Property of Sekhmet

Last updated 2 March 2016.

( Sekhmet and related goddesses bibliography )

Over in Tumblr, my strange little hobby is trying to identify gods and demons in photos from Egypt. When the name is visible in hieroglyphs, of course, it's a pushover. At other times, I can only make an educated guess from other clues, because the iconography of many deities overlaps: Isis and Hathor; Amun and Khnum; Re and Ra-Horakhty; and the many lioness goddesses can look identical. I'm far less well up on the gods of the Levant, Phoenicia and Syria and Canaan and all that, but the problem of telling them apart seems to be even more pronounced, even for the experts. As Richard D. Barnett writes, "we have lost the keys for interpreting many of the bewildering variety of divine types".

So Barnett only "ventured to identify" one particular form of Phoenician goddess of the Iron Age with Anat (aka 'Anath): "a young girl, dressed in a long Egyptian woman's garment who wears either the great Egyptian triple version of the 'atef crown, called hm hm ('terrible'), or the 'atef crown on horns between two uraeus snakes". She also "wears an Isis-girdle, holds a shield and harpe and sometimes has a long dagger (or daggers) stuck in her girdle at her waist." Barnett describes this goddess as "partially transvestite": not only is she armed, but the hm hm crown is more usually seen on male gods, such as Osiris, Harpocrates, and Ba'al. This is a good match for the Anat of the Ba'al cycle, ready to avenge her brother's death, and representations of Anat from New Kingdom Egypt show her brandishing shield and weapons, as Barnett points out. (I'd add that it matches Papyrus Chester Beatty VII, in which Anat is described as "a woman acting as a warrior, clad as men and girt as women".) However, 'Ashtart (aka Astarte) was similarly depicted in Egypt: "it is clear that she and 'Anath often coalesced".

Barnett's goal is to trace the history of representations of Anat. The Iron Age in Phoenicia, 1200-500 BCE, roughly corresponds with the middle of the New Kingdom in Egypt through to the middle of the Late Period. Barnett writes that "the identification of Isis-Hathor with the Lady of Byblos goes back to the Middle Kingdom" and "the concept of 'Anath and 'Ashtart as war-goddesses is an invention of the Egyptian New Kingdom, and was not known in Phoenicia till the Iron Age." (There may be indications of it as early as the Hyksos period, however.) I guess this is a pretty good indication of the cultural exchange going on between Egypt and the Levant - iconography and gods being traded along with everything else. (Ugarit, however, predates the Iron Age, and 'Anat is pretty bloody warlike in the literature found there!)

It's also possible that 'Anath is represented in a different way - wearing Isis/Hathor's sun-and-horns headdress, flanking a god who could be Ba'al or Reshep, with a goat standing on its hindlegs on his other side. She embraces him (the god, not the goat). Apparently Anat and Hathor were identified with one another in second millennium BCE Syria. Barnett thinks it's more likely this goddess is 'Astarte. But he cautions that "Their roles and representations are in fact still at present very hard to distinguish. The distinction between the representation of the two sister goddesses is something of a mystery, which we are not yet in a position to unravel." Has it been unravelled a bit since 1978? Further investigation is indicated.

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Barnett, Richard D. The Earliest Representation of 'Anath. Eretz-Israel 14 1978, pp 28-31.

Time to write up my notes from this book so I can return it to kylaw!

Written to accompany the travelling exhibition "The Quest for Immortality – Treasures of Ancient Egypt", this book takes the unusual approach of juxtaposing Egyptologist Erik Hornung's description of the Amduat with Jungian analyst Theodor Abt's exploration of its meaning for modern, and perhaps ancient, spirituality and psychology. Abt remarks that the sun god's journey through the "nightworld, that is also the world of the deceased... can also be seen as a symbolic representation of an inner psychic process of transformation and renewal." Not surprisingly, this fits well with the Wiccan and Neo-Pagan ideas about the Dying God's trip to the netherworld and back, which takes place not during the night but during a different natural cycle – the seasons of the year.

The Amduat, or "What is in the Netherworld", first appears in the early New Kingdom – "the first illustrated book in history", as Hornung puts it, "lavishly illustrated throughout" with scenes from the sun's journey through the twelve hours of the night. Part or all of the book appears in various arrangements in the tombs of NK pharaohs. In the late 21st Dynasty, the book appears in the tombs of the Theban priests of Amun, and is written on coffins and papyri rather than in tombs. It appears again in royal tombs of the 22nd and 26th Dynasties, and on royal and non-royal sarcophagi of the 30th Dynasty and the early Ptolemaic period. (There's also short, un-illustrated version – Hornung calls it a "quick guide".)

