Fig. 44 Isis
Isis, perhaps the best known and most forceful of the goddesses, displayed decisive action only when attempting to protect and defend her husband, an admirable activity for a loyal Egyptian wife. Following Seth’s betrayal and dismemberment of Osiris, Isis and her sister Nephthys travelled to the ends of the earth to gather up his scattered remains so that he could eventually became whole again: ‘Rise up, Osiris, for Isis has your arm and Nephthys has your hand.’ Following this remarkable resurrection, Isis conceived a son, hiding in the marshes until she could safely present Horus before the tribunal of the gods where he was acknowledged as heir to his father. Motherhood slowly became an important part of the cult of Isis and, particularly during the Late Period, she was frequently illustrated breastfeeding the baby Horus. These depictions marked the transition of Isis from her relatively restricted role as a member of the Egyptian pantheon to more universal recognition as a mother goddess or earth mother. Isis remained an important goddess beyond the collapse of the Egyptian empire as her cult, carried by visiting sailors, first travelled to Rome and then spread throughout the Roman Empire, attracting mysterious rituals and doctrines. Within Egypt, it was only the gradual spread of Christianity which caused her adherents to dwindle, and her cult was still being practised on the Island of Philae, Upper Egypt, in the fifth century AD. The cult of Isis was always particularly important to women as she was variously perceived as being the patroness of marriage, a protector during childbirth and even the inventor of weaving. The major attraction of her cult in the Roman world, however, seems to have been that worshippers of both sexes were allowed to take an active part in the ceremonies rather than being forced to observe the rituals of the official priests.
The other highly influential Egyptian goddess was Hathor, ‘Lady of the Sycamores’ and mistress of love, music and drunkenness. Hathor was already a well-established goddess at the start of the Old Kingdom, as her prominent role on the Narmer Palette confirms, and she was still being worshipped in various forms during the Saite period some two thousand years later. She enjoyed a widespread popularity among women, and was depicted on many popular day-to-day female items such as mirrors, which were symbolically linked with both fertility and childbirth. Hathor’s role as a nurturer or provider was emphasized by her identification with the cow; she was either depicted as a cow-goddess or as a lady with obviously rounded cow’s ears and horns. Her cult, based at the Upper Egyptian town of Dendera, was served by a large number of female priestesses, often of high birth, who were supervised by relatively few male administrators. Hathor of Dendera was believed to be the wife of the nearby Horus of Edfu, and mother of Harsomtus, while the ‘Seven Hathors’ were connected with Hathor as a goddess of death.
There were, however, clear exceptions to the general rule of the goddess as a loyal wife preoccupied with approved feminine pursuits such as fertility, childbirth, music and love. Neith, the patron deity of the Delta town of Sais, had a slightly androgynous quality. Although she was always depicted as a woman she was linked with the undeniably masculine concerns of war and hunting, and she was often depicted carrying a bow or crossed arrows, so that eventually she became identified with the Greek warrior maiden Athene. Neith may be compared with Sekhmet, the bloodthirsty lion-headed goddess of war and sickness, who was only narrowly thwarted in her mission to destroy all of mankind by the cunning intervention of Re.2 In her less dramatic moments, Sekhmet was the consort of Ptah and the mother of Nefertum at Memphis, and she had a more benevolent counterpart in Bast, the cat-headed goddess of Bubastis.
Several warlike goddesses were imported into Egypt during the New Kingdom, and it says much for the flexibility of the religious system that they were able to find a niche in the official pantheon without any undue fuss. The Canaanite goddess Astarte, who is also identified with the Assyrio-Babylonian goddess Ishtar, is either depicted as a lion-headed goddess driving a chariot over her vanquished enemies or as a naked goddess riding a horse and wielding a dangerous-looking sword and battle-axe; in her more gentle persona of Ashtoreth she is again shown as a beautiful naked woman, often identified with Hathor in her role as goddess of love. Anath was the Syrian war-goddess who in Egypt became ‘Lady of Heaven’ and ‘Mistress of the Gods’, the daughter of Re and the consort of Seth. Although she usually dressed in a conventional feminine style, she carried a battle-axe and spear to indicate where her real interests lay.
