Hyphenated goddesses

[ikhet_sekhmet]

I'm very curious about the identification of the Eye of Re with the Eye of Horus, and what this has to do with the identification of goddesses like Bastet and Wadjet. First stop: the Lexikon der ägyptischen Götter und Götterbezeichnungen, a huge dictionary listing every deity name and giving their attestations. In German. It's very educational, especially when there are words like "Kopfschmuck" to be learned.

Anywho, the Lexikon lists numerous instances of Bastet being conflated with another goddess:

Bastet-Wadjet
Bastet-Wadjet-Shesmetet
Bastet-Unut
Bastet-Werethekau
Bastet-Menhit-Nebetuu
Bastet-Sekhmet
Bastet-Shesmetet
Bastet-Tefnut
ETA: Bastet-Sothis

And, amongst various titles:

Bastet, Eye of Horus

Not to mention:

Wadjet-Menhit
Wadjet-Sekhmet-Bastet
Menhit-Wadjet
Menhit-Bastet
Menhit-Sothis
Menhit-Sekhmet
Menhit-Sekhmet-Bastet
Menhit-Sekhmet-Bastet-Wadjet
Menhit-Tefnut
Mut-Wadjet
Mut-Wadjet-Werethekau
Mut-Wadjet-Sekhmet-Bastet
Sekhmet-Isis
Sekhmet-Bastet
Sekhmet-Bastet-Werethekau
Sekhmet-Bastet-Raet [aka Sekhmet-Bast-Ra, aka Mut - Book of the Dead Ch. 164]
Sekhmet-Bastet-Tefnut
Sekhmet-Mut
Sekhmet-Menhit
Sekhmet-Neith
Sekhmet-Nut
Sekhmet-Hathor
Sekhmet-Tefnut

And my favourite:

Mut-Wadjet-Bastet-Shesmetet-Menhit

ETA: Sekhmet-Wadjet appears in Chapter 23 of the Book of the Dead.

That gives me plenty to go on. But something I'm not clear on is how Egyptologists know to use a hyphen - that is, when the name is a conflation of the goddesses and when it isn't. Why is Mwt-Tm "the mother of Atum" and not "Mut-Atum"? Mostly the conflations are just long strings of names, but in some cases, such as Bastet-Sekhmet and Menhit-Neith, they're unmistakenly a single word, with all the determinatives coming together at the end instead of ending each individual name. And does the order of the names carry any meaning?

__
Leitz, Christian. Lexikon der ägyptischen Götter und Götterbezeichnungen. Dudley, MA, Peeters, 2002-2003.

Comments

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

Why is Mwt-Tm "the mother of Atum" and not "Mut-Atum"?

Examples of cross-gender divine fusion are very rare, if not entirely unattested: Hornung (Conceptions, p. 97 n. 118) gives the examples of Neith-Osiris, Mut-Min, Horus-Sothis, and Sothis-Horus. Since I don't have the texts at hand, I can't say what combinations of determiners are present.

And does the order of the names carry any meaning?

It is generally the case that the name which comes first is the one being modified; that is, "Sekhmet-Mut", e.g., is the Mut-aspect of Sekhmet, arising in the context of Sekhmet's cult. This may not be an absolute rule (I think it breaks down particularly in the case of three or more Gods in the fusion, e.g., Ptah-Sokar-Osiris) but it is clearly the preponderant case.

(I discuss the theology behind these fusion-forms somewhat in my article "Polycentric Polytheism and the Philosophy of Religion", which I can give you, if you're interested.)

Regarding the identification of the Eye of Re and the Eye of Horus, the important thing to understand is the symbolic equation this expresses, so that one doesn't just think of it as a mere slippage from one "eye" to another, especially inasmuch as the "Eye of Horus" almost always translates the term wedjat and not a compound with irt, "eye", as "Eye of Re", irt Rê.

The core symbolism of the wedjat is that it is damaged and healed. Whenever something like this happens in Egyptian myth, it provides an opportunity for humans to insert themselves into the process and partake of a divine potency. In this way, the wedjat is the symbol for any divine offering as such. Anything that offered to the Gods or utilized in a ritual can be referred to as the wedjat, as we see again and again from the Pyramid Texts onward.

The core symbolism of the irt Rê is given in the name, irt, "eye", being a pun for ir.t, "doing". Goddesses acting as irt Rê are given this epithet because Re's agency is vested in them, Re being somewhat of a deus otiosus (this is perhaps also somewhat comparable to the position of various Goddesses in shakta tantra relative to Shiva).

We can think of this equation as going in either of two directions. That is, when the wedjat is identified with the irt Rê, it generally means that some ritual act, especially involving the offering of some concrete substance, is understood to be part of the defense of the cosmos, the work par excellence of the irt Rê. This equation is especially meaningful insofar as rituals involving the wedjat are frequently for the benefit of some individual, and so in this equation we identify the good of that individual with the good of the whole cosmic order.

When, on the other hand, the irt Rê is identified with the wedjat, we are generally dealing with some version of the "Distant Goddess" myth, in which Re's agency, his ir.t, cuts itself off from him and must be brought back. This resembles, in some ways, what Horus undergoes in the loss of his "eye" (which is really any of the vicissitudes he suffers in the course of his cycle, and which form the topos of so many spells of healing and the like), and hence it affirms that the whole cosmic order requires similar supplementation, as it were, by human action, which is particularly symbolized in the "Distant Goddess" cycle, in which the irt Rê is recalled from a distant place to destroy Re's enemies and have her wrath "soothed" by the people's festive enjoyment (these two acts actually being functionally equivalent and simultaneous).

Hope this has been helpful; I deal a bit with the "eyes" in my article on the Book of the Celestial Cow.