The Left Eye of God

[ikhet_sekhmet]

Right then. The moon and the sun are linked as the eyes of a god in various places in Egyptian myth - I'll stick a bunch of notes behind the cut - but if my rummagings are correct, how the right eye, the solar Eye of Re, the ferocious goddess, overlaps with the left eye, the lunar Eye of Horus, is this: Thoth brings them both back.

I was familiar with two stories involving Thoth and an eye - the myth of the Distant Goddess, in which the Eye of Re decamps to Nubia in a huff, and Thoth (or Onuris, or Shu) is dispatched to get her back; and the healing of Horus' eye after Set's assault.

What I didn't know is that there's also a myth in which Horus's eye wanders off and Thoth returns it to him:

The eye of Horus sprang up as he fell on yonder side of the Winding Watercourse, to protect itself against (or, free itself from) Set.
Thot saw it on yonder side of the Winding Watercourse.
The eye of Horus sprang up on yonder side of the Winding Watercourse, and fell upon the wing of Thot on yonder side of the Winding Watercourse.
O ye gods, ye who ferry over on the wing of Thot to yonder side of the Winding Watercourse, to the eastern side of heaven, to speak with Set about that eye of Horus, may N. ferry over with you on the wing of Thot to yonder side of the Winding Watercourse, to the eastern side of heaven, that he, N., may speak with Set about that eye of Horus.
- Pyramid Texts 594-596

It'd make a great animated cartoon - Horus' eye either leaping out of his face (or perhaps off Set's forehead) and Thoth spotting it in time to catch it and fly it back to its owner. (Hmmm. I wonder if this is an image of the changeable moon travelling through the sky.)

Various other bits of the PT touch on the same story. Patrick Boylan discusses all this in a footnote:

"The legend of the flight and return of the eye is obviously similar in many respects to the legends of the Destroying Eye of Re, of the angry eye which becomes the serpent on the diadem of the sun-god, of Onuris who fetched the divine lioness from the eastern desert, and of Hathor of Byblos. All these legends are intricately interwoven - so much so, indeed, that it is often difficult to decide to which of them a particular feature or motif primitively belongs. Thoth is certainly associated primitively with the astral legend of the moon-eye that vanished and was found again. The primitive astral myth contains no suggestion of an angry eye of Horus. Thoth's function as pacifier of the eye is connected with the more reflective legends of the Eye as Serpent on the crown of Horus (in which Sechmet appears as the Eye in her form nsr.t, and Thoth is the shtp nsr.t). (p 32, fn 1)

It's a bit slack to just quote chunks of Boylan, but I'm knackered and he explains it so simply:

"The name of [Onuris] Ini hri.t, 'He who brings the one who was far away', refers probably to the bringing to Egypt from the mountain lands of the eastern deserts of a goddess in leonine form who was forced or induced to leave her desert home by an ancient battle-god in lion or falcon form. This ancient god was Horus the warrior-god who, because he brought to Egypt the stranger goddess, received the epithet Ini hri.t (Onuris) - 'He that fetches her that was far away'. Later this Hri.t came to be identified with the wd3.t and Ini hri.t was explained as 'He that brings the Eye that was far away'. Thus, the name of Onuris came to be written (as Thoth's could be, and sometimes was, written) as a deity carrying the wd3.t. (p 35)

And as a footnote to that lot:

"In some cases, of course, Thoth brings back to Horus (or Re) the right eye, or the Sun. This activity seems to be secondary or borrowed in the legends of the sun-god Re: it is based on his more primitive activity in connection with the moon." (p 35 fn 1)

So there you go - multiple versions of basically the same story, the eye leaving and being returned, with slippage between just which eye is doing the round trip.

• The last amulet considered by Carol Andrews represents a falcon-headed fly with a panel containing "a rather squashed right wedjat-eye" (EA 57874). The falcon noggin (the fly amulet is unique in having a non-fly head) is bedecked with "a mis-shapen full moon with what appears to be a double upreared ureaus set against it, all between the horns of a crescent moon". Falcon + moon = Khonsu, but: "The presence of the wedjat-eye on the amulet can be viewed as further lunar symbolism even though it is actually the right eye, usually associated with the sun, rather than the left 'lunar' eye which is depicted (compare Book of the Dead, Chapter 151, where there is the same reversal of association) (Allen 1974, 147, S2)." (emphasis mine)
  
  
• Coffin Text 316 dramatically identifies the Eye of Horus with the Eye of Re: "I am the fiery Eye of Horus, which went forth terrible, Lady of Slaughter, greatly awesome, who came into being in the flame of the sunshine, to whom Rē' granted appearings in glory." This Eye links itself to Sekhmet, I think, when it comments: "I am indeed she who shoots" (although this could refer to Satis, who drives off southern invaders with her arrows in CT 3134) and "I am She who is over what is red"; In CT 313, Horus calls his Eye "a living serpent".
  