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Behold, I will announce to the great and the small who are in the troop: Beware of the Peak, for there is a lion within her! The Peak pounces with the movement of a savage lion, and she goes after him who offends her.
New Kingdom stela from Deir el-Medina
Everyday religious life was very much centred around the cults of the family past and present. Bonds with living relatives were crucial to the family-centred Egyptians, and there was at all times a deeply felt and permanent link with the dead relations who were in many ways still regarded as family members. Paying honour to immediate ancestors was therefore regarded as a particularly important religious requirement. Those who were affluent enough to build their own private tombs made sure that they included an integral above-ground chapel in the plan. This allowed the living to visit the tomb and make offerings to the spirit dwelling in the body of the deceased family member who was interred at the bottom of a shaft dug within or in front of the chapel. Separate shafts were excavated for the husband, wife and young unmarried children, and each succeeding generation hoped to build a new tomb to house their own nuclear family.
Tomb ownership was, however, a luxury denied to most Egyptians who were forced to express their reverence either at the graveside or, more usually, at the family altar or shrine. In poorer houses this shrine was a simple decorated niche or cupboard set in the wall of the main room directly opposite a doorway. More wealthy families were able to build elaborate free-standing chapels in the gardens of their spacious villas. The shrine usually held a small sacred image, a carving or statue which represented a composite of the patron god or goddess, the king and the souls of all the deceased family members. The function of the family shrine or chapel extended beyond that of the tomb-chapel, being concerned not only with the welfare of the recently departed but also with the worship of a mixture of local cult gods and goddesses, minor deities and the king. The private votive chapels which were built on the outskirts of the Amarna workmen’s village developed their own priesthood, and each chapel had its own guardian or curator who actually lived within the chapel precincts. Many of these chapels included images of Renenutet, the cobra-goddess of harvest and fertility, while the comparable votive chapels at the workmen’s village of Deir el-Medina showed a definite bias towards the female-orientated goddesses Renenutet, Meretseger and Taweret. Although not particularly influential within the state pantheon, these three goddesses personified events and locations which were very important in the daily lives of their worshippers.
Fig. 45 The cobra goddess Renenutet
A particularly strong domestic cult evolved around the cobra goddess Renenutet who was firmly identified with household and family life and was also the patron goddess of nursing and the harvest. The snake, who at first sight might be regarded as an unwelcome guest in any home, protected the stored food from vermin and was therefore perceived as both helpful and friendly. Renenutet, Meretseger and Edjo, the cobra goddess of Lower Egypt and protector of the king, were all widely revered female snake-deities, while the only wholly evil snake was the male Apophis, a serpent who was despised as the enemy of the gods. As the goddess of the Theban mountain, Meretseger (the ‘Peak of the West’) was particularly important to the workmen of Deir el-Medina, and was frequently depicted in association with Ptah, the mummiform patron of craftsmen.
Snakes became very closely linked with women, fertility and childbirth to the extent that Isis, holding the baby Horus, was often depicted under the protection of two snakes. Further evidence of a connection between the snake and feminini
ty is provided by a series of New Kingdom female-fertility figurines which are modelled lying on beds decorated with red and black stripy snakes, while both ostraca and wall paintings recovered at Amarna and Deir el-Medina depict snakes in close association with dancing Bes figures, Taweret and trailing foliage and flowers.3 These scenes may be literal depictions of a ‘birth bower’, a particular room or even a separate hut reserved for the use of women during their delivery and subsequent period of purification, or they may be more symbolic representations intended to give protection to the mother and child and to ensure the continued prosperity of the whole family. Whatever their purpose, they certainly emphasize the importance attached to childbirth by the community as a whole.
