Weekly Deity: Renenutet

Renenutet is the Egyptian goddess of nourishment, the harvest, and the true name.

Attributes

Renenutet could be simply a cobra, or a woman with the head of a cobra.  Sometimes she would be shown with her husband Sobek, and sometimes alone.

Mythology

A true name, to the Egyptians, was an aspect of the soul acquired during birth.  It would be necessary for life.  Renenutet is not only the goddess of this aspect of the soul but is anthropomorphized as the true name.  She brought the true name to the baby upon birth but also was the true name, if that makes sense.

Renenutet was also considered a goddess of grains and the harvest, as well as nourishment.  This probably comes from her association with the snake and from a secondary meaning of her name, “nourishment snake”.  She is a goddess of riches and good fortune and is worshiped most at harvest time.

Her husband is usually considered to be Sobek, the god of the Nile.  But the ancients usually associated Renenutet more with her son, Nehebkau, who was the god of and anthropomorphic deity of the entrance to the Underworld.  When Renenutet was seen as the mother of Nehebkau, she was then considered the wife of Geb, the earth.

Sometimes Renenutet is confused with Wadjet, another snake goddess represented by a cobra.

Light and Dark Sides

Renenutet seems like a very positive deity.  She brings life and nourishment.  She is, in fact, part of the reason we live, seeing as how she brings us a part of our soul at birth.  Since she doesn’t feature in any myths, we can’t get an accurate reading of her personality from that source, and all we have to go on are the ideas of what she does and what she is responsible for.

Her duties seem to be very positive as well.  She brings nourishment and the harvest, and works with either one of her husbands, both of whom are related to the earth and/or the harvest, in order to bring plenty to the fields.  She is a goddess of good fortune, but there is where we must be careful, as we should with any deity of good fortune–it is too easy to think that good fortune will always be around, when in fact the deity could decide to withhold their favor.  Treat that aspect with care.

Weekly Deity: Tefnut

Tefnut (left) and Shu (right)

Tefnut is the Egyptian goddess of the rain.  She has connections to both the sun and the moon, but her primary duty is rain/moisture.

Attributes

Tefnut was shown as a grown woman with the head of a lioness.  She carried a scepter and ankh and sat on a throne.  A full solar disk sat atop her head, circled by two cobras.

Mythology

The head of Tefnut is a lioness because the sun god Atum created Tefnut and her brother Shu as lion cubs.  Thus Atum is considered their father.  Shu is the god of air and also Tefnut’s husband.  The pair spawned the god of earth, Geb, and Nut the goddess of the sky.  All five of these deities were a part of the Ennead, a group of nine original gods worshiped at the birthplace of the gods, Heliopolis.  (The other four are the children of Nut and Geb: Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys.)

Tefnut was an important deity to the ancient Egyptians.  Their country is mostly desert, with only the Nile to give any kind of sustainability to human civilization.  Water was incredibly important, and the goddess of moisture was likewise important.

She shared a role with other goddesses as the protector of the sun god and an Eye of Ra.  This is where her connection to the sun and moon come in.  As a goddess of moisture she can be the absence of moisture (dried from the sun) or the abundance of moisture (connected to the moon).  While Tefnut shared the sun aspect with other goddesses, she was actually considered to be both the Eyes of Ra, the left (moon) and the right (sun), and seems to have held the moon aspect in her own right.

One myth says that Tefnut became angry with her father Atum/Ra while he ruled on earth.  She was so angry that she went to Nubia and took all the moisture of Egypt with her.  She rampaged across Nubia as a lioness while Egypt dried up.  Atum/Ra sent Thoth and Shu after her to placate her and bring her back.  They succeeded, and on her way back Tefnut visited every village in Egypt and brought great rejoicing.

Another myth says that Tefnut and Shu went into the waters of Nun (chaos).  Atum/Ra thought he had lost them forever, and sent his eye to find them.  But Tefnut and Shu returned from chaos, and Atumwas so happy to find them alive that he wept.  His tears became the first humans.

Light and Dark Side

Considering the desert that is Egypt, a goddess of moisture is something of a fertility deity.  She helps to not only bring life but sustain it.  In the last myth, where Amen’s tears create the first humans, it could be argued that actually this is due to Tefnut–tears are moisture, and she would have had control over that moisture.  Her life-giving/fertility nature gives her a boost to the Light side of the deity spectrum.