The first hall of the tomb of Tuthmosis III includes a catalogue of 741 deities from the Amduat; in total, there are 908 "beings" in the book, including those which are punished and damned. (The Egyptians were not great followers of the principle Non sunt multiplicanda entia sine necessitate.)

Each of the twelve hours shows the sun-god in his barque, attended by various deities. In the first hour, the sun passes through the (unrepresented) first gate, "Which Swallows All", which is then "'sealed' to prevent any evil forces from entering' (or exiting, I wonder?) this "intermediate realm" between the world of the living and the netherworld proper. The sun god travels in the form of a ba-soul; hence his ram's head. He's accompanied by two forms of the goddess Ma'at (as Abt remarks, it's "encouraging and consoling" that ma'at is present in the netherworld too - or, I wonder, does the creator god bring ma'at with him?) and welcomed joyfully by nine baboons (familiar from the tomb of Tutankhamun). This hour also introduces the twelve goddess of the hours of the night, which Abt calls "aspects of the goddess Hathor" – given names like "She who smashes the brows of her foes", "She who protects her Eye" and "She who rages", they certainly could be – and twelve ureai, whose fiery breath will protect the sun god from his enemies.

In the second hour (called Wernes), the solar barque is accompanied by four more boats, one of which carries the moon. "Since the moon is meant to replace the sun during the night," says Hornung, "she is not normally present in the netherworld; but by going through phases, disappearing and becoming full again, is an important symbol not only of rejuvenation for the dead but also of the circular regeneration in time. Moreover, she is the left eye of the Sungod, as Hathor [whose symbol is carried in the next boat] is his right eye."

The "abundant and well-watered" second hour and third hour (called Water of Osiris) are followed by the arid fourth hour (Rosetau), "the land of Sokar, who is upon his sand". Hornung characterises the netherworld falcon-god Sokar as "an aspect of Osiris". Sokar-land is filled with "impenetrable darkness", but if you could see it, it would look remarkably like a video game: there are "serpent monsters, some with several heads, or with legs and wings to emphasize their ability to move around quickly", as well as "a zigzag path" blocked by doors named "knife" and "full of 'fire from the mouth of Isis'". The barque, which has turned into a fire-breathing amphisbaena in order to light the way, has to be towed across the sand. The "night sun", which "has finally become the dark sun", can't wake the dead with his light – but they can hear his voice, the only sound in the darkness. The hour is broken up into short scenes, such as Thoth and Sokar healing the solar eye.

In the fifth hour, we're still in Sokar-land. At the centre of the top register is Osiris' burial mound, with Khepri emerging from it in scarab form (like every other being in this register, it's helping pull the barque along!). At the centre of the bottom register is the double-headed sphinx god of the earth, Aker; inside Aker is Sokar in a cavern, lifting the wings of a triple-headed "multicoloured serpent" which is the sun god in another form. At the very bottom of the hour is the Lake of Fire – which punishes sinners, but provides cool water for the "blessed dead". (Dunno who the head in the centre of the middle register is, though.)

At the "utmost depth" of the sixth hour (Arrival That Gives the Right Way), "Re as Ba-soul and Osiris as his corpse" are reunited, "and thus the light of the sun is rekindled". Re is reunited with both of his eyes (shown above Osiris in lion form, behind whom sits Isis-Tait). A baboon-headed Thoth offers himself in ibis form to a goddess who holds the eyes behind her back. The gods Nun and Sobek (with Set-ears?) appear in this watery hour, representing the primeval ocean, "out of which the Sungod has emerged at the beginning of time and is now renewed again." At the right of the middle register can be seen a five-headed snake protecting the sun god's corpse, a scarab on his head.

In the next exciting installment: the battle with Apophis!

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Theodor Abt and Erik Hornung. Knowledge for the Afterlife: The Egyptian Amduat – A Quest for Immortality. Living Human Heritage Publications, Zurich, 2003.

Spell 331 of the Coffin Texts is awesome. (I found my way to it via a discussion in The Coffin of Heqata.) The deceased identifies him or herself with Hathor, and gives us one of those glorious bursts of self-praise: she is "the Primeval, the Lady of All", from whom all the others gods flee (Cf the Exaltation of Inanna: "O my lady, the Anunna, the great gods, fluttering like bats fly off from before you to the clefts"). She calls herself "that Eye of Horus, the female messenger of the Sole Lord", and identifies herself with the Eye of Atum or Re, who set out to find and return Shu and Tefnut to their father. She also identifies herself with the goddesses Shesmetet and Wadjet.

