Property of Sekhmet

Spell 331 of the Coffin Texts is awesome. (I found my way to it via a discussion in The Coffin of Heqata.) The deceased identifies him or herself with Hathor, and gives us one of those glorious bursts of self-praise: she is "the Primeval, the Lady of All", from whom all the others gods flee (Cf the Exaltation of Inanna: "O my lady, the Anunna, the great gods, fluttering like bats fly off from before you to the clefts"). She calls herself "that Eye of Horus, the female messenger of the Sole Lord", and identifies herself with the Eye of Atum or Re, who set out to find and return Shu and Tefnut to their father. She also identifies herself with the goddesses Shesmetet and Wadjet.

Looks as though Willems translates CT 331 differently to Faulkner - for example, compare respectively "She claims to have the heart of a lion - a reference to the Destruction de Hommes? - and to have the lips of an executioner" and "my heart is the lion-god, my lips are the [sytyw]" ("the meaning of this last word is not known"). (Faulkner notes that one version has "my heart is the lion-god(s)" - Shu and Tefnut?)

Hathor remarks, "I have given my tears", which Willem interprets as a reference to the myth spelled out in Papyrus Bremner-Rhind XXVII,1-3, in which the Eye returns with Shu and Tefnut, "only to discover that Atum had made a new Eye... Distressed by this discovery, the eye wept (rmi), and humanity (rmt) originated in its tears." So Hathor is claiming to have created the human race.

(This self-praise continues in CT 332, but without explicit reference to the Eyes. There's a lot of Hathoric sky and light imagery, and an intriguing reference: "I am the third one, mistress of brightness, who guides the great ones who are languid on the paths of the wakeful." Willems suggests this Third One is Sothis.)

As Willems points out, here Hathor is the sun-god's protector and supporter, as befits his Eye. Discussing the prominent role of eyes in Egyptian myth, he remarks, 'First and foremost, there is the myth about the Eye of Horus, which was torn out by Seth but restored later by Thoth... Via the connection with Thoth, but also as the Left Eye of Horus, it was identified with the moon... but because Horus was sometimes interpreted as a solar deity, the 'Eye of Horus' could equally well be the sun." Then there's the myth of the Distant Goddess, in which the sun-god's eye departs for Nubia, and is brought back by another deity. Different versions of the myth involve different sun-gods, different Eyes of Re such as Hathor, Tefnut, and Wepset, and, as the god who brings her home, Onuris ("who brings back the distant one"), Shu, Thoth, or "forms of Horus". (And there's one where "a Hathor-like goddess went into the Libyan desert". Blimey.) Since the sun god can appear as Horus, Willem remarks, "it is not surprising that there was a degree of interference between the myth complexes concerning the Eye of Horus and the Onuris legend."

So, as Willems sees it, this spell combines the various eye myths, allowing the person reciting it to identify "with the solar eye in as many capacities as possible". (p 352)

Some more figures of interest (to me!) from Dr. Cruz-Uribe's catalogue of the gods of Hibis Temple:

• Mut - lioness-headed, enthroned, holding the wedjat eye (p 2)
  
• Mut foremost of the temple of Ptah - enthroned, mummiform, holding something (lost), wearing skullcap. (p 14)
  
• "Female figure, with arms at sides, stands between two cats seated on stands." (p 13) Next to:
  
• Mut, foremost of the "Horns of the gods". Falcon-headed, with small disc and uraeus, arms at sides. (p 13)
  
• Mut, foremost of the temple of Ptah. Standing, wedjat eye on head. [Helck MDAIK 23 1968 p 123 line 11; Gardiner AEO II 125; Holmberg, Ptah, p 190] (p 13)
  
  
• Sekhmet the great, beloved of Ptah - recumbent lion on pedestal (p 14) [Germond p 341]
  
• Sekhmet, lady of (possibly siw or sinw?) - hedgehog (?) on pedestal. [Germond 92 no 26; Brunner-Traut Spitzmaus 161; Aufrere BIFAO 85 1985 23] (p 39-40)
  
• Sekhmet in the mansion of the ka - enthroned, mummiform, lioness-headed, atef crown. (Shares a platform with Ptah.) (p 42)

( The ear is questionable. It may only be damage to wall. )
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Cruz-Uribe, Eugene. Hibis temple project, Vol 1: Translations, commentary, discussions and sign list. San Antonio, Texas, Van Siclen Books, 1988.

In March last year I began a long-term project of taking notes from all the photocopies and downloads I'd gathered on the goddess Bast or Bastet. I think I've finally finished. :)

Here, as threatened, is my brief (and very much not comprehensive!) summary:

Bastet's name becomes common in the Second and Third Dynasties, but isn't attested before then. She was the protectress of royalty in the late Old Kingdom.

The Libyan pharaohs of the 22nd Dynasty adopted Bastet as their tutelary deity and rebuilt her temple at Bubastis. It's not until then that the familiar cat goddess appears. Until then, Bastet is a lioness, with similar iconography to Sekhmet (and it can be difficult to tell them and other lioness goddesses apart). Bastet was called "Eye of Re" and "Eye of Atum", the daughter of Atum-Re, or his consort (and, by him, the mother of Mahes or of Horhekenu.) Like Sekhmet, she sent disease in the form of "the slaughterers of Bastet". However, in Dynasties 12 and 18, Bastet could be paired with Sekhmet as the gentler of the two, for example, in descriptions of the pharaoh's beneficence vs his righteous anger; but his ferocity in battle could also be compared with Bastet's.

