Property of Sekhmet

A few notes from The Physicians of Pharaonic Egypt and The House of Life (Per Ankh): Magic and Medical Science in Ancient Egypt, both by Paul Ghalioungui.

In Physicians, Ghalioungui lists numerous flavours of physicians, including specialists like oculists, dentists, and "embalmers and bandagers", as well as "medical auxiliaries", such as the manicurist. There's a lot of overlap between the categories. The main types were the lay physician (swnw), magician-physician, and priest-physician, including priests of Sekhmet. He gives several examples of these wab-Sekhmet who were also doctors.

Magic and Medical Science opens with a detailed discussion of magic and how it works, and the difference between magic and "sacerdotal medicine". "The [magician] constrains the spirits by his charms. The [priest] gains the assistance of the gods by negotiating it in return for his submission to certain rules of behaviour." (p 14) Gods involved in healing, other than Sekhmet, included Thoth, Isis, Horus, Khonsu, the deified Imhotep, and Duau of Heliopolis, patron of "numerous oculist-priests". Seth, usually out of favour, was seen as "a source of sickness and epidemics". Tawaret and Neith protected mothers. (p 15-16)

( The per-ankh, or House of Life )The House of Life opens with a detailed discussion of magic and how it works, and the difference between magic and "sacerdotal medicine". "The [magician] constrains the spirits by his charms. The [priest] gains the assistance of the gods by negotiating it in return for his submission to certain rules of behaviour." (p 14) Gods involved in healing, other than Sekhmet, included Thoth, Isis, Horus, Khonsu, the deified Imhotep, and Duau of Heliopolis, patron of "numerous oculist-priests". Seth, usually out of favour, was seen as "a source of sickness and epidemics". Tawaret and Neith protected mothers. (p 15-16)

"If no material causes could be found to account for a disease, then occult agencies were assumed... These evil spirits had a chief who introduced them into the body and guided them in its interior. The Egyptians called him the 'great slanderer', like the Greeks who called him diabolos, the slanderer. These devils, these envoys of Sekhmet, carried with them 'the wind of the pest of the year'." They disguised themselves and "hid in the corners of the house", necessitating the exorcism of doors and windows. But often, an illness sent as a punishment could only be cured by the responsible god. (p 62)

Physicians (p 9) makes a comparison I don't think I've encountered before:

"At least in two instances a healing statue of her [Sekhmet's] Asian counterpart, Ishtar, was sent to Egypt, and Jonckheere (1951, 31) laid stress on the similarities between the two goddesses: same weapons, same husband (Ptah) and worship in the same city, Memphis." (p 9). [That's: Jonckheere, F. A la recherche du chirurgien Egyptien. Chronique d'Egypt 51 1951 pp 28-45. I'm all over it.]

ETA: According to Ghalioungui, two female physicians are known by name: the swnw.t Peseshet, who had the title imy(.t)-r3 swnw.t, "Lady Overseer of Lady Physicians"; and the t3-syn Tawe, a midwife from around 300 BC.

__

Ghalioungui, Paul. The House of Life (Per Ankh): Magic and Medical Science in Ancient Egypt. Amsterdam, B.M. Israel, 1973.
— The Physicians of Pharaonic Egypt (Sonderschrift (Deutsches Archaeologisches Institut. Abteilung Kairo) 10). Cairo, Al-Ahram Center for Scientific Translations; Springfield, Va, Available from the U.S. Dept. of Commerce, National Technical Information Service, 1983.

My interest has been captivated by this particular manifestation of the goddess! Quoth Miroslav Verner:

"The renewed mortuary cults at the Abusir pyramids survived, however, for only a short period and then died out forever. Abusir fell into complete oblivion for almost half a millennium. People returned there only at the beginning of the New Kingdom when the cult of the goddess Sakhmet developed in the ruins of [the Fifth Dynasty king] Sahure's mortuary temple [possibly because of] the relief of the lion goddess which once adorned the wall of the corridor around the temple's open court, and the precise significance of which was not grasped by simple people. The cult of the so-called 'Sahure Sakhmet' rapidly acquired an importance which transcended the level of popular culture. It endured until the end of the New Kingdom."