Looks as though Willems translates CT 331 differently to Faulkner - for example, compare respectively "She claims to have the heart of a lion - a reference to the Destruction de Hommes? - and to have the lips of an executioner" and "my heart is the lion-god, my lips are the [sytyw]" ("the meaning of this last word is not known"). (Faulkner notes that one version has "my heart is the lion-god(s)" - Shu and Tefnut?)

Hathor remarks, "I have given my tears", which Willem interprets as a reference to the myth spelled out in Papyrus Bremner-Rhind XXVII,1-3, in which the Eye returns with Shu and Tefnut, "only to discover that Atum had made a new Eye... Distressed by this discovery, the eye wept (rmi), and humanity (rmt) originated in its tears." So Hathor is claiming to have created the human race.

(This self-praise continues in CT 332, but without explicit reference to the Eyes. There's a lot of Hathoric sky and light imagery, and an intriguing reference: "I am the third one, mistress of brightness, who guides the great ones who are languid on the paths of the wakeful." Willems suggests this Third One is Sothis.)

As Willems points out, here Hathor is the sun-god's protector and supporter, as befits his Eye. Discussing the prominent role of eyes in Egyptian myth, he remarks, 'First and foremost, there is the myth about the Eye of Horus, which was torn out by Seth but restored later by Thoth... Via the connection with Thoth, but also as the Left Eye of Horus, it was identified with the moon... but because Horus was sometimes interpreted as a solar deity, the 'Eye of Horus' could equally well be the sun." Then there's the myth of the Distant Goddess, in which the sun-god's eye departs for Nubia, and is brought back by another deity. Different versions of the myth involve different sun-gods, different Eyes of Re such as Hathor, Tefnut, and Wepset, and, as the god who brings her home, Onuris ("who brings back the distant one"), Shu, Thoth, or "forms of Horus". (And there's one where "a Hathor-like goddess went into the Libyan desert". Blimey.) Since the sun god can appear as Horus, Willem remarks, "it is not surprising that there was a degree of interference between the myth complexes concerning the Eye of Horus and the Onuris legend."

So, as Willems sees it, this spell combines the various eye myths, allowing the person reciting it to identify "with the solar eye in as many capacities as possible". (p 352)

The "Holy One" - serious article from a neo-Pagan journal about the identity of the goddess Qudshu; good pictures and bibliography.

The Edfu Project - "a freely accessible online library of monographs, articles, and manuscripts on material about the Edfu district".

The Dawn of Civilization: Writing, Urban Life, and Warfare - December 2009 Discover magazine article about Tell Brak in Syria. Also from the magazine: World's First Grain Silos Discovered at Dhra in Jordan, and Oldest Musical Instrument Found, a bone flute from Hohle Fels. And lots more in the Preghistoric Culture section.

Maat-Ka-Re Hatshepsut includes maps, photos and info from the maintainer's visits to Egyptian sites, including Speos Artemidos and the Temple of Mut.

ETA: Computers unlock more secrets of the mysterious Indus Valley script, University of Washington News, August 2009

Finally, via tysolna:

Now, my particular interest in Hathor is where she intersects with Sekhmet and Tefnut, as the sun-eye, and as a wrathful goddess who needs to be appeased. So these notes will reflect that.

But first, some other goddesses entirely:

Bleeker points out that "as cow-goddess, Hathor does not represent the peaceful domesticated animal, but the wild cow that lived in the originally marshy area of the Delta" - a symbol of "fertile, abundant life" (p 30). This made my ears prick up, because Enheduanna addresses Inanna as "impetuous wild cow". Hathor's titles include "monarch of the sky" or "queen of the heavens", which recalls Ishtar's title "Queen of Heaven", and Bleeker even describes her multifaceted nature as "paradoxical" (p 102), recalling similar characterisations of Inanna/Ishtar as a "paradox" (eg by Rivkah Harris). I'm not clear, though, on how similar the Egyptian pt and the Mesopotamian an or anu really are - exactly where the gods and the afterlife were located in Egyptian thought seems to be more complicated than just "heaven". Nor am I clear on whether Inanna the wild cow is a symbol of fertility or dangerousness (or both). Research is indicated.

ETA: Discussing Thoth, Bleeker suggests it's in the nature of deities to be inconsistent - "his behaviour is occasionally contrary to what human rationality and ethics would expect." (p 132)

As mistress of the western desert, Hathor was associated with goddesses such as Meretseger, "she who loves silence". Bleeker says this is "a characteristic name for a death-goddess, for the realm of the dead is a aphonous land where silence reigns, where the dead find peace and quiet." (pp 42-43)

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Bleeker, C.J. Hathor and Thoth: Two Key Figures of the Ancient Egyptian Religion. Leiden, Brill, 1973.