Cats became house pets during the Middle Kingdom; perhaps this is what changed the cat's image from wild to docile. Votive statues of Bastet are always in cat or cat-headed form, not lioness. The cat version of the goddess is often accompanied by her aegis, a sistrum, and a basket possibly containing kittens. During the 22nd Dynasty, cat necropolises appear, in which mummified cats are left in large numbers as votive offerings, including cats killed for the purpose.

Good grief, when you write it down like that, it doesn't look like anything! And yet, a little over a year ago, I didn't know any of it.

More stuff:

• Another skerrick: In CT 1186, Heqata addresses a rerek-snake called "traveller of Shu" and "envoy of Bastet". (p 139)


• You don't want to miss the Henadology entry for Bast!


• The 30th Dynasty pharaoh Nekhthorheb II did a lot of building work at Bastet's temple in Bubastis, including adding two granite shrines, one of which has been reconstructed, and housed "a processional image of Bastet". The shrine has a tw3-p.t scene showing pharaoh holding up the sky. Daniel Rosenow remarks: "Each primary deity of a temple is interpreted as the creator god, he or she has to support heaven, as every king has to hold up the heaven of the temple." The goddess, seated, holding a lotus sceptre, lion-headed but with no headdress, identifies herself as "Bastet, lady of the shrine and eye of Horus".


• Also found at Tell Basta: a depiction of the "cult statues" of Shesemtet and Wadjet, probably intended to be carried in barques. Both goddesses are depicted standing with empty hands and lioness heads with no headdress.


• Bastet's son Mahes (aka Mihos, Miysis, etc) had a little temple of his own next to his mum's big temple at Bubastis - a rectangular structure to the north of the main temple, with "red-granite palm and papyrus bundle columns". There's nothing left now but the foundations. Like the later Ptolemaic mammisis, the temple linked the child-god's birth to that of the king, in this case Osorkon II.


• Some snippets found in Traversing Eternity. From the Ceremony of Glorifying Osiris in the God's Domain, Graeco-Roman ritual/funerary text: "Hathor will guard you in Hetepet, and Bastet will protect you in Bubastis. She will instil fear of you before all. She will magnify your strength against your foes." (Maybe it's just the translation, but this suggests the "she" is both Hathor and Bastet.) Similarly, in Papyrus Harkness: "Neith the triumphant, Bastet, and Sekhmet will overthrow your enemy."


• Taming the Beast: The Evolution of Bastet from the Old Kingdom to the Ptolemaic Period (paper)


• "The only other dedication to Artemis from Alexandria, or its neighbourhood, is from Canopus. It is to Artemis Soteira [Artemis the Saviour], and is of the early Ptolemaic period. As an example of a potential syncretism we may note that Bast or Bubastis, whom the Greeks early equated with Artemis, bears the cult-title Soteira in a dedication of the reign of Euergetes II, made by a family of Greeks. The dedication may be from Bubastis, and the Greek family resident there has in that case accepted the identity of the local goddess with Artemis." (Fraser, P.M., Ptolemaic Alexandria, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1972)
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• An unpublished Early Dynastic inscription of the Goddess Bastet (from 2003. Probably been published by now!)

"All the great gods and goddesses, as well as some of their less well-known divine colleagues, appear as amulets. Thus among lion-headed figures are found not only Sekhmet, Bastet and Wadjyt but Pakhet and Mehyt and the fierce god Mahes." (p 12)

"The problem is that the Egyptians believed most of their gods were able to manifest themselves in animal form, but there were not enough types of animal to suffice. Thus any one species might represent a number of different gods... Sekhmet, Tefnut, Mehyt, Pakhet and Bastet, even Wadjyt, might all appear as an amulet of a lion-headed woman." (p 14)

Cat-shaped amulets, representing Bastet, were most popular in the Third Intermediate Period. (p 12)

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Andrews, Carol. Amulets of Ancient Egypt. British Museum Press, London, 1994.

"Though bizarre at first sight, these deities sporting the heads of falcons or lionesses on human shoulders lent physical form, in a strikingly succint fashion, both to the divine power of which the animal was the visible symbol and to its potential influence - through human agency - on earthly affairs." (p 122)

Germond ponders representations such as the goose and ram for Amun-Re: "Are they gods or sacred animals?" He refers to a stela at Deir el-Medina which shows two geese, one captioned "the beautiful goose of Amun-Re", the other "Amun-Re, the beautiful goose". "... to the layman, [the animal] was often identified with the god himself, while for the priest and holy man it was understood more as one of the possible manifestations of the god." An animal may be the "repository of the divine soul" plus "a god in its own right." (p 122) For example, the Apis bull was "the living ba of Ptah"; the sacred falcons at Edfu and Philae were the ba of Re-Horakhte; the sacred crocodile at Kom Ombo was the ba of Sobek. (p 149)

Germond notes the lack of male lion-gods, with only one example in Mahes; by contrast, there were thirty snake gods. He notes that Wadjet was associated with the Eye of the Sun, perhaps because of the burning feeling of a snakebite, and cites a myth in which Re's temporary eye is insulted when his original Eye returns, so is compensated by a place on his forehead. (p177-8)
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Germond, Philippe. An Egyptian Bestiary: Animals in Life and Religion in the Land of the Pharoahs. Thames and Hudson, London, 2001.