seths) power (Meeks, Mythes et Lgendes du Delta, 7). A fragmentary
text concerning a lamp-lighting festival celebrated in Letopolis (Ibid., 18) relates an
incident in which Nephthys hides herself from Seth in the water at night, but is
discovered by him when he lights a lamp with the oil of the abdu fish, whose
characteristic function is to swim before the solar vessel and warn Re of the approach
of Apophis; note that this fish is said to have been born on the last of the epagomenal
days, which is also the day of the birth of Nephthys (Meeks, p. 230).
The tradition reported by Plutarch according to which Nephthys is the mother of
Anubis by Osiris seems to find little support in indigenous Egyptian sources, although it
was probably not unknown. Anubis is also regarded sometimes as the son of Nephthys
and Re. Nephthys seems sometimes to have been regarded as the wife of Osiris in the
netherworld as Isis is on earth, however; Osiris and Nephthys can thus be depicted as
a couple (as in the statue of Ramose from the Louvre, E 16378). Nephthys is sometimes
given the title Onnophret, the feminine form of the Osirian epithet Onnophris or
wn.nfr, the beautiful existent. Nephthys can thus on rare occasions represent the
Page 133 of 223

deceased as Osiris normally does, or the wife of a male deceased (Meeks, Mythes et
Lgendes, p. 227f).
Independent of her sister, Nephthys seems to exercise the function of recording or
administering destiny, invoked as she who makes firm the commands of the Gods,
(Kom Ombo, 413) or as reckoner of lifespan, mistress of years, mistress of destiny and
providence, atenet [feminine form of the name of the solar disk, the aten] who ordains
that which comes to be, (Dendara II, 149). She is sometimes said to offer Maet
(truth, order, justice) to Atum, a role resembling that of the pharaoh, such that it has
been suggested that Nephthys is the guardian of the divine succession as Isis is of the
royal succession (Kom Ombo, 414).

PT utterance 222 juxtaposes Isis and Nephthys, urging the deceased king to descend
with Nephthys, sink into darkness with the Night-bark, and to ascend with Isis, rise
with the Day-bark. This association of Nephthys with the suns nocturnal journey is
possibly underscored by utterance 359, in which at the left side of the deceased are
Nephthys, Seth and Khenty-irty, a God depicted in hawk form whose name means
Foremost in eyesight. In utterance 532, a passage describing the recovery of the body
of Osiris by the sisters, it is said that Isis comes and Nephthys comes, one of them
from the west and one of them from the east, one of them as a screecher [a raptor of
some kind], one of them as a kite. It becomes common later for Isis and Nephthys
both to be depicted as black kites; hence CT spell 24 says that the Two Kites, who are
Isis and Nephthys, scream for you, striking for you on two gongs in the presence of the
Gods. Here, however, it seems that Isis is the screecher from the east and Nephthys
the kite from the west, for in utterance 720 it is said to the deceased that the West
calls to you as Nephthys.
Another form of complementarity between Isis and Nephthys is to cast the former as
mother and Nephthys as wetnurse; hence in PT utterance 553, the deceased is a spirit
whom Nephthys suckled with her left breast, and in 555 he affirms My mother is
Isis, my nurse is Nephthys. Something else is implied when both Goddesses are
identified as the mother: Isis conceives me, Nephthys begets me, (utterance 511). In
the latter case, it is perhaps a matter of a special role for Nephthys in the
resurrection, the second birth, as it were. In utterance 364, Nephthys, identified with
Seshat, Lady of Builders, has collected the limbs of Osiris/the deceased, while in
365, the deceased is a spirit whom Nut bore, whom Nephthys suckled, and they put
you together. The reference to Nut here is meant to evoke, not only the sky, but also
the coffin. That Nephthys plays a leading role in the resurrection is clear from PT
utterances 628-630, in which Nephthys addresses the deceased king in the first
person, promising to restore his heart awareness to him. In CT spell 53, it is said
that Nephthys has favored you, you being renewed daily in the night-time, combining
the association of Nephthys with the suns nocturnal journey with her resurrection
Page 134 of 223

function. This seems to be underscored by CT spell 373, for breathing air among the
waters, in which Nephthys addresses someone called the Outcast, apparently Seth,
of whom it is said that He-whose-hand-is-extended is upon the Outcast the Outcast,
the son of Nut, has fallen on his side and his breath has been taken away. Nephthys
says, Hidden are the ways for those who pass by; light is perished and darkness comes
into being. Nephthys seems here to perform a nocturnal resurrection upon Seth, which
is transmitted by him to the deceased, who affirms that It is the Outcast who speaks
to me and informs me that life is provided and that air is breathed among the waters.
That Nephthys specializes in reconstituting the body is apparent in CT spell 778, which
states that Horus has protected you [the deceased]; he has caused Nephthys to put
you together she will mould you in her name of Seshat, Mistress of potters, for such
is this great lady, a possessor of life in the Night-bark, who raises up Horus. Nephthys
is perhaps identified in this role with Seshat, the patron Goddess of scribes, because
the latter presides over the construction of sacred buildings, which are themselves
living bodies of a sort. Nephthys bears the epithet protector of the statues and
guardian of the idols, which Gutbub has compared to the description of the pharaoh as
one who protects the temples, guards the sanctuaries, and restores the statues,
(Kom Ombo, 413f). That her role in this respect transcends the Osirian context is
indicated by a text concerning the divine relics of the Place of the Wedjat at
Heliopolis, namely the two eyes of Horus, the thumb of Atum, the hand of Haroeris,
and the ear of Horakhty, none of which are fragments of the Osirian body, but which
have been damaged by Seth and which Nephthys heals in a ritual that involves
fashioning simulacra of these divine members out of clay mixed with fat (Meeks,
Mythes et Lgendes, 7). Nephthys is also involved with Horus in the preparation of
sacred unguents and perfumes, with the title mistress of the laboratory ( Dendara IX,
158, 9).
Nephthys is the unfailing companion of Isis in her mourning for Osiris, her search for
him, his resurrection, and the rearing of Horus. Therefore it is not surprising that the
two of them are proverbial for friendship. A state of paradise is thus described in BD
spell 182 (21st dyn.): Every man is friendly to his fellow, without wrath or strife, as
Isis and Nephthys have been friendly each to the other. A late spell in Coptic to cause
sexual attraction, however, uses as a trope the need of Isis to win back the desire of
Osiris, whom she has learned to be having sex with Nephthys ( PGM IV. 94ff). This text
also provides some support for Plutarchs account of the conception of Anubis by Osiris
and Nephthys. Another spell (PDM lxi. 100-105) is for something called the red cloth
of Nephthys, but its use is unclear; it seeks to bring someone to the operator, perhaps
for sex. The red cloth might refer to the menstrual blood of Nephthys. A vessel
divination spell calls for using an amulet of Nephthys and asss dung on the brazier in
order to speak to the spirit of a dead person ( PDM xiv. 84). Nephthys has also been
discerned in a Greek-language spell (PGM XI.a 1-40), the goal of which is to acquire a
magical servant. The spell refers to Nephthys by translating her name into Greek as
Page 135 of 223

Oikouros, literally Mistress of the House. In this spell, Nephthys appears, upon
invocation, as a woman of extraordinary loveliness, possessing a heavenly beauty,
indescribably fair and youthful, riding upon a donkey (an animal associated with Seth).
The Goddess transforms herself into an old woman the servant then back into her
own form, leaving the old woman behind when she leaves. A spell to assist in childbirth
(Ramesseum Papyri IV, plate 18) refers to Nephthys bearing a daughter by Hemen:
Hemen made pregnant his mother Nephthys with a daughter. It seems, however,
that the purpose of this formula is to identify the woman in labor as a daughter of
Nephthys and Hemen, rather than to allude to a Goddess born of Nephthys and Hemen.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Barns, John W. B. 1956. Five Ramesseum Papyri. Oxford: Griffith Institute.
Betz, H. D. 1992. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. 2d ed. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [PGM, PDM]
Cauville, Sylvie. 1998. Dendara. Leuven: Peeters.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Gutbub, Adolphe. 1973. Textes fondamentaux de la thologie de Kom Ombo . Cairo:
Institut franais darchologie orientale.
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Meeks, Dimitri. 2006. Mythes et Lgendes du Delta: daprs le papyrus Brooklyn

47.218.84. Cairo: Institut franais darchologie orientale.

Nn
(Nu) Nun personifies the oceanic abyss that pre-exists the emergence of the cosmos
and which continues to exist outside its limits. The Egyptians conceived the heavens as
a fluid expanse surrounding the earth and its atmosphere, on whose surface or belly
the heavenly bodies travel like ships or rest like islands. Nun is the bottomless depths
of the heavenly ocean, beyond the waters in which the stars actually travel. The earth
and sky came into being by separating out from this abyss, which persists as the
remainder, so to speak, of this formative activity by the primordial Gods. While the
divinities of sky and earth, Nut and Geb respectively, are not to be confused with sky
and earth themselves, the Egyptians having distinct words for these which were not
the names of deities, Nun is at once a God and the limitless abyss itself, a sort of
reservoir of latent potential and inert or inactive forms. It is therefore convenient at
times to speak of the Nun, rather than Nun, and in such cases to refer to the Nun as
it rather than he.
Page 136 of 223

The nature of the abyss lying at the upper side of the sky is described as dark and
inert, without limits and as that into which the Gods and spirits do not penetrate.
However, Nun is also conceived, in the Book of the Celestial Cow, as a God with whom Re
at least is able to consult about the problem posed by the rebellious humans, who
separate themselves from the natural order represented by Res sovereignty, thus in
some sense evoking the formlessness embodied by Nun. In seeking Nuns counsel, Re
addresses Nun as Eldest God, in whom I myself came into being, subtly raising the
question of whether Nun is the source of Res sovereignty or only the occasion of it.
Res legitimacy has been undermined by humanitys rebellion, but Nun makes no claim
upon the sovereignty based upon his own seniority: My son Re, God greater than he
who created thee, older than he who made thee, be seated on thy throne! (Piankoff,
27). Nun is thus a force cooperative in the cosmogonic work of Re, as symbolized in
images of the boat of Re being lifted up by the arms of Nun. A pre-cosmic force, Nun is
nevertheless not an anti-cosmic force, like Apophis. In CT spell 75, Shu similarly
asserts himself relative to Nun; speaking of his creation from the Nun, Shu states
that Nun saw me when I came into being, and I know his name, I know the place where
I came into being, but he did not see me come into being with his own sight, for I came
into being from the flesh of the self-created God, meaning Atum. Nun is here clearly
less an independent center of awareness than a place, contrasted in this respect with
Atum.
Nun is often simply a synonym for the heavens, or for waters in general. His association
with wine, however, implies reference not only to liquids but also to oblivion, and
sleepers are also thought to enter the Nun (Hornung, pp. 180, 183). Nun is potentiality,
and by virtue of that, participates in nonbeing to a degree. It is for this reason,
possibly, that Osiris is referred to as the heir of Nun (BD spell 181; for whom Nun
has poured his libation (185A); BD spell 144, for entering unto Osiris, requests the
doorkeepers of the horizon to Make way [for the deceased] for he is Nun), for as
the God who dies, Osiris is able to partake of a portion of Nuns legacy that the other
Gods cannot. Hence Osiris and Atum occupy the Nun together when all else has
returned into the flood, as it was aforetime (BD spell 175). Osiris and Atum take the
form in the Nun of snakes which men know not and Gods see not. The Nun is already in
the Pyramid Texts both a place from which dangerous serpents emerge ( PT utterance
233) and, as a deity, a means of repulsing them ( crawl away because of Nun!
(utterance 729)). Nun protects the four Goddesses (Isis, Nephthys, Neith and Serket)
who in turn protect the throne (i.e., the sarcophagus and the canopic chests); CT spell
820, for having power over water, affirms that the protection of Nun is about me
just as the protection of Nun was about the egg from which I issued. Mortals, by
nature of their very mortality, have perhaps a special bond with Nun: My aged father
Nun has established my paternal inheritance yonder (BD spell 57). PT utterance 576
asks Nun to raise the Kings arm to the sky that he may support the earth which he

Page 137 of 223

has given to you. The deceased king has perhaps given the earth to Nun in the sense
that he has brought his own world with him into death.
Nun and his consort Naunet feature along with their fellow Hehu, Amun and Amaunet,
in PT utterance 301, in which these pre-cosmic Gods are said to protect the Gods with
your shadow. References to Nun, therefore, when they do not simply designate a place,
invoke him as what one might term the beneficent side of nonbeing. The Nun was
before the sky existed, before earth existed, before men existed, before the Gods
were born, before death existed (PT utterance 571; cf. also Hornung, p. 175 n. 125).
And yet this was when the deceased king was fashioned by Nun at his left hand when
he [the king] was a child who had no wisdom; he [Nun] has saved the King from inimical
Gods, and he will not give the King over to inimical Gods ( PT utterance 607) because
Nun is prior to the conflict inherent in the evolved cosmos. But there always remains an
ambivalence to any contact with the Nun because of the element of nonbeing inherent
in its nature.
The question of the relative priority of Nun and Re seems to have been a matter for
reflection among Egyptian theologians. The Book of the Celestial Cow is careful to have
Re say that he came to be in Nun, referring to the abyss as a medium rather than a
progenitor. Nun is sometimes called father of the Gods, but this does not imply that
the other Gods are not self-generated in fact, any given God is typically and in
general regarded as self-generating. Questions of priority can emerge in specific
contexts, however. Hence the statement in BD spell 17, I am the great God who came
into being of himself, is glossed by one ancient commentator as He is water, he is
Nun, the father of the Gods, while another commentator simply glosses He is Re. The
operator in CT spell 307, identifying his/her soul with Re who issued from the Nun in
this my name of Khepri, that is, transformer, is empowered to affirm I am the Soul
who created the Nun. In CT spell 76, however, Atum creates the names of the eight
Chaos-Gods or Hehu (i.e., brings them forth) in speaking with Nun, and in spell 78 the
Hehu are those whom Nun begot, and in spell 79 their names are created by the
flesh of Atum in accordance with the word of Nun, and are to be made (if the unusual
tense can be trusted here) according to the pattern of the word of Nun and Atum
(alternately, of Nun and Re). In such texts it seems that Nun is, at minimum, a sort of
material constraint upon the creative process, if not an active partner in it (which
would seem to be something of a contradiction in terms) with the cosmogonic Gods.
There are some texts in which Nun speaks in the first person. In CT spell 444, the
inertness of Nun is an advantage, hence the operators identification with him: I am
Nun, I was inert when the Two Lands were complete, but I was not gripped and my
magic was not attacked I controlled my appearing. This spell is one of a series in
which the operator, in a move which overturns certain of our expectations concerning
the Egyptian attitude toward death, affirms the bodys dissolution: I am a pure one
Page 138 of 223

who has demolished his body (441; var. his portal (440); his castle (443)). In CT
spell 714, the operator states I am Nun, the Sole One who has no equal I brought my
body into being through my power; I am one who made myself, and I formed myself at
my will according to my desire. What went forth from me was under my supervision.
Identifying with Nuns negativity in relation to the entire cosmos everything in the
hand of Nun (CT spell 316) allows the operator to emancipate him/herself from any
particular cosmic conditions. Nun embodies in this sense not an absolute nonbeing but a
kind of simplicity that is pure potentiality: I am Nun, Lord of darkness; I have come
that I may have power over the path, and he who has two faces is afraid of me (cp. BD
spell 7, for getting past the dangerous vertebra of Apophis: I am the one-faced one
who presides over the Nun, and my protection consists of the Gods, the lords of
eternity.).
See also: The Book of the Celestial Cow: A Theological Interpretation, Eye of the
Heart: A Journal of Traditional Wisdom, No. 3, May 2009, pp. 73-99.
Nt
(Nuit) Goddess of the upper sky, especially the night sky dappled with stars, Nut
occupies a position in the Egyptian pantheon linking the Gods who are conceived as being
active in the most primordial phases of the emergence of the cosmos with those whose
sphere of activity lies closer to human experience. As such, Nut has an extraordinary
density of familial ties to other Gods, ties present already in the earliest Egyptian
religious literature, the Pyramid Texts, in which Nut is already the daughter of Shu and
Tefnut, granddaughter of Atum, husband of Geb, and mother of Isis and Osiris, Seth
and Nephthys. On a parallel track, however, so to speak, Nut has also an intense dyadic
relationship with Re, to whom she gives birth every day and who returns to her
embrace every evening, vanishing from human eyes. From this perspective, in which Re
occupies the central role, Nuts only other significant bond is with Nun, the Abyss (see,
e.g., BD spell 15A1: thy father is Nun, thy mother is Nut). Nun is conceived as an
infinite expanse of water enclosing a bubble, so to speak, in which is suspended the
organized cosmos, while Nut is the surface of this bubble, a membrane separating the
cosmos from the abyss. Nuts name may be related to that of Nun (also spelled Nu), in
which case it might mean She who dwells in the Abyss.
Nut is usually depicted anthropomorphically with her body covered in stars, arched
over the earth with her fingers touching the western horizon and her toes the eastern,
but also as a cow with her front hooves in the west and hind hooves in the east. In
either case, her four limbs are meant to be at the cardinal points as the pillars of the
sky, although this is difficult to show clearly within the conventions of Egyptian art.
When depicted anthropomorphically, her consort Geb may lie beneath her, his erect
phallus reaching up toward her, while Shu holds her aloft and separates them. When
she is depicted as a cow, the eight Hehu, the Gods of the precosmic formlessness (the
Page 139 of 223

Hermopolitan Ogdoad), may be shown assisting Shu by supporting her legs and hence
fortifying the cosmos. When Nut is depicted anthropomorphically, the setting sun may
be poised at her lips, to embark on its night journey by entering her mouth, traveling
through her body to emerge from her womb at dawn, whereas bovine depictions of Nut
do not seem to concern this cycle as such but are more astronomical in character. Nuts
sexual and procreative aspect are more closely linked to her role in the resurrection,
for she also personifies the coffin or sarcophagus, and is depicted on the lids of
sarcophagi. In the Songs of Isis and Nephthys, for example, Osiris is urged to Come
thou to thy mother Nut that she may spread herself over thee that she may guard
thy flesh from all evil that she may drive off all evil which appertains to thy flesh,
the loneliness being broken as though it had never been, (The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus
I, p. 125 [6, 9]); and later, that Thy mother Nut builds thee up with the life of
her body. Be thou a soul, a soul! Be thou stable, stable! Mayest thou have a soul, O male,
lord of women, (ibid., p. 131 [15, 8]) where the latter phrase emphasizes phallic potency
as a symbol of the integrity of the body and the identity.
The sun travels daily along Nuts body, passing into her mouth at dusk, in its symbolic
death, its light reborn as the stars during its journey through the netherworld; this
process is equivalent to that by which the deceased is transfigured to become an akh, a
spirit or glorious one (see, for instance, PT utterances 431 and 513). The actual stars,
however, travel outside Nut in the night when they shine and are seen; it is within her
that they travel in the day when they do not shine and are not seen, (P. Carlsberg I,
Part II. IV, 35-VII, 27/Neugebauer and Parker vol I., p. 67). The moment of being
swallowed by Nut is treated somewhat more obliquely when the cosmic cycle is
interpreted in terms of human mortality, as in PT utterance 563, in which the deceased
states It is I who am the seed of the God which is in you. In this respect the
identification between the deceased and the sun is not total: the deceased rests alive
in the west, among the followers of Re who present the road to the light, ( PT
utterance 603; trans. Piankoff); elsewhere it is said Ascend to your mother Nut; she
will take your hand and give you a road to the horizon, to the place where Re is,
(utterance 422). PT utterance 697 says that Nut has laid her hands on you, O King,
she whose hair is long and whose breasts hang down; she carries you for herself to the
sky. Once born from the vulva of Nut, the sun and the deceased alike are purified by
passing through a marshy transitional space of lakes, pools and rushes before reaching
the doors of the horizon; this is the twilight before the dawn. Sometimes the day
journey of the sun is represented by Nun, the precosmic watery abyss, lifting the solar
vessel towards the zenith of the sky, up to Nut.
Nut plays an especially active role in the Pyramid Texts. In PT utterance 6, one of a
series of utterances spoken by Nut to charge the sarcophagus as the locus of
resurrection, she affirms that she has given to the deceased king the two horizons
that he may have power in them as Horakhty, that is, Horus-of-the-[two]-horizons. In
Page 140 of 223

this identification with the elder Horus, the deceased stands apart from Osiris; hence
in PT utterance 245, Nut tells the deceased king to look down upon Osiris when he
governs the spirits, for you stand far off from him,i.e., in the skyyou are not
among them and you shall not be among them. The complex relationship between Nut,
Re and the deceased king emerges in utterance 479, which asks Re to make the womb
of Nut pregnant with the seed of the spirit which is in her. This spirit can only be the
king, for in utterance 431, Nut, who is here referred to as the daughter, mighty in her
mother [Tefnut], who [Nut] appeared as a bee, is asked to make the King a spirit
within yourself, for he has not died. Res daily cycle in relation to Nut, impregnating
her and being born from her every day, is thus utilized as the engine powering the
resurrection of the deceased. In this sense, the account closely resembles that in
afterlife literature such as the Amduat book, in which the climax of Res nocturnal
journey is the rendezvous with Osiris. Similarly, the deceased king affirms in PT
utterance 563 that pressure is in your womb, O Nut, through the seed of the God
which is in you; it is I who am the seed of the God which is in you. The resurrection of
the deceased king is thus fit into the cosmic cycle of relations between Re and Nut.
Hence even in assimilation to Re, the deceased king is identified with Osiris, son of
Geb: sit on this throne of Re because you are Re who came forth from Nut who
bears Re daily, and you are born daily like Re; take possession of the heritage of your
father Geb, (PT utterance 606). For purposes of resurrection, the deceased must
simultaneously be identified with Osiris and with Re. Hence the complex statement in
BD spell 180 that I am one who enters when he sets into the netherworld and comes
forth when he sets from Nut. The contrasting identifications of the deceased with
Osiris and with Re find equilibrium in the identification with Horus; hence the parallel
assurances of PT utterance 609 that your mother Nut has borne you in the West and
your mother Isis has borne you in Chemmis [Akhmim]. Horus resolves the tension, so
to speak, between Osiris and Re, individual mortality and cosmic cyclicality.
Nut is also closely associated with the sycamore and tamarisk trees. The tree of Nut is
a place in which cosmic emergence and individual resurrection come together. CT spell
682 says of the deceased that his mother Nut bore him in the Field of Tamarisk which
protected the God in the nest, obviously referring to a myth about the birth of the
sun, while BD spell 59, for breathing air and having water available in the Gods
domain, appeals to the sycamore of Nut to give me water and the breath that is in
thee. It is I who occupy this seat in the midst of Hermopolis,where the eight Hehu
presided at the hatching of the cosmic egg. The shade of this tree is evoked in BD spell
152, which asks the sycamore of Nut to give cool water to Osiris N. [the deceased]
while he sits under thy branches, which give the north wind to the Weary-hearted One
[Osiris] in that seat forever. The tree is also, however, a source of warmth, in a
different sense, because its wood is the revivifying coffin: O thou sycamore of Nut
which refreshes the presider over the westerners,Osiris as lord of the land of the
deadand extends its arms to his members, behold, he is warm.
Page 141 of 223

Nut represents a critical juncture in the emergence of the cosmos, for the world of
the children of Nut, dominated by the conflict over the Osirian succession, is far
different from all that came before. On one side of the membrane formed by Nut is
the cosmos, bustling with activity, generation and strife, on the other side the abyss,
formless and unknowable. Hence in CT spell 624, the operator affirms that I do not
know the emerging earth or Nun, because one must be on one side or the other of the
membrane Nut represents. Correspondingly, in BD spell 50, the operator affirms I did
not see truth before the divine images of the Gods were fashioned. I am he who is; I
am heir of the great Gods. The complementary nature of Nut and Nun in this regard
can be seen in the statements in CT spell 640 that the knot is tied behind me by Nun
and in BD spell 50 that a knot was tied around me by Nut, who saw its first instance.
Nut is sometimes depicted, mostly in amulets, as a sow with piglets. In a text from the
ceiling of the sarcophagus chamber of Seti I, it is said that Nut is called Sow who eats
her piglets, referring to the stars. In this text, Geb quarrels with Nut because she
eats their children, but is reassured by Shu that they [the stars] shall live, and they
shall go forth from the place under her hind part in the east every day [i.e., at sunset],
as she gives birth to Re daily, (Neugebauer vol. I, 67f). A class of objects commonly
taken to be merely decorative has been argued (Kozloff 1992, 331-333) to depict Nut,
namely the so-called cosmetic spoons which depict a nude swimming girl holding before
her certain objects such as a lotus, a goose or a duck. In these objects can be
discerned a depiction of Nut swimming in the watery abyss, holding up the sun or the
cosmos itself (the lotus), or the earth (the goose, symbol of her lover Geb), or mortal
being (the duck being the sign for sa, son, here referring to Osiris, son of Nut and the
divine embodiment of mortality).
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Buhl, Marie-Louise. 1947. The Goddesses of the Egyptian Tree Cult. Journal of Near
Eastern Studies Vol. 6, No. 2: 80-97.
Faulkner, R. O. 1936-1938. The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus. The Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology 22-24.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Kozloff, Arielle P., and Betsy M. Bryan with Lawrence M. Berman. 1992. Egypts
Dazzling Sun: Amenhotep III and his World. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art.
Neugebauer, Otto, and Richard A. Parker. 1960-9. Egyptian Astronomical Texts.
Providence: Brown University Press.
Piankoff, Alexander. 1934. The Sky-Goddess Nut and the Night Journey of the Sun.
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 20: 57-61.
Page 142 of 223

Onuris
(Anhur) A divine warrior and desert hunter, Onuris is depicted as a man wearing a
crown with either two or more often four tall plumes a headdress which is frequently
interpreted as representing the four winds wielding a lance and a lasso or a lance
alone. His name means Bringer of the Distant One, and it seems thus that of the many
Gods who are placed in the role of bringing the Distant Goddess a wrathful Goddess
depicted as a lioness to Egypt from a semi-mythical land to the south or southeast,
Onuris may well lay claim to being the original, and his consort, Mehyt, to being the
original Distant Goddess. A love spell from the Greek Magical Papyri ( PGM X. 10f)
invokes the assistance of Onuris that the object of the spell be well disposed toward
me having seen me, let her fall in love with me, and no one will be able to speak in
opposition, apparently drawing upon the myth of the Distant Goddess in expectation
that Onuris will be able to attract the object of the spell toward its operator just as
he convinces the Distant Goddess to come back with him to Egypt. Arensnuphis, who
plays essentially the same role as Onuris in a different version of the myth, is similarly
invoked in a spell to obtain favor (PGM XII. 182f).
Onuris is mentioned in the Conflict of Horus and Seth as a partisan of Horus, but has
no other role in the myth. His connection to Horus here alludes, however, to his
participation in a myth involving the hunt to return the Eye of Horus, stolen by an oryx,
this myth providing yet another layer of meaning to Onuris name.
A further dimension to the character of Onuris comes from the irresistable tendency
to link Goddesses featuring in the Distant Goddess myth with Goddesses functioning
as the Eye of Re, that is, as the defender of Re and the executrix of his will in the
world. Onuris is thus depicted bearing the ankh, sign of life, in the midst of the
forbidding darkness of the Land of Sokar in the fourth hour of the Amduat book,
which recounts the solar boats nighttime journey through the netherworld. The
appearance of Onuris here seems to relate at once to the desert terrain of this hour,
as well as to the darkness in which the solar boat has been plunged, which is
represented by the separation of the solar eye from the boat itself. In the register
below that in which Onuris is depicted, fourteen heads wearing solar disks are shown,
indicating the fourteen days of the waxing moon, in which the Eye of Horus, the
wedjat, returns to fullness, its light having been brought from afar.
The sole reference to Onuris in the Coffin Texts is CT spell 768. In this spell, a God
who is addressed throughout without being named is identified at one point as You who
have come into being, Khepri who is in the flood, whom Nun made as Onuris. Onuris is
referred to in ways that allude to the myth of the Distant Goddess: You whose heart
aches for the Sacred Eye You who go and return safely. The God in question is also
called you whose name is one and whose faces are four, perhaps in reference to the
four plumed crown Onuris wears. Awareness seems to be the spells principal theme.
Page 143 of 223