The dangerous mysteries associated with the creation of a new life led to the development of a female-orientated domestic cult centred around fertility, pregnancy and, more specifically, childbirth. The whole process of delivery was not only physically hazardous for the mother and child, it also seemed to bring the participants, indeed, the whole household, into contact with forces of creation far outside human control. Medicine could be of very little help at such a time, so women naturally turned to the comfort of superstition and magic ritual to ward off evil and assist them through their labour. A small hoard of private votive material recently discovered in the cupboard of an abandoned Amarna house includes a stela showing a woman and a girl worshipping Taweret, two broken female figurines and two model beds; this poignant collection, symbolizing the hopes and fears of an unknown mother and her daughter, allows us a glimpse of the hidden rituals of childbirth. Three thousand years later the Egyptian village women were still treating their confinements as a matter for magic intervention rather than medical aid. As Miss Blackman dispassionately observed:
On many different occasions women have brought their babies to me with the request that I would spit into their mouths, in order to make them live long. Also I found that many of my old clothes that I had thrown away were torn up, and many small pieces of them given to various mothers in the village, who hung them on their babies as charms to prolong life. One expectant mother came and begged me to let her have one of my old frocks, in order that her child might be born on to it! She, poor thing, did not get her request granted, and I regret to say that her baby died very soon after the birth!
The most popular charms and amulets associated with childbirth were those of Taweret (‘The Great One’), the hippopotamus goddess who was always depicted standing upright to display her large and presumably pregnant belly, and who protected women throughout their pregnancy and labour. Although a kindly goddess, Taweret’s power should not be underestimated; the hippopotamus is a large and dangerous animal and even today more Africans are killed each year by hippos than by lions. Charms portraying Hekat, the frog-headed goddess, and Bes, the ugly dwarf god, were also associated with the mysteries of birth; indeed, both Taweret and Bes were occasionally painted on to the inner walls of the village houses to provide a degree of extra protection for the whole family.
All the items associated with childbirth developed a special ritual significance and became invested with particular magical powers, so that even the birthing-stool or birthing-bricks became personified in the form of the goddess Meskhenet, an idiosyncratic-looking lady occasionally illustrated as a tile or brick with a human head but more often shown as a woman sporting a cow’s uterus as her divine headgear.4 Meskhenet was entrusted with the task of protecting the new-born infant, and it is perhaps significant that the determinative sign of a snake was often written at the end of her name. Special care was taken to guard the birthing-bricks themselves, as these would later be used as tablets by the god Thoth when he wrote the future of the new-born child. During the Middle Kingdom magical boomerang-shaped batons or wands played an important but unfortunately obscure role during the delivery. Over one hundred of these batons have been recovered, and almost all are carved from hippopotamus teeth, stressing the link with Taweret. Many carry engraved images of the protective spirits, Taweret and Bes, while some even have inscriptions ‘we have come to give protection to this child’ and the name of the baby or the mother. These items were first identified as magical knives, although as they are all blunt it seems more likely that they had some other less obvious function. The most credible suggestion which has been made as to their use is that they were used to draw a magic circle around the bed to protect the mother and child, somewhat as modern witches are popularly supposed to draw and then step inside a magic pentagon while performing their nefarious deeds.
Fig. 46 The two forms of Meskhenet
It was not only the items associated with childbirth which developed a symbolic or ritual meaning beyond their obvious functional role. Religion, or superstition, had become so much an integral part of everyday life that almost every item used by the Egyptians carried some underlying magical message or had some associated superstitious ritual. Even the days were graded according to magical portents into good, bad and indifferent, and nervous businessmen could consult the official calendar before deciding whether or not to take momentous actions. Similarly, dreams became the subject of intense study as a means of divining the future; the Dream Book gave a long list of common dreams and their interpretations: ‘If a man dreams that he is drinking warm beer, this is bad and suffering will come to him.’ The beneficial effects of wearing specific charms or even specific colours have already been discussed in Chapter 5. Less apparent to modern eyes, but clearly important to the Egyptians, were the advantages of displaying certain decorative devices. For example, a blue faience bowl decorated with a lotus-blossom pattern may have been a beautiful object to have in the house or the tomb, but it also had a symbolic meaning to its owner. The lotus motif, representing the blue lotus flower which opens its petals at daybreak and closes them at night, was closely associated with the daily rebirth of the sun god, and by extension became symbolic of rebirth after death. Similarly, a cosmetic dish or spoon in the shape of a fish would not only be an amusing and practical trinket, it too would represent rebirth and fertility to its owner.
