Neith the Creatress

Erik Hornung:

"Creation through the word is by no means associated with Ptah alone... the goddess Neith called the world into being through seven statements, which in a later magical text become the sevenfold laugh of the creator god. In the figure of Neith we confront a demiurge who represents more than a late, localized development... her close ties to the primeval cow Mehetweret link her with the early image of the celestial cow. If we consider Neith's important role in the Early Period, and her early incarnation as a beetle, we see that while she holds a central position in early cosmogonic conceptions, these are later eclipsed by others. The beetle Neith disappears, for instance, and gives way to the dung beetle of the sun god, the scarab Khepri."

Is this as unusual as I think it is - a female creator god who uses the abstract method of speech, rather than more concrete methods like birth or craft, to order the world?

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Hornung, Erik (trans. Elizabeth Bredeck). Idea into Image: Essays on Ancient Egyptian Thought. Timken Publishers, New York, 1992.

Endless day

Hornung again, re the fallout from the narrowly averted Destruction of Mankind:

"The sun retreats from the earth on the back of the celestial cow, and darkness reigns for the first time since creation; in their blindness, surviving human beings turn against one another, distancing themselves from the gods forever." (p 48)

I don't think I've seen that before, either - the idea that the golden age was a time of perpetual daylight. (The humans' panicked response reminds me of the Isaac Asimov story Nightfall!)

Raettawy

A shabti at the Univeristy of New England's Museum of Antiquities has the painted label: "The Osiris, Mery-Re, justified before Rait-tawy." Dr Ockinga notes that "She is well attested in the New Kingdom as well as in later periods and also appears on monuments whose provenance, like the probable provenance of the shabtis of Mery-Re, is Deir el Medina". In a note, he adds, "She appears on a stele of the foreman of the workers at Deir el Medina, Inherka... and on a stele of a certain Nebamentet now in Tartu."

ETA: The shabti can be seen on the cover of the Museum's guide.

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Ockinga, Boyo. The Armidale shabtis of Mery-Re: witnesses to ancient Egyptian funerary beliefs (Museum of Antiquities Maurice Kelly lecture, no. 1). Armidale, NSW: University of New England, 1997.