The deity in question is addressed by the recurring phrase, If N. [the deceased] be

aware, do not be unaware of him. If you know N., N. will know you, and the deity is
characterized as you who see all you with a perceiving heart. At one point, the
operator requests that the deceased be empowered with a similar consciousness: Let
N. know of the tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands,
millions, all the universe about you You who measure everything, you who number
those who sleep, he [the deceased] will number those who sleep. Could this association
with awareness be a further dimension of Onuris as one who brings from afar?
Osiris
Osiris is the God of mortality and of the mortal being as mortal, hence in the ultimate
stages of the development of Egyptian theology, any deceased individual is identified
with Osiris, as is reflected by the use of Osiris N. to refer to the deceased in the
collections of afterlife literature known as the Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead,
where the conventional N. of the translators represents the insertion of the name of
the person on whose behalf the copy of the text was produced. This identification
bridges gender, males and females alike being referred to as Osiris in this context,
albeit occasionally Hathor replaced Osiris as the vehicle of divine identification for the
female deceased; and the Osirian identification apparently bridged species as well,
since as animals who received funerary rites, such as the Apis bull, could be
Osirianized as well. Osiris is depicted anthropomorphically, virtually always
mummiform, holding the crook and flail, symbols of royalty, and the atef crown, which
resembles the white crown of Upper Egypt but with two plumes on either side. The
skin color of Osiris is generally green, symbolizing vegetative life and renewal. No single
convincing interpretation of the name Osiris has come forward (for the various
hypotheses, see J. G. Griffiths, Osiris, in Helck and Otto), but the Os- component is
written with the same sign a throne, with the meaning seat or place as the Iscomponent in the name Isis, while the -ir component is written with an eye, as the verb
to make, hence the wordplay of PT utterance 684: the King will take his place as
Osiris, or make his seat like Osiris. A connection to the word wsr, mighty, has also
been suggested. The most characteristic epithet of Osiris is wn-nfr, or Onnophris,
meaning Enduring in well-being/the good.
Osiris is the passive object of the opus of resurrection, to which virtually all of the
Gods of the Egyptian pantheon make a contribution large or small, just as they make
their contributions to the defense of Re, the one pertaining to the cosmos as a whole,
the other to the life cycle of the individual mortal being. Like many Egyptian myths,
that of Osiris is not known to us through a narrative account, but rather through
countless allusions to it in hymns, rituals and spells. The Greek philosopher Plutarch
offers a famous narrative in his On Isis and Osiris, but this text can only be trusted to
accurately transmit Egyptian ideas intermittently. Perhaps the longest single Egyptian
account of the myth is the Great Hymn to Osiris on the stela of Amenmose (18th
Page 144 of 223

dynasty) (trans. in Lichtheim, vol. 2, 81-86). What is clear is that Osiris, son of Geb and
Nut, brother and husband of Isis, and king of an ideal Egypt, is murdered by his
brother Seth, although the method is not clear. Vagueness on this subject comes about
not only through a reticence in Egyptian sources to dwell at length on an inauspicious
topic, but also probably because the death of Osiris at the hands of Seth is meant to
symbolize all the diverse causes of mortality. Some part of Osiris fate involved being
cast into the Nile and recovered (brought ashore, according to an important tradition,
at Memphis) and some part involved dismemberment, although the drowning and the
dismemberment are probably substitutable alternatives rather than discrete elements
in a single account. The immersion of Osiris in the Nile, while it is on the one hand a
symbol for disintegration, also establishes the immanence of Osiris in the Niles lifegiving annual inundation; a related tradition is that the phallus of Osiris was never
recovered from the Nile, but rather was consumed by a carp. (Vernus has argued that
when Osiris is said to be mi, it does not mean drowned, but merely immersed. Note
the metaphorical extension of mi, which allows one to speak, as in English, of being
immersed in thought or concern about something.) This connection of Osiris to
agriculture via the inundation is stronger than the identification claimed by older
scholarship between Osiris and the crops themselves, the primary evidence for which is
the beds for barley sprouts in the shape of Osiris which were a feature of the Osirian
rites. The Great Hymn is, at any rate, paradigmatic in its account that Isis sought him
without wearying roamed the land lamenting, not resting till she found him, (83) and
that Isis protects the prone Osiris from further attacks, being his guard who drives
off the foes, who stops the deeds of the disturber by the power of her utterance,
that is, her magic primarily, but also possibly as ruler in his stead, for she is
characterized here as the clever-tongued whose speech fails not, effective in the
word of command, (ibid.). Osiris is somehow reconstituted and resurrected, an event
typically depicted by Osiris laying upon a bier while Isis hovers over his erect phallus in
the form of a small bird of prey, either a kestrel or kite; the Great Hymn describes
Isis having thus created breath with her wings, (ibid.). Isis creates the missing
phallus of Osiris for herself by means of her magic, a symbol for the magical
reconstitution or resurrection of Osiris in general. Isis copulates with the risen Osiris,
conceiving Horus, whom she raises in secret to vindicate Osiris and claim the
sovereignty. The resurrection of Osiris, being metaphysical, so to speak, does not
result in his return to his prior life, but his assumption of his new role as lord of the
dead, Khenty-Amentiu, Foremost of the Westerners, an epithet which refers to the
West (Amenti) as the land of the setting sun and hence of the dead. In this sense, the
Egyptians resurrection is not a negation of mortality, but is instead predicated upon it.
The futurity of Osiris is represented instead by Horus, who is conceived, in effect,
posthumously; or, better, the reconstitution of Osiris is one and the same magical act
as the conception of Horus, which is its proof, so to speak. The myth of Osiris and
Horus is a myth of royal succession, in which the living king is Horus in relation to his
deceased predecessor Osiris, whether or not there is a blood relation between them;
Page 145 of 223

but the myth becomes the basis for a doctrine of salvation. Horus vindicates his right
to succeed to the sovereignty of the ideal Egypt before a tribunal of the Gods, to
whom he must prove his claim against Seth, and when he is found justified (lit. trueof-voice, mae-hru) and given sovereignty over the cosmos, there results universal
jubilation inasmuch as the succession of Horus represents the victory over death itself
as well as the triumph of legitimacy and civilization over the rule of force. Osiris
himself presides over the tribunal which judges the dead, an event which assumes its
most characteristic form in BD spell 125 with the weighing of the heart (the
conscience, as it were) against Maet (truth, justice, the cosmic order).
The territory in dispute between Horus and Seth is, in a sense, Osiris himself, insofar
as the parts of Osiris body are associated (albeit with some inconsistency and
redundancy) with the nomes, or districts, of Egypt as well as the limbs of an ideal living
being who is, in effect, every mortal being. Moreover, as can be seen from spells in the
afterlife literature having as their goal the divinization of the parts of the deceaseds
body by identifying them with various Gods, the entire pantheon of Egypt has a stake in
the resurrection of Osiris and are, in some sense, manifest in his resurrected body.
The body parts of Osiris were not understood to be interred at different places
around the country; tombs of Osiris at several places around Egypt the Abaton near
Philae, Abydos, Busiris, Herakleopolis Magna were rather resting places of his whole
person, however this was conceived. The identification of the districts with the limbs
of Osiris affirms the nations indivisibility, not its fragmentation, by literally taking up
or incorporating the local cults into the Gods body (Hans Betz, Reliquie, in Helck and
Otto). Furthermore, the dismemberment of Osiris is simply decomposition into
formlessness, as contrasted with the integrity that is synonymous with life and hence
with resurrection, and it is the integrity and totality of Osiris which theology
consistently seeks to emphasize. Thus, for instance, PT utterance 247, possibly the
earliest extant hymn to Osiris, calls Osiris the Complete, tem, associating him thereby
with Atum, his great-grandfather. This point about integrity and resurrection helps to
clarify the Egyptians understanding with respect to mummification. Inasmuch as the
only genuine guarantee of the integrity of the body is not its embalming, but its
resurrection, since only a living body is unified and integral, the mummy is properly
regarded as a locus for the work of resurrection, and a shelter for the individual in
that process, rather than as the goal of that process as such.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Griffiths, J. G. 1980. The Origins of Osiris and His Cult. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Helck, Wolfgang and Eberhard Otto, eds. 1973. Lexikon der gyptologie. Wiesbaden:
Otto Harrassowitz.
Page 146 of 223

Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University

of California Press.
Vernus, P. 1991. Le Mythe dun mythe: la prtendue noyade dOsiris. De la drive dun
corps la drive du sens. Studi di egittologia e di Antichit funiche 9: 19-34.
Pakhet
(Pasht) Pakhet, whose name means She who scratches, is depicted as a woman with the
head of a lioness. In CT spell 470, for reaching Orion, the operator affirms that I
have appeared as Pakhet the Great, whose eyes are keen and whose claws are sharp,
the lioness who sees and catches by night. An inscription by the pharaoh Hatshepsut
at Speos Artemidos credits Pakhet, mistress of the desert plateau who roams the
wadis in the midst of the East, with having opened the roads for the water-torrent
without drenching me, in order to catch the water, that is, according to Hans
Goedicke, with having diverted a flood away from Hatshepsuts realm, that is, away
from inhabited areas, into the desert. Goedicke identifies this flood as a tsunami
caused by the volcanic eruption on the island of Thera (Santorini) in the Aegean. In any
case, to commemorate this event Hatshepsut dedicated a new shrine at Speos
Artemidos for Pakhet and her Ennead, that is, a pantheon of other Gods affiliated
with Pakhet, the term ennead refers to a group of nine Gods, an ideal number for sets
of Gods in Egyptian theology; it is not specified, however, which Gods comprise Pakhets
Ennead. A warrior Goddess, the cult of Pakhet was apparently most popular among
professional soldiers.
Goedicke, Hans. 2004. The Speos Artemidos Inscription of Hatshepsut and Related

Discussions. Oakville, CT: HALGO, Inc.

Pedesi and Pihor
A pair of mortal brothers apparently deified after drowning in the Nile, Pedesi (or
Peteese or Peteisis) and Pihor were the sons of Kuper, a chief of the Medjay (also
known as Blemmyes) and a local ally of the Romans. The brothers appear to have lived
during or around the 26th dynasty and were worshiped chiefly at a tiny temple of Isis
at Tutzis or Thz known as the temple of Dendur and now residing at the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York City. The temple of Dendur was erected by Emperor
Augustus (63 BCE-14 CE). Pedesi means Given by Isis and Pihor means Belonging to
Horus. Pedesi is featured more prominently on the walls of the temple, and is referred
to as the pshai, or beneficent spirit, of Tutzis (cf. Shai). Pihor is particularly
associated with neighboring Kelet or Krteh, and is called p-hry, the master or
superior. The brothers may have been interred in a crypt behind the temples rear
wall. Pedesi and Pihor are shown receiving offerings from the pharaoh Augustus as well
as worshiping the chief Gods of the temple, namely Isis and Osiris.

Page 147 of 223

Aldred, Cyril. 1978. The Temple of Dendur. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Ptah
The preeminent God of the city of Memphis, one of the earliest administrative centers
of the unified Egyptian nation, Ptah apparently lent his name to the nation itself, at
least in the Greek tongue. The Egyptians called their nation Kemi, or something
approximating to this, but the Greek name which we have inherited to refer to this
land, Aiguptos, appears to be a Greek transliteration of an Egyptian name for the city
of Memphis, He[t]-ka-Ptah, House of the spirit of Ptah. Due to its position at the
junction of Upper and Lower Egypt, Memphis is described as the Balance of the Two
Lands, in which Upper and Lower Egypt had been weighed in the conflict between
Horus and Seth, representing Lower and Upper Egypt respectively (Lichtheim vol. 1,
53). Ptah, a God of life, intelligence, speech (especially the word of command) and
craftsmanship, is depicted as a standing mummiform man, wearing a skullcap and a
broad collar with a large tassel at the back and holding a sceptre combining the ankh,

djed, and was (uas) symbols. Ptah is mummiform, not because he has funerary
associations, but to symbolize his participation in the state of changeless perfection
with which mummification is associated. Ptahs consort is Sekhmet and Nefertum is his
son. The Apis bull was regarded as Ptahs mortal representative and the deified vizier
Imhotep came to be regarded as Ptahs son as well. In addition, some late depictions of
Ptah in magical contexts depict him as a beardless dwarffully humanoid, unlike Besin
most cases holding snakes in his hands; in one instance, this image is labelled Ptah
endowed with life, (Holmberg, 182). This image is apparently also commonly intended to
depict the triune fusion deity Ptah-Sokar-Osiris. Ptah is also so frequently allied with
Tatenen in the fusion deity Ptah-Tatenen that in many cases Tatenen seems simply to
have become an epithet of Ptahs, but it is always safer to assume, given Egyptian
conservatism with respect to theological formulae, that references to Tatenen in
texts embed a reference to Tatenen himself.
Until Ptah came to be allied with other deities associated with the afterlife such as
Sokar, his role in the literature of the afterlife was slight. Only oblique references are
made to Ptah in the Pyramid Texts, from which it appears, however, that Nefertum was
already regarded as his son; PT utterance 573 urges Re to commend the deceased king
to him who is greatly noble, the beloved of Ptah, the son of Ptah, that he may speak on
my behalf. Ptah is best known for his role in the famous Memphite Theology, an Old
Kingdom text existing in a 25th Dynasty copy. In this text (trans. in Lichtheim vol. 1,
51-57) Ptah is said to be the heart and tongue of the Ennead, the nine who
conventionally represent all the Gods. In the Memphite Theology, the other Gods come
into being through the thought and speech of Ptah, indeed as the thought and speech
of Ptah. On the one hand, Ptah is thus given precedence even over the primordial God
Atum; among the Gods who came into being in Ptah are Ptah-Nun, the father who
made Atum and Ptah-Naunet, the mother who bore Atum. This sort of precedence,
Page 148 of 223

however, which is accorded to many if not all Egyptian deities when they are the focus
of contemplation, at the same time does not displace the inalienable attribute of all
Gods in Egyptian theology, namely the power of self-creation. Hence in the Memphite
Theology itself, the tongue (i.e., creative utterance) of Ptah is that through which
Horus had taken shape as Ptah, in which Thoth had taken shape as Ptah (ibid., 54).
That is, to the degree that Ptahs creative utterance is prior to all the other Gods, it
also renders Ptahs identity relative, for it becomes the instrument by means of which
Gods such as Horus and Thoth create themselves. The purpose of the Memphite
Theology therefore is not solely the glorification of Ptah, but rather the glorification
of the all-pervading power of mind itself, through identification with which Ptah is
perceived as supreme: Thus heart and tongue rule over all the limbs in accordance with
the teaching that it is in every body and it is in every mouth of all Gods, all men, all
cattle, all creeping things, whatever lives, thinking whatever it wishes and commanding
whatever it wishes, (54).

CT spell 647 is called Protection through Ptah. In this spell Ptah speaks in the firstperson, attributing his name to an exclamation by Atum: O my son, how beautiful is
your face,beautiful of face (nefer-her) being a common epithet of Ptah My
likeness [i.e., Atum's] is created [p-t-h], and that is how this my name of Ptah came
into being. Ptahs functions in this spell seem to center around being the ideal ruler as
well as the lord of natural generation. He performs the typical royal act of offering
Maet as a symbol of promoting harmony in the universe: I have lifted Maet onto the
altar of Shu who is in the coffin. Ptah thus carries forward the cosmogonic work of
Shu just as a royal successor ideally carries forward the will of his predecessor. Ptahs
special association in this respect is with living things. He affirms that he makes the
herbage to grow I make the riparian lands of Upper Egypt green, I the Lord of the
deserts who makes green the valleys in which are the Nubians, the Asiatics and the
Libyans. Elsewhere, he states that he is charged with nourishing the grain of the
Field of Offerings and knitting the seed together, and that he give[s] life, controlling
offerings for the Gods the lords of offerings. Ptah also identifies himself here with
Nehebkau who grants souls, crownings, kas and beginnings when I wish, I act, and
they live. He calls himself the Lord of Life, and the operator identifying with Ptah
states that Seth is my protection because he knows the nature of what I do, for as
lord of life and vitality Ptah can legitimately invoke the assistance of Seth, who favors
the strong. This subtly underscores that Ptahs sphere of activity does not lie in the
afterlife, but in this world; compare in this respect BD spell 82, For assuming the form
of Ptah, that is, eating bread, drinking beer, excreting from the anus, and existing
alive in Heliopolis. Ptah here is paradigmatic of the living state. Ptah manifests his
characteristic qualities of perception and command, just as in the Memphite Theology,
expressed here through a union with Sia and Hu, respectively embodying these
attributes: I am Hu who is on my mouth and Sia who is in my body. These qualities
permit the extension of Ptahs power into any domain, and hence Ptah states here that
Page 149 of 223

I have steered the Night-bark and the sailors of the bark are in joy. In CT spell 1143,
Sia (perception) is said to be in Ptahs Eye.
A specific funerary role was seen for Ptah in the Opening of the Mouth ceremony,
which is more typically the role of Anubis. BD spell 23, however, explains the nature of
the association when it says my mouth has been parted by Ptah with this metal chisel
of his with which he parted the mouths of the Gods. Here Ptahs role as God of
intelligent speech combines with his role as artisan, for the mouths of the Gods in
question belong to the cult statues which Ptah, as patron of craftsmanship, has
fashioned. This important function with respect to the Gods statues is doubtless one
of the factors underlying the attribution to Ptah of power over the entire pantheon, as
in the Memphite Theology; cf. BD spell 15: Ptah art thou, for thou fashionest thy
body. It should be noted that Ptahs name is often connected in later texts with an
Egyptian verb p-t-h, meaning to open or to sculpt/engrave, although this is not the
word for open which occurs in the name of the Opening of the Mouth ceremony. It is
doubtful, also, that this verb is the origin of Ptahs name, insofar as it appears to be a
Semitic loan word (Holmberg, 10). Ptahs craftsmanship is characteristically expressed
by the verb n-b-i, meaning to mould or model, and particularly to melt or cast metal.
Ptah sometimes appears to be especially associated with metalworking, as in a text
from Edfu, in which Horus is urged to Grasp the harpoon which Ptah, the goodly guide,
fashioned for Sekhet [the Goddess of the marshes], which was fashioned in copper for
thy mother Isis, (Holmberg, 46). Ptah as smith or sculptor can be contrasted with
Khnum as potter, as in a scene from Denderah which portrays the fashioning of Ihy,
the son of Hathor, by Ptah and Khnum together, Khnum turning Ihy on a potters wheel
while Ptah sculpts his form with a chisel (ibid., 47).
Other common epithets of Ptah are south of his wall, apparently referring to the
position of a shrine of Ptah within his temple at Memphis, and under his moringa tree,
referring to a tree sacred to Ptah which was cultivated for its oil seeds. Ptah is also
depicted sometimes as raising up the sky, probably from his association with building
(see, e.g., CT spell 626 where Ptah erects the coffin by analogy); this image and its
associated ideas have been studied exhaustively in Berlandini 1995.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Berlandini, Jocelyne. 1995. Ptah-Demiurge et lExaltation du Ciel. Revue dgyptologie
46: 9-41.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Holmberg, M. S. 1946. The God Ptah. Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup.
Page 150 of 223

Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University

of California Press.
Qadesh
(Qudshu, Qodsha) Qadesh is a Goddess clearly originating outside of Egypt, somewhere
in the Levant, for her name is a Semitic word meaning the Holy or Holiness. On one
monument, however, the same figure is labeled Qenet. Qadesh is depicted as a nude
woman facing front (similar in this respect to Hathor) holding snakes or lotus blossoms
in both hands, generally standing atop a lion. On a stone bowl from the reign of
Horemheb Qadesh bears the epithet lady of the stars of heaven (Redford 1973).
Walter Meier identifies Qadesh with a Goddess named as Serpent Lady in protoSinaitic inscriptions, and sees her as an early form of the Phoenician Goddess Tanith or
Tannit, deriving the name Tannit from a Canaanite form Tannintu, also meaning Serpent
Lady, from tannn, serpent (Maier 1986, 100). In Egyptian images Qadesh is frequently
accompanied by Min and Reshep.
Maier, Walter A. 1986. Aerah, Extrabiblical Evidence. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
Redford, Donald B. 1973. New Light on the Asiatic Campaigning of Horemheb. Bulletin

of the American Schools of Oriental Research No. 211: 36-49

Raet (Raettawy)
(Rt, Rt, Reyet) Raet is the feminine counterpart or complement of Re, but she
features most often as the consort of Montu, by whom she is the mother of Harpre,
Solar Horus, a child God similar in form to Harpocrates. She is depicted as a woman
wearing the headdress typical of Hathor, namely the solar disk, cows horns and uraeus
serpent, sometimes with the addition of two feathers to the disk. Frequently she is
known as Raettawy (var. Rt-taui), Raet of the Two Lands, the Two Lands being the
standard term for the united Egypt and, in a sense, for the ideal world. Raet is in the
first place a title originated by Hatshepsut which designated her as wielding the power
of solar sovereignty, that is, the power of illumination and innovation, in this world. The
sense of Raet as a title is akin in certain respects to that of aten or visible disk of the
sun. Subsequently, due to the scarcity of female sovereigns, the title comes to be
borne by Goddesses who are consorts of Gods identified with Re; by Goddesses who act
as Res executive or Eye; and by Goddesses identified as Res daughter. Among the
Goddesses bearing this title most often are Hathor, Mut, Maet, and Isis. Sometimes
the title Raet is interchangeable with the feminine form of Aten, Atenet. The epithet
is also used to introduce the name of a Goddess preeminent in a given place. The name
Raettawy is used more commonly to denote the consort of Montu. Raettawy is also
sometimes regarded as the mother of Thoth, in which capacity she is also called
Seneket-Net, Wet-nurse of Neith (el-Sayed 1969, 73-75). This epithet would seem to
designate Raettawy as Thoths grandmother, Thoth sometimes having been regarded as
Page 151 of 223

the son of Neith, although it is more likely that it simply expresses that Raettawy is
primordial, having nursed the primordial Goddess Neith herself. In the cosmogony
involving the lotus, Raettawy is identified with the bud of the lotus from which the
solar child comes forth as the blossom (Ryhiner 1986, 135f, 192f), and in general as
nourishing and protecting the solar child.
Gutbub, Adolphe. 1984. Rait and Rat-taui. Pp. 87-90 and 151-155 in vol. 5 of Helck,
Wolfgang and Eberhard Otto, eds. 1973. Lexikon der gyptologie. Wiesbaden: Otto
Harrassowitz.
Ryhiner, Marie-Louise. 1986. LOffrande du Lotus dans les Temples gyptiens de
lpoque Tardive. Brussels: Fondation gyptologique Reine lisabeth.
el-Sayed, Ramadan. 1969. Thoth na-t-il Vraiment pas de Mre? Revue dgyptologie
21: 71-76.
Re
(In the later period, frequently Pre due to the addition of the definite article to the
name; also frequently Ra, but note that the vowel is not the open a as in father) Re is
the great God of the city of Iunu or n, a city the Greeks named Heliopolis, or City of
the Sun, because Re is the God of the sun par excellence in the Egyptian pantheon. To
say that Re is God of the sun is not to say that he is identical with the sun as a physical
being, a distinction Egyptians registered by their use of the term aten to refer to the
suns visible disk. Rather, Re is the divine potency in the sun and hence the focal point
of the whole cosmos. Res nature and functions have more to do with the central
position of the symbol of the sun in the totality of Egyptian thought than with the sun
in a narrowly physical sense. Res most characteristic depiction is either as a hawk or a
hawk-headed man wearing on his head a solar disk encircled by a cobra; as the night sun
traveling through the netherworld, however, Re is usually depicted as a ram-headed
man. Re travels across the sky in his bark or boat, which is called the mandjet in the
day and the mesketet at night. Upon the solar boat the pharaoh himself in the Pyramid
Texts wishes to serve as a mere oarsman (e.g., PT utterances 467, 469). An important
motif in Egyptian theology is the defense of Re against his enemies, who are the
enemies of the cosmic order, undertaken by other deities. Each deity in the pantheon,
in some sense, in exercising their particular function on behalf of the cosmos can be
seen as undertaking the defense of Re. Chief among the deities who battle Res enemies
for him are the numerous Goddesses bearing the epithet Eye of Re, such as Hathor,
Sekhmet, Tefnut and Wadjet; the God Seth, which is noteworthy inasmuch as the
latter has negative associations in other important contexts; and the God Horus,
especially in the form of Horus Behdety, the winged disk.
Recognizing the distinction between the divine potency in the sun and the sun as a
natural entity allows one not only to differentiate Re from the physical sun, but also to
better understand the fusion of Re with other Gods in compound forms such as AmunPage 152 of 223

Re. Such compounds, which occur among many different Gods in Egyptian religion, do
not involve the dissolution of the identities of the Gods in question. In the case of
compounds with -Re, the combined forms bear almost without exception the
iconography, not of Re, save for solarized headdresses, but of the other God in the
combination. In general, affixing -Re to the name of another God expresses that Gods
assumption of the central role which the sun plays in the cosmic system. That is, the
combined form with -Re is the theological expression of a thesis about the central
disposition of the solar potency in the order of nature and of the solar principle in the
order of thought. This thesis, most forcefully articulated in the New Kingdom, makes
itself felt in theology but is perhaps misleadingly referred to as the New Kingdom
solar theology, to the degree that it is a philosophy, one which leaves untouched that
which forms the foundations of Egyptian theology, namely the manifold of individual
Gods and the body of myths, symbols and rites associated with them.
Despite Res extensive fusion with other Gods, it is possible to discern a cycle of myths
which seems to have belonged originally and exclusively to him. Re is apparently
originally regarded as the child of Nut or else of Mehet-Weret, born upon the
primordial mound whose emergence from the waters of the abyss, personified as Nun,
marks the initial creative impulse in the cosmos. This tradition seems to have been
independent both of that attributing the original creative impulse to Atum, resulting in
the conception of Shu and Tefnut, as well as that for which Nut is primarily the mother
by Geb of Osiris, Isis, Seth and Nephthys. It would not be accurate to see in Nun Res
father, since what is emphasized about Nun is his inertness; the Gods who come to be
in Nun create themselves. Hence Re speaks of Nun in the Book of the Celestial Cow as
his elder, in whom he came to be, but not as his progenitor, nor does Nun imply that
this is the case. Re is born from Nut every morning, voyages across the sky in his day
bark, then enters her body again at sunset to voyage in the night bark through the
netherworld, the inside of the sky, so to speak, to be born again at dawn. He is thus his
own father and his own son. It seems impossible to interject a linear narrative
development into this cycle having neither beginning nor end; but another body of myth
associated with Re posits him as having undergone a significant change of state in the
ideal, timeless past. This myth is recounted primarily in the aforementioned Book of
the Celestial Cow (trans. in Piankoff 1955; translations also in Lichtheim, Ancient

Egyptian Literature, vol. 2, and in Simpson, et al., Literature of Ancient Egypt). In this
text, Re is depicted as having reigned originally over Gods and mortals alike without
intermediaries, but he grows old and humans become rebellious. Rebellious humanity is
attacked first by Hathor in the desert, then by Sekhmet in the riparian lands, each
acting in her capacity as Res powerful Eye ( irt), the enforcer of his will (the Egyptian
verb ir, to do, the participial form ir.t, doer or agent being evoked by irt, eye). These
actions foreshadow the ultimate development in the myth, namely Res decision to
distance himself from mortals and delegate the governance of the mortal world to
other Gods (Geb, Osiris and Thoth are specified). Re is lifted up to the sky by Nut in
Page 153 of 223

the form of a great cow. The theme of Re delegating power to other Gods is also
encountered in a myth concerning Isis (no. 84 in Borghouts), in which Isis crafts a
scorpion to poison Re, then demands Re reveal to her his secret name, by the magical
efficacy of which she can cure him. This magical efficacy transmitted to Isis is in turn
used by her on behalf of her son Horus.
A different body of literature involving Re, less mythical than magical in nature, are
the various New Kingdom netherworld books such as the Amduat book (for this class of
literature see Hornung 1999). These books, in general, are accounts of Res nocturnal
journey through the netherworld, or duat, which is divided into the hours of the night.
The form in which Re makes this journey is called Ifu-Re, flesh-of-Re. As the boat of
Re and his entourage enters each hour, the divinities, potencies and souls who reside in
that hour are illuminated and interact with the boat. The climax of Res journey is his
rendezvous with Osiris at or near the middle of the night. In these books, Res
illumination of the netherworld is the engine of resurrection and its power supply. The
mythic charter for the creation of such books is provided in the Book of the Celestial
Cow. Before Res withdrawal from the mortal realm, access to Res spiritual illumination
was universal and immediate for mortals; after his withdrawal, this illumination is
dependent upon their own wisdom and virtue. Hence the partially illuminated space of
the netherworld effectively embodies this withdrawal of Re. Since mortals will require
knowledge in this new order, Re charges Thoth with writing down the things which are
in the netherworld.
Another expression of the relationship Egyptians conceived between Re and humans is
the tradition that humans came into existence from tears shed by Re or Atum. While
this myth has its basis in the similarity between the words for tears and for people in
Egyptian, it also underscores once again the fundamental Egyptian idea of a distance
between humans and the natural or cosmic order, a distance which is even painful on
some level for the Gods themselves. This distance is made concrete where it is
specified that Re (or Atum) wept because he was separated from his Eye, i.e. his
agency or doing. When she returns, he has fashioned a new eye, so he places the
original Eye upon his forehead, i.e., as the uraeus serpent whose flame is the defense
of the cosmic order Re has established. This order involves a painful degree of
separation between the natural order and human experience; but the work of healing
this rift is immediately taken up by the Gods who occupy the space thus created, Gods
such as Isis or Thoth, whom Re assists by delegating some of his own power. Re also is
said to have created Hu (authoritative utterance) and Sia (perception/understanding)
from blood which he shed when he cut his phallus, possibly a reference to circumcision
(BD spell 17). Hu and Sia are often depicted guiding the solar boat, as is Heka, the
divine personification of magic itself, and Goddesses such as Hathor or Isis. That
elements of perception and cognition are so prominent among the crew of the solar
boat implies that the boat is a figure of mind and its powers. The power of magic, once
Page 154 of 223

imparted to humans, allows them to assist not only themselves, but also Re in his
maintenance of the cosmic order. This is made explicit in The Book of Overthrowing

Apophis, a series of ritual texts directed against Apophis, the divine embodiment of
entropy and all anti-cosmic forces, who each day attacks the solar bark and each day is
repelled by the collective efforts of the other Gods and, apparently, of humans too, for
Re states that the tears which came forth from mine Eye, i.e., humans, are against
you [Apophis] (27, 25; The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus III, p. 173). Later in the same
text, Re states that children fell him [Apophis] and sunder his soul from his body and
his shade, and the sages who are in the bark and the tears of mine Eye desire to attack
them, and urges that ye sages who are in this land, and ye Nine Gods who came into
being from my flesh, be ye vigilant in felling Apophis, (29, 8-10; The Bremner-Rhind
Papyrus IV, p. 42). Humans, whether sages or mere children, play a vital role in
partnership with the Gods in sustaining the cosmos against the forces of entropy.
Re is also at the center of a text known as the Litany of Re, although its proper title is
The Book of the Adoration of Re in the West and of the Adoration of the One Joined
Together in the West. The joined-together-one is, in effect, the third entity created
by the union of Re and Osiris, the resurrected Osiris infused with the potency of Re.
The text takes the form of a hymn of sorts to seventy-four (or, in some versions,
seventy-five) forms of Re. Its function in the tombs in which it is found is to enact
the resurrection of Osiris, that is, the deceased, who is accordingly referred to as the

djeba ['substitute' or 'token'] of the one joined together. The Litany was also for
use by the living, however, stating of itself, This is the victory of Re over his enemies
in the West. It is profitable for a man upon earth; it is profitable for him after his
burial. The man on earth who would perform the ritual is perhaps the heir of the
djeba referred to in the text. The establishment of a relationship of succession among
the living through their participation in the resurrection of their forebears is implicit
in Egyptian dogma about the afterlife, but is perhaps intensified in the Litany due to
its royal provenance, although portions of it were adopted as BD spells 127 and 180; it
also formed some part of the liturgy of certain temples in the Late Period. This latter
fact underscores the point that where Re is involved it can no longer be strictly a
matter of the resurrection of the private individual, but must involve a cosmic element,
whether literally royal or pertaining to the eternal sovereignty of the Gods.
See also: The Book of the Celestial Cow: A Theological Interpretation, Eye of the
Heart: A Journal of Traditional Wisdom, No. 3, May 2009, pp. 73-99.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Faulkner, R. O. 1937. The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus III. Journal of Egyptian

Archaeology 23: 166-185.