However, in the tradition of ancient deities, Tefnut is somewhat petty at times.  When she had a spat with her father, she took it out not only on him but all of Egypt, harming innocents in her quarrel with Atum.  Then she rampages through a country that has done her no harm and had no part in the original quarrel in the first place.  Such petty actions, and the fact that she harms innocents with her actions, gives her a Darker aspect.  Another Dark side is the ability to control the moisture so that there is drought or flood.  We have already seen her do this–she caused a drought in Egypt and a flood in Nubia.  She likely would be prone to such things again (and since floods and droughts are common natural events, she probably did).

Overall, Tefnut is a Light goddess, because of her ability to give life.  But the Dark aspects are worth considering as well.

Weekly Deity: Pakhet

Pakhet was worshiped in ancient Egypt (primarily in Middle Egypt) as the goddess of inner strength, particularly for women.  It’s likely that she was a combination of Bast (goddess of sun/moon/cats/women/secrets) and Sekhmet (goddess of divine retribution).  Her name was also spelled Pachet, Pehkhet, and Phastet, and meant “she who scratches.”

Attributes

Her form was usually that of a human, but her head was that of a lioness.  On her head is normally a sun-disk as well.  She carried an ankh in one hand and a staff in the other.  At times she has been depicted as an actual cat, killing snakes with her claws.

Mythology

Pakhet is a mix of protector, war goddess, and goddess of strength.  She is thought to be originally a regional lioness deity who became merged with Sekhmet and Bast, and took on properties of both but in terms of her ferocity claimed the middle ground between the two goddess.  Bast took on the qualities of an indoor, more tamed cat over time, while Sekhmet was something more of the fierce lioness, while Pakhet stood between the two extremes.   Though her strength is of an inner quality, Pakhet retained the potential to be as fierce and strong as any war goddess.

Because of her association with Bast and Sekhmet, who in turn are associated with Hathor, Pakhet is also a sun deity–hence the sun-disk on her head in some pictures.  She retained more qualities from her two contributing goddesses: from Bast she retained the quality of being a protector of motherhood; from Sekhmet came the associations with the desert and desert storms.

When the Greeks ruled Egypt, Pakhet’s huntress qualities led the Greeks to identify her with Artemis.  Later, the Romans continued the association during their occupation of Egypt.

Light and Dark Sides

Pakhet is relatively easy to pin down in what she governs: she is protector of motherhood, a huntress, a goddess of inner strength and the fierce desert.  But what is difficult to identify is her personality.  As a protector, we can assume that she protected all mothers, and likely children.  But was she said to be the kind of protector who kept their charges too close, smothering them, or was her control too loose?  As a huntress, we can assume she was fierce, which aligns as well with her main function as the goddess of (woman’s) inner strength.  But what other things did she do?  How did she interact with other deities, how was she said to have treated the mortals in her care and her fellow gods?  Since there are no myths about her, this is unknown.  We only know her functions in the scheme of deities.

However, knowing those functions allows certain assumptions.  Pakhet was a fierce goddess, a protector, rather like a lioness protecting her cubs.  Lionesses are strong, loyal, and willing to fight when necessary.  Pakhet, then, sounds like a goddess on the Lighter side of the deity spectrum.  Her Dark sides would occur if she were over protective–but since we have no evidence for this…it’s difficult to say.

Weekly Deity: Isis

The Egyptian goddess Isis was and continues to be an extremely popular and well-known figure.  She was a mother goddess as well as a goddess of nature, fertility, children, magic, and love.  Isis was also linked to death as a protector of the dead (as explained in the myth of Osiris).

Attributes

The goddess is normally shown as a tall woman wearing a plain sheath dress to her ankles and crowned with the hieroglyphic sign for “throne”.  A common depiction was also of Isis holding or nursing her son Horus.  In other images (the most common ones), Isis holds the ankh in one hand and a plain staff in the other.  On funerary coffins and inscriptions, Isis and her sister Nephthys are shown with outspread wings, to show their status as protectors.

Mythology

Isis was the daughter of Geb, god of the Earth, and Nut, goddess of the sky.  Her brother (as well as husband) was Osiris.  Her two other siblings were Set (god of storms and chaos) and Nephthys (goddess of lamentation and the night).  Isis was the mother of Horus, hawk-headed god of the sky, war, and vengeance.

The main myth of Isis involves both Set and Osiris.  Set created a beautiful box and said that whoever could fit inside it perfectly could keep it.  What the gods didn’t know was that Set had secretly measured Osiris while he slept, so he would be sure to have the exact fit for Osiris.  The gods took turns, and then Osiris stepped inside to see if he would fit.  When all of Osiris was inside, Set slammed shut the lid and it became a coffin.  Set took the coffin and threw it into the Nile where it drifted away.  Isis went looking for the coffin to give Osiris a proper burial and found it in a tree in Phoenicia.  She brought it back to Egypt and hid the coffin in a swamp.

