Eye and Eye 1

[ikhet_sekhmet]

Now this is odd.

"Mythological texts tell of the left or lunar eye, the feline goddess (Tefnut, Hathor, or Mehit, for example) who ravaged the enemies of Ra until she was appeased. Then she became the full moon, bringing increase and prosperity for the land."

That's more from Egypt's Dazzling Sun, this time considering the Prudhoe Lions aka the Soleb Lions at the BM. I've been ferretting out references which seem to indicate the moon was thought of as the "left eye" of Ra, corresponding to the sun as his "right eye", or that seem to link the two eyes. I've found more than I expected (of which more later) but nothing quite like this, which seems to just conflate the two outright. (Kozloff is pretty sharp with the footnotes, but doesn't give one for this bit.)

The same article (page 219 of the exhibition guide, a book you wouldn't want to drop on your foot) notes that the temple of Soleb was dedicated to "Nebmaatra [ie Amenhotep III], lord of Nubia, a deified form of the king himself as the moon god Khonsu, the deity embodied by the lion." Amenhotep III built the temple; later, it was moved and reinscribed for Tutankhamen and Ay, with Nebmaatra being reidentified with another moon god, Iah. "Syncretized rather early, Iah and Khonsu are easily confused, since Iah was not uncommonly represented in an anthropomorphic striding form, as was Nebmaatra of Soleb."
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Kozloff, Arielle P., et al. Egypt's dazzling sun: Amenhotep III and his world. Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1992.

Comments

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

My impression has been that the right eye/left eye distinction was made generally not of Re, but of Hor-wer (Haroeris, "Great Horus").

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

I'm gonna dump everything I can find on the Eyes here in lj, and then sift through it. Messy, but it sometimes works. :)