"Sakhmet-of-Sahure is mentioned in graffiti, and in a cartouche of Thutmose IV, which (says John Baines) means the cult probably started somewhere between his reign and the reign of Thutmose III. Betsy Bryan states that Thutmose IV "usurped" the relief and "reused" it for Sekhmet's cult, adding his cartouches to an existing relief of Sahure offering to Bastet, probably "to stress his link with the northern gods in whose territory he may have been a relative unknown". (But now I'm not sure if this was a different relief to the one Verner suggests inspired the cult, or the same one!)

ETA: Here, hang on a minute! Three years ago I blogged: "The earliest known scene of a wine offering is from the king Sahure's Pyramid temple. He's shown offering wine to Sekhmet, with an inscription that reads in part, 'Wine and libation for the ka of the Mistress of the Two Lands, Sekhmet of Sahure'." Far out, how many reliefs are we talking about - one, two, three? ETA ETA: At least two, according to Amr Aly Aly Gaber, who reports that two festivals of the goddess were celebrated in Deir el Medina, and suggests that Sekhmet-of-Sahure might have been a deified version of Sahure himself.

ETA from Paul Ghalioungli: "Her [Sekhmet's] figure, engraved on the walls of Sahoure's Temple at Abousir (Vth dynasty) acquired fame for the miracles it wrought, and special chapels attended by her own special clergy were consecrated to her in the temples of Egypt, where she became the object of universal worship."

ETA from Květa Smoláriková: "The peak of this cult, which dates mainly to the end of the 18th Dynasty, survived with a limited intensity through the two subsequent dynasties, as the construction and restoration inscriptions indicate. Numerous stelae and graffiti prove that Sekhmet of Sahure was held in high esteem by all classes of population, including foreigners. With no continuous support from the rulers, the cult of Sekhmet declined to the level of a purely local sanctuary, which it held during the whole Late Period, and perhaps even to the end of the Ptolemaic Period."

ETA from Françoise Dunand and Christiane Zivie-Coche: "Moreover, Egyptians generally had a certain prediection for places that were already 'old' in their eyes, charged with historical prestige or with a mythological aura..." They cite the cult of Sekhmet in Sahure's chapel as an example. "The old building was transformed into a veritable chapel that grew in size over the centuries and was administered by a clergy."

ETA from Alexander J. Peden: "The Vth Dynasty mortuary temple of King Sahure at Abû Sîr is the site of one of the latest visitors' graffiti known from Pharaonic Egypt. This late hieratic graffito, penned in black ink, is dated to Year 5 of Amasis and records the presence of one Khaemwase son of Pami, a prophet of Sekhmet-of-Sahure. This cult, established during the mid XVIIIth Dynasty, seems to have been based in the south part of the Sahure temple. Our partially preserved late hieratic text is the final dated evidence for this devotion and for visitors of any kinds to the temple until the Graeco-Roman era."

Intriguingly, there is apparently part of an Eighteenth Dynasty stela showing Sekhmet-of-Sahure at the National Museum in Warsaw (Inv. 199303).

__
Baines, John. The destruction of the pyramid temple of Sahure. Göttinger Miszellen 4, 1973, pp 9-14.
Bryan, Betsy M. The Reign of Thutmose IV. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
Dunand, Françoise and Christiane Zivie-Coche. Gods and men in Egypt: 3000 BCE to 395 CE. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.
Gaber, Amr Aly Aly. "Aspects of the Deification of some Old Kingdom Kings". in Eyma, A.K. and C.J. Bennett (eds). A Delta-Man in Yebu: occasional volume of the Egyptologist's Electronic Forum 1, 2003.
Ghalioungui, Paul. The House of Life: Per ankh. Magic and medical science in ancient Egypt. Amsterdam, B.M. Israel, 1973.
Peden, Alexander J. The graffiti of pharaonic Egypt: scope and roles of informal writings (c. 3100-332 B.C.) (Probleme der Ägyptologie 17). Boston, Brill, 2001.
Smoláriková, Květa. Abusir VII: Greek imports in Egypt: Graeco-Egyptian relations during the first millennium B.C.. Prague, Czech Institute of Egyptology, Charles University, 2002.
Verner, Miroslav. Forgotten pharaohs, lost pyramids: Abusir. Prague, Academia Skodaexport, 1994.