I see the uni library has got that book on Montu, so I shall explore further.
What book on Montu do you mean?
I wonder if having a female Ra, a female expression of the power of the sun, comes from the Egyptian need to put everything into pairs or from the questions raised by having a male creator god.
Well, what a lot of people don't really recognize is that the power of the sun, strictly speaking, is for the Egyptians always feminine, because Re is the quiescent term in the complex equation that is the symbolic Sun in Egyptian theology. The "fire" of the "sun" (putting in scare-quotes so we understand it's not literal here--the physical disk of the sun is the Aten) is the projecting power of the uraeus or Eye of Re, acting on his behalf, but nevertheless the sole actor. Re's passivity I think is similar to the position of the Platonic forms.
On the Egyptian "need to put everything in pairs", I think that it is never just a question of mechanically complementing terms, but rather one has to look at the particular complement in question. I know that this makes generalizations more difficult, but I think it is unavoidable, and so much bad synthesis and comparison has been done in this area.
The creation of the term "Raet" did not fill a gap in the female expression of the power of the sun because that power was already vested in the feminine for Egyptian theology. What it probably did--and this would be consistent with its origins in the royal titulary of a female pharaoh, Hatshepsut--was to fill a gap in the symbolism of a female on whose behalf others acted. Of active Goddesses, there were plenty; of those who delegated authority there were few; Neith would be the primary example.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-02-23 05:50 pm (UTC)What book on Montu do you mean?
I wonder if having a female Ra, a female expression of the power of the sun, comes from the Egyptian need to put everything into pairs or from the questions raised by having a male creator god.
Well, what a lot of people don't really recognize is that the power of the sun, strictly speaking, is for the Egyptians always feminine, because Re is the quiescent term in the complex equation that is the symbolic Sun in Egyptian theology. The "fire" of the "sun" (putting in scare-quotes so we understand it's not literal here--the physical disk of the sun is the Aten) is the projecting power of the uraeus or Eye of Re, acting on his behalf, but nevertheless the sole actor. Re's passivity I think is similar to the position of the Platonic forms.
On the Egyptian "need to put everything in pairs", I think that it is never just a question of mechanically complementing terms, but rather one has to look at the particular complement in question. I know that this makes generalizations more difficult, but I think it is unavoidable, and so much bad synthesis and comparison has been done in this area.
The creation of the term "Raet" did not fill a gap in the female expression of the power of the sun because that power was already vested in the feminine for Egyptian theology. What it probably did--and this would be consistent with its origins in the royal titulary of a female pharaoh, Hatshepsut--was to fill a gap in the symbolism of a female on whose behalf others acted. Of active Goddesses, there were plenty; of those who delegated authority there were few; Neith would be the primary example.