  
• Lana Troy: The Hymn to the Diadem (or rather, one of the nine hymns, "Adoring the White One") identifies the white crown with the Eye of Horus with the sun, "The one over whose beauty the Ennead rejoices when she rises in the eastern horizon".
  
  
• John Coleman Darnell: "Although the left eye of the supreme cosmic deity is the lunar eye of Horus, and his right eye the solar eye of Re, there are numerous associations of the two eyes. In the Coffin Texts Hathor even states that she "is that eye of Horus". The two eyes are both protectors of their cosmic lord, and in this capacity they combine in a class of amulets taking the form of the Udjat-eye, with the figure of a goddess on one side." (Ooh, lots in this!)
  
  
• Boylan gives examples of the sun (Re) and the moon (Thoth) being identified with each other, which he calls "a familiar Egyptian ideas... that the moon is a representative of, or substitute for the sun". For example: in BD 131 the deceased "describes himself as 'Re that shines in the night', and the context makes it clear that the sun of the night is none other than Thoth." (p 63) In the Book of the Heavenly Cow, Thoth is explicitly called "Substitute for Re" (p 81). At Denderah, Thoth is called "Silver Sun" (p 65), and at the same temple there's what appears to be a Thoth-Re:
  
  
  
  
• Harco Willems, re the texts on Heqata's coffin: "Almost all of the offerings are called 'Eye of Horus' which term therefore affords no indication as to the nature of the object. The only exception to this rule is formed by a few cases where the colour of the Eye is indicated. In such cases, a correlation to the colour of the actual item can be observed." (p 83) (I note this partly out of amusement and partly because there's a bunch of stuff in Troy about colours which I didn't really understand on first reading.)
  
  
• Bit more from Willems, footnoting the last line of CT 934 (CT VII, 134a-136i): "Oh Osiris this N, I give to you the good right Eye of Horus, that your ba may live by means of it!". He remarks: "Cf P. Tur. 54003, rt. 19: 'daylight rises as the Eye of Re, and the Eye of Thoth rejoices about this good Eye of Horus.' 'This good Eye of Horus' is here implicitly described as the right Eye of Horus, and is obviously identical with the Eye of Re, ie, the sun. By extension, the same explanation may apply for 'the good right Eye of Horus' in our text." (p 403)
  
  

__

Andrews, Carol. "The Boar, the Ram-Headed Crocodile and the Lunar Fly". in Studies in Egyptian Antiquities: A Tribute to T.G.H. James (Occasional paper 123). London, British Museum, 1999. pp. 79 - 81.

Boylan, Patrick. Thoth, the Hermes of Egypt. Chicago, Ares Publishers, 1987. (A reprint of this, I believe.)

Darnell, J. C. 1997. The Apotropaic Goddess in the Eye. Studien zur Altägyptischen Kultur 24, pp 35-48.

Troy, Lana. "Mut Enthroned". in van Dijk, J. (ed.), Essays on Ancient Egypt in Honour of Herman te Velde, Groningen, 1997, pp.301-315.

Willems, Harco. The coffin of Heqata (Cairo JdE 36418): a case study of Egyptian funerary culture of the early Middle Kingdom. Leuven, Uitgeverij Peeters en Departement Oriëntalistiek, 1996.

Comments

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

That's a nifty piece you came across from the Pyramid Texts. I'm wondering what sort of commentary there has been about its possible astronomical references. The "Winding Watercourse" is, I think, the Milky Way.

Remember that the "Eye of Horus" can be equivalent to essentially anything really keen or useful. Since the Eye of Horus is the offering as such, it is a simple symbolic equation to identify it with the Eye of Re; the statement reads, in effect, "The ritual offering done for the benefit of the individual is also the defense of the cosmos." Hence:

In the Coffin Texts Hathor even states that she "is that eye of Horus"

is Hathor saying, "I am that effective offering."

Miscellaneous:

1) "I am She who is over what is red"

Wadjet atop the "red crown", I should think.

2) Boylan's discussion of the diverse "Distant Goddess" and "Eye" myths is a model of just the sort of care I was referring to in not further tangling the already-knotted threads. That book has really stood the test of time nicely.

[ikhet-sekhmet.livejournal.com]

Without Boylan's explanation I'd still be in the dark! Did we inherit this urge to systematise everything from the Greeks? The Egyptians seem to have been happy leaving their myths lying around in bits.

Anywho, what a lovely idea that the Winding Watercourse could be the Milky Way! It would fit with the idea that the Eye's disappearance is a celestial event - an eclipse, or the new moon. Plus there just aren't that many rivers lying around - if this is a river that isn't the Nile, the sky is pretty much the only place it could be.