Page 155 of 223

. 1938. The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus IV. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 24: 4153.
. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [PT]
Hornung, Erik. 1999. The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife . trans. David Lorton.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Piankoff, Alexandre. 1955. The Shrines of Tut-Ankh-Amon. New York: Bollingen.
. 1964. The Litany of Re. New York: Bollingen.
Quirke, Stephen. 2001. The Cult of Ra: Sun-Worship in Ancient Egypt . New York:
Thames & Hudson.
Renenutet
(Renenet, Ernutet, Hermouthis, Thermouthis; also sometimes Terenuthis, although this
is properly the Hellenized form of the name of her cult center) Goddess of the harvest
and of destiny, divine protector and wetnurse, Renenutet is depicted either as a cobra,
or as a cobra-headed woman, or as a cobra with a womans head, or as a woman with the
lower body of a cobra. Renenutet is often depicted nursing her son Nepry, the God of
grain, or the pharaoh, who identifies himself with Nepry in the festival celebrating his
birth in the ninth month of the Egyptian calendar. The eighth month of the Egyptian
calendar, Pharmuthi, in fact bears the name of Renenutet. Renenutets name comes
from a word meaning a nurse, one who rears a child, the verb rnn meaning also to take
upon ones lap or fondle, as well as to exult or praise, this too being a kind of
nourishment. Renenutets most common consort is Sobek.
In PT utterance 256 (similar to CT spell 575), the deceased king affirms, I have
succeeded to Geb, I have succeeded to Atum, I am on the throne of Horus the firstborn, and his Eye is my strength, I am protected from what was done against him, the
flaming blast of my uraeus is that of Renenutet who is upon me. The uraeus is the firespitting cobra who defends the king as the legitimate representative of solar
sovereignty on earth. Renenutet is naturally associated with the uraeus because she too
is depicted as a cobra, but she is not simply and hence redundantly identical to the
uraeus here; rather, she combines the role of the uraeus, which is pre-eminently the
defender of Re, with the defense of Horus, through an association with the Eye of
Horus which was wounded and healed. The Eye of Horus represents any material seen
as a divine boon to humans or, conversely, as an offering by humans to the Gods. As
Goddess of the harvest, Renenutet is naturally closely connected to virtually all such
substances. A passage from the Hearst Papyrus (P. Hearst xiv, 4-7) identifies
Renenutet and the Eye of Horus: Hail to thee, O Eye of Horus, Renenutet upon Hedjhotep, thou to whom Re has given glory before the Ennead, i.e. the totality of the
Gods, referred to by the ideal number nine. Hedj-hotep is the God of weaving, and thus
the reference here is to flax as the matter of clothing, or for the bandages which
form the protective clothing of the mummy. Similarly, PT utterance 622 states, in
offering a garment to Osiris the King, that is, the deceased king as Osiris, I have
Page 156 of 223

clad you in the Eye of Horus, this Renenutet garment of which the Gods are afraid, so
that the Gods may fear you just as they fear the Eye of Horus. The awe or fear
generated by the Eye of Horus is the power of the offering, for the Eye of Horus
represents offerings to the Gods in general, the efficacy of which is unfailingly
respected (feared) by them. Renenutet was also apparently associated with the
development of an infant in the womb, an association which enriches the symbolism of a
Renenutet garment. Thus she is sometimes juxtaposed with Heqet and Meskhenet as a
reproductive trinity, Heqet being responsible for the initial conception, Renenutet for
the growth, and Meskhenet for the delivery (as in Hatshepsuts Speos Artemidos
inscription, Goedicke 70f). The Renenutet garment is the garment of ones destiny,
woven as one grows, Renenutet representing ones luck or prosperity which nourishes
one all through life.
A similar concept is expressed, albeit in much different form, by the identification of
the deceased in CT spell 762 with Nehebkau, son of Geb, born of your mother
Renenutet; you are indeed the ka of every God Horus has greeted you, for he
recognizes you as the ka of all the Gods. The relationship of Renenutet to Nehebkau is
not a matter of myth so much as of the concept of the ka, with its concrete sense of
sustenance as well as its abstract sense of essence. Renenutet is the harvest not just
of the literal crops, but embodies fulfillment more generally. This provides further
depth for her associations in the afterlife literature with Horus, who fulfills the
promise of his father, and with the linen which forms the final garment, the wrappings
for the mummy (see especially CT spells 779 and 862), these symbolizing at once the
solicitude of Horus for his father and the material force of resurrection as embodied
in an agricultural product. A special bond between Renenutet and Horus is affirmed by

BD spell 170, which calls Renenutet she who conceived Horus to Atum before the
Ennead, that is, before the emergence of the manifold of the Gods who administer the
cosmos. This same spell calls out to the deceased with the words, Thy Renenutet lifts
thee, the use of thy here echoing a usage found in other contexts where it means
ones destiny. Hence the Satire of the Trades, a text exhorting young people to train
as scribes, states that A scribes Renenutet is on his shoulder on the day he is born
(Lichtheim vol. 1, 191). This derives its sense, again, from Renenutets link to the
harvest, for this is destiny in the sense of that which is provided for ones future,
literally ones future sustenance, for as the text goes on to say, no scribe is short of
food and of riches from the palace (ibid.). This juxtaposition of sustenance and
futurity in order to generate the concept of destiny is, in turn, very close to the
process by which the complex concept of the ka seems to have developed.
The offspring of Renenutet and Sobek is identified in Greek as Anchoes, a name which
seems to derive from the Egyptian Ankhy, the Living. No God of this name is attested,
however; a Greek hymn to Renenutet fused with Isis as Isis-Hermouthis states

Page 157 of 223

that Anchoes your Son, who inhabits the height of heaven, is the rising Sun who shows
forth his light, (Vanderlip p. 36).
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Goedicke, Hans. 2004. The Speos Artemidos Inscription of Hatshepsut and Related
Discussions. Oakville, CT: HALGO, Inc.
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Vanderlip, Vera F. 1972. The Four Greek Hymns of Isidorus and the Cult of Isis .
Toronto: A. M. Hakkert.
Reret
Reret is depicted as a bipedal hippopotamus in a fashion virtually identical to Ipy or
Taweret, from whom she is distinguished by her astral associations. Reret is linked to
two different sets of stars, but primarily to a constellation in the north sky
corresponding to our Draco. This constellation, in turn, is linked in Egyptian thought to
another constellation, corresponding to our Big Dipper, which Egyptians saw as having
the shape of the foreleg of a quadruped and was known to Egyptians as the Meskhet,
the Foreleg. The constellation was usually depicted as a bulls foreleg, connected by a
tether to a mooring post held by Reret. The Meskhet was regarded sometimes as the
foreleg of Seth, and was then spoken of as the foreleg of a donkey or dog, but is never
depicted in this fashion (note that Seths foreleg is already spoken of in PT utterance
61, though not in connection to a constellation). Seths foreleg is tied to the mooring
post guarded by Reret so that it [the Foreleg] cannot travel among the Gods
(Jumilhac pp. 108, 129). In texts from the temple of Esna, however (nos. 400, 450),
Reret is said to tether the Foreleg in the northern sky in order not to let it [the
Foreleg] go upside down into the Duat [the netherworld]. In these texts there is no
suggestion that the Foreleg is associated with Seth. A similar concept of these stars
and their relation to Reret seems to be expressed on the lid of a bull sarcophagus from
Ab Ysn, which attributes the Foreleg to Osiris: Hail Osiris bull of the sky are you
the stars of the northern sky are your Foreleg. They never set in the west of the sky
like the decanal stars but they travel, going upside down in the night as in the day. They
are in the following of Reret the Great of the northern sky, (Neugebauer vol. III, 1901). There was also a Reret, similarly with a mooring post, among the hour stars, located
near or in the decanal belt, south of and near the ecliptic (Neugebauer vol. II, 7). Reret
is depicted with her front feet resting on the mooring post, or one on the mooring post
and one on a small vertical crocodile. Sometimes a tether or chain runs from the
Page 158 of 223

mooring post to the Foreleg. Reret is also often depicted bearing a crocodile on her
back. Although she is always depicted as a hippopotamus, Rerets name apparently
means the Sow.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Neugebauer, Otto, and Richard A. Parker. 1960-9. Egyptian Astronomical Texts.
Providence: Brown University Press.
Sauneron, Serge. 1959-75. Esna. Cairo: Institut franais darchologie orientale.
Vandier, Jacques. 1961. Le Papyrus Jumilhac. Paris: Muse du Louvre.
Reshep
(Reshef, -ph, Rashap) Reshep is a Levantine God adopted into the Egyptian pantheon
during the New Kingdom. He is depicted as a bearded man, often with the thick,
pointed Asiatic beard, wearing a headdress with the horns or head of a gazelle at its
front and a long streamer or a cord with a tassel on the end at the back, or in more
Egyptianizing fashion as a youg man with the typical ceremonial beard worn by the Gods
and wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt adorned with a uraeus serpent. He may
wear a Syrian-style kilt with tassels on the hem. Reshep generally bears a spear, mace
or ax and a shield and sometimes a quiver of arrows, alluding both to the martial nature
which earned him royal patronage and to his prowess as a demon fighter which was
responsible for his popularity among commoners, especially Levantine immigrants, but
not limited to that community. Occasionally Reshep carries a lute. Reshep forms a triad
with Min and the Levantine Goddess Qadesh on numerous stelae, but the relationship
between these deities cannot be determined. Resheps consort is Itum, about whom
little else is known, but they are invoked together in a spell (no. 23 in Borghouts)
against certain demons of disease. The invocation, which accompanies the application of
a salve made of ground cucumber seed heated with wine, refers to the poisons of
Reshep and Itum, his wife, which are directed against the demons. Reshep and Astarte
are patrons of horsemanship in a text about the youthful Amenhotep II, and another
text speaks of the same king, fighting in Syria, as having crossed the Orontes on
dangerous waters, like Reshep, (ANET p. 245).
Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Pritchard, James B. 1969. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament .
3d edn. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [ANET]
Sah
Sah is the divinity immanent in the constellation of Orion. In PT utterance 274, Sah is
called father of the Gods, most likely because Orion precedes Sirius (Egyptian
Sothis), the heliacal rising of which marked the beginning of the Egyptian year.
Page 159 of 223

Orion/Sah thus presides over the cycle of festivals through the course of the year
through which the Gods manifest themselves. Orion is generally paired with Sirius in
Egyptian thought. Thus in PT utterance 412, the deceased king is assured, You shall
reach [sah] the sky as Sah, your soul shall be as effective [seped] as Sothis [Sopdet].
Orion and SiriusSah and Sothisthus come to be associated quite closely with Osiris
and Isis respectively, but not to the point of identity. Soped is the child of Sah and
Sothis, and BD spell 172 refers to Sah as the son of Re and Nut.
In PT utterance 442, it is said that Osiris has come as Sah, lord of wine in the Wag
festival, since the Wag festival in honor of Osiris takes place during the first month
of the year, and hence appropriately incorporates Sah/Orion. In this utterance the
deceased king is promised to regularly ascend with Sah from the eastern region of the
sky <and> regularly descend with Sah into the western region of the sky, and that
Sothis shall guide the king and Sah alike on the goodly roads which are in the sky in
the Field of Reeds, the Field of Reeds being a transitional space the sun passes
through just prior to the dawn. The reference to Sah as Lord of wine in the Wag
festival echoes the affirmation by the deceased king in PT utterance 504 that the
sky is pregnant of wine, Nut has given birth to her daughter the dawnlight, and I raise
myself, which is thought to refer to the heliacal rising of Sirius, i.e. the rising of
Sirius just before dawn, whose redness is here compared to wine. In PT utterance 466,
Sah and Osiris are again paralleled, although Sah is in the sky and Osiris in the
netherworld (which can be understood, however, as an invisible or ethereal sky): O
King, you are this great star, the companion of Sah, who traverses the sky with Sah,
who navigates the netherworld with Osiris The sky has borne you with Sah, the year
has put a fillet on you with Osiris. The companion star to Orion in this utterance has
been identified with either Procyon or Aldebaran. In utterance 477, Sah is a name of
Osiris, characterized thereby as long of leg and lengthy of stride, due to a wordplay
between Sah and a word sah meaning to kick as well as to reach or arrive at, as in PT
utterance 412 (cf. CT spell 227: I am Sah who treads [sah] his Two Lands). Between
Osiris and Sah, then, there is a close association, but involving only a narrow range of
Osiris attributes. Sah principally signifies a desirable locale or abode in the sky, a
favorite son of the heavens, and a helper in the ascent to the stars. Sah connects most
clearly with Osiris in standing for the renewal of the year and thus the inauguration of
a new round of the cosmic cycle, an especially important aspect of the general Osirian
theme of renewal as such. In the Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys, Isis says to
Osiris, Your sacred image, Orion in heaven, rises and sets every day The noble image
issued from you nourishes Gods and men, reptiles and herds live by it, (Lichtheim vol.
3, 118f).
The Pyramid Texts parallel the birth of Orion in the netherworld to the second birth
of the deceased in the sky as a transfigured spirit or akh: The sky conceives you with
Orion, the netherworld bears you with Orion, (PT utterance 442). The special
Page 160 of 223

relationship between the deceased and Sah/Orion is developed further in the

subsequent afterlife literature. Spell 469 in the Coffin Texts involves an encounter
between the operator and Sah: I find Sah standing in my path with his staff of rank in
his hand; I accept it from him and I will be a God by means of it, the operator affirms,
and by virtue of possessing this staff gains access to the Mansion of Sah, from a
throne in the shrine of which s/he is able to summon Sah at will. A scepter or staff of
Sah is also mentioned in BD spells 180 and Pleyte 168. Sah engages in a dialogue with
the deceased (or the operator of the spell more generally) which is less than clear in
its details but which demonstrates that a certain tradition envisioned a partnership
between the magical operator and Sah, Sah acting as an intermediary between the
operator and the other denizens of the netherworld. CT spell 470, a greatly condensed
version of the same, affirms that Sah regards the operator as his son and successor:
Sah says, Give me my son, for it is he who rises in peace; you shall be ennobled before
your throne, for you are my son, the lord of my house. Another in this apparent genre
of spells is CT spell 689, where Orion says that the deceased is my son, older than I,
a typical sort of meaningful paradox in Egyptian religious literature. Once again Sah
acts on behalf of the deceased, bringing certain flesh offerings to him/herI have
indeed comeso says Sah. I bring to you the two shares of the cutting which you have
asked for from me and those in charge of them,and mediating between the deceased
and other Gods or spirits: Let me know what those two have done about what you
asked forso says Sah. In CT spell 1017, similarly, a series of speeches by Sah show
him taking the principal role in the investiture of the deceased with the dignities and
potencies s/he is to exercise in the netherworld.
Mention is made in BD spell 64 of a doctrine pertaining to the attendants of Sah,
each of whom represents a twelfth part of the night, two of whom or a sixth of the
night representing the hour of overthrowing the rebel and returning therefrom
triumphant It is these that are at the opening of the netherworld; it is these that
are assigned to Shu. Here the role of the attendants of Sah, particularly two crucial
ones, seems to be to secure the entrance to the netherworld, which is not conceived
spatially here so much as temporally. These chosen attendants, representing a crucial
moment in the journey through the night, are thus assigned to Shu because they form
part of the supports of the heavens.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Page 161 of 223

Satis
(Satet) Satis is depicted typically as a woman wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt
to which are attached antelope horns and a uraeus. Her principal functions, deriving
from the location of her cult center at Elephantine, pertain on the one hand to the
protection of Egypts southern border, which has naturally a spiritual as well as a
political significance inasmuch as Egypt is a spiritual as well as a political territory, and
on the other to the Niles annual inundation, which was, at least from a religious
perspective, thought of as originating from subterranean caverns in the vicinity of
Elephantine Island. A reference to these caverns is likely to be seen in PT utterance
508, in which the king, ascending to the sky, affirms that Satis has cleansed me with
her four jars from Elephantine, a reference perhaps to the caverns from which the
inundation is released. Satis has Khnum and Montu for consorts, and is frequently
paired with Anukis, who is perhaps to be regarded as her daughter, although their
relationship cannot be definitively determined from the surviving evidence. Satis and
Anukis are sometimes conceived as dividing the function of superintending the Niles
inundation, with Satis being responsible for the rivers rise and Anukis for its
withdrawal. Satis is also strongly associated with the star Sirius Sothis in Egyptian
the heliacal rising of which was regarded by the Egyptians as heralding the coming of
the inundation and thus marks the beginning of the Egyptian calendar. Satis and Anukis
also have a general protective function with respect to Osiris at his tomb at Biga.
In PT utterance 439 the deceased king identifies himself with Satis, saying I am Satis
who takes possession of the Two Lands, the Burning One who receives her two shores,
linking Satis thus to Sirius, the brightest burning star in the sky, while the two shores
are received in the inundation which claims them. The king, as Satis, goes on to affirm
that I have gone up to the sky and found Re standing that I might meet him; I will
seat myself beside him, referring possibly to the heliacal rising of Sirius, in which the
star appears on the horizon just before the sun (Re). The rather fragmentary CT spell
937 states at one point, Satis opens to me the cleared paths, and my glance falls on all
of them, the evil ones who are in their caverns. Here Satis blazes a trail for the
deceased in the netherworld, shining light upon its hidden menaces. There is perhaps
some implied reference again to the heliacal rising of Sirius, which opens the year. The
protection of Satis is characteristically localized to the symbolic southern frontier, as
in CT spell 313, where among a series of protective incantations delivered on behalf of
the deceased by Thoth is the charge that Those who shall come against you [the
deceased] from the South shall be driven off by Satis, Lady of Elephantine, who will
shoot at them with her arrows, which are painful and sharp against them.
Sekhet
Sekhet is the divinity immanent in marshes or fields, hence her name is frequently
translated as the Fen-Goddess. In inscriptions from the temple of Horus at Edfu
Page 162 of 223

Sekhet is hailed as lady of the catch, mistress of Hbs-birds, who created fish and
fowl, who made the Hdw-birds, mother of the gnw-birds, queen of the ro-geese, who
cares for the nestlings, (Edfou II, 163, 11-12) and as mother of the wild fowl, ( Edfou
IV, 199, 9-10). Sekhet is depicted as a naked, nubile young woman with the sign for a
field over her head.
Sekhet grants the produce of the marsh; hence in CT spell 571, To build a mansion
among the waters, it is Sekhet who supplies the netherworld mansion with fowl. CT
spell 607 refers to Sekhet as the flesh of the East-land, because the place of the
sunrise is imagined as marshland, placing her in association with other deities who
represent the east as the assistant of Nemty and the guardian of Soped, Lord of the
East. In CT spell 1015, To become a fowler of the great God who gives water and
watches over water, Sekhet renders assistance to the fowler, although the details are
rather obscure. Sekhet is often depicted together with Hapy in temple reliefs, bringing
the produce of the fields as offerings to the temple. Hapy and Sekhet are also
envisioned as consorts, uniting sexually in the annual inundation. The term sekhet, it
should also be noted, is used as much to refer to fertile territories of the netherworld
as of the natural world, as evidenced by the Field of Reeds ( sekhet iaru) at the
eastern horizon and the Field of Offerings (sekhet hetepu) in the northeastern sky
which are frequently mentioned locales in the afterlife literature.
In the text of the myth of Horus Behdety from Edfu, the chorus at one point urges
Horus to Grasp the harpoon which Ptah, the goodly guide, fashioned for Sekhet, which
was fashioned in copper for thy mother Isis, (Blackman and Fairman, p. 10 (Scene II,
66)). Sekhets close association with Isis and Horus in this passage probably alludes to
the period in which Horus was hidden in the marshes by Isis to protect him from Seth.
In the same passage, Isis states I have made raiment for Sekhet, perhaps implying
her own contribution to the fertility of the flora and fauna which constitute Sekhets
raiment.
Blackman, A. M. and H. W. Fairman. The Myth of Horus at EdfuII. Journal of

Egyptian Archaeology 29, 1943.

Sekhmet
(Sakhmet, Sachmet or -mis, etc.) Sekhmet, whose name means the Powerful, is
depicted as a lioness-headed woman, often with the solar disk atop her head. A
Goddess of healing and of pestilence alike, Sekhmet often bears the epithet Eye of
Re, identifying her as the executor (irt, eye can also be read as ir.t, doer or
agent) of the will of the sovereign solar power of the cosmos. Sekhmet and Hathor
both operate as the Eye of Re in the myth from the Book of the Celestial Cow in
which Re sends first Hathor, then Sekhmet to strike rebellious humanity. Sekhmet is
to wade in their blood as far as Herakleopolis [Hnes], on a southward path (referring
Page 163 of 223

to the southward course of the sun after the summer solstice), but Re saves humanity
by ordering the production of a great quantity of beer with an additive to make it red
like blood, with which the Goddess is intoxicated and her destructive mission
terminated, perhaps at Kom el-Hisn in the Western Delta. Sekhmet can cause as well as
avert all forms of pestilence, whether natural disaster, famine or epidemic, but she is
particularly associated with illness and its cure, and priests of Sekhmet played a
prominent role in Egyptian medicine. Sekhmets consort is Ptah and she is the mother of
Nefertum.
Sekhmets arrows (often specified as seven in number) are a common term for her
striking power, as is her knife and her flame. Several spells exist (nos. 13-15, 20 in
Borghouts) which are designed to protect against pestilence associated with the
transition into the New Year (hence the title of no. 13 in Borghouts, The Book of the

Last Day of the Year) which make frequent mention of Sekhmet and of the demons in
her retinue, her emissaries (wepwety), wanderers (shemayu) or murderers
(khayti), who must be placated. In many of these spells, it seems that Sekhmets
protection is won by identifying the individual with Horusas in no. 20: I am your
Horus, Sekhmet. Horus is also often called sprout of Sekhmet in such spells, in which
the word translated as sprout is wadjHorus is thus literally the greening of the
Goddess who is paradigmatically red with blood (note that the papyrus scepter which
Sekhmet and a number of other Goddesses carry is also wadj). The relationship
between Sekhmet and Horus is not one of parentage, but rather alludes to Sekhmet
being one of the wrathful Goddesses charged with the protection of Horus during his
vulnerable infancy in the marshes. The pharaoh is sometimes characterized as brother
[sen]/image [senen] of Nefertum, born of Sekhmet. State rituals involving Sekhmet
were particularly important at the new year, which was linked to the heliacal rising of
Sirius and thus took place in late summer (northern hemisphere). The purpose of such
rituals appears to have been to prevent the contamination of the new year by inimical
forces emanating from the old year as well as to ensure the proper alignment of life on
earth with its divine paradigms; hence two of the most important rituals involving
Sekhmet at this time were known as the union of the disk, focusing on the physical
disk of the sun, the aten, and the conferring of the heritage. It is important to note
that the term iadet, or pestilence, which is associated with Sekhmet, is a very broad
term, and appears to be identical to a word for net, which occurs repeatedly in spells
from the afterlife literature to protect the soul from becoming trapped like a fish in
such nets (e.g., Coffin Texts spells 473-481). Sekhmet can thus be regarded as having
power over virtually any misfortune or net of circumstances which might trap the
individual indiscriminately.
Sekhmet is often paired or juxtaposed with Wadjet, who also bears the title Eye of
Re, as in CT spell 757, where the operator affirms, My White Crown is Sekhmet, my
Red Crown is Wadjet, referring to the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt, in accord
Page 164 of 223

with a tendency in Egyptian thought to identify defenders of the crown, such as

Sekhmet and Wadjet, with the crown itself. In a version of the Opening of the Mouth
ceremony (BD spell 23), the deceased, whose ka statue has been empowered, states, I
am Sekhmet-Wadjet who dwells in the west of heaven. In a ritual for offering meat to
the sacred hawk that lived at the temple of Horus at Edfu, in which we probably see an
adaptation of a ritual performed originally on behalf of the king, we find the
interesting invocation, O Sekhmet of yesterday, Wadjet of today, thou hast come and
hast replenished this table of the Living Falcon even as thou didst for thy father
Horus, when thou camest forth from Pe, (Blackman, p. 60 [155, 8-9]). Sekhmet
replenishes the table inasmuch as meat-offerings are identified with the flesh of royal
foes, the texts invocation of Sekhmet turning the occasion of the meal into an
enactment of the destruction of the kings enemies. The identification of Sekhmet with
yesterday and Wadjet with today is unusual and harder to explain, but it perhaps
invokes Sekhmets protection against the nonbeing of the past. In CT spell 957
Sekhmet is juxtaposed with Nekhbet, the operator affirming, I have ascended to the
upper sky, and I have fashioned Nekhbet; I have descended to the lower sky of Re, and
I have fashioned Sekhmet. Another sort of opposition is posed in the Book of the
Celestial Cow, in which Hathor is sent to strike humans in the mountains or desert,
while Sekhmet is sent to strike them in the Delta.
Multiplication seems in some fashion essential to Sekhmet, perhaps because power
diversifies itself at its points of application; thus she is referred to as Sekhmet of
multiple appearances, (Edfou I, 278 & IV, 116) and as Sekhmet the great, mistress of
the Sekhmets, (Edfou VII, 14). In the Tenth Hour of the Amduat book, the healing of
the wedjat, the Eye of Horus, is shown being carried out by Thoth, in baboon form, and
eight forms of Sekhmet, four with lioness heads and four with human heads.
See also: The Book of the Celestial Cow: A Theological Interpretation, Eye of the

Heart: A Journal of Traditional Wisdom, No. 3, May 2009, pp. 73-99.

Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Blackman, A. M. 1945. The King of Egypts Grace Before Meat. Journal of Egyptian

Archaeology 31: 57-73.

Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Sepa
Sepa, who is depicted as a centipede (not a millipede, as is sometimes mistakenly
asserted) and is thus often referred to in Egyptological literature simply as the
Centipede-God or the Centipede, had an important cult at Kheraha, which gave its
Page 165 of 223

name to the modern Egyptian city of Cairo. Near Kheraha was a sanctuary known as the
House of Sepa, which was one of the sites of the interment of Osiris, and the cults of
Osiris and of Sepa were very closely intertwined in the region of Kheraha and
Heliopolis (Egyptian Iunu or n). Sepa is even sometimes called the divine body of
Osiris, (Corteggiani p. 136 & n. 5). The southern crypt or cavern ( imehet) of Sepa at
Kheraha was considered to be the spiritual source of the Niles annual inundation in the
north, like Biggeh in the south, and a ritual of the new water of Sepa seems to have
involved breaching an earthwork dam to release the floodwaters into the irrigation
canals in the area (ibid., 138ff). Frequent reference is made to a procession of Sepa
from Heliopolis to Kheraha, sometimes referred to as the festival of accompanying
Sepa to Kheraha on his day, (135). At Edfu Horus is identified as he who brought
Sepa to Kheraha in his reliquary/portable bark, (136). This procession likely had some
connection to the coming of the annual flood. Spells 31 and 69 in the Book of the Dead
indicate that Anubis played some role in association with the day of Sepa, as one
would expect if there were Osirian rites performed, and in one version of BD spell 17,
the seven spirits or blessed ones who are stationed by Anubis as the protectors of
the coffin of Osiris are said to have been in the retinue of their lord Sepa. Mention is
made in spell 414 of the Coffin Texts of the Mansions of Sepa in which a light has
been kindled against the Furious One who has rebelled against Re and threatens the
solar bark. The Furious One here is presumably Apophis, and Sepas association with
rituals against Apophis would provide the paradigm for a spell against snakes in the
road (no. 143 in Borghouts) which protects the traveller by stating that He is Sepa
he is on his way to Heliopolis, a metaphorical reference to Sepas processional route
(albeit in the opposite direction as the procession, which has always Kheraha as its
destination). This procession lends its name to an actual road of Sepa to Heliopolis,
mentioned in the Victory Stela of King Piye (Lichtheim vol. 3, 77), a road of Sepa,
whether mundane or spiritual, having been mentioned as early as the Pyramid Texts
(Corteggiani p. 135, n. 2). In CT spell 91, the deceased affirms, I have gone forth from
a myriad, I have appeared as Sepa, perhaps alluding to the many legs of the centipede;
earlier in the same spell, the deceased has stated that he whose faces are many shall
engage his foe for him so that I may go forth into the day. The reference is made
explicit in CT spell 280, for Becoming the Elder Horus, in which the operator,
identified with the Elder Horus (Haroeris), is told your legs are Sepa.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Corteggiani, Jean-Pierre. 1979. Une stle Hliopolitaine dpoque Sate. In Hommages

la mmoire de Serge Sauneron, 1927-1976, vol. I. Cairo: IFAO.

Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Page 166 of 223

Serapis
(Sarapis) Serapis has presented a riddle for Egyptologists. His worship originated
among the Ptolemies, the transplanted Macedonian dynasty that ruled Egypt from their
capital at Alexandria in the wake of Egypts conquest by Alexander the Great, and was
subsequently adopted and promoted by the emperors of Rome. But Serapis remained,
paradoxically, an Egyptian God worshiped in the company of other Egyptian Gods from
one end of the Roman Empire to the other, but almost entirely by non-Egyptians. As the
consort of Isis, Serapis became a fixture of the international Isis cult. In this role,
Serapis displaced Osiris for many foreign devotees. Serapis is depicted in fully
Hellenistic style as a bearded, robust man enthroned with the sign of a modius, or grain
measure, on his head. The grain measure symbolizes allotting the portion deserved.
Serapis is a God of miracles, destiny, healing and the afterlife, often fused with the
Greek God Zeus or the Roman God Jupiter, extending the notion of sovereignty to
include dominion over fate. Occasionally, for reasons unknown, a bust of Serapis sits
atop a colossal right foot. Serapis and Isis may also be depicted as two snakes.
It is generally thought that Serapis derives from the Egyptian Osiris-Apis, the
Osirianized form of the Apis bull, but the situation is complicated. Greeks and
Egyptians alike affiliated Serapis more and more with the native cults over time, and
the identification of Serapis with Osiris-Apis was clearly an official one; hence a chapel
of Serapis catering to Greek pilgrims was installed at Memphis within the temple
complex of Osiris-Apis. The cults remained, however, as a practical matter, separate.
The canonical account of the origin of Serapis is told by Plutarch in his On Isis and

Osiris (28), which relates that Ptolemy Soter (323-282 BCE) saw in a dream a certain
colossal statue, of which he had no prior knowledge, in Sinop, a city on the southern
coast of the Black Sea. The statue spoke to him, urging him to have it brought to
Alexandria. Making inquiries, the king learned that such a statue did indeed exist in
Sinop. The statue having been obtained by whatever means, it was brought to
Alexandria. This statue, according to Plutarch, showed the God accompanied by a
Cerberus dog and a serpent, and was therefore identified as a statue of Pluto by
experts Ptolemy consulted, but took to itself the name which Pluto bears among the
Egyptians, that of Serapis, (362 A). However, Plutarch himself connects Serapis, not
with Osiris-Apis, but with Osiris simply, stating that Osiris received this appellation at
the time when he changed his nature, (362 B) that is, when he was resurrected. Thus
Plutarch, although aware of much of the theology surrounding the Egyptian Apis cult
for instance, that we must regard Apis as the bodily image of the soul of Osiris, (362
D)is seemingly either unaware of or unimpressed by a direct derivation of the name
of Serapis from Osiris-Apis, and says that in his opinion, if the name Serapis is
Egyptian, it denotes cheerfulness and rejoicing, and I base this opinion on the fact that
the Egyptians call their festival of rejoicing sairei, (362 D) an etymology most likely

Page 167 of 223

spurious. Plutarch states as well that Serapis is a God of all peoples in common, even as
Osiris is; and this they who have participated in the holy rites well know, (362 B).
The story placing the origins of Serapis in Sinop, on the other hand, is by no means
without support (see Stiehl 1963 27f). Perhaps most significantly, the philosopher
Diogenes (404-323 BCE), a native of Sinop, is quoted as having said, upon learning that
the Athenians had given Alexander the Great the title of Dionysus, that You might
as well make me Serapis, (Diogenes Laertius VI. 63). The obscurity surrounding the
origins of Serapis is also indicative, however, of what is most distinctive about the God:
Serapis is presented as a truly international deity. Aside from the question of his
identity with Osiris or with the Osirianized form of the bull who is himself the living
soul of Osiris on earth, Serapis expresses a universality implicit in the nature of Osiris
all along insofar as the latter embodied what is essential to all mortals as such.
Stiehl, Ruth. 1963. The Origin of the Cult of Sarapis. History of Religions Vol. 3, No.
1: 21-33.
Serket
(Serqet, as well as Selkis/Selqis/Selket) Serket is depicted as a woman with the sign
of a water scorpion or, later, a true or land scorpion atop her head. The scorpion atop
Serkets head, if it is a scorpion at all, is usually represented without stinger, or even
evident legs. It is often claimed that the scorpion is thus rendered symbolically
harmless in order to indicate Serkets beneficence; it has been convincingly
established, however, that the animal originally associated with Serket is not a scorpion
proper, but the so-called water scorpion, or nepa, which despite its name is not an
arachnid like a true scorpion, but an insect. The stingerless tail of the ersatz scorpion
depicted atop Serkets head would thus in fact be the caudal siphon or breathing tube
of the water scorpion. Starting in the 19th Dynasty, however, whether due to
syncretism or simple confusion, Serket begins to be associated with the arachnid
scorpion. Serkets primary role appears to be as a sort of divine physician; sometimes
her name is rendered more fully as Serket-Hetu or Serket-Hetyt, which seems to
mean opener of the windpipe, i.e., giver of breath (might the Egyptians successfully
discerned the function of the water scorpions breathing tube?). A class of priests
known as the kherepu, or conjurors, of Serket were apparently physicians specializing
in the treatment of stings and bites of venomous animals (F. von Knel, Les prtres-

oub de Sekhmet et les conjurateurs de Serket). Serket is paired with Neith in the
group of four Goddesses positioned protectively around the sarcophagus (the throne
of PT utterance 362), the others being Isis and Nephthys. Serket also plays a role in
the fight against the serpent Apophis, the divine embodiment of entropy; in CT spell
752, the deceased states I am skilled in the craft of Serket-Hetyt; therefore I will
drive off Apophis, ferrying across the firmament. She is regarded as the mother of
Nehebkau as early as the Pyramid Texts (utterance 308).
Page 168 of 223

Despite her helpful nature Serket retains an element of danger, as indicated by the
reference in PT utterance 385 to a snake, Dedy son of Serket-Hetu, against whom
other Gods are mobilized to defend the deceased. More typical, however, is CT spell
885 where the deceased states, My cavern is that of Serket, the snake is in my hand
and cannot bite me. In a spell identifying the deceased with Osiris (PT utterance 219),
Osiris/the deceased is called Dweller in the Mansion of Serket, a contented spirit.
The mansion of Serket is probably an astronomical reference (see below); in PT
utterance 571 the deceased king is said to be an imperishable star who dwells in the
Mansion of Serket, and the plural Mansions of Serket are referred to in utterance
534 as a place to which Nephthys is sent if she comes with evil. This latter spell
contains a series of formulae for repelling a host of ordinarily beneficent Gods (Horus,
Thoth, Isis) in case they should come attempting to appropriate the tomb for
themselves; the formula involving Nephthys and Serket is interesting inasmuch as it is
the only one of the repulsion formulae which pits one deity against another, not to
mention two deities so often grouped together. CT spells 1069 and 1176 share a
common formula, in which the deceased, at a certain bend in a netherworld waterway,
calls out O Serket, I shall exist forever!
Serket is often involved in magical spells protecting against snakes and scorpions or
curing their bites and stings. Serket is the narratorthus, in effect, the operatorof
a well-known spell which recounts a myth involving Isis and Re (no. 84 in Borghouts). In
the latter, Isis fashions a serpent out of earth mixed with Res saliva; in a spell for
warding off a snake (Borghouts no. 137), a wad of clay in which is embedded a knife and
a bundle of herbs in order to magically absorb the snakes attack is called this clay of
Isis that has come forth from under the armpit of Serket. In another spell involving
Isis, Serket advises Isis, when the infant Horus has been poisoned by a venomous
creature in the marsh, to call to heaven: Then the crew of Re will come to a standstill
and the boat of Re will not sail on as long as the boy Horus is lying on his side, i.e.,
unconscious. Serket is also named as the operator of another spell against snake bite or
scorpion sting (Borghouts no. 112).
One version of CT spell 84, for Becoming Nehebkau, mentions Serket. The other
version mentions Seshat instead, but the reference to Nehebkau makes Serket more
likely to be correct. The operator states, I have presented offerings before Isis and
Nephthys, that they may place holy things upon the arms of Serket, who is pregnant
with me and holds back from me. She is angry with me and she stabs at me. I have made
the front which is between her thighs as Him-whose-head-is-raised, an epithet of a
serpent, perhaps alluding at once to sexual excitation and to a threat to strike. A
curious formula occurs in certain versions of BD spell 32, for driving off the four
crocodiles that come to take a mans magic away from him in the Gods domain [or, 'that
come to take a blessed one's heart away from him in the God's domain]: the four

Page 169 of 223

crocodiles are identified with the four cardinal points, and the formula against the
crocodile from the north states that Serket is in my belly, unborn [or, 'unbegotten'].
Serkets birth is spoken of in PT utterance 569, among a list of cosmic events which
shall be prevented if the deceased king cannot reach the sky, in a context implying that
Serket is to be identified with some particular star or constellation. Egyptian star maps
do show Serket among the northern constellations, either on the same plane as the Big
Dipper (meskhetiu in Egyptian) and behind it, or at right angles and before it ( Egyptian
Astronomical Texts, vol. 3, p. 183). Egyptian star maps vary so much in their
arrangement and are so fanciful in their presentation, however, that it has proven
impossible to securely identify any of the northern constellations other than the Big
Dipper. From the reference to birth, moreover, one would expect the passage from
the Pyramid Texts to be referring to a constellation which rises and sets, which means
that if Serkets constellation is the same in the Pyramid Texts and in the later star
charts, it is probably further from the Dipper than the charts depict it.
Neugebauer, Otto, and Richard A. Parker. 1960-9. Egyptian Astronomical Texts.
Providence: Brown University Press.
Seshat
Seshat is the divine patroness of scribesher name simply means the Scribe or the
Writerand is closely linked to Thoth. Egyptians distinguished conceptually between
words (mdw) and writing (drf or sesh). Thoth, although ultimately responsible for
both, is associated more strictly with the former and Seshat with the latter (Saleh
1969, 24). Seshat is regarded as the inventor both of writing, of reckoning, especially
in the archaic form of notching palm-leaf stalks, and measurement in generalshe
reckons all things on earth (Edfou I, 291). She records the royal name at birth and
writes it on the leaves of the sacred ished, or persea tree, at Heliopolis; she records
the royal titulary at the coronation; she grants the king sed-festivals, commemorating
his accession and renewing his sovereignty; she keeps count of the spoils brought back
by the Pharaoh from foreign lands; and she marks the kings lifespan by notching off
years on the palm-stalk, an image augmented by a symbol signifying a limitless quantity,
indicating that the kings reign is eternal. In temple foundation scenes, Seshat holds
the string which is used to mark out the structures perimeter. This ritual, called the
stretching of the cord, expresses her grasp of all the subtle forces that must be
harmonized in order for the sacred structure to fulfill its function. In general, Seshat
guarantees that rituals of all kinds are performed according to the instructions in the
holy books. In Egyptian thought the concept of fate ( sha) is always imagined in
connection with writing, and hence Seshat is a Goddess of fate as well, which in
Egyptian theology paradigmatically involves reckoning the lifespan. The divine command
is written down, not as a mere record, but to render it concrete, and the writing of it is
inseparable from its enforcement. Seshat is depicted anthropomorphically, usually
Page 170 of 223

carrying the equipment of a scribe, wearing a headband and with a sign over her head
consisting of a pair of downward pointing bovine horns enclosing a palmette with seven
leaves which may represent a scribes brush. This sign is apparently indicated by a
common epithet of Seshat, Sekhefabwy or Sefkhetabwy, She who releases the two
horns, suggesting that the inversion of the hornsa typical headdress of Goddesses
such as Hathorimplies their activation. The epithet may also incorporate the word

sefekh, meaning seven, so that the epithet would mean Sevenfold of the two horns.
According to Wainwright 1940, the horns of her headdress were originally the monthsign with two feathers atop it; he also notes that the seven-petalled flower or palmette
often occurs alone in monuments of the first-dynasty king Narmer (c. 3150 BCE). In PT
utterance 364, Nephthys collecting together the parts of the body of Osiris is
compared to Seshat, Lady of Builders, inasmuch as the temple is like a divine body.
In CT spell 10, Seshat is said to open the portal of the netherworld for the deceased,
in which we may understand the portal in question to be the successful mastery of
ritual under Seshats guidance. A similar interpretation can be assumed for phrases
such as your mother Seshat clothes you, (CT spell 68). Again, when Seshat is invoked
to help build a mansion in the netherworld for the deceased (e.g., CT spell 709), one
may think at once both of Seshats role with respect to sacred buildings, as well as of
the role of ritual texts and afterlife literature such as the very Coffin Texts
themselves in constructing a dwelling in the netherworld. A juxtaposition of Seshat and
Ihy, the divine musician and son of Hathor, in CT spell 746 seems to symbolize
command over both the lyrics and the music or, so to speak, the letter and the spirit of
the ritual text: My hands are those of Seshat who is in my mouth as Ihy. An
especially clear role is established for Seshat by CT spell 849, To open the tomb and
to bring writings to a man in the realm of the dead, which brings Thoth and Seshat to
the deceased, each in his/her shape, to bring to him [the deceased] this writing, for
it is his recognition, it is his being made a spirit in the Island of Fire [a location in the
upper sky] so that N. may see those who are yonder among the blessed. BD spell 169,
for setting up the bier, portrays the resurrected state of the deceased: Thou
coolest thyself on the cedar tree beside Weret-Hekau ['the one great of magic', an
epithet of several Goddesses, but especially Wadjet], while Seshat is seated before
thee and Sia [divine personification of perception] is the magical protection of thy
body.
In the fragmentary demotic composition which has been labelled the Book of Thoth
(trans. Jasnow and Zauzich 2005), Seshat is generally referred to by the epithet Sh
or Sha, the primeval one, which is not to be confused with the word sha, fate, and
its personification, the God Shai, although such a confusion may have been encouraged.
A chamber of darkness (.t-kky) features prominently in the Book of Thoth, and
Seshat is referred to in this text as well as in inscriptions from Edfu as Mistress of
the rope, foremost one of the chamber of darkness, possibly referring to Seshats
Page 171 of 223

role in the ceremony of stretching the cord. Alternatively, the epithet might be read
as Mistress of the sustenance of the foremost one of the chamber of darkness.
Seshat is associated as well in this text with a ritual of entering the chamber of
darkness, and the aspiring initiate expresses a desire to bark among the dogs of
Sht the great, i.e. Seshat (B07, 17; compare the Egyptian text entitled Dialogues of
Dogs, supposedly translated into Greek by Eudoxus (Diogenes Laertius 8. 89). The text
also refers to Seshat as a huntress and trapper (C04.1, 12-13). At Esna Seshat is
depicted holding a net with Khnum, and she was associated with a House of the Fishnet at Thoths cult center of Hermopolis. The symbolism of the net in Egyptian
theology extends from the dangerous nets in the netherworld ( CT spells 477-480, BD
spell 153) to the depictions of fishing and fowling that decorate the walls of tombs and
the literary depiction of the kings enjoyment of such activities in the fragmentary
hieratic text known as The Pleasures of Fishing and Fowling (in Caminos 1956); and it
would be nave to think the positive depictions to be any less weighted with symbolic
significance than the negative ones. In another passage of the Book of Thoth, the
aspiring initiate, designated the one who loves knowledge, questioned about whether
he has crossed certain bodies of waterin the sense of netherworld ferryboat spells
like BD spell 99states in reply, I have caught their fish. I have trapped the best of
their exotic birds, (L01.5, 10/13).
An unusual characterization of a learned scribe is as one whom Thoth himself has
taught, into whose mouth Seshat has spat, which is uncannily reminiscent of a Greek
myth recounted by Apollodorus, in which Polyeidos deprives Glaukos of the arts which
Glaukos has learned from him by having Glaukos spit into his mouth.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Caminos, Ricardo. 1956. Literary Fragments in the Hieratic Script. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Jasnow, Richard and Karl-Theodor Zauzich. 2005. The Ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth.
2 vols. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
Seth
(Set, Suty, Sutekh) Son of Geb and Nut, Seth is a God of physical vigor and voracious
sexual appetite in open conflict with social order and emotional bonds. While there are
important contexts in which Seths activity is positive, most notably in his defense of
the boat of Re against the attacks of Apophis, the great symbol of entropy, he is most
well known as the murderer of his brother Osiris and for unsuccessfully vying for
Page 172 of 223

worldly sovereignty against Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris and the embodiment of
legitimacy and civilization. In the conflict with Horus, Seth represents the principle
that might makes right, as well as all the wild elements of human nature that resist
civilization. Especially in his animal guises, or as the God of storms, Seth embodies the
points at which nature itself comes into conflict with the human world, resisting
domestication, or the points at which humans seek justification for their exploitation
of nature, as in myths which sanctify the use of animal flesh in sacred contexts by
identifying the animals in question with Seth or his followers. Seths positive aspects
come to be expressed less and less over the course of Egyptian history, especially
after the 20th dynasty, when a reaction against the foreign Hyksos dynasty who had
taken Seth as their patron seems to have caused a precipitous decline in Seths cult.
Whatever role contingent historical factors may have played in this fall from favor, it
is also clearly to be attributed to the increasing centrality of the Osirian mythos in
Egyptian culture, and perhaps as well as to the smaller accomodation afforded the wild,
undisciplined aspects of life in an increasingly orderly and legalistic society. At his most
positive, Seth represents vigor and strength, but in a form which would ruthlessly
displace the weaker were it not kept in check. This force is constructive when
channeled against either entropy itself (Apophis) or some other brute elemental force
like the sea, subdued by Seth in a fragmentary myth. A candid recognition of Seths
change in status can be seen in the so-called Memphite Theology, in which it is
recounted that Geb, judging between Horus and Seth, initially resolves their conflict by
dividing the nation, making Seth king of Upper (Southern) Egypt, the place in which he
was born, and Horus king of Lower (Northern) Egypt, the place in which his father
was drowned, but, as the text goes on to explain, then it seemed wrong to Geb that
the portion of Horus was like the portion of Seth. So Geb gave to Horus his [Horus']
inheritance, for he [Horus] is the son of the firstborn son, (Lichtheim vol. 1, 52) thus
awarding Horus sovereignty over the totality of a unified Egypt. Seth is a God to whom
Egyptians, whether kings or commoners, had recourse, however, in war or in illness, lifeor-death struggles where physical strength and combat prowess would be decisive. He
occurs as well in certain images of balance and totality, such as in images of coronation
or of the sma tawy, the uniting of the (two) lands, in which Seth represents Upper
Egypt and Horus represents Lower Egypt, although there is a tendency later to replace
Seth with Thoth in these contexts as Seth falls into disfavor.
Seth is especially associated with a type of animal known in Egyptian as a sha, the
identification of which remains controversial, and was probably unknown even in Egypt
in the late period. If the sha was not a creature of fantasy, the most convincing
identification of it is as a type of extinct wild pig, the so-called Irish greyhound pig, as
argued by Newberry 1928. The sha-animal, which was also associated with the God Ash,
has a body resembling a greyhound, with rectangular ears that stand up, a slightly
drooping snout, and an upturned tail with a fork at the end (perhaps a stylized tuft).
Detailed images show that the animal has lighter stripes on its back, the body being
Page 173 of 223

predominantly dark in color. Seth is depicted either as a sha or as a man with a shas
head. In addition, the was-scepter carried by so many Egyptian Gods appears to be a
stylized sha; appropriately, the scepters name means strength. In later texts Seth is
commonly characterized as a red ass or red dog, being associated with the color red
from an early period. Red symbolizes in Egyptian thought the red land of the desert, as
opposed to the black land rendered fertile by the Niles annual inundation, which gave
its name to the Egyptian term for their own nation, Kemit, the black land. Seth and the
sha-animal are strongly associated with the desert. Seth is also depicted frequently as
a hippopotamus; he transforms into a hippopotamus at 13, 2-11 of the Conflict of Horus
and Seth, although Horus is prevented by Isis from harpooning him. He is also
associated with, although not necessarily depicted as, the crocodile, the oryx and the
ostrich.
Seth has Nephthys as his consort in addition to the foreign Goddesses Anat and
Astarte, but has no divine offspring. Maga, a malevolent crocodile deity, is an
exception, referred to often as son of Seth, but is not an object of cult. Seth has no
posterity perhaps because he embodies a principle already taken to its extreme;
because of his association with the unfertile red land and with acts of violence; and
also because he is associated with sexual activity expressing a purely physical urge,
rather than as a bond which would be symbolically represented as fruitful. One might
assume Seths lack of divine offspring to be attributable to the injury Horus inflicts
upon Seths testicles complementary to that inflicted by Seth upon the eye of Horus;
but Seths injury is healed just like that of Horus. In PT utterance 215, the king is
urged to spit on the face of Horus for him, that you may remove the injury which is on
himsaliva being thought of as a healing substanceand pick up the testicles of
Seth, that you may remove his [Seth's] mutilation. Injuries suffered by the Gods
seem generally in Egyptian theology to afford an opportunity for mortals to be inserted
into the mythic organization; accordingly we find the testicles of Seth represented in
ritual by two sceptres, that is, as a form of divine power which can be symbolically
appropriated by humans (Ramesseum Dramatic Papyrus 83-86 and scene 17, pl. 18;
Griffiths 35).
Seth is punished in a variety of ways for his act of violence against Osiris. He is forced
to carry Osiris on his back, exalting the value of the mortal being, represented by
Osiris, within the natural order which sweeps it remorselessly away: Horus has laid
hold of Seth and has set him under you [Osiris/the deceased] on your behalf so that he
may lift you up and quake beneath you as the earth quakes, you being holier than he in
your name of Sacred Land, (PT utterance 356). Seth is sometimes represented as a
ship when this is ritually enacted (Griffiths 11 n. 1, 48), which is significant since the
cult statues of Egyptian Gods are always carried in boats when taken on procession. The
forces embodied by Seth thus become the vehicle of divinities upholding a providential
ordering of the cosmos. The punishments inflicted upon Seth in the Jumilhac Papyrus,
Page 174 of 223

by comparison, seem to legitimize the use by humans of various animal products such as
leather. The violence inherent to these products, or to the consumption of meat, or to
the obtaining of luxury products such as ostrich plumes, is theologically justified by
symbolically identifying these animals with Seth. In this fashion, anything that mortals
require (or are perceived to require) which incorporates an element of injustice or
disorder in its production is referred back to the founding injustice of the mortal
condition of which each individual, as mortal, is always already the victim.
An important incident in the Conflict of Horus and Seth is Seths sexual molestation of
Horus. Seth attempts to argue on the basis of this incident that Horus is unsuited for
the sovereignty, probably because it is supposed to imply that Horus is young and nave,
or not strong enough to have fought off Seths advances. Isis, however, by getting
Horus to deposit some semen on lettuce in Seths garden (Seth, like Min, has an
appetite for lettuce, an aphrodisiac in Egyptian lore) is able to summon the seed of
Horus from within Seths body, making of him the passive partner as well. It comes
forth from Seths forehead in the form of a golden solar disc (12, 12) which is
appropriated by Thoth. Since the disc Thoth bears over his head is a lunar, rather than
a solar disc, the incident perhaps accounts for the origin of the moon. Sometimes
Thoth is himself said to have been conceived through this encounter (Griffiths 43).
Another etiological divine injury occurs in the course of this myth, when the hands of
Horus, in which he caught Seths semen, are cut off by Isis and thrown into the water,
whereupon they transform into fish (CT spell 158/BD spell 113). The hands of Horus
are replaced by Isis, the point being not the mutilation of the divine but the insertion
of the human exploitation of a natural resource into a circuit of symbolic meaning.
In some contexts a reciprocity or rapprochement between Horus and Seth is
particularly emphasized. For instance, in a spell (no. 25 in Borghouts) to conjure a
particular type of demon, the magical potency invoked is characterized as the
protection [sau] of Horus that protects Seth and vice versa. A spell against headache
(no. 42 in Borghouts), which involves attaching a strip of fabric with seven knots in it to
the patients big toe, says The boy Horus spends the day lying on a cushion of nedjfabric [the fabric which is knotted and attached to the patient's toe]. His brother
Seth kept watch over him, because he lay stretched out, his task being to keep the
lower parts healthy. References to Seth as the brother of Horus do not contradict
his status as his uncle, since brother is simply sen, two, in Egyptian, and can refer to
anyone who is in some sense the double or complement of another, such as opponents in
a lawsuit. In another spell (no. 115 in Borghouts) which is labelled a protection of
Horus, (i.e. a protection furnished by Horus) the operator affirms that Seth is on my
right, Horus on my left, while a conjuration against a scorpion (no. 117) says Horus is
behind me, Seth is next to my shoulder Do not attack me! See, a great God [Seth] is
the one who is at my side. An exorcism (no. 119) includes the charm, When Horus had
looked behind him he found Seth following him and vice versa. Sometimes Horus and
Page 175 of 223

Seth even appear fused, their two heads on one body, bearing the name Antywy
(Antaios in Greek sources).
An interesting spell (no. 102 in Borghouts) treats of an episode in which Seth has
apparently been bitten or stung by something and requires the assistance of Horus,
who is travelling with him. Echoing the famous myth involving Isis and Re (no. 84 in
Borghouts), Horus states that Seth must tell him his (true) name in order to be healed.
Seth offers a series of names to Horus, each of which Horus rejects as being not his
true name. The names Seth offers for himself and which are rejected by Horus are:
yesterday, today, and tomorrow which has not yet come; a quiver full of arrows, a pot
full of unrest; a man of an infinite number of cubits whose appearance is not known; a
threshing floor as strong as bronze, which no cow has ever trodden; a jug of milk
milked from the udder of Bastet. The final name Seth offers, which is accepted and
brings about his healing, is a man of an infinite number of cubits, whose name is Evil
Day. As for the day of giving birth and becoming pregnantthere is no giving of birth
and sycamores will not bear figs. This latter remark sounds very much like the entry
for an unlucky day from a typical Egyptian calendar. According to this spell, therefore,
while each of the other names Seth volunteers undoubtedly reflect valid aspects of his
nature, the most adequate description of Seth is as an unlimited being who is a source
of bad luck, specifically lack of fruitfulness.
A distinctive characteristic of Seth in addition to his strength and sexual appetite is
his loud voice, which contrasts sharply with the Egyptian ideal of the person who is at
once soft-spoken and laconic, exhibiting self-control and forethought. It is significant
therefore that it is specifically Seths voiceperhaps a metaphor for thunderthat
subdues the sea (spell no. 77 in Borghouts). The power of Seths voice is appropriated
by the magician in a conjuration against scorpions (no. 120 in Borghouts) which states
The voice of the conjurer is loud while calling for the poison, i.e., calling for the
poison to exit the patients body, like the voice of Seth while wrestling with the
poison, which, since the word for poison and for semen is the same in Egyptian, may
be a reference to the Conflict myth, in which Seth is tricked into ingesting the semen
of Horus. Another association of Seths which may relate to storms is iron, which was
for the Egyptians paradigmatically meteoritic in origin. Hence in PT utterance 21, the
iron of which the instrument used in the Opening of the Mouth ritual is said to be the
iron which issued from Seth, and millennia later Plutarch reports the Egyptian
tradition that the lodestone (magnetic oxide of iron) is the bone of Horus and iron is
the bone of Typhon, i.e. Seth, in the Hellenistic syncretism ( On Isis and Osiris 62,
376b).
In PT utterance 570 and 571, the deceased king affirms his immortality by stating I
escape my day of death just as Seth escaped his day of death, repeating the formula
with the units of half-months of death, months of death, and year of death. It
Page 176 of 223

seems in this fashion that Seth was susceptible to mortality like Osiris. Seths
mortality is also enacted in the Pyramid Texts, however, in his identification with the
sacrificial ox of PT utterance 580. The constellation Ursa Major was identified as the
foreleg of Seth in the form of the sacrificial ox, and the adze used in the Opening of
the Mouth ritual, the key moment in the ceremonies of resurrection, is also identified
with this foreleg (te Velde 1967, 86-89).
The name of Seth (whose oldest form in Egyptian seems to have been closer to Sutekh
or Setekh) may be related to words in Egyptian such as tekhi, to be drunk, tekhtekh,
disorder, tesh, to smash/crush, while the Seth-animal is used as determiner for a
variety of words having to do with misfortune, violence, confusion and storms (complete
list in te Velde 1967, 22-23).
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Gwyn Griffiths, J. 1960. The Conflict of Horus and Seth. Liverpool: Liverpool University
Press.
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Newberry, P. E. 1928. The Pig and the Cult-Animal of Set. Journal of Egyptian
Archaeology 14: 211-225
Velde, H. te. 1967. Seth, God of Confusion. Trans. G. E. van Baaren-Pape. Leiden: E. J.
Brill.
Vandier, Jacques. 1961. Le Papyrus Jumilhac. Paris: Muse du Louvre.
Shai
(Shay; in Greek Psais or Psois, from addition of the definite article) Shais name comes
from the word sha, to ordain, order, assign, settle, or decide. Possibly related words
are shae, meaning to begin or be the first (to do something), or to originate (in both
senses; shae m, originate from); and shau, meaning weight, worth, value, with extended
uses such as n shau, apt to, fit for, and n shau n, in the capacity of. The concept of
shai, which Shai personifies, is usually translated, not entirely adequately, as fate or
destiny. Sometimes it is said that Shai embodies fate as opposed to what we would call
fortune, with its sense of mutability, the latter being associated with Renenutet, but
this seems to have little substance, and in most cases Shai and Renenutet play
indistinguishable roles, save for the fact that Renenutet is firmly attested as a deity,
while Shai straddles the border between deities and personified concepts.
Page 177 of 223

