Mystery goddess

[ikhet_sekhmet]

Hi all. Remember this mysterious lady?



I looked her up in the Lexikon der ägyptischen Götter und Götterbezeichnungen. That weighty tome gives her name as "Hknt-m-tp-n-nb.s", which it translates as "Die Preisende am Kopf ihres Vaters". (I have been struggling with online tools to make sense of this in English - possibly "Praise at the head of her fathers"?)

Now, what set me off all those years ago was a traveller's report of an ibis-headed goddess at Kom Ombo. This figure seems like a good match for the description, but has a vulture's head. Now it seems far more likely that the careful scholarly drawing is correct, but how to clear up the doubt, especially since IIUC the mammisi itself was washed away long ago?

Helpfully, the Lexikon provides the final bit of evidence: the same figure appears at Deir el Bahari, in the same vulture-headed form, with other "month-goddesses". I'll see if I can't find a picture of her.

So much for James Augustus St. John's shakti of Thoth! But my three-year search for her has been extremely educational. :)

Comments

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

I'd gloss Hknt-m-tp-n-nb.s as "One who praises at the head of her lord". The figure seems to me pretty clearly to be the upright composite hippopotamus/lion/crocodile type of divinity we see in Taweret, Ipy and Reret, only with a vulture's head swapped in, which is very syntactically unexceptionable. I really doubt it's an ibis head; awesome if it was, though.