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A votive Work in honor of the Goddess Isis

GODDESS ISIS

Isis the Mother

Date: October 12, 2014 Author: Isidora  3 Comments

Here are some lines from a particularly

interesting New Kingdom hymn to the Goddess. I
have simpli ed some of the lacunae and made the
appropriate capitalizations. See if you can guess
which Goddess the hymn praises:

“ “…great of sunlight, Who illumines [the

entire land with] Her rays. She is His Eye,
Who causes the land to prosper, the
glorious eye of Harakhti, the Ruler of
The Mother
What Exists, the Great and Powerful
Mistress, life being in Her possession in
this Her name […]

[…] in the circuit. The Gods are in … Great of Might. Her Eye has illumined
the horizon. The Ennead, Their hearts are glad because of Her, the
Mistress of Their Joy, in this Her name of Heaven.

She is in their hearts, they being glad when She ascends to Her abode, Her
temple. She has appeared and has shone as the Woman of Gold […] of best
 pure silver. All lands give Her their divine property in Her name, and their
standards of their places. They rejoice for Her and Her beauty which
belongs to Her. Everyone comes into existence through Her when he is
created, say the Living in this temple.

There exists no one like Her on earth. She who lives by the might of Her
word.

[…] the Great One of the Throne […] She is […] of forms, Great of Property,
Mistress of That Which Exists. The papyrus ourishes.”

This Goddess is also called Mistress of the Gods,

Queen of Heaven, Great Goddess, Mighty Goddess,
Lady of the Two Lands.

The hymn could well be used to praise Isis. Yet it

seems that all the Great Goddesses, at one time or
another, were called by each other’s epithets and
even by each other’s names. (See how that applies
to Nephthys here.) Louis Zabkar, who has studied
Isis protected by the the Isis hymns at Philae extensively, traced how a
Vulture Mother
number of the texts at Philae were adapted from
preexisting sources to suit both the space they had
available at Philae and the Goddess they were praising.

But this hymn is in praise of Mut; and it is particularly interesting because it is in the
form of a crossword. Known as the Crossword Hymn to Mut (obviously enough),
the instructions say to read it “three ways.” Indeed, it can be read horizontally and
vertically. Scholars guess that the third way might be around the edges, but the
artifact is too damaged to be sure that works.

Mut’s name means simply “Mother.” It is spelled with the vulture hieroglyph, which
also connects Her with one of the Two Ladies of Egypt, Nekhebet the Vulture
Goddess Who was the protectress of Upper
Egypt. According to Horapollo, supposed to be an
Egyptian magician of the fourth century CE, Egyptian
tradition had it that there were no male vultures.
Female vultures were thought to remain virgin, but
to become pregnant by exposing their vulvas to the
north wind. Thus Mut is a Virgin Mother. In Her
Crossword Hymn, we see Her both as the maiden
Daughter of Re and the Mother, “in this Her name of
Creator.”
Mut with a phallus from
the Book of Doors oracle
But Mut also has a powerful lioness aspect. In this deck

form, She is one of the Raging and Returning

Goddesses, like Sakhmet, Hathor, and Tefnut. In the Book of the Dead, Spell 164, a
magical image of Mut is described as having three faces: a vulture, a woman, and a
lioness. Not only that, She has a phallus and wings and lion’s claws. This talisman of
a rather erce and awesome Mother is, as you might expect, for protection of the
dead. Yet the Crossword Hymn also calls Her Mistress of Joy, Mistress of Peace, and
the Beloved One.

It almost goes without saying that Isis

is a Mother Goddess. Speci cally and
signi cantly, She is the mother of
Horus, Mut Nutdjer, “Mother of the
God.” But She also reveals Herself as
Mother of the Gods and as the Great
Mother of All. As Great Mother, Isis
Isis with the head of a lioness from the Ombos has inspired the devoted worship of
temple
women and men throughout history.
During the Græco-Roman period, Her
motherliness toward humanity was expressed in the novel The Golden Ass by Her
initiate, Lucius, who declared that Isis brings “the sweet love of a mother to the
trials of the unfortunate.” This conception of Isis endures today when, for many, Isis
is the very model of the Mother Goddess.
It should be no surprise then that Mother Isis and the
Goddess Mother would become identi ed. In Isis’
Roman-era temple at Shenhur (newly reopened to the
public, yay!), Isis is represented in four forms: “Isis the
Great, Mother of the Gods,” “The Great Goddess Isis,”
Mut, and Nephthys Nebet-Ihy (a festive form of
Nephthys). In Mut’s Crossword Hymn, She is said to be
“under the king as the throne,” just as Isis’ very name is
“Throne.”

Isis from Abydos

As Isis the Kite protects Osiris by enfolding Him in Her wearing the Vulture
wings, so in one of the Books of the Dead, a vulture- Headdress

headed Mut is shown enfolding Osiris in the same way.

On a pectoral found in Tutankhamon’s funerary equipment, a vulture, labeled “Isis”,
guards the king. In the Book of the Dead, the “vulture of gold” to be placed at the
neck of the deceased is associated with Isis. Both Isis and Mut wear the Vulture
Headdress, though Mut wears over it the combined Red and White Crowns. Both
are Eye Goddesses and Uraeus Goddesses and as such are assimilated with Bast
and Sakhmet. Both, as Great of Magic, take the prominent place of the divine
barque to defend and protect the Sun God. And of course, both are Divine Mothers;
Isis of Horus and Mut of Khonsu. Isis and Mut are considered to be the mother of
the pharaoh and They ultimately mother those of us devoted to Them.

I started this post because I wanted to share with you the amazing Crossword
Hymn of Mut. But now I am being struck by this idea of the correspondences of the
Great Goddesses (and the Great Gods, for that matter). The more I study, the more I
nd that They share mythology, share epithets, and share the ability to appear as
each other “in Her name of” ll-in-the-blank. This capacity, along with the ancient
Egyptian idea that the Deities could combine Their identities or be the Ba of
another Deity points at an underlying unity of the Divine, even in the midst of a
thriving polytheism. Works for me.
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the Goddess

Jon
January 10, 2017 at 9:30 pm

I have been fascinated by the worship of the Goddess Mut, and also how she
relates to Goddess Isis. I love them dearly, and thank you so very much for
posting this. There is so little information out there on Mut that it’s dif cult to
learn about her. Thanks again! Blessed Be!

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