The concept of shai is of a kind of decree, itself emanating from the Gods, but which
the Gods can also overrule. Hence in a hymn to Amun (Leyden I, 350, III, 17) it is said
that Amun gives more than that which is fated [shayt] to him whom he loves. That
which is fated refers here, as elsewhere, most immediately to lifespan, but there is a
wider sense in which what is fated for an individual is what might be expected in
general or for the most part, while the Gods can offer the unexpected and the
exceptional. The unexpected and the expected alike refer to the potential which lies in
the personality or character. Character is destiny, the saying goes, and this was true in
a particular sense for Egyptians. It is said in the Instructions of Ptah-hotep that He
whom the God loves, hears, but he whom the God hates hears not. What the sage
means is that the Gods grant to those they love the capacity to learn and hence to
improve their character, while failure to work upon oneself brings about its punishment
all on its own. Shai embodies what we might call the givens of mortal life, prominent
among which, of course, is the inevitability of death, which sometimes seems to be his
most distinct function, in which capacity he may be depicted accompanying the
deceased at the afterlife judgment scene. In this sense, Shai is often juxtaposed with
Meskhenet, both being depicted as human-headed birth bricks, Meskhenet
representing birth, Shai death, but transformed into a symbol expressing the
transition to the afterlife as a new birth. More commonly, Shai is depicted in
nondescript human form, or as a cobra, largely as a result of the transfer to him of the
iconography of Renenutet.
A fragmentary cosmology in demotic from Tebtunis in the Fayyum and dating from the
second century CE speaks of Pshai (that is, Shai, with the addition of the late Egyptian
definite article at the front of his name) as existing in the beginning pa Nwn, in or as
the Nun, or primordial abyss. Shai finds a place for himself to stand in the abyss, while
within the waters there is also a plant which, although adrift, grows into a large
thicket, eventually coming to rest at the place where Shai is; these are the reeds, upon
which Shai spreads his seed, and from which in some fashion Ptah comes into existence.
Ptah creates the Gods of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad, who merge to create the God
Amun, from whom comes a wind which separates the sky from the earth and fertilizes
an egg from which the sun emerges, an event which the text conceives as the return of
Shai, who goes on to create other deities, notably Thoth, with whom Shai engages in a
dialogue. It is not clear whether Shai plays a role in subsequent mythical events
narrated by the text. This cosmology is unusual for placing Shai in the position of
primordial creator, and he either does so in the tradition of personal creator-Gods such
as Atum or as a symbol of natural, destinal forces within the abyss (see Smith 1998).
The Coptic Christian Shenoute complains in a sermon from the fifth century CE of
people in the region of Panopolis (Akhmim) saying that Today is the worship of Shai, or
the shai of the village or shai of the home, (cited in Frankfurter, p. 63), indicating
that after the imposition of Christianity, worship of the old Gods was concealed
Page 178 of 223

beneath the terminology of anonymous fates that were supplicated for protection and
prosperity.
Frankfurter, David. 1998. Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
Smith, Mark. 1998. A New Egyptian Cosmology. In C. J. Eyre, ed. Proceedings of the
Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists, Cambridge, 3-9 September 1995 .
Leuven: Peeters. pp. 1075-1079.
Shed
A master of wild beasts and a demon slayer, Shed, whose name means rescuer or
savior, is depicted as a youth with the characteristic shaved head and braided
forelock, often grasping or treading upon serpents, antelopes, crocodiles and other wild
animals. Shed bears a close resemblance to the child form of Horus, who is often
depicted in very similar fashion, particularly on the magical stelae known as cippi, and in
such contexts they are functionally indistinguishable. Shed is strongly associated with
hunting, particularly in the desert, and may bear a small gazelle head projecting from
his forehead, this being perhaps one of the principal ways of distinguishing Shed from
Horus on the cippi. On one early cippus, Shed is described as coming from the desert
lands with the wedjat, or Horus-eye, in order to protect the shrines, (Strandberg, p.
142).
Strandberg, Asa. 2009. The Gazelle in Ancient Egyptian Art: Image and Meaning.
Uppsala: Uppsala Studies in Egyptology.
Shesmetet
(Shesmet, Shesemtet, or spellings with Shez-; Hellenized as Smithis) Shesmetet is
depicted as a lioness or lioness-headed woman, and is associated with a ritual girdle or
apron called a shesmet, her name meaning She of the shesmet. The shesmet is
described by P. E. Newberry as a leather belt from which were suspended narrow
strips of hide ending in tassels; sometimes the girdle was ornamented with beads and
cowries; sometimes the hanging pieces were decorated with Hathor-heads, (316). The

shesmet, which is worn by Gods such as Horus, Seth, Thoth, Sepa, and Amun, but which
is particularly characteristic of Soped, was perhaps originally a garment for unmarried
girls. Newberry cites similar garments (called rahat or hauf) among several East
African peoples to the south of Egypt, which are broken by the bridegroom to complete
the wedding ceremony. Moreover, Herodotus (IV. 189) compares the aegis worn by the
Greek Goddess Athena to such garments, worn by Libyan women, and similar garments
were once worn, according to Newberry, by Arab girls, by women in their courses, and
also, it is said, by worshipers at the Caaba, (317). Shesmet is also the name in Egyptian
for the green mineral malachite, which was used by Egyptians as an eye paint. ShesmetPage 179 of 223

land is also an Egyptian name for an area in the eastern part of Egypt centering around
Per-Soped, the House of Soped, modern Saft el Henneh, a few miles to the east of
Bubastis. Significantly, this area was known in early Arab times as El-Hauf, a virtually
direct translation of the Egyptian Shesmet-land (323).
Shesmetet is paired with Sekhmet, a Goddess also depicted as a lioness, in a formula
from the Pyramid Texts which was to be reused in the Coffin Texts and finally in the

Book of the Dead. In PT utterances 248 and 704, it is affirmed that the deceased king
was conceived by Sekhmet, and it was Shesmetet who bore the king, the formula
going on to describe the king as a star brilliant and far-travelling, who brings distant
products to Re daily. The operator similarly identifies himself as the son of
Shesmetet in CT spell 310, a spell in which the operator otherwise identifies with
Khonsu, suggesting some link between Shesmetet and Khonsu. In CT spell 173, the mat
of Shesmetet is something the deceased refuses to accept, indicating that it
represents some kind of corruption; it is clearly not the same as the shesmet (but
recall above, the use of the rahat or hauf by menstruating women (Newberry, 317)). In
CT spell 331, for Becoming Hathor, in a passage in which the operator assumes the
wrathful aspect of Hathor, the operator states of those s/he smites, I make warmth
for them in this my name of Shesmetet, an ironic reference to blasting them with
flames. The formula from PT utterances 248 and 704 concerning having been born from
Shesmetet is attached, in CT spell 485, to a spell for being in the retinue of Hathor,
albeit the reference to Sekhmet has dropped out; the formula returns to its original
form, however, in BD spell 66, Spell for going forth by day, in which the operator
affirms, I know that I was conceived by Sekhmet and born of Shesmetet, and the
whole formula, including its astral context, is carried over unaltered from PT utterance
248 to BD spell 174. Sekhmet and Shesmetet are also invoked together in a spell to
protect against pestilence associated with the transition to the new year, the Book of
the Last Day of the Year (no. 13 in Borghouts).
Newberry, Percy E. Shesmet. Pp. 316-323 in S. R. K. Glanville, ed., Studies Presented

to F. Ll. Griffith.
Shesmu
(Shezmu) Shesmu is closely associated with the presses used in the production of wine
and oils; hence he is often simply referred to in Egyptological literature as the WinePress God. His function in Egyptian theology involves, first, the use of such presses in
the production of perfumes and unguents used in the cults of all the Gods, and second,
the symbolism of the press, which was drawn upon in afterlife literature to express the
processing, so to speak, of the dead who cannot achieve resurrection. Thirdly, Shesmu
is the divine butcher, with the attendant ambivalence of being a supplier of food as well
as a mutilator of living flesh. The extremes of Shesmus nature are expressed by a
difference in iconography: as ointment-maker, in which role Shesmu is known as lord of
Page 180 of 223

the laboratory (nb iswy), he is depicted as lion-headed, while as butcher he is depicted

anthropomorphically.
In PT utterance 273-4, the lords who are slain by Khonsu are cut up and cooked by
Shesmu so that the deceased king may assimilate their magic and their spirits. In

PT utterance 334 the deceased king compares a crossing he makes to that of Shesmu
who is in his oil-press bark, perhaps to convey the idea that he is crushing any
resistance in his path. In PT utterance 581, Shesmu is described as bearing grape-juice
to the deceased king, identified with Osiris. In a scene of the grape harvest from the
Saqqara mastaba of Ptahhotep a group of youths are throwing darts during a harvest
game or ritual, the scene labelled Shooting for Shesmu (Ciccarello 44 and n. 5). In CT
spell 34, among the sights which the Goddess the beautiful West, Amentet, the
personification of the land of the setting sun and hence of the dead, offers to show
the deceased, for the young God [Horus] is like you, is Shesmu with his knives in his
shape of Slaughterer. In CT spell 205, one of the ways in which the deceased signals
his resurrection is cackling as a goose of Shesmu, or cackling as a goose like Shesmu.
Similarly, CT spell 253, To become the scribe of Atum, invokes Shesmu in some avian
form: O Shesmu in your nest, I will act on behalf of my lord. Shesmu features
regularly in CT spells 473-480, spells for avoiding the nets and fish-traps in the
netherworld, in which he is performing exactly the same role as in PT 273-4 against the
anonymous lords, only in the spells from the Coffin Texts, the viewpoint from which
his activities are being described is reversed. In these spells, escaping from the
netherworld fishermen is a matter of being able to identify them, their ship and their
equipment; thus in spell 473, e.g., Shesmu is present with his knife and cauldron, gutting
and cooking the fish, i.e., captured souls. Interestingly, his cauldron is referred to as
a woman: [You shall not catch me in your nets] because I know the name of the woman
in which he [Shesmu] cooks it [the 'fish' or soul]; it is the cauldron in the hand of
Shesmu. In CT spell 571, for building and supplying a mansion among the waters,
Shesmu is involved in the distribution of offerings, presumably from out of the produce
of the mansion, to the Gods and to the patricians, i.e., the other righteous dead, and
similarly in CT spell 720, the deceased is to receive his/her rightful portion from the
slaughterhouse operated by Shesmu, meat continuing to be supplied in the afterlife
just as on earth. In CT spell 1028, Shesmu, just as in the passages from the Pyramid
Texts, slaughters for the deceased certain high-status persons, here the elders of
the sky, the spell being titled, intriguingly, To show the path to acclaim. CT spell 944
contains the formula My heart is Shesmu. In BD spell 17 Shesmu is described as the
mutilator on behalf of Osiris. BD spell 153 contains a version of the fish-net spells
from the Coffin Texts, with references to Shesmus participation, but differs from the
Coffin Texts version in not only allowing the deceased to escape being caught by the
fishermen, but indeed to become one of them. In BD spell 170, Shesmu provides for
the deceased the best of fowl. The constant shifting of Shesmus role from

Page 181 of 223

executioner to provisioner indicates that the netherworld operates, like this world, as a
closed metabolism, in which one eating implies some other being eaten.
In the New Kingdom Shesmu is increasingly either ointment-maker or butcher and no
longer associated with wine. On the east staircase at Dendera, Shesmu is depicted both
as lion-headed, carrying jars of ointment and called Shesmu, lord of the laboratory,
and also as human-headed, carrying cuts of meat, labelled Shesmu, lord of the
slaughterhouse of Horus, chief of the slaughterblock, who hacks up the oryx, wild of
countenance, who overthrows enemies, who slays all the beasts of the desert, mighty in
his arm, who strikes down the rebel, who propitiates the heart of Hathor with what she
likes, (Ciccarello 51; Mariette, Denderah IV, Pls. V, VII, XIV, XVI). Shesmu who
overthrows his enemies is also one of the guardian deities invoked in the Book of the
Protection of the Body from the temple of Horus at Edfu (Chassinat, Temple dEdfou
VI, 301), as well as the guardian of the twelfth hour of the night at Edfu, Dendera and
Philae.
Ciccarello, Mark. 1976. Shesmu the Letopolite. Pp. 43-54 in Mark Ciccarello, et al.,
eds., Studies in Honor of George R. Hughes. Chicago: The Oriental Institute.
Shu
The God Shu is generally depicted anthropomorphically, wearing a single plume on his
head, but is also frequently depicted as a lion. Shu is conventionally referred to as the
God of the air, but Shu is air, not in an abstract elemental sense, but as life principle
and as void, in the sense that void provides the possibility of determinacy. His name can
be interpreted as meaning emptiness, not only in a privative sense, but in the sense of
being free from some quality or condition (in this respect see utterance 452 of the
Pyramid Texts, your purity is the purity of Shu), or as dryness, because he expresses
the clearing of a space in the watery abyss of Nun. A different interpretation of his
name, however, would read it as who rises up or lifts himself up. The latter refers to
the role of Shu as separating the earth, Geb, from the sky, Nut.
Shu comes into being along with his sister/lover Tefnut from the masturbatory act of
Atum, the God who is alone at the beginning of the cosmos in the abyss of Nun.
Alternately, Shu is exhaled by Atum or spat forth (perhaps as an involuntary reaction
to inhaling the waters of Nun?). In any case, Shu embodies the coming to consciousness
of Atum in the indeterminacy of Nun, the fluid abyss. Shu embodies the preconditions
of consciousness inasmuch as air is the medium of sound and light, hence of hearing and
vision. The link between Shu and sunlight is especially close, to the extent that it has
been posited that the Egyptians did not really distinguish between air in the sense
represented by Shu and light itself, considered as a substance separate from that
which emits it. The rays of the sun are the Shu-forms of Re (e.g. at Coffin Texts
spell 1013), the powerful arms of Shu which support the sky. The rays of sunlight,
Page 182 of 223

although perfectly insubstantial, hold apart the heavens and the earth, a function which
is itself inseparable from the act of seeing and of conscious perceiving, which are, in
turn, inseparable for Egyptian thought from the power to breathe, itself an expression
of a living essence in air. The rays of sunlight are thus mere light no more than the
breath of life is air in the abstract, elemental sense. The deceased affirms in CT spell
1013 that I will lift up the Shu-forms of Re; my wailing women [i.e. mourners] are
silent. Here doing the work of Shu in separating sky from earth from underworld is
synonymous with resurrection, which silences the mourners for they no longer have any
reason to grieve.
In one of a series of spells pertaining to Shu in the Coffin Texts (spell 80) Atum says
of Shu, He knows how to nourish him who is in the egg in the womb for me, namely the
human beings who came forth from my eye which I sent out while I was alone with Nun
in lassitude. The sending forth by Atum of his eye is at once the emergence into the
world of the light of awareness, as well as the coming to life from out of the waters of
the womb of the living, breathing being, which is the work of Shu as quickener of the
womb, both as breath of life and as sperm, because Shu is the seed of Atum, the seed
of Shu also being spoken of in such life-imparting contexts. Shu is the life having come
into the waters of the primordial abyss, and thus he is water in a special sense, the
waters of conception and of birth, as well as the pure waters of the netherworld: in PT
utterance 338 the deceased king states, I will not by thirsty by reason of Shu, while
the officiating priest in PT utterance 222 directs the king to Be pure in the horizon
and get rid of your impurity in the Lakes of Shu. Reference is made numerous times in
the temple inscriptions from Kom Ombo of the reunion of Shu and Geb, a symbol
perhaps of the emergence of life on the earth as Shus incarnation and the earths
spiritualization. In CT spell 80, for instance, Shu affirms that all the different kinds of
animals live in accordance with the command of Atum that I should govern them and
nourish them with this mouth of mine. My life is what is in their nostrils. Hence when
reference is made to the weary (or inert) Shu in CT spell 76, who needs to be lifted
up into the sky by others, we are to understand the deceased, who has lost the power
of breath and must breathethat is, livethrough the activity of others.
This potential for an intimate identification with Shu is underscored by the important
series of spells in the Coffin Texts which are devoted to manifesting or becoming Shu
(CT spells 75-83), which are some of the most striking works of Egyptian religious
thought. These spells were obviously intended not only for use in a funerary context,
but also by the living, as is clear from the notations on spell 81. An identification with
Shu is already indicated by PT utterance 660, in which the king addresses Shu,
affirming that he himself is the son of Atum (i.e. Shu). Shu confirms this, telling the
king You are the eldest son of Atum, his first-born; Atum has spat you out from his
mouth in your name of Shu. This common alternate version of Shus emergence evokes
Atums intake of breath amidst the waters of Nun, causing him to spit them out in the
Page 183 of 223

form of Shu. Shu thus expresses Atums reaction to the abyss, his differentiation of
himself from it by negating it forcefully. It also connotes speech, a concept which
becomes more important in the Shu spells from the Coffin Texts. In the Pyramid Texts
and thereafter, Shu plays a critical role in the resurrection because breath is the preeminent symbol of life itself. Hence a third party in utterance 660, presumably a
priest, says to Shu If you live, he [the king] will live, since identification with Shu is
identification with the principle of life itself. Shu is therefore a symbol of selfsufficiency, as at utterance 539: I live on that whereon Shu lives. In CT spell 80 Shu
affirms that he knits together the body of Atum and that of Osiris, that he secures
the head of Atum to his body, and likewise that of Isis, in reference to the general
Egyptian notion that breath is the very coherence and integrity of the living body, and
also through the specific association of the breath with the throat, which connects the
heart, seat of thought for Egyptians, and the mouth, which utters the words that
express the consciousness (note in this respect the reference to Isis, who is the
paradigmatic speaker of magic). But the work which Shu does to guarantee the
integrity of the living organism is not peculiar to humans; Shu explains in spell 80 that
he knits on the heads of all animals with this authority of mine which is on my lips,
i.e., with his authoritative speech.
The form of the Shu spells in the Coffin Texts is a monologue in the first person
delivered by Shu, who gives an account of his origin as the self-created God who came
into being from the flesh of the self-created God, i.e. Atum. It is not a matter of
redundancy that Atum and Shu should both be regarded as self-created, for the selfcreation of Atum involves essentially his coming to consciousness, and this very act is
itself nothing other than the self-creation of Shu, who is autonomous inasmuch as
consciousness is freed from its preconditions. Shus dual role of conveying sound and
conveying understanding is evident in his affirmation that he hears the words of the
Chaos-Gods, i.e., the Gods of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad who express the conditions of
formlessness prior to the emergence of the cosmos. In spell 76 it is said that Atum
made the names of the Chaos-Gods by speaking with the abyss (Nun) in chaos, in
darkness and in gloom. Atum, in other words, speaks into the Abyss the characteristics
of that abyss, and these attributes, because they come into expression and awareness,
become the Gods of the Ogdoad whose names derive from these attributes, i.e. chaos
or limitlessness (Heh/Hauhet), darkness (Kek/Kauket), and gloom or the nowhere
(Tenem/Tenemet). Therefore we read in spell 79, O you eight Chaos-Gods who went
forth from Shu, whose names the flesh of Atum created in accordance with the word
of Nun in chaos, in the Abyss, in darkness and in gloom, thus stating the names of the
Chaos-Gods as attributes of Nun, the abyss, and identifying the very act of speaking
these attributes with Shu, because he is the medium into which this speech comes
forth. But the naming of the Chaos-Gods is also the creation of the space for
consciousness and expression that is Shu, and therefore it can be said that the
primordial Gods of the Ogdoad are created by Shu from the efflux of his flesh, his
Page 184 of 223

flesh being at once medium and moment of signification and communication. Thus spell
80 says that a cry for me [Shu] went forth from the mouth of Atum, the air opened up
upon my ways. Likewise, Shu says in spell 75 that he despatches the word of the Selfcreated [Atum] to the multitudes. Shu also affirms in these spells that he does not
obey magic, for I have already come into being, after which some texts add my
clothing is the breath of life which issued after me from the mouth of Atum (spell
75). Shus immunity from magical compulsion here is not merely due to his primordiality,
but also from the fact that the very breath with which magic (which is, in the Egyptian
understanding, primarily something to be spoken) is performed must be borrowed, in
effect, from Shu. Similarly, in the same spell Shu says Your hearts have spoken to me,
you Gods, without anything issuing from your mouths, because there has come into
being through me the doing of everything.
Shus role is often seen, especially in the Pyramid Texts, as that of reaching out to lift
the deceased up into the sky, just as each morning he lifts the boat of Re into the sky
at the eastern horizon; reference is often made to the ladder of Shu, which is said in
CT spell 76 to be assembled by the eight Chaos-Gods. Shu is associated with a number
of other atmospheric phenomena; the lightning is called favorite son of Shu in PT
utterance 261, clouds or mist are the bones of Shu in utterance 222, the bank of
dusk is the supports of Shu in CT spell 76, and some of the references to Shus
powerful arms and strength in combat, in addition to their more theological dimensions,
also surely refer to the power of the winds. The four winds are referred to as the four
bau (that is, manifestations) of Shu, and Shu as well as related Gods such as Onuris
sometimes wear a crown with four plumes to symbolize the four winds. CT spell 80 calls
hail-storms and the dark storm clouds the sweat of Shu. Shu describes himself in his
monologue from the Coffin Texts as the one who foretells the sun when it ascends
from the horizon, and it is in this pre-dawn luminosity that the Egyptians saw perhaps
the most distinct manifestation of Shu.
Shu and his sister Tefnut are frequently portrayed as two lions, and are referred to
thus as Ruty, literally the Lions. In PT utterance 301 Atum and Ruty are said to have
yourselves created your Godheads and your persons, and Shu and Tefnut are those
who made the Gods, who begot the Gods and established the Gods. Shu and Tefnut
escort the boat of Re, Shu on its east side, Tefnut on its west side (utterance 606; see
also utterance 496: I [the deceased] have come from Dendara with Shu behind me,
Tefnut before me, and Wepwawet at my right hand). An ascension text (utterance
684) speaks of Shu and Tefnut as the kings grandfather and grandmother, and says
that they take the king to the sky, to the sky, on the smoke of the incense, a
reference again to the role of air as a conducting medium, in this case for incense,
which makes a convenient symbol for the effectiveness of worship in general (see also
utterance 689: Oh Shu, supporter of Nut, raise the Eye of Horus [i.e., the offering] to
the sky). Just as the air is the medium for spoken prayer or magic, it is the medium
Page 185 of 223

for incense or for the burnt offering, and therefore governs virtually all interactions
with the divine.
The most important myth concerning Shu and Tefnut is, however, that in which Tefnut,
the Eye of Re, the fierce protector of Re and enforcer of his will in the cosmos, is
pacified or cooled by Shu, as is clearly alluded to in CT spell 75, where Shu says I
have extinguished the fire, I have calmed the soul of her who burns, I have quieted her
who is in the midst of her rage. Shu says I am he whom the flame of fire burns, but
its fiery blast is not against me, which at once refers to air as the medium and
sustenance of fire, but also has a deeper significance, for the deceased, empowered by
his/her identification with Shu, says later in the same spell there is no flame for my
soul on account of its foulness, that is, because there is no foulness in the soul, it
needs no purification by fire (or that which is purified by fire is not identified with the
soul itself). The pacification of the wrathful Tefnut by Shu seems to come about
through their sexual union. A reference to this sexual conjunction of Shu and Tefnut is
implied in PT utterance 685, in which the king is purified by the waters of life which
the phallus of Shu makes and which the vagina of Tefnut creates.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Sia
Sia is the divine personification of the power of perception or understanding, and is
frequently paired with Hu, the personification of authoritative speech. But Sia and Hu
are not simply these powers in the abstract, but are in the first place the
understanding and speech of Re as he gives form to the cosmos at the beginning of
time and anew each and every day. In BD spell 17, it is said that Re cut his penis and Sia
and Hu came into being from the drops of blood he shed. Sia and Hu are Res constant
companions aboard the vessel in which he traverses the sky. Just as Hu is not merely
utterance, but utterance in accord with the truth, and hence authoritative and
effective, and thus similar to heka, the power of magically effective utterance (see
Heka), Sia is not merely perception, but accurate perception, which is inseparable from
understanding. A special connection with vision is implied by the statement that images
on the walls of the temple at Denderah had been beautifully executed in accordance
with the glorious words of Sia, (Mariette, Dend. II, 73) which also indicates that the
aesthetic canons of Egyptian art were understood to derive ultimately from Sia;
sometimes the images themselves were characterized as the words of Sia, ( Dend. II,

Page 186 of 223

13e; cited in Saleh 1969, p. 30). Perception is understood as a kind of assimilation, as

shown by the characterization of Sia as the great swallower (Ritner 1997, 107).
In PT utterance 250, Sia, who is announcing the king to the Gods, characterizes himself
as he who is in charge of wisdom who bears the Gods book who is at the right
hand of Re. The deceased king proceeds to identify himself with Sia. In PT utterance
255, the concepts of sia and hu are paired: I have assumed authority [hu] and have
power through understanding [sia], while in utterance 257 it is said that the King
assumes authority [hu], eternity is brought to him and understanding [sia] is
established at his feet for him. In the Coffin Texts one encounters the affirmation I
know what Sia knows, and a path is opened for me, for I am the lord of air, ( CT spell
237) in which the pervasiveness of air seems to symbolize the all-knowingness of Sia.
Another way of affirming command of the faculty of understanding is I know what Sia
did, (CT spell 241). Sia and Hu are also linked with Shu insofar as they both emanate
from the primordial God Atum, albeit in different senses. Thus in CT spell 321, the
operator states of Atum (or the deceased, here identified with Atum) that His
utterance is what goes forth from his own heart, he has gone round in the company of
Shu upon the circuit of Hu and Sia, who made enquiry from him. Hu and Sia then say,
to Atum, but hence also to the deceased, in regard to a certain winding path in the
netherworld, Come, let us go and make the names of yonder winding in accordance with
what went out from his heart, of him who once went round with Shu, for he is his son
who fashioned himself. Thus it seems that the winding path is to take on the name, and
hence the shape, of the prior understanding of which the deceased, as a son who
fashioned himself, partakes.
Sia can also be cast as the narrator of mythic events, such as in CT spell 335, in which
a fragment of myth about the great Cat (identified with Re) and his actions in a war
between the followers of Re and the forces of chaos is attributed to Sia: What is that
great Cat? He is Re himself; he was called Cat when Sia spoke about him. He was catlike in what he did, and that is how his name of Cat came into being. This explanatory
passage makes it seem as though the import of attributing a name to the speech of Sia
is that the name is in accord with veridical perception, as opposed not only to false
perception, but also to possible sources of naming other than direct perceptual
acquaintance. In CT spell 816, Sia speaks through the deceased as a result of the
Opening of the Mouth ceremony: I have seen Sia, and he opens my mouth and tells a
true matter to the Lord of All [Atum]. CT spell 958 is To become Sia who belongs to
Re, that is, the power of perception which belongs to Re, but it is brief and
fragmentary. Similar but more informative is CT spell 1006, Sia [in the midst] of the
Eye of Re, in which the operator, identifying with Sia, affirms that I go up that I may
give you [Re] your plume; I have gone down that I may create Hu, indicating the
mediating role of Sia, that is, perception, between intelligence (Re) and utterance (Hu),
and that a God may be diverted by a God, perhaps referring to the ability, through
Page 187 of 223

knowledge and authoritative utterance (Sia and Hu), to divert an adverse destiny. Sia
states here that he is the image of Re in the midst of Res shrine, and tells Re that he
has duplicated your soul for your power. I am he who satisfies, and it is your wand
which does it again [lit. 'which repeats']. The references here to duplication and
repetition seem to refer to the alignment of the operators powers of perception with
the divine perception of Re as its double or repetition, which benefits not only the
operator, but Re too, and hence the cosmos itself, for it makes of the operator the
executor or agent (ir.t, like irt or eye) of Res will in the world. Hence Sia/the
operator goes on to urge Re to guard this power of mine, give me air, and I will give you
what is in the offering as for him who helps me, I will help him. CT spell 1143 refers
to Sia as being in the Eye of Ptah, indicating a similar relationship between the power
of perception/understanding and demiurgic activity such as that of the divine
craftsman Ptah.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Ritner, Robert K. 1997. The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice. Chicago:
The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
Saleh, Abd el-Aziz. 1969. Plural Sense and Cultural Aspects of the Ancient Egyptian

mdw-ntr. Bulletin de lInstitut Franais dArchologie Orientale 68: 15-38.

Sobek
(Sebek, Souchos) The most popular of a number of Egyptian deities depicted in
crocodilian or semi-crocodilian form, Sobek embodies the creative potency of the Nile
vested especially in the Fayyum lake, the center of Sobeks venerationand, by
extension, the primordial creative power of the cosmos itself, in perhaps its most
intense form. Sobek is depicted either as a crocodile or as a crocodile-headed man,
often wearing a crown with solar disk and plumes. His closest tie is with Neith, who is
identified as his mother in PT utterances 308 and 317. A father is named for Sobek
about whom nothing is known but his name: Senuy (in Greek Psosnaus), which literally
means the two brothers. Since Sobek was worshiped all over Egypt (sometimes
through the intermediary of living sacred crocodiles), he is associated with many
consorts and offspring in a purely cultic context. The Pyramid Texts includes a spell
identifying the deceased king with Sobek (PT utterance 317). Here Sobek is called,
green of plume, watchful of face, raised of brow, the raging one who came forth from
the shank and tail of the Great One who is in the sunshine, this Great One being
feminine and hence probably referring to Neith. The green plume refers to the
vegetation of the marshes. Greenness is a frequent motif in relation to Sobek, linking
the greenish hide of the crocodile to the idiomatic sense of green ( wadj) in Egyptian
as healthy or vigorous: I make green the herbage which is on the banks of the
Page 188 of 223

horizon, that I may bring greenness to the Eye of the Great One [fem.] who dwells in
the field, (PT utterance 317). Sobek also embodies sexual potency: I am the lord of
semen who takes women from their husbands whenever he wishes, (ibid.); in the hymns
from Sumenu Sobek is said to produce all living seed (pStrassburg 7, 5). In the Conflict

of Horus and Seth, when Re writes to Neith seeking her advice in the matter of
whether to recognize Horus or Seth as the successor to Osiris, he expresses the
transcendence of Neith and Sobek both, remarking that I your servant spend the
night on behalf of Osiris taking counsel for the Two Lands every day, while Sobek
endures forever, (Lichtheim vol. 2, 215). Re means here that while he travels into the
netherworld every night and thus has contact with the mortal realm, Sobek and Neith
experience no such oscillation in their state of being, which renders them capable of
offering a different perspective on the problem confronting the divine tribunal. In CT
spell 160 (BD spells 108, 111), Sobek is described as living at the eastern side of the
mountain of Bakhu upon which the sky rests, a mountain made entirely of crystal,
while Sobeks temple is of carnelian. From the summit of this mountain a serpent with
its forepart made of flint attacks the boat of Re in the evening, presumably just
before sunset, causing the boat to stop while Seth fights off the snake with his magic,
allowing the solar voyage to proceed. Sobeks role in this myth is unclear, but Lord of
Bakhu is a frequent epithet of his, and Sobek can be assumed to be friendly to the
boat of Re, his presence on the eastern, dawn facing side of Bakhu acting as a
counterweight to the flint-headed serpents presence on the western side.
Sobek is also called Lord of Water (285). In CT spell 636, which allows the operator
establish his/her powers of magic in several different locales of the netherworld, the
operators ka the source of his/her heka, magic (see Heka) is said to be in the
water with Sobek, and he is asked to bring it to the operator. CT spells 268 and 285
are both for Becoming Sobek, Lord of the Winding Waterway, a term which refers to
the celestial waterway of the ecliptic, which souls cross on their journey to the
northern sky; the operator identifies with Sobek, who comes, having eaten his brother
and lived on his scales, i.e., his brothers the fish (spell 268), stating that I live on
what he [the fish] knows and on that through which he has power. Sobek is described
in these spells as eating when he copulates, indicating that when he copulates he
totally assimilates the other. In CT spell 158, the hands of Horus, severed and thrown
into the Nile by Isis, are retrieved by Sobek, the spell remarking, That is how the
fish-trap came into being. As might be expected, identifying with Sobek allows the
operator to escape from the netherworld fish-nets of CT spell 474/BD spell 153; it is
perhaps significant in this regard that a House of the Net was part of the temple
complex of Neith at Sas. CT spell 991 also permits the invocation of or
transformation into Sobek, described here as that God whom the eight [i.e., the
primeval Gods of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad] row (compare pStrassburg 2 IV, 6, where
Sobek is identified with Hu and Sia, divine personifications of authority and perception,
and said to have engendered the double Ogdoad of the Gods). Sobek or the operator
Page 189 of 223

who identifies with him is also characterized in this spell as a rebel among the Gods
who has taken possession of the sky and of the earth and as one who has recourse to
robbery. This conjunction of attributes suggests that Sobek is conceived as a
primordial God who transcends the lawful order of the cosmos as established by the
Gods posterior to him and can thus uphold or transgress this system as he wishes;
similarly, a stela from the eastern Delta refers to Sobek as the Wrongdoer,
(Brovarski, Lexikon 1007). One text (Pap. Sallier IV, pl. XVII, 3, 4) warns of Sobek
being slaughtered by Seth in defense of the boat of the sun: Do not go out at dawn
this day to see Sobek massacred by Seth in front of the great bark on this day,
(Gutbub 1979, 428 n. 3). Perhaps surprisingly, however, given his crocodilian nature,
Sobek is rarely portrayed as a God from whom humans would require protection, the
purely destructive aspects of the crocodile generally being embodied by Seths
crocodile son Maga, an exception being BD spell 71, which urges Sobek lodging on his
hill and Neith lodging on her shores to Stop loose him [the deceased], free him;
put him down, grant his desire. This relationship bears no resemblance to simple fear,
however: the implication in general is that Sobek is the object, not of fear, but of the
dread and awe appropriate to an ancient and mysterious force of nature which is
beyond the ken, not just of humans, but also in some respects of the younger Gods.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Brovarski, Edward. Sobek. In Wolfgang Helck and Eberhard Otto, eds. 1973. Lexikon
der gyptologie. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Gutbub, Adolphe. 1979. La tortue animal cosmique bnfique lpoque ptolmaque et
romaine. Pp. 391-435 in Hommages la Mmoire de Serge Sauneron I. Cairo: Institut
Franais dArchologie Orientale du Caire.
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Sokar
(Seker) Soker is depicted either as a hawk-headed man, sometimes mummiform, or as a
hawk, particularly enshrined in his elaborate henu bark, which features prominently in
many of the texts which speak of Sokar. This boat, one end of which is in the shape of
a backward-turning oryx head (perhaps as a desert-roaming animal, see below), rests
upon runners, and has in its center a funerary chest or an earthen funerary mound from
which the head of a hawk emerges or upon which a hawk is perched. Sometimes a bulls
head with a leash can be seen facing forward behind the oryx head, and a tilapia fish
and six small falcons may appear behind the prow. Sokar is strongly associated with the
Page 190 of 223