Lessee... that's Samuel Mercer's translation (http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/pyt/) - Boylan's is somewhat different (p 32): "...the Eye of Horus separated from its owner, was found by Thoth as it wandered on the further shore of the lake Nḫ3, and was carried back to Horus on the ibis-wings of Thoth." Footnote 2 on page 33 remarks: "For the position of Lake Nḫ3, and its position in the legends of the Eye of Horus cf Junker, Onurislegende, pp 79,138. According to Junker the lake is east of Egypt. It is mentioned in the legend of the fetching of the Eye of Horus from Kns.t." (I wonder if the same adjective is being translated "winding" and "wandering", and attributed to different nouns?)

*rubs hands* This is the good stuff. :D More in a bit!

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

After a while, you get to appreciate the utility of leaving the myths "lying around in bits". It's like a machine that you are disassembling and reassembling into a different machine all the time, so you leave the bits where you can get at them readily.

I'll have to have a look at this lake Nḫ3 business. One of the things that makes it confusing is that the Egyptians tried to identify celestial counterparts for things on earth and vice versa, so there may well be a lake Nḫ3 to the east of Egypt and also a lake Nḫ3 in the eastern sky.

[ikhet-sekhmet.livejournal.com]

Tools, rather than facts; verbs, rather than nouns. Me gusta.

Lemme know if you pin down the lake / river / whatevs. Macquarie has a copy of Onurislegende, but it's locked away in the Brunner Collection where I can't get my grubby little paws on it - like most of the really good stuff! (Never mind that it's in German - that's a comparatively minor hurdle. :)

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

Apparently the identification of the "Winding Waterway" (mr seems more often a canal than a lake) with the Milky Way is not favored these days. An article by Sakovich in JARCE 42 points out that since one crosses it to get to the horizon, it ought to be a channel in the sky stretching from south to north. But at other times, it's said to be "in the north of the sky", so something's funny.

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the same adjective is being translated "winding" and "wandering", and attributed to different nouns?

It seems like nH3 primarily means "treacherous", though I can't be totally sure until I've looked at the Egyptian of the Pyramid Texts. Faulkner's Middle Egyptian dictionary glosses it all alone (without mr) as a treacherous waterway, given appropriate determiners. Perhaps there is a determiner in the PT that gives the specific sense of "winding".

[ikhet-sekhmet.livejournal.com]

Poked about trying to find the bit in the CT where Hathor says "I am that Eye of Horus" and - as so often happens! - landed on something you'd already posted:

http://henadology.wordpress.com/theology/netjeru/hathor/#comment-675

(a) omg, that's awesome. Fairly literally. (b) Can we read "Eye of Horus" here as an offering? As his "messenger" here, she seems more like the Eye of Re (his "chief executive" - excellent phrase :). Though of course, since Horus's eye leaves and has to be returned to him, his messenger / executive is an "effective offering"... am I going in circles here? :)

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

omg, that's awesome. Fairly literally

Oh yes, it's a marvelous text.

(b) Can we read "Eye of Horus" here as an offering? As his "messenger" here, she seems more like the Eye of Re

I think that the idea here is that Hathor is at once the Eye of Re, guarantor of the cosmic order, and the Eye of Horus, the effective offering, the very effectiveness of ritual as such. Hathor's intimate relationship to Re as well as to Horus allows her to effectively collapse the distinction between the collective (Eye of Re) and the personal (Eye of Horus).

[ikhet-sekhmet.livejournal.com]

She's the Eye that goes out, and the Eye that comes back.

[ikhet-sekhmet.livejournal.com]

Wadjet atop the "red crown", I should think.

That would fit. Alternatively, Faulkner offers "presumably with reference to blood". I suppose it could also be a reference to Set and/or the desert?

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

The eye of Horus sprang up as he fell on yonder side of the Winding Watercourse […]

On this text, Harco Willems in The Coffin of Heqata (p. 162) says that the Eye of Horus in this text is the netherworld ferry boat, and that the text "refers to the ferry's navigation to the Fields of Reeds".

Still trying to understand why mr nx3 is translated "Winding Waterway", when I can find no word nx3 or phrase n x3 in the dictionary glossed as "winding".

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

I probably won't be able to grab Heqata until early next year, but in the meantime, there's a good slab of relevant stuff in Google books (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=2fMiG2dGPpYC&lpg=PA105&ots=WlpPSGeean&dq=%22coffin%20of%20Heqata%22&pg=PA349#v=onepage&q&f=false), including the remark that "References to the Eye of Horus pervade Egyptian religious texts to such an extent that the term can signify almost anything." %)

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

I won't really be able to get to the bottom of this until I get a look at Altenmuller's article on the "winding waterway" in ZÄS 92, however it seems that the phrase is a hapax legomenon of sorts, I mean that there is no word nX3 or phrase n X3 that means "winding" in any context other than the phrase mr nX3/mr n X3.

What is particularly interesting to me is that the most distinctive way of writing the phrase is with a rather rare glyph for X3, namely a bivalve shell (Gardiner L6); so I am wondering if anybody has (or why nobody has) suggested as a reading of mr n X3 "waterway of shells", which would seem very appropriate for, e.g., the Milky Way.