The penis of Tefnut
Feb. 22nd, 2014 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ikhet_sekhmetI'm too tired this evening to do any really useful work, so instead, I shall blog about the goddess Tefnut's penis, mentioned in one mythological text, "The Revelation of the Mystery of Four Balls". (IIUC, during the ritual, each ball was given a message for the forces of evil in the form of a recited spell, and then whacked in one of the four cardinal directions by pharaoh, using a special bat.)
If you're interested in complex sexuality, as I am, there's a danger of seeing it when it isn't really there. But the converse is also true, of course. Puzzled by the passage ("qui n'offre aucun sense intelligble"), Goyon translated it as "you [Seth] have taken away the land-heritage [mt3t] of Tefnut"), But van Dijk ("I do not believe it is necessary to emend the text as Goyon has suggested) renders it: "you have taken away the penis [mt3] of Tefnut."
So what's that all about, then? Van Dijk explains: "In this text Tefnut represents the primeval wife of the Creator god Re-Atum, who like Iusa'as and Nebethetepet symbolises the 'hand' with which the god masturbated in order to impregnate himself. By taking away the penis of this primeval androgynous goddess, Seth frustrates Re's rebirth and resurrection", just as he does in the story van Dijk is considering, in which Seth copulates with the Creator god's wife in the form of the god's Seed, the Seed embeds herself in Seth's forehead and poisons him, and Isis has to extract it.
(My impression is that the Seed is comparable to the Eye - an active part of the god which can be separated from him and have temper tantrums to boot! When she attacks Seth, she "flew up to his forehead, to the region of his eyebrows", which is where you'd expect to find the Eye in uraeus form.)
I wonder if there are matching references to, say, Shu's womb which could support van Dijk's reading of the line.
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Goyon, Jean-Claude. Textes mythologiques II. "Les révélations du mystère des Quatre Boules". Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’archéologie Orientale 75, 1975, pp 349-399.
Van Dijk, J. "'Anat, Seth and the Seed of Pre". in J. H. Hospers and Herman L.J. Vanstiphout (eds). Scripta Signa Vocis. Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1986, pp 31-51.
If you're interested in complex sexuality, as I am, there's a danger of seeing it when it isn't really there. But the converse is also true, of course. Puzzled by the passage ("qui n'offre aucun sense intelligble"), Goyon translated it as "you [Seth] have taken away the land-heritage [mt3t] of Tefnut"), But van Dijk ("I do not believe it is necessary to emend the text as Goyon has suggested) renders it: "you have taken away the penis [mt3] of Tefnut."
So what's that all about, then? Van Dijk explains: "In this text Tefnut represents the primeval wife of the Creator god Re-Atum, who like Iusa'as and Nebethetepet symbolises the 'hand' with which the god masturbated in order to impregnate himself. By taking away the penis of this primeval androgynous goddess, Seth frustrates Re's rebirth and resurrection", just as he does in the story van Dijk is considering, in which Seth copulates with the Creator god's wife in the form of the god's Seed, the Seed embeds herself in Seth's forehead and poisons him, and Isis has to extract it.
(My impression is that the Seed is comparable to the Eye - an active part of the god which can be separated from him and have temper tantrums to boot! When she attacks Seth, she "flew up to his forehead, to the region of his eyebrows", which is where you'd expect to find the Eye in uraeus form.)
I wonder if there are matching references to, say, Shu's womb which could support van Dijk's reading of the line.
__
Goyon, Jean-Claude. Textes mythologiques II. "Les révélations du mystère des Quatre Boules". Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’archéologie Orientale 75, 1975, pp 349-399.
Van Dijk, J. "'Anat, Seth and the Seed of Pre". in J. H. Hospers and Herman L.J. Vanstiphout (eds). Scripta Signa Vocis. Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1986, pp 31-51.