Memphite necropolis, of which a portionSaqqarastill recalls his name, and with the
resurrection and the afterlife generally, and with the desert and the subterranean
world. He is also a patron of crafts, especially metalworking. Sokars cult is thoroughly
intertwined with those of Ptah and Osiris, the fusion forms Sokar-Osiris and PtahSokar being popular, as well as the triune fusion deity Ptah-Sokar-Osiris. Ptah-SokarOsiris is typically depicted as a mummiform man and a hawk facing one another atop a
pedestal, or as a hawk atop a pedestal from which a serpent emerges. Amuletic images
of Ptah as a dwarf are also frequently characterized as Ptah-Sokar-Osiris. Sokar was
at the center of an important and popular festival held in the fourth month of the
season of Akhet, on the eve of the winter sowing. Despite the extensive Osirianization
of Sokars cult, he differs clearly from Osiris in that Sokar is native to the realm of
the dead and its master, while Osiris experiences death and achieves identification
with Sokar by virtue of his victory over it.
In PT utterances 364, 645, and 647, Horus lifting up Osiris is compared to the henu
boat bearing Sokar, and in PT utterance 610 it is stated that Horus made a spirit of
his father as Ha, as Min, and as Sokar. In other passages from the Pyramid Texts
Sokar is charged with purifying the deceased (PT utterance 479), or as a
representative of the deceased, as in PT utterance 566, which asks of Thoth to ferry
me over on the tip of your wing as Sokar who presides over the Bark of
Righteousness, which is not the henu bark but the boat of maety, lit. the (two)
Maets, a name usually given to a vehicle of Resan early indication of the solarization
of Sokar (compare the reference, from a funerary stele, to Re journeying in the bark
of Sokar, (Gaballa and Kitchen, 60). Other instances of identification of the deceased
with Sokar are in PT utterance 483, where the watchers of Nekhen [Hierakonpolis in
Upper Egypt] ennoble him as Sokar and in CT spell 941 where the deceased says that
he has awakened as the son of Sokar. BD spell 94 has the deceased affirm, I have
purified myself while I tarried with Sokar, i.e., in the necropolis. PT utterance 669
consists of a dialogue between Nun and Isis concerning the emergence of the deceased
king from an egg in which he resides as yet unformed. Isis states that the henu boat
shall be brought for the deceased and he shall be lifted up into it, and that Sokar shall
break open the egg with a harpoon of his own fashioning, releasing the king to fly up to
the sky. In CT spell 816, the iron instrument used in the Opening of the Mouth
ceremony (see under Anubis) is said to be the iron which Sokar spiritualized in n
the iron which Sokar raised on high in the name of the Great One in n. There are
references to iron in PT utterance 669 as well, which, albeit enigmatic, might serve to
link these two texts. In a spell to charge a medicine (no. 73 in Borghouts), the drinking
of the medicine is linked to the Opening of the Mouth ritual, the spell saying Your
mouth will be opened up by Ptah, your mouth will be disclosed by Sokar with that chisel
of bronze of his. Sokars craftsmanship, mentioned in the fashioning of the harpoon in
PT utterance 669, is also evident in CT spell 590, which speaks of a gold collar of
Sokar, given to Osiris by Horus, fashioned at the command of Re, with funds dispensed
Page 191 of 223

to Thoth and the craftsmen of Sokar being assembled. CT spell 173 refers to being
shod with the sandals of Sokar, which assists the deceased to not have to live on
corruption. BD spell 74, for hastening the feet and ascending from the earth, appeals
to Sokar to do thou what thou doest, O Sokar, Sokar in his house, who is at the steps
in the Gods domain, the deceased complaining that s/he ascend[s] to the sky so
wearily, and walks so wearily on the shores of them whose speech has been taken
away in the Gods domain. In CT spell 398, the netherworld ferry-boat is to be
assembled in company with Sokar, Lord of the henu bark. CT spell 275, for Assuming
all forms in the realm of the dead, states that the deceased has overturned Osiris
from his throne on the day of the Festival of Sokar, while CT spell 419 salutes Osiris
and the deceased alike (or in identification) in your happy day of the festival of
Sokar, on which see below, as well as the reference to it as one of the six festivals of
eternity for the spiritualized deceased in CT spell 557. Sokar occurs in CT spell 479,
part of the genre of spells for escaping the nets of the netherworld fishermen who
fish for souls, but the specific formulae refer back to the context of spells for
providing fresh food and water for the deceased, i.e., the spells for preventing walking
upside down or eating excrement, and Sokar is closely involved in provisioning the
Mansion among the waters for the deceased in CT spell 571. This is presumably
because Sokar, as lord of the necropolis, dispenses the offerings made to the dead.
During the fourth and fifth hours of the Amduat book, which recounts the solar boats
nocturnal journey through the netherworld, the boat traverses Rostau, the Land of
Sokar who is upon his sand, a desert through which the solar boat travels by
transforming itself into a double-headed serpent which lights the way through the
otherwise impenetrable darkness by breathing fire. Sokar himself is shown with Thoth
at the center of the fourth hour, protecting the solar eye, which is separated from the
boat itself as a symbol of the darkness, and to convey that the realm of Sokar is
actually distant from the path travelled by the boat, the site of separate but parallel
events. This is more fully revealed in the next hour. At the center of the fifth hour,
which is identified with a different region of the netherworld, namely Amenti, or the
Western Land, beneath the burial mound of Osiris, deep in the earth, Sokar is
depicted standing on the back of a three-headed, multicolored winged serpent,
representing the energy imparted to the underworld by the passage of the solar boat
through the night, energy which Sokar harnesses to operate the mystery of the
resurrection.
The festival of Sokar was on day 26 of 4th Akhet. On the 25th, participants tied
garlands of onions at their necks and followed Sokars cult statue in procession within
the temple precincts. Garlands of onions were also worn that night, and onions were
offered at tomb chapels. The onions can represent the gift to, and receipt by, the
dead of all manner of garden-vegetables, (Gaballa and Kitchen, 54). Participants
probably kept a vigil till dawn. Then on the 26th came the ritual of following Sokar
Page 192 of 223

when he goes round the Walls, (ibid., 46) a circuit of the old city walls of Memphis by
the cult statue of Sokar in the henu boat on a sledge. While in theory the boat was
dragged on its sledge, in practice it was carried upon the shoulders of as many as
sixteen priests. A symbol of Nefertum led the way before Sokar; an address to
Nefertum from Abydos says to him, thou givest thy hands to Sokar in the henu bark,
(ibid. 59). Participation in the Sokar festival is mentioned often in the afterlife
literature. Processions of Sokar around the city walls, modeled on the ceremony at
Memphis, occurred in other cities, such as Abydos, Thebes and Busiris. At the end of
the festival day, offerings would be made at the tombs, and statuettes of deceased
officials may have joined the procession as Sokar visited some part of the local
necropolis, which embodied Sokars domain of Rostau, the concept of which originally
perhaps referred strictly to the Memphite necropolis, but which came to include any
necropolis and, indeed, the whole realm of the dead (ibid., 67-68). This excursion would
involve a real or symbolic navigation, a journey on the water.
A text from the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus is called The Ritual of Bringing in Sokar,
(trans. R. O. Faulkner, JEA 23, 1937, pp. 10-16), the first part of which is a hymn to
Sokar. Sokar is hymned as thou who healest for thyself thy throat, that is, who
resurrects himself, the ability to open the throat being synonymous with the power to
breathe and hence with life itself, but also as thou whose darkness is more enduring
than the light of the sun and thou who blindfoldest him who is in the Netherworld
from seeing the sun; as august rope-maker of the Night-bark, the mesketet, in which
Re travels through the Netherworld each night, the rope being what tows or drags the
bark, as we have seen, through those portions of the Netherworld which it cannot
traverse under its own power; as living soul of Osiris when he appears as the moon;
but also as divine one who hidest Osiris in the realm of the dead.
Soped
(Sopd, Sopdu, Sopedu) Sopeds name apparently comes from an Egyptian word meaning,
literally, sharp, but which also bore a similar range of metaphorical meanings to that
which sharp has in English, i.e., skilled or effective. The literal sharpness which is
said of Soped is that of his beak (e.g., sharp of teeth in PT utterance 222), for he is
depicted often as a hawk, especially with a headdress of two tall plumes (these plumes
possibly an astral phenomenon of some kind, viz. CT spell 61, you shine in the plumes of
Soped) and a flail perched at his shoulder. Soped is also depicted anthropomorphically
in the manner of a native of what was the far east for Egyptians, namely the Sinai and
Arabia, for Soped characteristically represents the direction of the east in all of its
connotations, both political and cosmological. When he appears in anthropomorphic
form, Soped wears the beaded-and-tasseled shesmet belt (see Shesmetet) and his
plumed headdress. Soped is regarded as the son of Sah (the constellation Orion) and
Sothis (Sopdet; the star Sirius). His consort is Khensut.
Page 193 of 223

In a text spoken by Geb in PT utterance 306, it is said of the deceased king that the
Fields of Rushes worship you in this your name of Dwaw ['dawn'] as Soped who is under
his ksbt-trees, the Fields of Rushes being a marshy place in the east of the sky from
which the sun emerges at dawn, while the ksbt is a type of fruit-bearing tree
frequently associated with Soped but not readily identifiable. A significant reference
to Soped begins in PT utterance 578 with an address to the deceased king as Osiris,
saying you shall not go into these eastern lands, you shall go into those western lands
by the road of the Followers of Re, apparently referring to an undesirable eastern
entry to the netherworld which is referred to in certain other texts (e.g., CT spell
548/BD spell 93, Not to ferry a man to the east in the realm of the dead, also called,
Spell for not dying again in the realm of the dead). The entourage of Osiris is charged
with announcing him (i.e., the deceased) to Re as one whose left arm is raised, an
apparent reference to the gesture of the raised arm which has the power to ward off
evil forces and which is symbolically represented by the flail poised over the upraised
arm, a symbolism especially associated with Min. The text goes on to identify the
deceased king with Soped, in whose name the king takes into his embrace certain
unidentified persons, of whom it is said only that You [the deceased] do not know them
You it is who prevent them from becoming inert in your embrace; you go up to them
empowered, effective in this your name of Soped. Your flail is in your hand, your
sceptre is at your hand, the slayers fall on their faces at you, the Imperishable Stars
[the northern circumpolar stars] kneel to you. Apparently the eastern realm of the
netherworld, in which certain unfortunate dead are slain a second time, and which is not
a suitable place for Osiris, is to be penetrated by Soped, who subdues the slayers and
rescues the anonymous dead from oblivion. CT spell 458, however, Not to die a second
time in the realm of the dead, opposes Horus and Soped: the deceased affirms, the
messengers of Soped have no power over me, for I am Horus, son of Osiris, and Soped
is clearly charged with performing executions in the netherworld in an ancient
commentary on BD spell 17 and in BD spell 130. CT spell 783 affirms of the deceased,
your son Soped the sharp-toothed acts as protector from whoever would harm you in
the eastern desert.

CT spell 270 is for Becoming Soped, (i.e., invoking Soped), but it is very short and
virtually unintelligible in parts; its formula, however, minus the problematic portion, is
that N. [the deceased] has gone forth upon the water which surrounds him, N.s plume
is on his head, N.s eyes are kaa [possibly 'spirit-powered', cf. the use of the word in
PT utterance 689, concerning the Eye of Horus] N. is lord of the deserts, N. is
Soped, eldest of the Gods. Soped occurs in contexts where the cardinal points are
being secured, e.g., in CT spell 313, where the deceased is assured that Those who
shall come against you from the East shall be doomed to Soped, Lord of the East, and
they shall be driven off with your knives in them, or in CT spell 636, Spell for a man
to have power through his magic [heka] in order that he may establish himself in the
realm of the dead, where Soped in the east is one of four deities charged with
Page 194 of 223

bringing the deceaseds ka [spirit; for the relation between ka and heka see Heka] to
his body. Breaking the pattern, however, is BD spell 32, in which, of the four
crocodiles that come to take a mans magic away from him in the Gods domain, it is the
crocodile from the south against whom Soped is invoked.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Sothis
(Sopdet) Sothis is the way the Greeks wrote the name of the Goddess whose name
appears in hieroglyphic Egyptian as Sopdet. Sothis is the deity immanent in the star
Sirius, which in addition to being the brightest star in the sky, also played a key role in
the Egyptian calendar. The Egyptian new year was fixed to the heliacal rising of Sirius,
that is, the first day on which Sirius is visible before dawn after a period of invisibility
which, in the case of Sirius, is about seventy days. The heliacal rising of Sirius varies
depending upon the observers latitude; at Egypts latitude, this event would have
occurred in late July. The heliacal rising of Sirius was particularly significant for
Egyptians because it marked the beginning of the period within which the Niles annual
inundation could be expected, and all Egyptian agriculture depended upon the Niles
inundation. Sothis is depicted as a woman wearing a crown like the White Crown of
Upper Egypt, but with antelope horns at the sides, like the crown worn by Satis, with
the addition of a five-pointed star at the top. Sothis has for consort Sah, the deity
immanent in the constellation of Orion, and is the mother of Soped. Both Sirius and
Orion undergo a period of invisibility during which they are in the netherworld, but
they emerge again, and thus are symbols of resurrection.

PT utterance 216 says that Orion (Sah) and Sothis are swallowed up by the
Netherworld, pure and living in the horizon, i.e., they depart alive; so too the deceased
king says I am swallowed up by the Netherworld, pure and living in the horizon. It is
well with me and with them, it is pleasant for me and for them, within the arms of my
father, within the arms of Atum. In the Pyramid Texts, the relationship between the
deceased king and Sothis is either that of son or of consort, in which latter case the
Morning Star is said to be their offspring. This union is frequently identified with that
of Isis and Osiris, as in PT utterance 366: Your sister Isis comes to you [the
deceased] rejoicing for love of you. You have placed her on your phallus and your seed
issues into her, she being ready [seped] as Sothis [Sopdet], and Horus-Soped has come
forth from you as Horus who is in Sothis. In PT utterance 477 Sothis is called the
beloved daughter of Osiris who prepares yearly sustenance for you [Osiris; not here
Page 195 of 223

identified with the deceased king] in this her name of Year and who guides me [the
deceased king] when I come to you. In PT utterance 509, the deceased king affirms
that I ascend to the sky among the Imperishable Stars [i.e., the northern circumpolar
stars], my sister is Sothis, my guide is the Morning Star, and they grasp my hand at the
Field of Offerings, a location in the northeastern sky. In CT spell 467 (cp. BD spell
110), for becoming lord of the Field of Offerings, and which details a number of sites
within this place, it is said of the Town of the Great Lady that Sothis speaks to me
[the deceased] in her good time, perhaps the heliacal rising of Sirius. PT utterance
569 indicates that the heliacal rising of Sirius could be seen as the birth of Sothis.
PT utterance 609 says of the deceased king, Your sister is Sothis, your offspring is
the Morning Star, and you shall sit between them on the great throne which is in the
presence of the Two Enneads [a general term conveying the sense of 'all the Gods'],
while it is said in PT utterance 691A of Re that his brother is Orion [Sah], his sister is
Sothis, and he sits between them in this land forever. CT spell 6, which speaks of the
resurrection of the deceased at the new moon festival, it said of the deceased that
You suck at your mother Sothis as your nurse who is in the horizon, while CT spells 36
and 37 affirm that the deceased has been ennobled in the House of Sothis. CT spell
44 invokes Sah, Sothis, and the Morning Star to encircle the deceased, saying may
they set you within the arms of your mother Nut, may they save you from the rage of
the dead who go head-downwards, an idiom in Egyptian afterlife literature for those
lacking awareness in the netherworld, for you are not among them and you shall not be
among them, you shall not go down to the butchery of the first of the decade,
referring to the death suffered by decanal stars when they disappear for seventy
days, as is explained in a text from Papyrus Carlsberg I, where it is said of these stars
that one dies and another lives every ten days, in a cycle of death and rebirth which
is the life of [these] stars, (Neugebauer and Parker, vol. I, 68). This death of stars
each decan might trigger the second death of souls who have not the means of fixing
their state. The stars themselves suffer no ill fate for undergoing this cycle, however,
as is clear from the deceaseds affirmation in BD spell 149 that I have eaten of the
foods of the field of offerings, being gone down to the meadow of the stars that set.
The role of certain stars, such as Sirius, the stars in Orion, and the Morning Star, was
apparently to assist in the transition to a state of permanence. CT spell 469 and its
much abbreviated version, CT spell 470, serve to equip the operator to be among the
spirits belonging to He of the Dawn, who is ever between the two great Gods when
they are in the sky, one of them in the west of the sky and one of them in the east of
the sky.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Page 196 of 223

Phillips Ltd. [CT]

Neugebauer, Otto, and Richard A. Parker. 1960-9. Egyptian Astronomical Texts.
Providence: Brown University Press.
Tabithet
(Tabitchet, Ta-Bithet, Bithet, etc.) Tabithet is a consort of Horus who is essentially
only known from magical contexts. It has been suggested that her name combines the
Egyptian definite article with a Canaanite or Amorite word meaning daughter, hence
the Daughter (Ritner 1998, 1036 n. 59, 1040). Her name is often simply given as
Bithet. Spells invoking Tabithet make frequent reference to the blood Tabithet shed
when losing her virginity to Horus. Thus in one spell (no. 97 in Borghouts), Horus is
invoked in the following manner: Hail to you, Horus, by the blood of TabithetHorus
deflowered her on a bed of ebony, while another (no. 98) has the operator call
Tabithet by assuming the identity of Horus: Come to me, Bithet, wife of Horus! Come,
I am Horus!
In no. 99, the blood shed by Tabithet is perhaps equated to the evacuation of
malignancy from the patient: Come, you malignant fluids there which are in the body of
NN born of NN, as they came out for Bithet, the wife of Horus, the daughter of Sepu,
the daughter of Osiris, who stood upright on something Geb had brought forth, Re
being aloof! Much is enigmatic here but something Geb had brought forth is a plant.
In no. 101, on the other hand, it is the blood itself which is to perform a healing, either
as symbolizing a substance of some kind, or as having sealed a pact, for it asks that
Horus (i.e., the patient) may be healed for his mother [Isis, i.e. the operator]by the
blood of Tabithet when Horus deflowered her in the evening. In this spell Tabithet,
wife of Horus, is asked to Close the mouth of any reptile, perhaps retroactively
rendering any poison ineffectual. The method of applying the otherwise unknown myth
about Horus and Tabithet, then, is variable, strengthening the impression of a freestanding myth. Indications in nos. 97 and 119 are that Tabithet was regarded as a
daughter of Re, indeed possibly the eldest child of Re. In no. 119, a Goddess, ostensibly
Tabithet although designated by an enigmatic epithet (see below) rather than her
name, is said to be either the eldest child of Re or a member of the first generation or
assembly (khet) of Re. Tabithet was perhaps to be depicted as a cobrano. 97:
Tabithet is Biyet, the lady of the cobra, a daughter of Pre [Re], while the upright
pose suggested in no. 101 is a typical image of a cobra in Egyptian iconographyor as a
scorpion.
Tabithet is sometimes referred to by the epithet Sepertuenes or Sepertueres, parsed
as She to whom one petitions, (Ritner 1998, 1036 n. 58). R. K. Ritner argues, however,
that Sepertuenes and Tabithet are distinct, forming two out of a group of seven wives
of Horus, of whom the rest are Ifdet, She who runs, Wepetsepu, She who judges
misdeeds, Sefedsepu, She who slaughters misdeeds, Metemetneferetiyes, Beautiful
Page 197 of 223

when she comes, and Batcheh, though of these Tabithet and Sepertuenes are the most
well-attested (Ritner 1998, passim).
Spell no. 119 says of Tabithet, She has been telling her name to Horus for three years,
while the blood stuck on her thighs since Horus deflowered her, this name being
equated in spell no. 119 with the words at which the poison (miasma, etc.) is supposed to
exit the patients body. The reference to a three-year interval presumably refers both
to the extraordinary length of Tabithets true or secret name as well as to the
extraordinary length of time taken up by the sexual encounter, unless it is an idiom of
some sort expressing the time during which Horus and Tabithet were lovers.
In a fragmentary spell (B. van de Walle, 80f), Tabithet apparently tells Hathor of her
encounter with Horus, taunting that His heart loves me more than you, and initiating
some kind of conflict between herself, Horus and Hathor, though the state of the text
unfortunately does not permit us to reconstruct the rest of the myth.
In what would be the sole reference to Tabithet outside a magical context, Horus the
child is referred to once at Edfu (Chassinat, Edfou IV, 192) as the son of Tabithet,
who is also characterized as nurse of the Golden One, and wife of Horus, in this way
participating in Horus divine self-generation (Ritner 1998, 1039; van de Walle 1967,
17).
Ritner, Robert K. 1998. The Wives of Horus and the Philinna Papyrus ( PGM XX). Pp.
1027-1041 in W. Clarysse, A. Schoors, and H. Willems, eds., Egyptian Religion: The Last

Thousand Years: Studies Dedicated to the Memory of Jan Quaegebeur . Leuven:

Peeters.
van de Walle, B. 1967. Lostracon E 3209 des Muses Royaux dArt et dHistoire
mentionnant la desse-scorpion Ta-Bithet. Chronique dgypte 42: 13-29.
. 1972. Une base de statue-guerisseuse avec une nouvelle mention de la dessescorpion Ta-Bithet. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 31.2: 67-82.
Tapshay
(Tapsais, Tnaphersais) Tapshays name means She who is of fate/destiny [ shai]; it is
also found in the form Tnaphersais [Tanefershay], meaning She who is good for
fate/destiny and her consort is Tutu. She was unknown until a temple dedicated to her
and Tutu was discovered at Kellis in the Dakhla oasis. Included among the finds was an
impressive bronze statue of Tapshay in almost perfect condition dating to the second
or third century CE. In the statue Tapshay wears the crown with bovine horns, sun disk
and two ostrich feathers, the whole set atop a modius. She also wears a small necklace
with a round pendant, of a type also depicted on Roman mummy portraits; elsewhere in
Page 198 of 223

the temple she is depicted wearing the vulture headdress and the same crown without
modius. The Greek inscription on the statue dedicates it to Tapsais all-victorious <and>
to Tithoes [Tutu], the God of Kellis. This association with victory is also underscored
in an inscription from the temple in which Tapshay affirms to the pharaoh (here
actually the Roman Emperor Pertinax), I send your enemies to the slaughtering place.
In addition to Tutu, Tapshay is closely associated at Kellis with Neith. Tapshay bears
the titles Mistress of the Oasis and Mistress of the City.
The nature of the crowns in which Tapshay is depicted suggest queenship, and it has
been suggested that this iconographic choice might imply that Tapshay is a deified
mortal, the mortal wife and mother of the deified Imhotep being similarly depicted
(Kaper and Worp, 115). Tapshays possession of certain traits of sovereignty, however,
parallels Tutus adoption of many traits of ancient pharaonic royal imagery.
Kaper, Olaf and Klaas Worp. A Bronze Representing Tapsais of Kellis. Revue
dEgyptologie 46, 1995, p. 107-118.
Tatenen
(Tatjenen, Tathenen, Tjenen, Tenen) Tatenens name means the land ( ta) which has
risen/become distinct (thenen or tjenen), that is, the primordial mound which emerged
at the inception of the cosmos from the waters of the abyss and hence distinguished
itself (theni) from the abyss, in which all is indeterminate. It is perhaps this specific
association with the primordial earth that principally distinguishes Tatenen from other
Gods associated with the Earth such as Geb and Aker. Tatenen is depicted
anthropomorphically wearing a crown with horizontal twisting rams horns (like those,
e.g., of Khnum) and two ostrich feathers; sometimes the crown is augmented with solar
disk and/or uraei. Tatenen was perhaps originally associated with Thinis (Tjeny, modern
Ghirga), in the eighth nome (or district) of Upper Egypt, since his name appears related
to the name of the town and the symbol of the eighth nome incorporates the two
feathers of his crown. In later times, however, Tatenen is worshiped primarily at
Memphis and is often fused with the Memphite God Ptah in the form Ptah-Tatenen. An
early presence of Tatenen at Memphis is possible, however, on account of references in
Old Kingdom texts to a God called Khenty-Tjenenet, foremost one of Tjenenet. It is
sometimes speculated that Tatenens original consort was Tjenenet, on account of the
similarity in their names.
In the Amduat, the book of What is in the Netherworld, in the eighth hour of the
nocturnal journey, Tatenen is depicted in the form of four rams (labeled as form
(kheper) one, form two, etc.) wearing four different crowns: the solar disk, the white
crown of Upper Egypt, the red crown of Lower Egypt, and the two plumes respectively.
In accord with the function of this division of the netherworld, the four forms of
Tatenen are accompanied by the sign for cloth (i.e., clothing). In the Book of Caverns,
Page 199 of 223

fifth section (Hornung 1999, 88) Tatenen is shown standing, his legs propped up by
figures who, though evidently alive, are labeled as the corpse of Atum and the corpse
of Khepri. In the Book of Aker, part D (Hornung, 99f), two ram-headed deities are
depicted seizing the Apophis serpent, under which stands Osiris in a shrine framed by
the corpse of Geb and the corpse of Tatenen, again evidently alive, but with their
feet sunken into the ground. In the Litany of Re, Tatenen is mentioned twice, first at
3, in which the power of Re identified with Tatenen is he who begets his Gods, he who
protects what is in him, he who transforms himself into the one at the head of his
cavern, in reference to the journey of the sun through the caverns of the
netherworld; and then again at 66, in which the power corresponding to Tatenen is
begetter who annihilates the offspring Thou art the bodies of the exalted [or
'risen'] Earth [or, 'of Tatenen']. The references to begetting in these two passages
may derive phallic symbolism from the symbol of the risen land.
Tatenen often embodies the earth, especially as beneficently receiving the setting sun,
as in BD spell 15, in which a passage adoring Re-Harakhty as he sets in the region of
life, says of Re-Harakhty Thy father Tatenen lifts thee; he wraps his arms about
thee, while thou art become divine in the earth. In BD spell 64, the deceased,
identifying with Re, affirms that Tatenens friendliness exceeds that of Ruty, so that
I am preserved. I am one who has escaped through a crack of the door. The light
created at his will abides. Ruty, which means the two lions, refers to the gates of the
netherworld. The references here to a crack in the door and light penetrating a dark
place seem to play upon an analogy between the resurrection made available to the
deceased and the emergence of determinacy and thus, for Egyptian thought, of life
from the entropy and formlessness of the abyss at the inception of the cosmos. The
light which abides may also be taken as alluding to the generation within the earth of
precious minerals. Another text states that Geb is glorious owing to what thou
[Tatenen] hast hidden, it being unknown what has arisen in thine body, (Holmberg, 58)
again alluding to minerals. Tatenens role in the afterlife literature is dependent largely
upon the analogy between death and the precosmic abyss, on the one hand, and between
the deceased and the sun, on the other. In BD spell 84, for assuming the form of a
heron, the deceased is affirmed to be the Sunlight, and when s/he picks up the
recitation in the first person, affirms, the breadth of the earth was created for my
journeys to cities and settlements Do I not know the Deep [the Nun, the Abyss]? Do
I not know Tatenen? In a version of the divinization of the parts of the body, a
common formula in the afterlife literature, the vulva of the deceased is identified with
Tatenen (BD spell 181). In The Songs of Isis and Nephthys, Osiris is hailed as Sacred
image of thy father Tatenen, (The Bremner-Rhind PapyrusI, p. 123 [1, 16]), and is
told that Thy father Tatenen lifts up the sky that thou mayest tread over its four
quarters; thy soul flies in the east; thou art the likeness of Re, and they who dwell in
the Netherworld receive thee with joy, Geb breaks open for thee what is in him, and
they come to thee in peace, (ibid., p. 132 [16, 24]).
Page 200 of 223

It is often unclear whether to take Ptah-Tatenen as a combination of the two deities

or whether Tatenen functions rather as an epithet of Ptah. The logic of the
combination is provided in the so-called Memphite Theology, in which it is said of Ptah,
He is Tatenen, who gave birth to the Gods, and from whom every thing came forth,
foods, provisions, divine offerings, all good things, (Lichtheim vol. 1, 55). Here Ptah is
called Tatenen insofar as the preceding philosophical argument of the text has
established that Tatenens cosmic function of determinacy can be identified, through a
shift in perspective, with Ptahs function of, as it were, articulation. The resulting
affirmation comes about, then, as the result of the philosophical inquiry concerning
their functions. Ptah and Tatenen also relate to each other more concretely through
Tatenens association with minerals and Ptahs association with metalworking.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Faulkner, R. O. 1936-1938. The Bremner-Rhind Papyrus. Journal of Egyptian

