A similar preference for the female deity is to be found in Egypt, where, for example, the goddess Nut is superior to her consort Nu.
I would quibble with this for a couple of reasons. First, because it's speculative to refer to Nu (aka "Nun") as Nut's consort.
There are two kinds of "consort" in Egyptian theology (note that "consort" is not the equivalent of any actual Egyptian term): on the one hand, there are Gods and Goddesses who form a nuclear family unit with a child and who have what one might characterize as a narrative relationship, i.e., a position in one of the various Egyptian theogonies and a role of some kind in myth. Nut's "consort" in this sense is clearly Geb, not Nu(n).
The other kind of "consort" relationship is between a God and Goddess who have the same name, only the Goddess has the feminine suffix ('-t'). A good example of this is Amun and Amaunet. Amun also has a consort of the first kind, namely Mut; their child is Khonsu. The masculine-feminine dyad relationship is generally without narrative content. The exact significance of these pairs is unclear, and it did vary from case to case. Raet, for instance, the feminine counterpart of Re, seems to have been a title more than a divine person. In other cases, it may be that the feminine counterpart is a hypostatization of the power or activity of the deity.
At any rate, it isn't even definitively established that Nu(n) and Nut are this sort of pair; it's been postulated by scholars who would like to tidy things up in this way, but the problem is that it involves conflating Nut and Naunet, who definitely is the feminine counterpart of Nu(n). But my reading of the primary texts does not support conflating Nut and Naunet.
Now, with regard to Nut being superior to Nu(n), this goes to my other problem with the statement. Putting aside the philological issues I mentioned above, the author seems to disregard the small matter of the actual theological significance of particular Gods, as though only their gender is relevant. Nu(n) is the primordial abyss, a state of potentiality prior to the emergence of the cosmos. Nut is the heavens, the celestial envelope between the outer chaos of Nu(n) and the world. She is, as it were, the bubble in which we live and that makes life as we know it possible. Naturally, then, she is superior to Nu(n), regardless of what their relationship is. In the "Book of the Heavenly Cow", Nu(n) acknowledges that Re, although he came from him (Nun), is superior to him.
Compare this, incidentally, to Aristotle's remark in the Metaphysics (1091a30 & sq) about how the "theologians" posit "the good and noble" as appearing "after the nature of things progressed … saying that the good belongs not to those who were first, as, for example, to Night and Ouranos, or to Chaos, or to Okeanos, but to Zeus, in so far as he is a king and a ruler."
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-02-22 06:41 pm (UTC)I would quibble with this for a couple of reasons. First, because it's speculative to refer to Nu (aka "Nun") as Nut's consort.
There are two kinds of "consort" in Egyptian theology (note that "consort" is not the equivalent of any actual Egyptian term): on the one hand, there are Gods and Goddesses who form a nuclear family unit with a child and who have what one might characterize as a narrative relationship, i.e., a position in one of the various Egyptian theogonies and a role of some kind in myth. Nut's "consort" in this sense is clearly Geb, not Nu(n).
The other kind of "consort" relationship is between a God and Goddess who have the same name, only the Goddess has the feminine suffix ('-t'). A good example of this is Amun and Amaunet. Amun also has a consort of the first kind, namely Mut; their child is Khonsu. The masculine-feminine dyad relationship is generally without narrative content. The exact significance of these pairs is unclear, and it did vary from case to case. Raet, for instance, the feminine counterpart of Re, seems to have been a title more than a divine person. In other cases, it may be that the feminine counterpart is a hypostatization of the power or activity of the deity.
At any rate, it isn't even definitively established that Nu(n) and Nut are this sort of pair; it's been postulated by scholars who would like to tidy things up in this way, but the problem is that it involves conflating Nut and Naunet, who definitely is the feminine counterpart of Nu(n). But my reading of the primary texts does not support conflating Nut and Naunet.
Now, with regard to Nut being superior to Nu(n), this goes to my other problem with the statement. Putting aside the philological issues I mentioned above, the author seems to disregard the small matter of the actual theological significance of particular Gods, as though only their gender is relevant. Nu(n) is the primordial abyss, a state of potentiality prior to the emergence of the cosmos. Nut is the heavens, the celestial envelope between the outer chaos of Nu(n) and the world. She is, as it were, the bubble in which we live and that makes life as we know it possible. Naturally, then, she is superior to Nu(n), regardless of what their relationship is. In the "Book of the Heavenly Cow", Nu(n) acknowledges that Re, although he came from him (Nun), is superior to him.
Compare this, incidentally, to Aristotle's remark in the Metaphysics (1091a30 & sq) about how the "theologians" posit "the good and noble" as appearing "after the nature of things progressed … saying that the good belongs not to those who were first, as, for example, to Night and Ouranos, or to Chaos, or to Okeanos, but to Zeus, in so far as he is a king and a ruler."