I can't say I see a general superiority of goddesses over gods in Egyptian mythology
One could never say anything so generalizing as that Goddesses are superior to Gods in Egyptian religion, or vice versa. One thing that is interesting, however, is that in Egyptian theology, where there is a masculine/feminine dyad, the masculine is the quiescent, the feminine the active—hence the "Eye of Re". This pattern obtains in a number of important cases.
Mesopotamian myth has that same pattern of the earliest gods not being the final word, what with Marduk overcoming Tiamat, Inanna stealing the me from Enki, and so on.
It's a philosophical perspective common to many polytheistic civilizations, namely that the complexity and multiplicity that emerges later in the history of the universe is better than the simplicity or nondifferentiated state that obtains in its archaic phases and continues to exist beyond the reach of the formative principles.
I was intrigued to discover that Ra had a female counterpart, but I'm not clear on whether Raet and Raettawy are the same goddess.
"Raettawy" means "Raet-of-the-(Two)-Lands", with the sense of, "Raet of the Whole World", or at least the good part, the part within which the writ of cosmic sovereignty runs. Raettawy can be a merely honorific variant of Raet, or can refer to particular Goddesses, namely either one of the consorts of Montu and mother of Harpre ("Hor-p-Re", "the Solar Horus") or a Goddess also known as Seneket-Net, "Wet-nurse of Neith," sometimes posited as the mother of Thoth.
It seems that "Raet" originated as a royal title of Hatshepsut's, and came to be applied as an honorific to various Goddesses subsequently, a way of expressing that they are the immediate expression of the solar potency (viz., in the lotus-cosmogony, Raet/Raettawy is the bud of the lotus from which the solar child comes forth as the blossom). As such, "Raet" is cognate to the Aten, and the titles "Raet" and "Atenet" ("Female Solar Disk") are sometimes interchangeable.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-02-22 07:33 pm (UTC)One could never say anything so generalizing as that Goddesses are superior to Gods in Egyptian religion, or vice versa. One thing that is interesting, however, is that in Egyptian theology, where there is a masculine/feminine dyad, the masculine is the quiescent, the feminine the active—hence the "Eye of Re". This pattern obtains in a number of important cases.
Mesopotamian myth has that same pattern of the earliest gods not being the final word, what with Marduk overcoming Tiamat, Inanna stealing the me from Enki, and so on.
It's a philosophical perspective common to many polytheistic civilizations, namely that the complexity and multiplicity that emerges later in the history of the universe is better than the simplicity or nondifferentiated state that obtains in its archaic phases and continues to exist beyond the reach of the formative principles.
I was intrigued to discover that Ra had a female counterpart, but I'm not clear on whether Raet and Raettawy are the same goddess.
"Raettawy" means "Raet-of-the-(Two)-Lands", with the sense of, "Raet of the Whole World", or at least the good part, the part within which the writ of cosmic sovereignty runs. Raettawy can be a merely honorific variant of Raet, or can refer to particular Goddesses, namely either one of the consorts of Montu and mother of Harpre ("Hor-p-Re", "the Solar Horus") or a Goddess also known as Seneket-Net, "Wet-nurse of Neith," sometimes posited as the mother of Thoth.
It seems that "Raet" originated as a royal title of Hatshepsut's, and came to be applied as an honorific to various Goddesses subsequently, a way of expressing that they are the immediate expression of the solar potency (viz., in the lotus-cosmogony, Raet/Raettawy is the bud of the lotus from which the solar child comes forth as the blossom). As such, "Raet" is cognate to the Aten, and the titles "Raet" and "Atenet" ("Female Solar Disk") are sometimes interchangeable.