Archaeology 22-24.
Holmberg, M. S. 1946. The God Ptah. Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup.
Lichtheim, Miriam. 1975-80. Ancient Egyptian Literature. 3 vols. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Piankoff, Alexandre. 1964. The Litany of Re. New York: Bollingen.
Taweret (Thoris)
(Ta-urt, Toris) Taweret (Thoris as rendered in Greek), whose name means She who is
mighty, is the most well-known of the Goddesses depicted in semi-hippopotamus form,
of whom other examples are Ipy and Reret. All of these Goddesses are depicted as
bipedal hippopotami with pendulous breasts, lions paws, and the ridged back and tail of
a crocodile. Taweret is, in particular, often depicted resting one front paw on the
symbol sa or sau, identified as a rolled up papyrus shelter used by herdsmen, which
means protection, and holding a torch. Taweret is not exclusively represented in semihippopotamus form, however, but can also depicted in a fully anthropomorphic form
closely resembling Hathor. A very popular Goddess well into late antiquity (her temple
at Oxyrhynchus was the site of a ritual symposium as late as 462 CE), Taweret is
invoked to protect physical well-being, especially that of women in childbirth, sharing
this function with Bes, with whom she is often juxtaposed. She is a protector of the
infant Horus, as the text on the base of a statue of Taweret states: I am Taweret in
her power, she who fights for the one who is hers and who repels those who would do
violence to her child Horus, (Gnies, Anges et Dmons, 52). Taweret is sometimes said
to be a consort of Seth, who can take the form of a hippopotamus, but also perhaps on
account of Seths own positive association with physical vigor. Taweret has a special
association with fresh water, basins or bowls for libation or purification having been
found inscribed with prayers to Taweret the pure water.
Page 201 of 223

Meeks, Dimitri. 1971. Gnies, anges, dmons en gypte. In Gnies, Anges et Dmons.
Paris: ditions du Seuil.
Tayet
(Tayt, Tait) Tayet is the Goddess of weaving and of linen, and is important in Egyptian
religion particularly inasmuch as she provides the fabric in which mummies were
wrapped, which provides a protective shell for the body during the process of
resurrection; Tayet is also responsible for the garments which clothe the cult statues
of the Gods, the dressing of which was an important ritual activity. The clothing of the
Gods represents a layer of insulation but at the same time of connection between the
Gods and the mortal world. In a text from the temple of Hathor at Dendera Tayet is
said to be she who purifies the Goddesses, who did spin of old and was the first to
weave, (Dendara IV, 125, 5-6). Tayet is depicted in fully anthropomorphic form,
although she is sometimes conceived as the linen itself, as in an inscription from the
same temple stating that Tayet was born with green skin (Dendara IV, 126, 4-5), a
reference to the green linen fiber; but she is also called Pale of complexion, (ibid) like
the linen fabric in its finished state. Tayet is also an alternate name for the town of
Buto (Dep), which was therefore perhaps her place of origin. Tayet is frequently
associated with Shesmu, the God of anointing, who plays a similarly important role in
the embalming process; with Nepry, the God of grain, another staple crop; and with
Hedjhotep, a God of linen and weaving, difficult to distinguish functionally from Tayet,
but sometimes regarded as her consort.
Utterance 417 of the Pyramid Texts states of the deceased that While the Great One
sleeps upon his mother Nut, your mother Tayet clothes you, she lifts you up to the sky
in this her name of Kite; he whom she has found is her Horus. Note that the kite is a
bird particularly associated with Isis. CT spell 282 is for becoming (i.e. invoking)
Tayet, who is said here to make a seat for the deceased, so that s/he need not lie
down in the shambles, the slaughterhouse of the netherworld. A more symbolic
interpretation of Tayets work is offered in PT utterance 415, a prayer to Tayet who
reconciled the God to his brother, i.e., who reconciled Horus and Seth. Guard the
Kings head, lest it become loose, the spell continues, gather together the Kings
bones, lest they become loose, and put the love of the King into the body of every God
who shall see him. Here the process of reintegrating the body, in which Tayet plays a
crucial role, is understood as the reconciliation of Horus and Seth because the
possibility of the resurrection settles the issue between these Gods, allowing life to
move forward infused with the acknowledgment and preservation of its tie to those
who came before. In BD spell 172, it is said of the deceased that Thou eatest bread
on a cloth which Tayet herself has woven. Tayet thus provides a comprehensive
buffer, as it were, between the deceased and all of the sources from which impurity or
entropy might invade him/her. Tayet has a specific association with Nepry, the God of
grain, who stands in the same relationship to bread as Tayet stands to clothing; hence
Page 202 of 223

on a stela of the 11th Dynasty, the deceased adds to the conventional autobiographical
formula I gave bread to the hungry and clothing to the naked a theological correlate:
I was son of Nepry, husband of Tayet.
In CT spell 60, the curtain of the horizon, which is probably also the curtain that
closes off the embalming tent, is compared to the cloak of Ptah which Tayet herself
wove, referring to Ptahs mummiform dress. Ptah is again the special recipient of a
garment from Tayet in BD spell 82, for assuming the form of Ptah, which has the
general purpose of making the body of the deceased fully functional in the
netherworld; here the deceased affirms, I put on a linen garment from the hand of
Tayet. The connection between Tayet and Ptah is probably more substantial than
Ptahs mummiform garb, which itself refers, not principally to the funerary sphere, but
to eternity. As the demiurge or artisan of the cosmos, Ptah is naturally assisted by
Tayet, whose garments are not mere clothing: in BD spell 172, it is said of the
deceased that Thou puttest on the pure garment; thou layest aside the thick
garment. Tayet fashions every sort of garment for the Gods, as can be seen in CT spell
486, Weaving the dress for Hathor, in which the operator, who wishes to take part in
this task, affirms that my hands support Tayet or I raise up the hands of Tayet to
her [Hathor]. Depictions from the temple of Hathor at Dendera show Tayet personally
arraying Hathor in her ceremonial clothing ( Dendara IV, 179, 10-14 and 265, 13-14), and
when the king presents deities with their various ceremonial clothes he is designated
the express image (tyt) of Tayet (Dendara III, 119, 11; IV, 56, 15-16). It is in regard
to her control of this form of interface between the Gods and the world that Tayet is
hailed as mother of the Gods, mistress of the Goddesses, who arrays the images [i.e.,
the cult statues of the Gods] in her handiwork, gives sweetness to their flesh, clothes
their bodies and gives health to their frames, (Dendara IV, 101, 12-13). The clothing of
the cult statues in the temples are called the great adornments of Tayet, ( Dendara
IV, 106, 3-4), and a text from the temple of Khnum at Esna states that the beautiful
clothes which are to beautify the body of Khnum have been woven by Tayet herself
(Esna V, 190, 7-8), an interesting affirmation inasmuch as Khnum is himself responsible
for fashioning the bodies of living beings.
A medical spell for warding off an haemorrhage (no. 31 in Borghouts) characterizes
the bleeding as the Niles inundation, which Anubis is charged to prevent from
treading on what is pure the land of Tayet, i.e. the bandage.
Tefnut
(Tefenet; transliterated in Greek as Thphnis) A complex Goddess, Tefnut is the
daughter of Atum, the twin sister and consort of Shu, and the mother of Geb and Nut.
She is usually depicted either as a lioness-headed woman or in fully leonine form, in the
latter case usually back-to-back with Shu in similarly leonine form; when depicted like
this Shu and Tefnut are known as Ruty, the Two Lions. Tefnut is created together with
Page 203 of 223

her brother through Atums act of masturbation at the beginning of the cosmos. The
name of Tefnut is thus sometimes linked to a verb tefen, meaning to spit or eject
something from the body, although it is sometimes also linked to a noun tefen, meaning
orphan, as in PT utterance 260, where the deceased king affirms, I the orphan
[tefen] have had judgment with the orphaness [tefenet, i.e. Tefnut]. This idea may be
linked to the notion that Tefnut created herself, and is therefore parentless, inasmuch
as it is said in PT utterance 301 that Atum and Ruty, that is, Atum, Shu and Tefnut,
yourselves created your godheads and your persons. Similarly, the cosmogonic account
in the Papyrus Bremner-Rhind (xxvii) states that the children of Geb and Nut, who are
Shu and Tefnuts grandchildren, are the first brought forth from the body, that is, in
contrast to the more mysterious manner in which the prior Gods came forth. This is in
accord with a statement earlier in the text in which Atum states Many were the
beings which came forth from my mouth before heaven came into being, before earth
came into being I put together some of them in Nun as inert ones, before I could find
a place in which I might stand, (xxvi). This existence of Shu and Tefnut together with
Atum in a state of latency or inertness, manifests in a certain fusion of persons in the
triangular relationship among these Gods. Hence PT utterance 685 says of the reborn
king that his feet are kissed by the pure waters which exist through Atum, which the
phallus of Shu makes and which the vagina of Tefnut creates, identifying the original
creative emission from Atum, in which Shu and Tefnut were present, with the sexual
union of Shu and Tefnut. In the fully differentiated relationship, Shu seems to embody
the more heavenly or transcendent aspect and Tefnut the more earthly or immanent
aspect of Atums emission or utterance.
This triangular relationship is further developed in the sequel to the Atum cosmogony,
the saga of the Eye. This myth, which is only imperfectly understood, concerns the
relationship between Atumwho, however, yields his place to Re in the most developed
formulations of the myth (a substitution which is explained in CT spell 76: The phoenix
of Re was that whereby Atum came into being in chaos, in the Abyss, in darkness and in
gloom)and his Eye, irt, which projects itself into the world, a play on words since
ir.t means doing or agency. The myth, which takes on many varied forms expressing
different but analogous sets of ideas, concerns in its simplest terms the return of the
Eye to Atum or Re. This Eye is the effective will of solar deities such as Re in the
world, its return therefore expressing the circling back to its source of this energy.
The symbolism of the return of the Eye has different qualities on the different levels
of the cosmos upon which the symbol operates. Sometimes it has the sense of the Gods
coming to consciousness through the experience of separation and reunion. Hence in the
Bremner-Rhind Papyrus (xxvii), Atum states that his Eye followed after Shu and
Tefnut, who, after having been ejected from his body, were brought up by and
rejoiced in Nun, the precosmic abyss, and were hence distant from him. In returning
to him, Atum says that Shu and Tefnut brought to me my Eye with them. This leads
to a new stage in the creation, for Atum states that After I had joined together my
Page 204 of 223

membersShu and Tefnut being like parts of his bodyI wept over them. That is
how humans came into being from the tears which came forth from my Eye, a play on
the words remi, tears, and romi, humans. From another perspective, Shu states in CT
spell 76 that Atum once sent his Sole Eye [lit. 'his Sole One'] seeking me and my
sister Tefnut. I made light of the darkness for it and it found me as an immortal. The
Eye which seeks out Shu and Tefnut is sometimes identified with Hathor, as in CT
spell 331.
This cosmogonic myth is in turn relatedalthough it is not clear exactly howto a
radically different myth also involving Tefnut, which is generally known as the myth of
the Distant Goddess. In this myth, Tefnut, the Distant Goddess, is induced by Shu to
return with him to Egypt from a vaguely-determined foreign land called Bougem or
Keneset, regarded as lying to the south and east of Egypt (e.g., Somalia), but
essentially a mythical place. The return of the fiery and wrathful Distant Goddess
involves her appeasement or purification, which occurs paradigmatically at Abaton on
the island of Bigh, the site of the tomb of Osiris. Although only imperfectly
understood, it is clear that the myth of the Distant Goddess unites cosmogonic and
Osirian themes. The myth of the Distant Goddess is told with an ever-shifting cast of
deities, and Shu and Tefnut may not have been the original hero and heroine (who were,
perhaps, Onuris and Mehyt). It is alluded to in many temple inscriptions but not
preserved in any early narrative form. Attempts have been made to reconstruct it with
the help of a demotic narrative (part of which also survives in Greek translation) which
seems to tell a folk tale version of it. In this text (translated in de Cenival 1988),
Thoth, in the form of a monkey, convinces Tefnut, at first in the form of a Kushite
cat, later taking the forms of a lioness, a vulture and a gazelle before returning to
her beautiful form of Tefnut, (22, 2) to return with him by a series of arguments,
fables, and hymns. Thoths role in this demotic narrative echoes his classical function
of pacifying wrathful Goddesses.
Attempts to reconstruct the myth of the Distant Goddess have sometimes been overly
ambitious in their synthesis (see the critique in Inconnu-Bocquillon 2001). The arrival of
the Distant Goddess is seemingly conceived in two ways: first, as Res daughter (the
Distant Goddess is identified, not as the daughter of Atum, but of Re) coming to his
defense against his enemies and the enemies of the cosmic order he represents; and
second as the theogamy (or divine marriage) of Shu and Tefnut, this being understood,
not as that which produced Geb and Nut at the beginning of the world, but rather as a
reunion of Shu and Tefnut and an indwelling of each in the other which also, in its most
theologically complex form, entails the reunion of Geb and Nut with Shu and Tefnut
(see especially the texts from Kom Ombo edited and translated by Gutbub). This
reunion thus confirms the creation, so to speak, closing a cosmic circle in which the
conflict characterizing the later generations of the Gods gives way to reconciliation
and the spiritualization of the cosmos: Shu, the son of Re, rejoices with his son Geb as
Page 205 of 223

Tefnut with her daughter Nut, they are in joy here [Kom Ombo] eternally, having put an
end to rebellion, having expelled calamity, (Gutbub 2f). An ancient commentary on BD
spell 17 identifies the soul of Re and the soul of Osiris, who come together in the
resurrection, as indwelling in Shu and Tefnut. Tefnut embodies, in relation to Shu, the
whole latter development of the cosmos, for it is she who bore the Ennead, (a generic
term for the pantheon) (CT spell 78). Hence Tefnut is closely associated with Maet
(e.g., in CT spell 80) as the principle of order and harmony in the cosmos which has as
its prerequisite, however, the development of complexity, for there cannot be order
without complexity. Tefnut bridges the gap between the primeval stages of the cosmos
and its evolved, complex state.
Certain texts, such as PT utterance 562, where it is said that The earth is raised on
high under the sky by your arms, O Tefnut, and you have taken the hands of Re, have
been interpreted as indicating that Tefnut is to be understood as a lower sky, an
atmosphere or ocean beneath the earth which supports it, but it may be that Tefnut is
here rather that force which spiritualizes the earth, raising it up to sky in her reunion
with Shu. There is slightly more explicit support in Egyptian texts for Shu and Tefnut
being considered as solar and lunar principles. In CT spell 607, the two eyes of Horus,
which issued from Atum, are Shu and Tefnut, the Horus referred to here being
Horus-the-Elder or Haroeris, the aspect of Horus which is the sky itself, his two eyes
the sun and moon, which are here Shu and Tefnut. As for which is solar and which lunar,
Tefnut is perhaps the more convincing candidate for lunar principle only inasmuch as
the myth of the Distant Goddess is at times applied to the lunar cycle and the Eye of
Re which returns to him is identified with the Eye of Horus (the wedjat) which is
wounded and healed or stolen and restored, a myth referring to the moon among other
things. Tefnuts principal associations, however, are strongly solar. BD spell 130 seems
to identify Tefnut in some fashion with the exhalation of Re: He inhales Shu, he
creates Tefnut. Tefnut here may be the suns radiance, kindled by the inhalation of
air. In BD spell 136B, for sailing in the great bark of Re to pass by the ring of fire,
Osiris says of the operator, identified with Horus, I have cut off harm from him, and
in its place I have brought to him Tefnut, that he may live on her. From the
surrounding context, it appears that Tefnut here embodies the fiery or radiant solar
power. BD spell 152 wishes that the deceased may drink the water of Tefnut, which is
perhaps the morning dew. In BD spell 169, it seems that Tefnut provides a sort of
ambrosia: Tefnut the daughter of Re feeds thee with what her father Re gave her. In

CT spell 660 the waters of Tefnut seem to be a symbol for the cosmos itself: Tefnut
is she who allots what is to be allotted by eternity; you shall adore her upon the waters
which are in her, you who follow after the Eye of Horus, and I [the operator] will adore
her waters.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Page 206 of 223

de Cenival, Franoise. 1988. Le Mythe de lOeil du Soleil. Sommerhausen: G. Zauzich

Verlag.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Inconnu-Bocquillon, Danielle. 2001. Le mythe de la Desse Lointaine Philae. Cairo:
Institut Franais darchologie orientale.
Thoth
(Tehuti, Djehuty) Thoth is the God of learning and of wisdom, depicted as an ibisheaded man, as an ibis, or, less often, as a baboon (in this form generally with a lunar
crescent on his head), and frequently holding the brush and palette of a scribe, since
the wisdom of which he is the master is in particular that which is contained in sacred
texts. Thoth has also strong lunar associations, to the extent of being often identified
with the moon itself (for instance, CT spell 156 states that what is small in the full
month [i.e., the new moon] and great in the half-month [the full moon], that is Thoth),
but more systematically Thoth is the God responsible for healing the wedjat, the Eye
of Horus, after it was injured by Seth, and since the wedjats regeneration is embodied
in the waxing lunar cycle, Thoth is the God who restores the light of the moon. The
symbolism of the Eye of Horus extends well beyond the moon, however, and Thoths
activities in relation to the Eye of Horus are virtually coextensive with his entire
sphere of activity; in CT spell 249, Thoth states I have come that I may seek out the
Eye of Horus, I have brought and examined it, and I have found it complete, fully
numbered and intact. Thoths identification with the moon probably also involves an
idea known to many cultures, namely that the moon, as the nocturnal sun, symbolizes
the powers of the human intelligence to supplement that which nature provides and as
an intermediary between the divine and mortal realms. Thoth is not only the
embodiment of wisdom, but also its advocate in the world: Content are all the Gods
with this great and mighty word which issued from the mouth of Thoth for Osiris, (PT
utterance 577). Thoth is also a peacemaker who reconciles Horus and Seth and who
pacifies the wrathful Goddesses, especially Sekhmet. In this latter role, expressed in
the epithet sehetep neseret, the one who pacifies/propitiates the divine flame, Thoth
mediates again between the mortal and the divine, for the fiery blast of wrathful
Goddesses, which is called neseret, forms a barrier of sorts between these realms.
Thoths cult center is Khemennu (known as Hermopolis by the Greeks); his consort is
Nehmetaway or Seshat, although the latter is sometimes regarded as his daughter.
Thoths association with Nehmetaway underscores that in addition to his role as lord of
knowledge and of magic, he is also lord of justice and of truth, whose abomination is
falsehood lord of laws, who makes writing speak who witnesses truth to the Gods,

Page 207 of 223

who so judges that maet [truth] is upheld, who vindicates the loser, savior of the needy
one and his possessions who rescues the needy from the powerful, ( BD spell 182).
In the conflict between Horus and Seth, Thoth, although clearly Horuss partisan in the
quest for the sovereignty, nevertheless was understood to heal both Gods of their
injuries, the eyes of Horus and the testicles of Seth. Thoth can be understood to
express an actual, if conflictual, bond between Horus and Seth. In the wake of a
homosexual encounter between Seth and Horus, which Seth subsequently tries to use
before the divine tribunal in order to disparage Horus, Thoth himself becomes the
recipient of the luminous disk which emerges from Seths head after Seth is tricked
into ingesting lettuce contaminated with the semen of Horus, this disk apparently
standing for the lunar disk which Thoth bears on his head. The allegorical value of such
a tale, in which wisdom is born from the conflict of other principles, was likely not lost
on Egyptians; we know that in the Late Period, at least, an extended allegory known as
The Blinding of Truth by Falsehood was in circulation which bears certain analogies
with the conflict myth, although it includes nothing like this episode. Another aspect of
Thoths role as mediator between Horus and Seth can be seen from the terminology
which is used for this act: Thoth separates [ wp] the combatants, a term which has
the sense both of separating physically but also of deciding or discerning. The same
terminology of separating is used in oracle consultations, where the God being
consulted is asked to separate [wp] two complementary petitions, that is, to choose
the correct claim and discard the other. A hymn to Thoth generalizes this function,
calling Thoth the legislator in heaven and on earth, he who sees to it that the Gods
remain within the limits of their competency, each guild fulfills its obligations and the
countries know their frontiers and the fields their appurtenances (Bleeker 1973, 137),
while in PT utterance 570 Thoth is he in whom is the peace of the Gods.
Thoth facilitates the exchange across the border between the human and divine realms
in his function as lord of sacred texts. In the Book of the Celestial Cow, when Re is
about to withdraw from his role as immanent sovereign of humanity to take his place on
the heavenly plane, he says to Thoth, I am here in heaven, in my place be a scribe
here, have power over those who are here thou shalt be in my place, my deputy,
(Piankoff, 32). Re empowers Thoth by a series of formulae linked to Thoths diverse
formsthe ibis, the moon, and the baboon. First, Re grants him the authority to send
forth the other Gods through spells and invocations and to check their actions in turn,
this power corresponding to the ibis. Next Re bids him to encompass the two heavens
with thy beauty and thy light, this corresponding to the moon. Finally, Re charges him
with traversing the lands of the Ha-nebu, the Northern Lords, a vague term for the
islands of the Aegean (cf. CT spell 785: O mighty of magic the Gods, the lords of all
things, circulate about you in your name of Him who goes round about the Isles, that
is, the islands of the Ha-nebu), perhaps implying a circuit around the Mediterranean
and thus through many foreign landsa hymn to Thoth states that he made different
Page 208 of 223

the tongue of one country from another, (Bleeker 1973, 140); this last power
corresponds to the baboon.
A large body of speculative literature in ancient Egypt was attributed to the authorship
of Thoth. In the hands of bilingual Egyptian priests, these texts were surely to some
degree the inspiration for the Greek literature known as the Hermetica, which date
from the first through the third centuries CE. To make more substantial claims about
doctrines common to the Egyptian speculative literature and the Hermetica, however, is
hazardous because only fragments of this genre of Egyptian literature survive. The
most significant surviving work of this kind, although it too is a tissue of fragments, is
a Demotic text which has been dubbed the Book of Thoth although its actual title does
not survive (see Jasnow and Zauzich 2005). Much of the text is hopelessly enigmatic,
but it takes the form of an initiatory dialogue between Thoth, called He who praises
knowledge, and a disciple, The one who loves knowledge or who wishes to learn.
Occasionally joining the dialogue is Osiris, named by an epithet which could variously be
translated as He who has judged upon his back (i.e., lying upon his bier), He who is upon
his mound, or He who wears the atef (the distinctive Osirian crown). Prominent roles
are also accorded to Seshat and to Imhotep, the latter as an initiator into the
mysteries of Thoth. The dialogue is wide-ranging, including discussions of the tools and
craft of the scribe, the nature of language and its origins, the art of interpreting
sacred texts, cosmogony, the netherworld, and animals, both sacred and mundane.
Symbols and concepts from the afterlife literature are deployed throughout the text,
although the Book of Thoth is clearly not itself funerary. Unfortunately, the state of
the text is such that it is far easier to say what subjects are discussed than just what
is said about them. One theme coming through strongly is the idea that wisdom is
continuous through the whole of nature; thus the text says at one point, Is a learned
one he who instructs? The sacred beasts and the birds, teaching comes about for them,
but what is the book chapter which they have read? The four-footed beasts which are
upon the mountains, do they not have guidance? (B01, 1/6-7).
Although he stands apart from the familial organization of the Children of Nut, due to
his extensive involvement on behalf of Osiris and Horus Thoth is sometimes regarded
as being among their number. Thus in BD spell 1, Thoth states, I am one of these Gods,
the children of Nut, who slay the enemies of Osiris and keep the rebels away from him.
I belong to thy people, Horus. I fought on thy behalf; I intercede in behalf of thy
name. In BD spell 175, however, in a dialogue with Atum, Thoth shows that he
transcends an exclusive identification with this divine family circle. In this spell, Atum
complains to Thoth, O Thoth, what is to be done with the Children of Nut? They have
made war, they have stirred up turmoil, they have committed wrongs, they have started
rebellions, they have made carnage, they have put under guard Give thou effective
help, O Thoth. Atum, as representing the most primordial order of Gods, laments the
disorder generated by all sides in the conflicts associated with the children of Nut,
Page 209 of 223

without preference. Thoth responds to Atum, Thou shalt not experience wrongs
Their years have been shortened, their months have been brought near, since they
have made a mockery of secrecy in all that thou hast done. The operator of the spell
proceeds to affirm, I am thy palette, O Thoth; I have brought thee thy water-bowl. I
am not among these who betray their secrets. In this fashion, the operator, with the
help of Thoth, identifies himself with a principle transcending the cosmic principles
themselves, which are conceived here as betraying the secrecy or latency of the
precosmic state. Elsewhere, Thoth is called the one with whose word Atum is content,
(Bleeker 1973, 119). Thoth is also distanced somewhat from the drama of the Children
of Nut in PT utterance 218, in which Seth and Thoth are called brothers who did not
mourn Osiris.
In PT utterance 534, in a series of formulae which are designed to repel ordinarily
beneficent deities in case they come with evil intentions for the deceased, the formula
to be used against Thoth is that he is motherless. To some extent this surely
foreshadows Thoths frequent designation in later texts as the heart [i.e., mind] of
Re (see Boylan 1922, 114f). In a text from Esna (Sauneron, Esna V, 226, text 206, 11;
III, p. 33; Sauneron in Ml. Mariette, p. 234-5) it is said that Thoth comes forth from
Res heart in a moment of grief. Sometimes Thoths origins are too primeval to speak
of his having parents; thus in BD spell 134, Thoth is referred to as son of the stone,
who came forth from the twin eggshells [lit., 'female stones']. A tradition of local
importance at Armant, however, identifies the Goddess Raettawy as Thoths mother. In
this capacity Raettawy bears the epithet Snk(t)-Nt, or Nurse of Neith, (el-Sayed
1969, 73ff). Thoth is sometimes called son of Neith and Neith divine mother of
Thoth, probably in a more symbolic than mythical sense. Some texts add that
Raettawy created Thoth for Horakhty, the solar form of Horus closely associated
with Re, or refer to her as Raettawy, the wet-nurse who nurses her heir, she is

Snk(t)-Nt beside Re. It is also stated that she brought Thoth forth in the sha, the
great pool at the beginning of the universe, and that she shines in the Nun [i.e., the
precosmic abyss] with Shu, all of which serves to convey that Thoths origins lie in the
earliest discernible moments of the cosmogenesis.
A mythic incident involving an injury to Thoths shoulder is alluded to in Ramesseum
Papyrus XI, which places it alongside the more well-known injuries to the eye of Horus
and to the testicles of Seth. An ambiguous passage from the Papyrus Jumilhac may
recount this incident (Vandier pp. 106-108 on 17, 3-6/570-573). The text is extremely
problematic, but according to one possible reconstruction, it tells of Seth attacking
Thoth and cutting off his arm after having stolen Thoths sacred books and thrown
them into the river. Thoth magically reattaches his arm, painting with his brush over
the spot where the arm fastens in order to fix it securely in place. The text says that
the qniw exist on account of this, the qni being a kind of ceremonial cape worn over
the shoulder by sem priests (p. 107 n. 3). CT spell 156, for knowing the souls of
Page 210 of 223

Khemennu, by way of comparison, refers to a plume which is fastened to the shoulder

of Osiris and grows, perhaps as a symbol for wings.
See also: The Book of the Celestial Cow: A Theological Interpretation, Eye of the
Heart: A Journal of Traditional Wisdom, No. 3, May 2009, pp. 73-99.
The Nature and Functions of Thoth in Egyptian Theology, Appendix A in The Scribing
Ibis: An Anthology of Pagan Fiction in Honor of Thoth , ed. Rebecca Buchanan et al.
(Bibliotheca Alexandrina, 2011).
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Bleeker, C. J. 1973. Hathor and Thoth. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Boylan, Patrick. 1922. Thoth, the Hermes of Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Jasnow, Richard and Karl-Theodor Zauzich. 2005. The Ancient Egyptian Book of Thoth.
Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
Piankoff, Alexandre. 1955. The Shrines of Tut-Ankh-Amon. New York: Bollingen.
Vandier, Jacques. 1961. Le Papyrus Jumilhac. Paris: Muse du Louvre.
el-Sayed, Ramadan. 1969. Thoth na-t-il Vraiment pas de Mre? Revue dgyptologie
21: 71-76.
Tjenenet
(Thenenet, Tjenenyet, Tenenet, Tanent) Tjenenet is depicted as a woman wearing
either the solar disk and uraeus, in the manner of Hathor, or the symbol of a cows
uterus, like Meskhenet. It has been argued (Derchain-Urtel 1979) that Tjenenet wears
this latter symbol in her role as the guarantor of the kings rebirth at his coronation,
marking his entry into the cosmic and eternal sphere of activity as Meskhenet presided
over his entry into the mundane realm. In CT spell 939, the operator states I am one
who is in front of Tjenenet, <I am> one greater than my father, implying the second
birth. The same formula recurs in CT spell 112, for not letting a mans heart sit down
against him, this phrase perhaps meaning to be struck by depression. The spell refers
to wailing at the sight of Sethi.e., at the murder of Osirisand warns that this
heart of mine sits down against me and it weeps for itself, before affirming that this
heart of mine has not forsaken me, I am he who is in front of Tjenenet. The
disposition in front of Tjenenet perhaps refers to being reborn in her presence. On
account of her name, Tjenenet is speculated to have been originally regarded as the
feminine counterpart of Tatenen, but her attested consort is typically Montu.
Tjenenets name also resembles that of a sanctuary glossed at BD spell 17 as the tomb
Page 211 of 223

of Osiris. The place where the sun sets is the gate of the tjenenet-sanctuary (BD
spell 1B), and in BD spell 100 the tjenenet-sanctuary is the place where the soul of the
deceased disembarks or embarks in the bark of Re, while the corpse remains on its
seat. In BD spell 17 those who reside in the tjenenet-sanctuary are said to be brought
suppers of faence, which the ancient commentator identifies with sky and earth.
Tjenenet is considered sometimes as the daughter of Atum and Mut.
Derchain-Urtel, Maria-Theresia. 1979. Synkretismus in gyptischer Ikonographie. Die
Gttin Tjenenet.
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Triphis (Repyt)
(Repit) The Hellenized name Triphis is generally thought to derive from fusing the
definite article ta- to an Egyptian word rpyt, meaning lady, noblewoman, or heiress.
Alan Gardiner, however, suggests deriving it instead from a different word rpyt
meaning an image or statue, a word which moreover always refers to a female (a male
image or statue being generally tut). Gardiner wonders if Ta-rpyt could in this context
be the Egyptian way of expressing what we might render as type, model, or ideal of
a woman, or means simply the female counterpart of a god, (109). Gardiner sees a
connection between this interpretation of her name and an epithet that seems to
belong to her, aperetiset, which some have taken as Aperet-Isis, and hence have
treated the deity identified in these contexts as simply a form of Isis, but which, if
the -iset is taken as the word meaning throne, seat or place, rather than as a name,
can be read as either equipper of the throne or, in line with Gardiners interpretation,
as supplying the place, i.e., of one absent or non-existent (110). Henri Gauthier
attempts to derive Triphis directly, by an unspecified morphological transposition,
from Aperetiset (175ff), however scholars have not followed him in this.
Gauthier (173f) calls attention to the use of the term rpyt in BD spell 162, where it
refers to the image or figure of the celestial cow used by the spells operator,
identifying Triphis in this way with a black cow of Min referred to in an inscription in
the Louvre (Stele C. 112). Rpyt also occurs in BD spells 99 and 168 (19th dyn.); in spell
99, the thongs of the netherworld ferryboat are identified with what Gardiner
translates as the hands of the female counterpart [rpyt] of Horus, while Allen reads
the hand(s) of the dame [rpyt] (and of) Horus <who made> her, while spell 168 (p. 171
in Allen) refers to Re under the head of the dame [rpyt].
Triphis is depicted as a lioness-headed woman wearing a crown with disk, horns and
plumes like that of Hathor. Her consort is Min and their child is Kolanthes. Triphis is
sometimes depicted standing behind Min, touching with her hand the flail which appears

