Nephthys, Eye of Re
Nov. 7th, 2010 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ikhet_sekhmetWell waddaya know. That neglected goddess, Nephthys, did have a cult, at least in one place - Dakhleh, where she and Set were worshipped as the Mistress and the Lord of the Oasis.
A small statue of a goddess found at Deir el-Haggar temple, wrecked by robbers intent on getting the gilding off, was tentatively identified as Nephthys - which would be interesting, since it's labelled "Eye of Re". I'd thought that only a certain constellation of goddesses were given that title - Sekhmet, Mut, Hathor, etc - but now I'm curious as to just how many goddesses the title is attested for (and at what times).
The statue's the earliest attestation for Seth-worship at Dakhleh, probably dating from the 21st Dynasty. In the oases, Seth was most commonly represented by the falcon rather than the Seth-animal - like the falcon-headed Seth spearing Apophis at Hibis, there's another spearing a scorpion at Ismant el-Kharab. All this contrasts with the rest of Egypt, where Seth's cult was generally suppressed after the Twentieth Dynasty.
ETA: in Seth: God of Confusion, te Velde notes that at Deir el-Haggar, "Vespasian offers flowers to Set and Nephthys" (p 116) and also that "there seems to have been a chapel of Nephthys" in Set's temple in Sepermeru (p 131).
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Kaper, Olaf E. "The Statue of Penbast: on the Cult of Set in the Dakhleh Oasis". in van Dijk, Jacobus (ed). Essays on Ancient Egypt in Honour of Herman te Velde. Groningen, Styx, 1997.
te Velde, H. Seth, God of Confusion: A Study of His Role in Egyptian Mythology and Religion. Brill, Leiden, 1977.
A small statue of a goddess found at Deir el-Haggar temple, wrecked by robbers intent on getting the gilding off, was tentatively identified as Nephthys - which would be interesting, since it's labelled "Eye of Re". I'd thought that only a certain constellation of goddesses were given that title - Sekhmet, Mut, Hathor, etc - but now I'm curious as to just how many goddesses the title is attested for (and at what times).
The statue's the earliest attestation for Seth-worship at Dakhleh, probably dating from the 21st Dynasty. In the oases, Seth was most commonly represented by the falcon rather than the Seth-animal - like the falcon-headed Seth spearing Apophis at Hibis, there's another spearing a scorpion at Ismant el-Kharab. All this contrasts with the rest of Egypt, where Seth's cult was generally suppressed after the Twentieth Dynasty.
ETA: in Seth: God of Confusion, te Velde notes that at Deir el-Haggar, "Vespasian offers flowers to Set and Nephthys" (p 116) and also that "there seems to have been a chapel of Nephthys" in Set's temple in Sepermeru (p 131).
__
Kaper, Olaf E. "The Statue of Penbast: on the Cult of Set in the Dakhleh Oasis". in van Dijk, Jacobus (ed). Essays on Ancient Egypt in Honour of Herman te Velde. Groningen, Styx, 1997.
te Velde, H. Seth, God of Confusion: A Study of His Role in Egyptian Mythology and Religion. Brill, Leiden, 1977.
