Property of Sekhmet

• Djedet is "a protective goddess" in The Book of Traversing Eternity, although not in a liony way.
  
  
• Geraldine Pinch notes that "Hathor, Lady of Mefkat... appears in lioness-headed form on a stela from Serabit el-Khadim."
  
  
• Another addition: Seret is attested by an inscription on a 5th Dynasty statue. (Note to self: Le Role et le Sens p 386; Reallexikon der Religionsgeschichte p 199, Fisher 200.932 2 )
  
  
• Here's Matit in the Lexikon. She was worshipped alongside the falcon deity Anty at Deir el Gebrawi in the Twelfth Nome of Upper Egypt. Here she is in Constant de Wit's Le Role Et Le Sens Du Lion Dans Legypte Ancienne. She had a male counterpart, the god Mati.
  
  
• Wepset appears in the Coffin Texts (CT I, 376/7a-380/1a), in which fire is given "several different names, including Wepset and w3w3.t-flame." (Willems 1996.) She is the Eye of the Sun and the Distant Goddess ("Wawat" is Lower Nubia). "Shu is regularly identified with Onuris" and in this spell Shu is said to "extinguish the flame, to cool Wepset and extinguish the w3w3.t-flame which dispels the mourning of the gods." Willems also notes that a female w3w3.t-flame, personifying "the burning poison in a person's body" is cooled "in a magical text on the Socle Béhague (h25-26)". (p 317)
  
  
• Seems like a reasonable place to throw in these snippets from The Life of Meresamun: "The multiple flexible strands of the menat are represented as a broad collar with falcon terminals around the neck of a female deity, most commonly Hathor but sometimes also Isis or the feline-form goddesses Tefnut, Sekhmet, Menhit, and Bastet." (p 37) "Among deities, Hathor, Mut, Sekhmet, and Tefnut are shown wearing them and, for unknown reasons, the menat was the characteristic emblem of the male god Khonsu." (p 39) Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven notes that lioness-headed goddesses "are known in relief as early as the Old Kingdom and in three dimensions from the New Kingdom." (p 138)
  
  
• A statue of Prince Hetep-Seshat and his missus lists amongst his titles "prophet of Khentichemi [Khenti-kheti?], prophet of Banebdjedet, prophet of Horus and Seth... prophet of Bastet, prophet of Shesemtet." He was a busy lad.
  
  
• Aperet-Isis formed a triad at Akhmim with Min and Kolanthes. (ETA: Aha! Henadology reports that Arepet-Isis is actually an epithet of Repyt.)
  
  
• Isis was depicted with a lioness head on Sidonian amulets.

Bastet's name becomes common in the Second and Third Dynasties, but isn't attested before then. She was the protectress of royalty in the late Old Kingdom.

The Libyan pharaohs of the 22nd Dynasty adopted Bastet as their tutelary deity and rebuilt her temple at Bubastis. It's not until then that the familiar cat goddess appears. Until then, Bastet is a lioness, with similar iconography to Sekhmet (and it can be difficult to tell them and other lioness goddesses apart). Bastet was called "Eye of Re" and "Eye of Atum", the daughter of Atum-Re, or his consort (and, by him, the mother of Mahes or of Horhekenu.) Like Sekhmet, she sent disease in the form of "the slaughterers of Bastet". However, in Dynasties 12 and 18, Bastet could be paired with Sekhmet as the gentler of the two, for example, in descriptions of the pharaoh's beneficence vs his righteous anger; but his ferocity in battle could also be compared with Bastet's.

Cats became house pets during the Middle Kingdom; perhaps this is what changed the cat's image from wild to docile. Votive statues of Bastet are always in cat or cat-headed form, not lioness. The cat version of the goddess is often accompanied by her aegis, a sistrum, and a basket possibly containing kittens. During the 22nd Dynasty, cat necropolises appear, in which mummified cats are left in large numbers as votive offerings, including cats killed for the purpose.

• Another skerrick: In CT 1186, Heqata addresses a rerek-snake called "traveller of Shu" and "envoy of Bastet". (p 139)


• You don't want to miss the Henadology entry for Bast!


• The 30th Dynasty pharaoh Nekhthorheb II did a lot of building work at Bastet's temple in Bubastis, including adding two granite shrines, one of which has been reconstructed, and housed "a processional image of Bastet". The shrine has a tw3-p.t scene showing pharaoh holding up the sky. Daniel Rosenow remarks: "Each primary deity of a temple is interpreted as the creator god, he or she has to support heaven, as every king has to hold up the heaven of the temple." The goddess, seated, holding a lotus sceptre, lion-headed but with no headdress, identifies herself as "Bastet, lady of the shrine and eye of Horus".


• Also found at Tell Basta: a depiction of the "cult statues" of Shesemtet and Wadjet, probably intended to be carried in barques. Both goddesses are depicted standing with empty hands and lioness heads with no headdress.


• Bastet's son Mahes (aka Mihos, Miysis, etc) had a little temple of his own next to his mum's big temple at Bubastis - a rectangular structure to the north of the main temple, with "red-granite palm and papyrus bundle columns". There's nothing left now but the foundations. Like the later Ptolemaic mammisis, the temple linked the child-god's birth to that of the king, in this case Osorkon II.


• Some snippets found in Traversing Eternity. From the Ceremony of Glorifying Osiris in the God's Domain, Graeco-Roman ritual/funerary text: "Hathor will guard you in Hetepet, and Bastet will protect you in Bubastis. She will instil fear of you before all. She will magnify your strength against your foes." (Maybe it's just the translation, but this suggests the "she" is both Hathor and Bastet.) Similarly, in Papyrus Harkness: "Neith the triumphant, Bastet, and Sekhmet will overthrow your enemy."


• Taming the Beast: The Evolution of Bastet from the Old Kingdom to the Ptolemaic Period (paper)


• "The only other dedication to Artemis from Alexandria, or its neighbourhood, is from Canopus. It is to Artemis Soteira [Artemis the Saviour], and is of the early Ptolemaic period. As an example of a potential syncretism we may note that Bast or Bubastis, whom the Greeks early equated with Artemis, bears the cult-title Soteira in a dedication of the reign of Euergetes II, made by a family of Greeks. The dedication may be from Bubastis, and the Greek family resident there has in that case accepted the identity of the local goddess with Artemis." (Fraser, P.M., Ptolemaic Alexandria, Oxford, Clarendon Press 1972)
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• An unpublished Early Dynastic inscription of the Goddess Bastet (from 2003. Probably been published by now!)