Once my attention was caught by a guide leading his group through the [British Museum's] Egyptian hall... He made the bemused, elderly Americans pass and repass in front of Sekhmet, an aspect of Hat-hor, goddess of love and beauty - lion-headed, wrathful, manifesting the destructive potential of love. He urged them to step across the goddess's line of vision: "The Egyptians thought she'd curse you, but she can't. Step right up to her..." It wasn't an official museum tour, but still...
- Ahdaf Soueif, writing in The Guardian

A detail John Baines points out in One God Or Many?: in the Book of the Dead of Hunefer, Nut is depicted with a lioness' head (she's sixth from the left in the row of gods at the top) but Tefnut is shown with a woman's head. (In the Book of the Dead of Any, it's the other way around.) [ETA: I wonder if it's just a hieroglyphic typo!]

Here's a terrific photo of Ra as the Cat of Heliopolis doing away with Apep. Great facial expressions on both of them. :)

A 1987 NYT article describes an unusual miniature idol of Sekhmet from Carthage.

Hathor was a sky goddess - hence her name, "House of Horus". Watterson writes, "The Egyptians thought of her as a gigantic cow which straddled the earth, her legs marking the four cardinal points. Between her horns she carried the sun's disk; her belly was the sky, her hide and udders were the stars and planets." (p 113)

The Narmer Palette is the earliest known representation of Hathor, and was probably an offering for Hathor's shrine. Watterson suggests the part-human, part-bovine face, uniquely shown from the front, was originally the goddess' fetish, and becamne stylised as her Bat symbol - the sistrum, Hathor's sacred rattle, could take this shape. Her son Ihy holds one.

The Greeks equated Hathor with Aphrodite. She "was especially reversed by women." Wine and beer, and music and dance, were important in her rituals; "the king himself sang and danced before the goddess". (p 118) Along with Bes and Ta-weret, she was concerned with childbirth, and also suckled the king. The Seven Hathors, who foretold the fates of newborn children, appear in The Tale of the Two Brothers and The Doomed Prince.

In the afterlife, Hathor, "Lady of the Sycamore", lived in a sycamore tree, which provided protection, food, and drink to the deceased. During the 18th Dynasty, she was merged with another cow goddess, Mehet-weret, becoming the patroness of the Theban necropolis. She was the goddess of foreign lands, and was worshipped at a mine in Sinai as "The Lady of Turquoise".

Denderah, site of Hathor's most important temple, takes its name from the Egyptian Ta-neteret, "the goddess". Her statue went in procession each year for a sacred marriage to Horus of Edfu. She was identified with local goddess in many towns, for example with Mut at Thebes, and with Wadjet at Buto; she was so often identified with Isis that they'd basically fused by the Late Period.

This book's available at Google Books!
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=kK1iuqphAKoC

Shafer opens by describing the Egyptian's complicated and sophisticated concept of the divine, including the "identifications and interrelations" between the various gods. "It is not possible simply to label one deity a god of one thing and another the god of something else." (p 7) Egyptian religious ideas were "fluid", always evolving, with no single "sacred book" (p 12). (Having grown up with kid's books which always gave the Heliopolitan cosmogony - that is, Osiris' family tree - I've been surprised to learn how many different creation stories they Egyptians had.)

Similarly, their gods were more fluid in their roles than the gods of Greece and Rome (p 23). For example, Set was a fratricide, Re's ally against Apophis, Horus's enemy, and then Horus's former enemy; he was esteemed in the Early Dynastic Period, and again in Ramesside Period (p 40-1), representing "the brute force and destructiveness that exist within creation", rather than the uncreated chaos outside it; but in the first millenium BCE Seth began to be seen as an enemy (p 124).

The interrelationships between gods were also complex. Shafer mentions familiar triads like Amun, Mut, and Khonsu at Thebes, but also notes that Hathor of Denderah was the consort of Horus of Edfu, even though each god "inhabited" their own temple (p 41).

A few quick notes. Seshat was Thoth's consort, and they were portrayed together in coronation scenes (p 42). Ma'at, unlike any of the gods other than the Aten, was "tolerated" thoughout the Amarna period (p 82). There are two records from the New Kingdom in which Hathor appeared to people in their dreams (p 172), one of which inspired the location of a man's tomb (p 185).

More notes to come, on sacred animals, personal piety, and theodicy.
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Shafer, Byron E. (ed). Religion in Ancient Egypt: Gods, Myths, and Personal Practice. Cornell University Press, Ithaca NY, 2001.

Last bits from Complete Gods and Goddesses:

( Bastet )

( Sekhmet )

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Wilkinson, Richard H. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. Thames and Hudson, London, 2003.