But Set went hunting that night for the coffin and when he found it he was enraged.  He chopped Osiris’ body into fourteen pieces and scattered them over Egypt.  Isis and Nephthys went searching for the pieces in order to properly bury Osiris but could only find thirteen of the fourteen.  The last piece, Osiris’ phallus, had been swallowed by a fish.  So Isis fashioned a new one with her magic (some myths say she first made a phallus of wood and used her magic to attach the replacement, but usually it’s just mentioned that she corrected the problem of the fourteenth piece with magic).  With all the pieces assembled, Isis was able to resurrect Osiris with her magic, after which they conceived Horus.

Sometimes it is said that the Nile floods each year because of Isis’ tears when she searches for Osiris’s parts.

Later on Isis merged with Hathor, the goddess of love and original mother of Horus (who originally was Isis’s husband rather than Osiris).  Because of the merging of the two beliefs and the institution of Osiris as Horus’ father, Horus was then brought into the struggle with Set, who wanted to kill Horus as well.  Isis fled with Horus and protected him until he was old enough to fight Set and become Pharaoh of Egypt.

In addition to assimilating Hathor, Isis also merged with Mut in popular belief.   Mut was a primordial deity from before the creation of the gods.  She is said to be the original mother from which the cosmos sprang.  Her properties by themselves coincided well with Isis, but Mut was the consort of Amun, which created problems in the stories later on when things did not match up well.

Light Side

On her Light side, Isis was a life-giver and life-restorer, in that she was a fertility goddess and protector of the dead.  By bringing Osiris back to life with her magical powers, she is then linked with resurrection, rebirth, and reincarnation (to a certain extent).  Although not strictly a goddess of the dead, she does seem to have some influence in that realm in that she protects burial rites, the dead, and those who would enter the afterlife.  Primarily Isis is a goddess of life, nature, fertility, and magic.

Dark Side

Isis, from the mythology alone, does not appear to have much of a dark side.  She seems to be wholly good, as a mother, magician, and protector.  She does not seem vindictive or hateful, or overbearing.  Therefore it is harder to find a Dark spot in her.  It could be argued, I suppose, that her Darker side is shown when she protects Horus so he can kill her brother later in vengeance–but that episode could also be seen merely as a mother protecting her son from his mad uncle.

Weekly Deity: Bes

Bes is primarily the Egyptian god of childbirth.  He also had a hand in minor demon warding/protection against wicked things and in laughter, song, and dance.

Attributes

This god is usually depicted as a fat and bearded dwarf–very unusual physically for an Egyptian deity who were often tall and slender.  Bes is almost always shown full-on rather than in profile.  He was said to be so ugly that he could frighten away a demon just by looking at it.  He is also sometimes depicted with feline or leonine features.

Mythology and Worship

As a god of childbirth, pregnant women would pray to him and offer him sacrifices of incense or food.  Statues of him would be kept near the pregnant woman’s bed, especially during the actual birthing.  Once the baby was born and growing, it was said that Bes would dance around and sing to the baby, and any time a baby laughed or smiled for no apparent reason it was because of Bes’s antics.

In later worship, Bes was given some healing properties as well, dealing with fertility issues or small, general healings.

Many houses kept statues of Bes near the door, to guard against wicked creatures that caused minor misfortunes.  Just a statue of Bes’ ugly face was enough to frighten these creatures away.

Bes was married to the goddess Beset.  Unfortunately, I was unable to find any examples of myths concerning Bes–the only information available is that of how he was worshiped by the people and what they considered him to be.

Light Side

On the positive side, it seems that Bes is a protector and a helper.  He aids in the difficult task of childbirth and brings laughter and joy to the children.   Without myths to speak to his personality, it’s more difficult to say what his Light side would be, but we can take some guesses based on what we know.  He’s not a trickster, which would be inappropriate for the tasks he has, but he is very light-hearted when dealing with children, kind and stubborn when aiding in childbirth, and fierce and protective when confronting the minor evil creatures at the doors.

Dark Side

On the opposite side, protection can be smothering.  Denial of all things dark leads to a weakening of the light, and if Bes is chasing away all the minor dark things, wouldn’t that then leave room for major dark creatures to move in?  His dark side could then be an overprotectiveness, which would make sense as mothers can sometimes be overprotective and Bes is a god of childbirth and pregnant mothers.