Ancient Egyptian deity
Not to be confused with Menhit.
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| Major cult center | Nekhen Thinis | |||||||
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| Spouse | Anhur | |||||||
Mehit (also Mehyt, Mekhit) was an ancient Egyptian and Nubian lion goddess of Nubian origin.
| Mehit | ||||||||
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| Name in hieroglyphs |
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| Major cult center | Nekhen Thinis | |||||||
| Genealogy | ||||||||
| Spouse | Anhur | |||||||
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Mehit (also Mehyt, Mekhit) was an ancient Egyptian and Nubian lion goddess of Nubian origin.
In the Early Dynastic period she was depicted as a reclining lioness with three bent poles projecting from her back. In that era she appears in numerous early dynastic sealings and ivory artifacts, usually together with a representation of an Upper Egyptian shrine. [1] Her main places of worship were Hierakonpolis and Thinis. [2]
Mehit was the consort of Anhur, or Onuris, a hunter god who was worshipped in Thinis. Various texts allude to a myth in which Anhur tracks down Mehit in Nubia and brings her to Egypt as his wife. This event is the basis for Anhur's name, which means "bringer-back of the distant one". Late sources identify this story with the "Distant Goddess" myth, in which the Eye of Ra—a solar deity who can take the form of several goddesses—runs away from her father Ra, who sends one of the gods to retrieve her. In the version with Anhur and Mehit, Anhur is syncretized with Shu and Mehit with Hathor-Tefnut, Shu's mythological sister and wife. Because Shu and Tefnut sometimes represented the sun and moon, Mehit could also represent the full moon. Her return to her proper place could thus represent the restoration of the Eye of Horus, a symbol of the moon and of the divine order of the cosmos. [3]
Geraldine Pinch suggests that the Distant Goddess may have originally been a personification of the wild deserts of Nubia, whose myth was absorbed into a complex of myths surrounding the Eye of Ra. [3] Toby Wilkinson says that in Early Dynastic times she may have been a protector goddess, associated with holy places. [1]
The Osiris myth is the most elaborate and influential story in ancient Egyptian mythology. It concerns the murder of the god Osiris, a primeval king of Egypt, and its consequences. Osiris's murderer, his brother Set, usurps his throne. Meanwhile, Osiris's wife Isis restores her husband's body, allowing him to posthumously conceive their son, Horus. The remainder of the story focuses on Horus, the product of the union of Isis and Osiris, who is at first a vulnerable child protected by his mother and then becomes Set's rival for the throne. Their often violent conflict ends with Horus's triumph, which restores maat to Egypt after Set's unrighteous reign and completes the process of Osiris's resurrection.
In early Egyptian mythology, Anhur was a god of war who was worshipped in the Egyptian area of Abydos, and particularly in Thinis. Myths told that he had brought his wife, Mehit, who was his female counterpart, from Nubia, and his name reflects this—it means '(one who) leads back the distant one'.
Atum, sometimes rendered as Atem, Temu, or Tem, is the primordial God in Egyptian mythology from whom all else arose. He created himself and is the father of Shu and Tefnut, the divine couple, who are the ancestors of the other Egyptian deities. Atum is also closely associated with the evening sun. As a primordial god and as the evening sun, Atum has chthonic and underworld connections. Atum was relevant to the ancient Egyptians throughout most of Egypt's history. He is believed to have been present in ideology as early as predynastic times, becoming even more prevalent during the Old Kingdom and continuing to be worshiped through the Middle and New Kingdom, though he becomes overshadowed by Ra around this time.
Shu was one of the primordial Egyptian gods, spouse and brother to the goddess Tefnut, and one of the nine deities of the Ennead of the Heliopolis cosmogony. He was the god of light, peace, lions, air, and wind.
Tefnut is a deity in Ancient Egyptian religion, the feminine counterpart of the air god Shu. Her mythological function is less clear than that of Shu, but Egyptologists have suggested she is connected with moisture, based on a passage in the Pyramid Texts in which she produces water, and on parallelism with Shu's connection with dry air. She was also one of the goddesses who could function as the fiery Eye of Ra.
Amunet or Imnt is a primordial goddess in ancient Egyptian religion. Thebes was the center of her worship through the last dynasty, the Ptolemaic Kingdom, in 30 BCE. She is attested in the earliest known of Egyptian religious texts and, as was the custom, was paired with a counterpart who is entitled with the same name, but in the masculine, Amun. They were thought to have existed prior to the beginning of creation along with three other couples representing primeval concepts.
Bastet, also known as Ubasti, or Bubastis, is a goddess of ancient Egyptian religion possibly of Nubian origin, worshipped as early as the Second Dynasty. In ancient Greek religion, she was known as Ailuros.
Neith was an ancient Egyptian deity, possibly of Libyan origin. She was connected with warfare, as indicated by her emblem of two crossed bows, and with motherhood, as shown by texts that call her the mother of particular deities, such as the sun god Ra and the crocodile god Sobek. As a mother goddess, she was sometimes said to be the creator of the world. She also had a presence in funerary religion, and this aspect of her character grew over time: she became one of the four goddesses who protected the coffin and internal organs of the deceased.
