egyptiangoddess

Women Crush Wednesday: Goddess Nut

Posted on by Melissa

This week let’s talk about my favorite goddess Nut! She was the goddess of the sky, stars, cosmos, and the universe.

Names and Epithets

Nut’s name means “Sky” in ancient Egyptian and uses the hieroglyph determinative for the sky. It can also be transcribed as Nunut, Nent, or Nuit. With any ancient Egyptian word, the pronunciation of her name is uncertain because vowels were omitted from its writing.

Like many gods, Nut had several epithets. She was the Coverer of the Sky, She who Protects, She who Bore the Gods, and She who Holds a Thousand Stars.

Description

Nut is depicted in several ways, but the most common is as a dark blue nude woman covered with white or yellow stars. Often she depicted arching over the Earth with only her fingers and toes touching land. When she was depicted as a woman, she has a water-pot hieroglyph (which is pronounced nw or nu) over her head.

She could also be depicted as a cow, sycamore tree, or as a giant sow, suckling piglets who represent the stars.

Origin Story

Nut’s birth is dictated in the Heliopolitan creation story. Tefnut is a personification of moisture, mated with Shu, which is a personification of the air. They gave birth to Nut and her brother Geb, who is the god of the Earth.

This is unique in that most ancient civilizations have a Father Sky and a Mother Earth, but in the case of Ancient Egyptian mythology, Nut is the Sky Mother and Geb is the Earth Father.

Myths

Nut is absolutely vital in Egyptian mythology because she birthed the gods that we know and love.

According to the myth, Ra was the second god to rule the world and he decreed that Nut shall not give birth any day of the year. At the time, the year was only made up of 360 days. Nut obviously didn’t like this because it meant that she wouldn’t be able to be with her husband Geb. So she came up with a plan with Thoth, the god of wisdom.

Nut decided to gamble with the Khonsu, god of the Moon. His light rivaled Ra so Nut thought she could use that to advantage. Every time Khonsu lost, he had to give Nut some of his moonlight. Apparently, he was not a very good gambler and lost several times. Eventually, Nut had enough moonlight to make five extra days. Since those days were not technically part of the year, Nut could have all her children.

Nut then gave birth to four children: Osiris, Set, Isis, and Nephthys. In some versions of the myth (typically the ones from Graeco-Roman times) Horus is added to this list of children. Typical Egyptian myths have Horus as the son of Osiris and Isis.

Ra was of course furious about this, so he separated Nut and Geb for eternity. Their father Shu, who again is the personification of the Air, was meant to separate them. Shu is often depicted standing on Geb and holding up Nut.

Role in Egyptian Life

Nut’s chief cult center was located at Heliopolis but the Egyptians also worshiped Nut at Memphis as a healing goddess at a shrine called the House of Nut. She has been associated with the goddess Hathor at Dendera, but she has no known temple built exclusively for her.

“I am Nut, and I have come so that I may enfold and protect you from all things evil.”

In Egyptian life, Nut was the goddess of the sky and a symbol of protecting the dead when they enter the afterlife. During the day, the heavenly bodies such as the Sun and the Moon would make their way across her body. At dusk, they would be swallowed pass through her belly at the night to be reborn at dawn. Her fingers and toes were believed to touch the four cardinal points, north, south, east, and west.

“O my Mother Nut, stretch Yourself over me, that I may be placed among the imperishable stars which are in You, and that I may not die.”

She was a barrier separating the forces of chaos from the ordered cosmos. Because of this, she was often painted on the inside lid of the sarcophagus, protecting the deceased. The ceilings of tombs were also painted dark blue with stars.

“Hail, thou Sycamore Tree of the Goddess Nut! Give me of the water and of the air which is in thee. I embrace that throne which is in Unu, and I keep guard over the Egg of Nekek-ur. It flourisheth, and I flourish; it liveth, and I live; it snuffeth the air, and I snuff the air, I the Osiris Ani, whose word is truth, in peace.”

A sacred symbol of Nut was the ladder used by Osiris to enter her heavenly skies. The ladder was called maqet and a symbol of it was placed in tombs to protect the deceased and invoke the aid of the diety of the dead.

There was also a collection of Egyptian astronomical texts called the Fundamentals of the Course of the Stars or otherwise called the Book of Nut. It talks about various other sky and earth deities.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nut_(goddess)

https://www.ancient-egypt-online.com/nut.html

https://www.gods-and-goddesses.com/egyptian/nut/

https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/nut/

Image Sources

Nut supported by Geb on the Greenfield Papyrus – Wikimedia Commons (British Museum)

Nut as a cow – Wikimedia Commons (The Gods of the Egyptians by Budge)

Nut on the coffin of Pedusiri at the Milwaukee Art Museum – Wikimedia Commons (Jonathunder)

Nut swallows the Sun in the tomb of Rameses VI – Wikimedia Commons (Hans Bernhard)

Nut – Wikimedia Commons (A. Parrot)

Nut on Pectoral – Flickr (-alice-)

Nut with Geb – https://willendorf.org/category/egyptian-goddess-nut

Nut in the Book of the Dead of Djedkhonsuiesfankh – https://goddess-pages.co.uk/nut-galactic-goddess-ancient-egypt/

Women Crush Wednesday: Goddess Sekhmet

Posted on by Melissa

This week let’s do something a little different. How about we discuss an ancient Egyptian goddess. And I couldn’t pick a better one first choice as Sekhmet!