As for the person who knows this spell, he will become like Re in the eastern sky and like Osiris in the Netherworld. He will go down into the circle of fire, without the flame ever touching him.
Part of a spell taken from the Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts
In marked contrast to the somewhat scanty evidence for the everyday religious practices of the ordinary people, the rituals associated with death have made a significant contribution to the archaeological record. The Egyptians were a joyful and vibrant people who enjoyed life and its pleasures to the full and who were tireless in their pursuit of happiness. It is therefore somewhat ironic that their idiosyncratic and highly materialistic approach towards the Afterlife has so fascinated modern observers that the uninformed visitor to an egyptological museum or specialist bookshop might be forgiven for imagining that the Egyptians themselves held an unhealthy and overwhelming obsession with all aspects of their own demise. To a large extent this misrepresentation is a direct result of the archaeological bias mentioned in the Introduction to this book, as the tradition of constructing permanent tombs of stone while living in relatively fragile mud-brick houses has naturally led to the disproportionate conservation of funerary remains. It has, however, been exacerbated by the fact that many observers, including trained egyptologists who should perhaps know better, exhibit a passionate interest in studying funerary rites to the virtual exclusion of other less bizarre but equally valid aspects of Egyptian existence. Could it be that this almost voyeuristic interest in the burial habits of others is a reflection of our own deep-seated insecurity which has made death a semi-taboo subject in the western world? It is certainly rare to find a modern people who can accept and even plan for their own departure with the equanimity of the ancient Egyptians.
Although the Egyptians did not allow persistent morbid thoughts to spoil their enjoyment of life they were very much aware that their earthly existence cou
ld be abruptly terminated at any moment. Indeed, their very love of life probably masked a very understandable fear of death and the unknown. The lack of some of the most basic of medical skills combined with ever-present natural dangers such as flood and famine to make death a constant threat to family security, and most Egyptians would have experienced the loss of one or more loved ones at a very early age. The official state theology did not attempt to provide any rational explanation or justification for death, and dying seems to have been accepted as an inexplicable fact of life. Rather than wasting time in endless speculation about the meaning of existence, the Egyptians preferred to make practical preparations for their own end. The prudent and the wealthy planned ahead, ensuring that their wishes would be fulfilled by supervising the construction of their own tombs and the collection of their own grave goods. However, this forward thinking should not be interpreted as a longing for death, and surviving texts give no indication that the planners ever anticipated their own demise in the way that traditionally devout Christians look forward to leaving the Vale of Tears and passing through the Pearly Gates of Heaven.
I asked the Majesty of my Lord that a white limestone sarcophagus might be brought for me from Tura. His Majesty caused the seal-bearer of the god and a crew under his direction to ferry over in order to bring for me this sarcophagus from Tura. He returned with it, in a great transport-boat of the Residence, together with its lid…
Inscription from the Old Kingdom tomb of Weni
Just as childbirth is almost universally perceived as a female rite so, in many cultures, it is women who are expected to supervise dying, while men assume control over the funeral rites of the dead. Birth and death therefore become inextricably linked together as contrasting sides of the same coin – one representing a passage into the light and the other a passage into the dark. It would appear that death is even in some obscure way perceived as polluting and that women, with their already impure bodies, are seen as the more appropriate sex to handle this transition. However, this rather neat anthropological theory may well represent the over-analysis of a basically simple situation; it is certainly equally valid to state that as women are conventionally at home all day, they are naturally the ones who are called upon to nurse the terminally ill. Whatever the reason, it is undeniable that most people regard death as a frightening event involving direct contact with unknown and uncontrollable forces. Even those with the advantages of modern medical knowledge regard the phenomena of birth and death with some awe and, until relatively recently, men have generally tended to avoid immediate contact with either of these mysteries. In practical terms this means that the care of the dying is generally perceived as female work, with men expecting women to preside over the deathbed and perhaps the laying out of the corpse before taking over with the more formal burial rituals which often cannot be adequately performed by a woman.
Daughters of Isis - Joyce Tyldesley Page 25