Hathor was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion who played a wide variety of roles. As a sky deity, she was the mother or consort of the sky god Horus and the sun god Ra, both of whom were connected with kingship, and thus she was the symbolic mother of their earthly representatives, the pharaohs. She was one of several goddesses who acted as the Eye of Ra, Ra's feminine counterpart, and in this form, she had a vengeful aspect that protected him from his enemies. Her beneficent side represented music, dance, joy, love, sexuality, and maternal care, and she acted as the consort of several male deities and the mother of their sons. These two aspects of the goddess exemplified the Egyptian conception of femininity. Hathor crossed boundaries between worlds, helping deceased souls in the transition to the afterlife.
Menhit was originally a Nubian lion goddess of war in the Kingdom of Kush, who was regarded as a tutelary and sun goddess. Her name means either "she who sacrifices" or "she who massacres."
Satet,Satit or Satjet, Satjit in Ancient Egyptian, Greek: Satis, also known by numerous related names, was an Upper Egyptian goddess who, along with Khnum and Anuket, formed part of the Elephantine Triad. A protective deity of Egypt's southern border with Nubia, she came to personify the former annual flooding of the Nile and to serve as a war, hunting, and fertility goddess.
Anuket was the ancient Egyptian goddess of the cataracts of the Nile and Lower Nubia in general, worshipped especially at Elephantine near the First Cataract.
Mehet-Weret or Mehturt is an ancient Egyptian deity of the sky in ancient Egyptian religion. Her name means "Great Flood".
In Ancient Egyptian religion, Taweret is the protective goddess of childbirth and fertility. The name "Taweret" means "she who is great" or simply "great one", a common pacificatory address to dangerous deities. The deity is typically depicted as a bipedal female hippopotamus with feline attributes, pendulous female human breasts, the limbs and paws of a lion, and the back and tail of a Nile crocodile. She commonly bears the epithets "Lady of Heaven", "Mistress of the Horizon", "She Who Removes Water", "Mistress of Pure Water", and "Lady of the Birth House".
The Eye of Ra or Eye of Re, usually depicted as sun disk or right wedjat-eye, is an entity in ancient Egyptian mythology that functions as an extension of the sun god Ra's power, equated with the disk of the sun, but it often behaves as an independent goddess, a feminine counterpart to Ra and a violent force that subdues his enemies. This goddess, also known with the theonym Wedjat, can be equated with several particular deities, including Hathor, Sekhmet, Bastet, Raet-Tawy, Menhit, Tefnut, and Mut. The eye goddess acts as mother, sibling, consort, and daughter of the sun god. She is his partner in the creative cycle in which he begets the renewed form of himself that is born at dawn. The eye's violent aspect defends Ra against the agents of disorder that threaten his rule. This dangerous aspect of the eye goddess is often represented by a lioness or by the uraeus, or cobra, a symbol of protection and royal authority. The disastrous fury and rampages of the eye goddess and the efforts of the gods to appease her are a prominent motif in Egyptian mythology.
Iusaaset, Iusaas, or, in Greek, Saosis, is a primordial goddess in Ancient Egyptian religion, a feminine counterpart to the male creator deity Atum. Iusaaset was depicted as a woman with a scarab beetle on her head. She was worshipped in the city of I͗wnw or Iunu, Greek Heliopolis, as was Atum. Iusaaset was associated with the acacia tree and acacias stood at the sanctuary dedicated to Iusaaset at Heliopolis.
Ancient Egyptian deities are the gods and goddesses worshipped in ancient Egypt. The beliefs and rituals surrounding these gods formed the core of ancient Egyptian religion, which emerged sometime in prehistory. Deities represented natural forces and phenomena, and the Egyptians supported and appeased them through offerings and rituals so that these forces would continue to function according to maat, or divine order. After the founding of the Egyptian state around 3100 BC, the authority to perform these tasks was controlled by the pharaoh, who claimed to be the gods' representative and managed the temples where the rituals were carried out.
Ra or Re was the ancient Egyptian deity of the Sun. By the Fifth Dynasty, in the 25th and 24th centuries BC, he had become one of the most important gods in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the noon-day sun. Ra ruled in all parts of the created world: the sky, the Earth, and the underworld. He was believed to have ruled as the first pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. He was the god of the sun, order, kings and the sky.
Nehmetawy(nḥm.t-ˁw3ỉ; "she who embraces those in need") is a goddess in the ancient Egyptian religion. She is not very widely known. Nehmetawy was the wife of snake god Nehebkau, or in other places of worship, like in Hermopolis, the wife of Thoth.A local form of the god Horus called Horus-nefer " might have been viewed as the son of Thoth and Nehmetawy. Her depictions are anthropomorph, with a sistrum-shaped headdress, often with a child in her lap.
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