Name

Sekhmet’s name has been spelled in a variety of ways from Sachmis, Sakhmet, Sekhet, or Scheme. Her name comes from the Egyptian word sxm, which means “power” or “might.” It is typically translated as “The One who is Powerful.”

She has a large range of titles. She was the “One Before Whom Evil Trembles,” “Mistress of Dread,” “Lady of Slaughter,” “She Who Mauls,” “One Who Loved Maat,” and sometimes even the “Lady of Life.”

Traits

Now Sekhmet was the goddess of war, chaos, the hot desert sun, and even healing. She is the protector of the pharaohs and protected them in the afterlife. She was said to breathe fire, and the hot winds of the desert were likened to her breath. She also caused plagues, which were called her servants or her messengers. Even though she has all these terrifying characteristics, she was also the patron of physicians and healers, because to her friends, she could cure all diseases.

There is not always a clear family tree of Egyptian gods and goddesses, but Sekhmet was sometimes considered the wife of Ptah and the mother of his son Nefertum. She also may have been the mother of another lion god called Maahes. And her parents are sometimes considered to be Geb, who was the earth, and Nut, who was the sky.

She was a solar deity, sometimes called the daughter of Ra. It was said that she was created from the fire of the sun god Ra’s eye when he looked upon the earth. He apparently created her as a weapon to destroy humans for their disobedience. In one myth about the end of Ra’s rule on Earth, Ra sends the goddess Hathor in the form of Sekhmet to destroy humans. After the battle, which Ra quickly realized had gotten out of hand, Sekhmet’s bloodlust could not be quelled. To stop her, Ra poured out beer dyed with either pomegranate juice or red ochre so that it resembled blood. She became so drunk that she gave up the slaughter.

Iconography

Sekhmet is depicted as a lioness or as a woman with the head of a lioness. Since she is a solar deity, she is depicted with a sun disk on her head and a uraeus, which associates her with Wadjet. She was often dressed in red, ie. the color of blood. Sometimes these dresses have a rosetta pattern over each breast, which is an ancient leonine motif that is traced to the observation of the shoulder knot hairs on lions. She is usually depicted holding a scepter in the form of papyrus, suggesting that she was associated primarily with the north. This is contradictory to the fact that she may have been associated with the south and the Sudan, where lions are much more plentiful.

When Sekhmet was in a calmer state, it was said she would take the form of the household cat goddess Bastet.

Worship

Again, even though she was, in general, a terrifying goddess, the ancient Egyptians believed that Sekhmet had a cure for every problem. To stay on her good side, they would offer her food and drink, play her music, and burn incense. They would also whisper prayers into the ears of cat mummies and offer them to Sekhmet.

Because she was closely associated with kingship, many kings in the New Kingdom worshiped her. Amenhotep II built almost 700 statues of her for his mortuary temple, as well as hundreds more for the temples in Karnak. Ramesses II also adopted Sekhmet as a symbol of his power in battle. During the Greek dominance of Egypt, there was a large temple of Sekhmet at Taremu in the Delta region in a city the Greeks called Leontopolis.

As I mentioned previously, Sekhmet was the main deity worshiped during the Festival of Intoxication, in which they recreate the Sekhmet’s drunkenness. I talked about this during a Fun Fact Friday post a couple of weeks ago!

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sekhmet#:~:text=In%20Egyptian%20mythology%2C%20Sekhmet%20(%2F,and%20led%20them%20in%20warfare.

https://egyptianmuseum.org/deities-sekhmet

https://ancientegyptonline.co.uk/sekhmet/

Image Sources

Gold cultic Aegis – Wikimedia Commons (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore)

Gilded bier from the tomb of Tut – Wikimedia Commons (Hans Ollermann)

Temple of Kom Ombo – Wikimedia Commons

Image from Menat necklace – Wikimedia Commons (Keith Schengili-Roberts)

Statue from Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow – Wikimedia Commons (Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg))

Statue from Temple of Mut Luxor at the National Museum, Copenhagen – Wikimedia Commons (McLeod)

Sekhmet – Wikimedia Commons (Jeff Dahl)

Sekhmet in the entrance of the Mortuary Temple of Ramses III, Medinet Habu – https://www.arce.org/resource/statues-sekhmet-mistress-dread

Sekhmet statues in the British Museum – https://thatmuse.com/2019/11/01/sekhmet-the-destroyer/