Page 212 of 223

over his upraised hand, indicating their intimacy as well as her participation in Mins
power.
In a spell to treat a scorpions bite (no. 91 in Borghouts), a myth is recounted, typical of
this genre of spell, in which the infant Horus, while in the marshes of Khemmis where
his mother Isis has hidden him from Seth, is struck down by some venomous creature, a
scorpion or snake, and must be revived by the magic which the operator of the spell
calls upon, in turn, to heal the patient. In this particular version of the myth, a woman
appears who lives in a town near the marshes, of whom Isis says she is known in the
town, a lady of distinction [repyt] in her district. She came to me bearing lifeall their
hearts [i.e., the local inhabitants] were full of confidence in her capacity. The woman in
question is most likely Triphis. Not every reference to a figure simply called the Lady
can naturally be assigned to Triphis, but the spells setting at KhemmisAkhmim, the
cult center of Min and Triphisas well as the close association of Triphis and Isis in
cultic contexts, lends support to the notion that Triphis is here intended. She goes on
to make a brief speech about the safety of Horus in the region: The child is safe from
the evil intentions of his brother [meaning Seth], the bush is hidden and death will not
enter it. The magic of Atum, the father of the Gods who is in heaven is what made my
life. Seth will not enter this district, and then urges Isis to investigate the cause of
Horus malady. The lady of distinction appears no more in the spell. A lady of
distinction occurs also in an enigmatic spell (no. 134 in Borghouts, with some elements
recurring in no. 135) which invokes the protection of a miraculous dwarf who is the
great support that extends from heaven unto the Underworld, that is, a kind of Atlas
figure, and who is said resemble an elderly monkey. The end of the spell announces,
The shrine is open! The one who is in it has the face of a monkey. Woe, fire! The child
of a lady of distinction [repyt] is a baboon!
Triphis appears explicitly in PDM xiv. 528ff, a spell for a vessel inquiry (i.e. divination
by gazing into a bowl of water, oil, et al.) in which the operator states, I am Pre [the
late Egyptian form of the name of the God Re], the noble youth I am he who came
forth on the arm of Triphis in the east. Triphis is here the mother of the solar child,
Harsomtus (Horus-the-uniter). In an erotic spell (PDM xiv. 1026ff), the operator
states, I am this great one who makes magic against the great Triphis, perhaps thus
identifying himself thereby with Min, who makes magic against Triphis by his powers
of erotic attraction. PDM xiv. 585ff, a spell to treat the bite of a dog, is called the
fury of Amun and Triphis, Amun and Min being often identified with one another by
way of Amuns ithyphallic form, Kamutef. The vignette (illustration) for BD spell 162
shows, alongside the Heavenly Cow of the spell, a Goddess who looks like Triphis,
though she is not named in the spell.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Page 213 of 223

Betz, H. D. 1992. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. 2d ed. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [PGM, PDM]
Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Gardiner, Alan. 1945. The Supposed Athribis of Upper Egypt. The Journal of Egyptian

Archaeology 31: 108-111.

Gauthier, Henri. 1903. La desse Triphis. Bulletin de lInstitut Franais de
lArchologie Orientale 3: 165-181.
Tutu (Tithoes)
Tutu, or Tithoes, in the Hellenized form of the name, is sometimes depicted
anthropomorphically but generally as a type of sphinx, with a human head, the body of a
lion, a tail in the form of a snake, and often wings. His name possibly means the imaged
one, from tut, image, and iconographic variation and embellishment is typical for him.
As master of the demons (Kaper 1991, 64), Tutu is shown standing on, accompanied by
or even wearing diverse demons or genii in the form of supplementary crocodile, lion,
ram, ibis and/or hawk heads emerging from his chest, neck and/or back; an array of
seven such supplementary animal heads is standard. The paws of the sphinx may also be
embellished with tiny serpents or scorpions as claws, or may wield knives and/or axes.
Sometimes Tutu is escorted by two large cobras. He is frequently depicted facing the
viewer, like a small number of other Gods (notably Bes, Bat and Hathor), which may
indicate his accessibility. Tutu is considered the son of Neith, but is also associated
with Sekhmet, as the leader of her army of genii, chief of the emissaries of
Sekhmet, (Sauneron 1960, 271f). Tutu was invoked in the defense of Re against
Apophis, and generally in any situation in which mastery over demonic forces would be
useful (e.g., healing, fertility, physical or psychic protection). Tutu is also master of the
agencies of retribution, a concept sometimes personified in late Egyptian thought as
Petbe. At the temple of Shenhur near Coptos, Tutu apparently delivered voice oracles.
Tutus consort is Tapshay.
There is a myth concerning Isis of Koptos in which Isis cuts a lock of her hair in
mourning for Osiris. Some scholars have argued, in a rather exotic hypothesis, that
Tutu/Tithos personifies that lock of hair, comparing his name to Coptic jijii, lock of
hair (Yoyotte, BIFAO 55 (1955), pp. 135-8).
A particularly interesting aspect of Tutu is his adoption of many traits of ancient
pharaonic royal imagery, even sometimes being designated straightforwardly as King of
Upper and Lower Egypt. In earlier times, a sphinx looking very much like Tutu had
symbolized the royal ka, that is, the spirit of the reigning king (see Barguet 1951).
When temples were remodeled during the imperial period, the reigning Roman emperor
was depicted performing the standard ritual functions of a pharaoh, but the position of
pharaoh was in any genuine sense vacated. Tutus popularity dates to this time after
Egypt no longer had pharaohs in anything but a purely formal sense. That Tutu stepped
Page 214 of 223

into some of the functions of the pharaoh offers insight into how the Egyptian people
accorded a spiritual role in their lives to the pharaoh.
Barguet, Paul. 1951. Au Sujet dune Reprsentation du Ka Royal. Annales du Service
des Antiquits de lgypte 51: 205-215.
Kaper, Olaf. 1991. The God Tutu (Tithoes) and His Temple in the Dakhleh Oasis.
Bulletin of the Australian Centre for Egyptology 2:59-67.
Sauneron, Serge. 1960. Le nouveau sphinx composite du Brooklyn Museum et le rle du
dieu Toutou-Tithos. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 19:269-287.
Wadjet
(Uadjet, Wedjoyet, Edjo, Uto) The deity emblematic of Lower (Northern) Egypt as
Nekhbet is emblematic of Upper (Southern) Egypt, Wadjet is paradigmatically depicted
as a cobra, erect, with hood flared, ready to strike. This cobra, known as the uraeus,
the Latinized form of the Greek ouraios, from Egyptian iaret, the Risen One, is the
symbol of royal power, vested in the sun on the cosmic plane and in the Egyptian
sovereign in the mundane world; hence uraei encircle the solar disk atop the heads of
deities channeling the solar potency and adorn the pharaohs headdress. Uraei are
frequently shown in multiples, but two uraeiespecially coiled atop wickerwork baskets
which are the sign for neb, lord or totalitysymbolize sovereignty over the Two
Lands, Egyptian sovereignty always being conceived as dual. Since Upper and Lower
Egypt are both represented by uraei, Wadjet sometimes incorporates aspects of
Nekhbet, appearing as a cobra with vultures wings, or in anthropomorphic form as a
woman wearing a vulture headdress from which projects the head of a cobra.
Sometimes Wadjet is depicted as an enthroned, lioness-headed woman; for reasons
which remain obscure, a number of hollow statues of this type have been found to
contain a mummified ichneumon (mongoose). Wadjets name comes from the word wadj,
which means papyrus, the characteristic vegetation of the marshes of Lower Egypt; but

wadj also means green, which had a broad range of connotations in Egyptian, especially
fortunate, flourishing or healthy. Hence the healthy Eye of Horus, having been
healed from the injury it sustained from Seth, is called the wedjat, also from wadj.
Wadjet is often characterized as wp tawy, the one who delimits the [Two] Lands,
from the verb wpi meaning to separate, judge, or delimit. The uraeus blasts the
enemies of the cosmic order with a mystical flame called nesery, and Wadjet is hence
sometimes called Neseret, the Fiery One or Fiery Serpent.
The uraeus is considered the personified Eye of Re, based upon a pun on the word irt,
which means both eye and doing or one who does. The Eye of Re enacts his will in the
world, hence it is his agent or doer. In the Papyrus Bremner-Rhind, the depiction of
the Eye as a cobra at the forehead is explained as follows. Atum sends his Eye forth
to bring back to him his children Shu and Tefnut, with whom he has lost contact in the
precosmic abyss, the Nun. The Eye returns, angry because Atum has made another in
Page 215 of 223

its place; to appease it, Atum explains, I advanced its place on my head (xvii), that is,
he placed it upon his forehead as a third eye. The appearance of this third eye on the
Gods forehead thus manifests the reunion of Atum with Shu and Tefnut, a reunion
which is also marked, in the Bremner-Rhind account, by the creation of humans ( romi)
from the joyful tears (remi) shed by Atum. The symbol of sovereignty, the uraeus, thus
emerges simultaneously with the human race, the concepts of sovereignty and
legitimacy being part of the essence of humanity in the Egyptian worldview.
Wadjet is often thought of as particularly embodied in the crown of Lower Egypt, the
Red Crown or Net. PT utterance 220/221 is an address, first by a priest, then by the
king, to the Lower Egyptian crown, which is called both Neseret and Weret-Hekau,
Great of Magic, another common epithet of Wadjet and Goddesses performing her
function. The king prays of the crown to Grant that the dread of me be like the dread
of you; grant that the acclaim of me be like the acclaim of you; grant that the love of
me be like the love of you. The power embodied in the crown, the power of the uraeus
and of Wadjet, is thus a power of charisma as much as it is the capacity for violent
mastery. It should be noted in this connection that the Egyptian cobra was not known
for inflicting many human fatalities, unlike the asp, and so the attitude of reverence
and awe for the uraeus is not primarily driven by fear, but by its large size (up to nine
feet) and vivid markings. The Egyptian cobra does protect itself by spitting venom to a
distance of six to eight feet, however (Johnson 1990, 12ff), probably the source of the
image of the uraeus spitting fire. The Red Crown and Wadjet are linked again in PT
utterance 273/4, in which it is said of the deceased king that He has eaten the Red,
swallowed the Green, referring to the Red Crown and to Wadjet. The Red Crown
features a projecting coil which perhaps represents the coiled cobra; later in PT
utterance 273/4, it is said that the king abhors licking the coils of the Red, but
delights to have their magic in his belly.
An adoration of Re in BD spell 15A2 says of Re, Thou risest, thou growest remote in
the sky, while the twin Wadjets abide on thy head, while a hymn to Osiris in BD spell
185K says, Hail to thee lord of gladness on whose brow have been fixed the twin
Wadjets. The twin Wadjets are the double crown, representing sovereignty over the
idealized Egypt, the universal kingdom. PT utterance 662 addresses the papyrus,
alluding to the other meanings of wadj: O papyrus plant which issued from Wadjet, you
have gone forth in the King, and the King has gone forth in you, the King is powerful
through your strength. In PT utterance 273, it is said of the deceased king that The
Kings powers are about him his uraei are on the crown of his head, the Kings guiding
serpent is on his brow, she who perceives the soul, she whose fire is effective. The
notion that Wadjet allows the soul to become visible seems to be echoed in a spell for
chasing away a terror which comes to fall upon a man in the night, with the face turned
backwards (no. 6 in Borghouts), that is, a persecutory figure in a nightmare whose
identity is concealed. Wadjet is invoked here to use her flames to illuminate the true
Page 216 of 223

identity of the apparition: The earth is afire, the sky is afire, men and Gods are afire
while you [the apparition] have said that you will hide yourself from it once it has
come Beware of the flame that has burst forth from the horizon!
Wadjets role in the afterlife literature is somewhat modest; one interesting
occurence, however, is in CT spell 773, in which the deceased prays, O Wadjet who
makes my neck firm, I am a loving son. This reference to fastening the head onto the
neck seems to allude to an occasional association between uraei and vertebrae which
can also be seen in PT utterance 318, in which it is said of the deceased king that The
King is a serpent who swallowed his seven uraei and his seven neck-vertebrae came
into being, who gives orders to the seven Enneads [assemblages of Gods] which hear
the word of the monarch who gives orders to the seven Bows, (hostile foreign
nations represented by their archers). Similarly, in CT spell 612, To become [invoke]
Hathor, the operator affirms, I have swallowed the seven uraei, because I am Hathor
the serpent who laughs with Wadjet. In BD spell 172, a spell for divinizing the parts
of the body, the vertebrae of the deceased are those of the twin Wadjets. The
protective function of Wadjet is invoked in BD spell 17, where the operator states, I
am a follower of Wadjet, lady of the sky and the devouring flames; but they [the
flames] let few of them ascend to me, to which an ancient commentary adds, Wadjet,
lady of the devouring flames, is the Eye of Re. They let few of them ascend to me
means when Seths cronies were approaching her, since it was a searing approach.
Wadjet sometimes appears in spells alongside Sekhmet where the two are pacified to
prevent attack by infectious agents or other demonic miasma; hence in the Book of the

Last Day of the Year (no. 13 in Borghouts), the operator states, Wadjet is pacified!
The attack of those who are among the wandering demons will pass over. In a spell for
purifying anything during the plague (no. 20 in Borghouts), which is used to empower an
instrument that can be brushed over food or drink or in ones living space to ward off
the passing of murderers, i.e., infectious agents, the operator states, I am your
Horus, Sekhmet. I am your unique one [or, 'your lion'], Wadjet! I will not die on account
of youI am the rejoiced one. The operator identifies with Horus here because
Wadjet is among the Goddesses who feature as wet-nurses of the infant Horus during
his occultation in the marshes of Khemmis.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Johnson, Sally B. 1990. The Cobra Goddess of Ancient Egypt. London: Kegan Paul.
Page 217 of 223

Wadj-wer
Wadj-wers name means the Great Green, which refers to some large body of open
water, either the Mediterranean Sea or the network of lakes at the northern limits of
the Delta. He is depicted in a fashion very similar to Hapy, as a scantily-clad pot-bellied
man with enlarged breasts and long hair. He can be distinguished from Hapy, however,
in that his body is covered with lines representing waves. Just as Hapy embodies the
fertility made possible by the Niles annual inundation, Wadj-wer embodies the
productivity of the Great Green, especially fishing. In PT utterance 366, the king is
compared to Wadj-wer: You are hale and great in your name of Sea; behold, you are
great and round [i.e. encircling] in your name of Ocean. Most references to Wadj-wer,
however, denote a place rather than a divinity, albeit sometimes it is a mythic locale: in
the Conflict of Horus and Seth, the three-month combat between Horus and Seth in
the form of hippopotami is said to take place in the wadj-wer. The only myth we know in
which Wadj-wer features, and which is known in very fragmentary fashion, told of how
Seth subdued the sea on behalf of the other Gods. The myth is possibly to be regarded
as originally involving the Canaanite Gods Baal and Yamm. Indeed, in one of the
attestations of the myth (spell no. 23 in Borghouts), reference is made indifferently
first to Seth, then to Baal. In a spell against the Asiatic disease, it is said that the
disease is to be conjured by Seth just as Seth conjured Wadj-wer (no. 56 in
Borghouts).
Wedjarenes
(Udjarenes) Wedjarenes, whose name means Her Name Lives, was the daughter of
two members of the clergy of Hathor at Hut-Sekhem (Hiw, Diospolis Parva) in Upper
Egypt. For reasons unknown, Udjarenes was deified at her death and integrated into
the local pantheon. Wedjarenes is depicted in a fashion similar to Hathor,
anthropomorphic and wearing the solar disk, and bears the title Gods Wife of
Neferhotep.
Collombert, Philippe. 1995. Hout-Sekhem et le Septieme Nome de Haute-Egypte I: La
Divine Oudjarenes. Revue dEgyptologie 46: 55-79.
Wekh
(Oukh, Uch) Wekh was a prominent deity at Qis, or Cusae, the capital of the 14th nome,
or district, of Upper Egypt (modern Meir or el-Qusiya). Little is known of Wekh, who is
generally depicted in inanimate form as a scepter, staff or pillar composed of a papyrus
stem crowned with two feathers. Sometimes the wekh-scepter is embellished with the

menit necklace associated with Hathor or the scourge or flail associated with Min and
other apotropaic deities. On one occasion, Wekh is depicted as a lion holding knives in
both front paws (Chassinat 1905, 104). The wekh-scepter may have symbolized the
support of the sky; it was at any rate closely associated with the Hathor cult at Cusae.
Page 218 of 223

In the tomb chapel of Wekh-hotep, a fight between two bulls is depicted at Cusae,
which is observed by local dignitaries. Behind either bull stands a herdsman armed with
a stick, while off to the side stands a cow. One herdsman calls out: Separate the bulls,
separate them! Up, take away the bull, separate them! The other herdsmen, in reply,
says to his bull: Let go, let go today! The Wekh is mighty, let go! (Blackman 1915, 25).
The bulls are probably fighting for the honor of being consort to a sacred cow of
Hathor; the relationship of the wekhor of the God Wekhto the proceedings is
unknown, and it is possible that rather than an autonomous deity, Wekh simply
embodies one of Hathors divine potencies.
Blackman, Aylward M. 1915. The Rock Tombs of Meir. Vol. II. London: Egypt Exploration
Fund.
Chassinat, mile. 1905. Sur une Reprsentation du dieu Oukh. Bulletin de lInstitut

Franais dArchologie Orientale 4: 103-104.

Weneg
In PT utterance 363, the king appeals to Re to come and ferry me over to yonder side
even as you ferried over your attendant Weneg whom you love, while in utterance 476,
he appeals to the Keeper of the Way, Warden of the Great Portal to bear witness
concerning me to these two great and mighty Gods [Re and Horus] because I am Weneg,
son of Re, who supports the sky, who guides the earth and judges the Gods. Despite
this early prominence, however, no later attestations of Weneg are known.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Wennut
(Unut, Wenet) Wennut, the Goddess of the 15th nome, or district, of Upper Egypt, in
which the city of Hermopolis was located, is depicted as a hare, or as a woman with the
head of a hare or with the sign of a hare over her head. Wennuts name has been
interpreted as meaning the swift one, from wni, to hasten, but it also may be related
to wnn, to be, exist, as well as to wnwt, hour or division of time generally. The element

wnn meaning to exist is also part of the almost constant epithet of Osiris, wnn-nfr or
Onnophris, He who exists/persists in well-being. The little that is known about the
nature of Wennut, therefore, should perhaps be read in the light of Egyptian ideas
concerning being and non-being, wnn and tm wnn or nn wnn, on which see especially
Hornung, 1982, pp. 172-185.
The antiquity of Wennuts cult is suggested by BD spell 137A, which claims to have
been discovered by the kings son Hardedef, that is, the son of the Fourth Dynasty
king Khufu (Cheops), in a chest of secrets in the Gods own writing in the house of
Wennut, the lady of Hermopolis, when sailing upstream making inspections in the
Page 219 of 223

temples, in the fields, and in the mounds of the Gods. In CT spell 47 the operator,
acting on behalf of the deceased, juxtaposes Wennut with Thoth: May Thoth ennoble
you [the deceased] with his [var., 'your'] beauty, may Wennut make firm your head for
you. In CT spell 495 the deceased states, I extend my arm in company with Shu, I am
released in company with Wennut. In spell 720, To become a dawn-God and to live by
means of magicians, the deceased affirms I will act as one who is sent to the Gods,
and my voice is that of Wennut. The voice of Wennut is, we might say, the voice of
being as opposed to the voice of nonbeing; in a similar vein, one of the denials from the
so-called negative confession of BD spell 125 is I do not know the nonexistent. In CT
spell 316, for Becoming the fiery eye of Horus, the operator states I am the wnwn.t
of the Lady of Unu [Wennut], punning on Wennuts name with a word, wnwn, that means
to move about, either in the sense of travelling or in the stationary sense, as a child
moves about in the womb (as in PT utterance 430). A spell to ease childbirth (no. 61 in
Borghouts) invokes, among others, Wennut, lady of Wenu. In the fragmentary CT spell
942, an unknown deity is identified with Wennut by the phrase she has nothing which
has been done against her, in this her name of Wennut; perhaps because what is not
being, is not, and hence is nothing?
Wenty
(Penwenti) Wenty is a name sometimes given to Apophis but also a distinct God
depicted as a crocodile. In a depiction of the suns journey through the netherworld in
the tomb of Ramesses IX the solar disk, surmounted by a rams head, is seen inside the
body of this crocodile, and it is said there that The disk of the great God opens the
netherworld of Wenty. The God [Re] emerges from his mysteries. Wenty vomits; he
ejaculates the eye of Re which is in his [Wenty's] belly. Its [the eye's] pupil enters
into its apparitions, (Borghouts 1973, 121). BD 136 states that The hearts of Geb and
Nut are glad in repeating the name of the new and youthful one, Unnofer [Osiris]. Re is
his magic power; Wenty is what he is called. Here, Re and Wenty seem to come
together in Osiris. The name of Wenty occurs ambiguously in PT utterance 376, which
breaks off after the exclamation O knife of the castrator, O shining one, shining one,
Wenty, Wenty! O sailor who uses his garments for the Day-bark! The Day-bark is the

mandjet, the boat in which Re travels through the day. The invocation is echoed in CT
spell 885, which says at one point, O Wenty, O sailor, the garments are put in the Daybark. How honored is he who has done this! The deceased states in CT spell 941 I am
swift as Wenty, who is set in the mouth of followed, unfortunately, by a lacuna. A
scene from the Book of Aker has at its center a mummiform corpse with a solar disk
inside it. In front of the mummy, a pair of arms rises from the earth; between the
arms is a rising serpent, while on the palms of the hands stand a tiny God and Goddess
praising the mummy. Immediately behind the mummy, a second pair of arms called the
arms of the darkness lift up the crocodile Wenty (Penwenti here), as well as a jackalheaded and a ram-headed scepter (Hornung 1999, 103, 105).
Page 220 of 223

Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Borghouts, J. F. 1978. Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University
Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Hornung, Erik. 1999. The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife . Trans. David Lorton.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Wepwawet
(Wep-waut, Wepuat) Wepwawets name means Opener of the Way, and he is depicted
as a jackal or as a jackal-headed man. Although difficult to differentiate
iconographically from Anubis in many cases, there are several ways. When color is
present, Wepwawet is usually grey and Anubis always black; Wepwawet carries
sometimes a mace and bow, in accord with the idea that Wepwawet opens the way
before the king in battle (or, as has been suggested, incarnate in the kings hunting
dog); and Wepwawet is frequently depicted atop a standard with the uraeus cobra of
Wadjet in front of him, as well as an item of uncertain identification but which may
represent a ceremonially preserved placenta, in token of the idea of Wepwawet as
opening the way of the womb as first-born.
That the ancients regarded Anubis and Wepwawet as being represented by distinct
canines is indicated by the Greek names for their respective cities, that of Anubis
being Cynopolis, dog city, while that of Wepwawet was Lycopolis, wolf city. However, a
stela (BM 1632) discussed in DuQuesne 2003 shows Wepwawet in conjunction with four
canines who seem to be domesticated dogs or wild dogs of the domesticated variety, as
well as a ram-headed anthropomorphic deity perhaps identified as Amun the hound
(Meyrat 2008 reads lion instead). Meyrat reads an epithet given to Wepwawet on this
stela, shed-hrw, as disrupter, literally loud of voice. This is typically a negative trait
in Egyptian literature, associated with Seth. Meyrats point is that the stela, which
depicts Wepwawet harpooning a crocodile, shows Wepwawet having picked up some of
the positive aspects of Seth associated with his defense of the solar boat against the
serpent of entropy, Apophis. The suggested reading of the epithet could also suggest
the apotropaic power of loud barking.
The iron instrument used in the Opening of the Mouth ritual is called in PT utterance
21 the adze of Wepwawet, indicating that Wepwawet may have preceded Anubis in
this role. In PT utterance 210 the Wepwawet-jackal which emerged from the
tamarisk-bush is a symbol for the resurrected king, while the rising sun is hailed as
Wepwawet in PT utterance 301, since it too opens the way, and Wepwawet opens the
way to the sky for the king in utterance 302. In utterances 424, 539, and 734 the
Page 221 of 223

kings face is said to be that of Wepwawet, similar to numerous passages in the

afterlife literature in which the deceased is said to bear the face of Anubis, but
perhaps with a special significance conveyed by the opener of the ways. In utterance
482, it is said of the deceased king that you shall become Wepwawet, an
identificatory tendency also seen with Anubis; in utterance 535 it is said of the king
that your eyes have been given to you as your two uraei because you are Wepwawet
who is on his standard and Anubis who presides over the Gods Booth [i.e. the embalming
tent]. Uraei are fire-spitting cobras and hence light the way in the darkness, a
function obviously related to that of Wepwawet insofar as a uraeus accompanies him on
his standard. This association is underscored by the reference in utterance 569 to the
birth of Wepwawet in the per-nu, the per-nu being the name of the shrine of Wadjet
(the uraeus Goddess). In PT utterance 670 Osiris/the deceased is said to have come
forth from the Lake of Life, having been cleansed in the Lake of Cool Water and having
become Wepwawet. The link between emerging from water and becoming Wepwawet
perhaps has some connection to the waters of birth; in utterance 679, it is said of the
deceased You have your water, you have your efflux, you have your flood which issued
from Osiris may you divide them as Wepwawet. Here it seems that the resurrection
is envisioned by means of a transposition in which the exit of fluids from the body in
embalming is identified with the exit of fluids accompanying birth.
DuQuesne, Terence. 2003. Exalting the God: Processions of Upwawet at Asyut in the
New Kingdom. Discussions in Egyptology 57: 21-46.
Meyrat, Pierre. 2008. Oupouaout-R, lagitateur dAssiout. Gttinger Miszellen 218:
71-6.
Yah
(Iah, Ioh) Yah is the total divinity of the moon, as opposed to other GodsThoth,
Khonsuwho represent certain aspects of it; Yah is the deity in the Egyptian pantheon
whose name means Moon. The corollary to this, however, is that references to Yah are
generally more astronomical than theological. One formula, though, which travels
through the afterlife literature in diverse forms, seems to be addressed to Yah and
Yah alone: in CT spell 93, for going out into the day, this formula appears as O you
Sole One who shines as the moon, I go forth among the masses to the gates of the
Bark with those who are in the sunshine, while CT spell 152, going forth into the day
and living after death, has it as O you Sole One who rises in the moon, O you Sole One
who shines in the moon, I will go up to the sky among a multitude of others when those
who are in the sunshine are released, while I have gone forth into this day that I may
carry off that foe of mine. BD spell 2s version reads, O Sole One who rises as the
moon, O Sole One who shines as the moon, may N. go out with this thy multitude.
Deliverer of them that are in the sunlight, open the netherworld, adding Lo, N. is gone
forth by day to do whatever he may wish among the living, while BD 65, for going
Page 222 of 223

forth by day and overcoming ones enemies, prays of the moon mayest thou go out
with this thy multitude. Mayest thou deliver him that is with the blessed. Open the
netherworld, and adds, Lo, I am ascended on this day, esteemed; my blessed ones [i.e.,
deceased relatives] give me life. Brought to me are my enemies, completely subdued, in
the Council. This formula seems to suggest beliefs about the moon which are known
from certain other cultures, namely that the moon waxes each month with the souls of
the dead ascending into the sky, souls that when the moon wanes are released back to
the earth.
Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day . Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. [BD]
Bernot, Denise et al., eds. 1962. La Lune: Mythes et Rites. Paris: ditions du Seuil.
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris &
Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Yamm
(Yam) A Semitic God, Yamm was adopted into the Egyptian pantheon as a malevolent
God of the sea (that is, the Mediterranean), perhaps to distinguish these aspects of
the sea from its fertility, which is particularly embodied by the native Egyptian sea
God Wadj-wer, the Great Green. Egyptians seem to have adapted a Canaanite myth in
which Yamm is subdued by Baal; in the Egyptian version it is Seth who subdues Yamm
by the power of his voice, implying thunder. Astarte, another Levantine deity adopted
into the Egyptian pantheon, also figures in the myth, which is however only known from
a very fragmentary papyrus and from scattered allusions elsewhere. The myth
apparently tells of a time when Yamm possessed sovereignty over the cosmos and
exacted tribute even from the other Gods, upon threat of flooding the world. Yamm
desires to make Astarte his wife, or perhaps actually does so, but the Gods appeal to
Seth as their champion results in Yamms submission, and perhaps sets the stage for
Seth to wed Astarte himself (trans. in Simpson 2003). It is possible that this myth has
not been adopted altogether from Canaanite sources, but rather that a native Egyptian
myth was remodeled to incorporate elements of a foreign myth with similar themes.
Simpson, W. K., ed. 2003. The Literature of Ancient Egypt. 3d ed. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
http://henadology.wordpress.com/theology/netjeru/

Page 223 of 223