Early Dynastic Egypt (57 page)

Bat occurs on a limestone model of a carrying shrine, from a deposit of early votive objects. The figure of Bat is recessed within the front of the shrine (Schlögl 1978:27, pls 81.a-c). A gold amulet from the Early Dynastic cemetery at Naga ed-Deir (grave N 1532) shows a bull with the Bat-fetish and an
ankh
pendant hanging from its neck (Reisner 1908: pl. 6; Fischer 1962:12). The Bat-fetish is also depicted on the ivory inlays of a box from Abu Rawash (Klasens 1958:53–4, fig. 20(y), pl. 59; Fischer 1962:13, n. 45), whilst an ivory from the tomb of Semerkhet at Abydos is decorated with two heads of Bat, very similar to those shown at the top of the Narmer Palette (Petrie 1900: pl. XXVII.71).

The name of Bat seems to be a feminine form of the word
b3,
‘soul’. In Utterance 506 (§1095) of the Pyramid Texts, the king identifies himself with ‘Bat with her two faces’; the Texts also contain several references to the ‘great wild cow’ as the king’s mother, for example Utterance 675 (§2003). The ‘great wild cow’ was later regarded as a manifestation of Hathor; and, indeed, there are strong connections between Bat and Hathor, even though they probably had separate origins. Both goddesses probably served a protective function (F.D.Friedman 1995:3); Bat is sometimes described as a particular manifestation of Hathor; Hathor eventually supplanted Bat as the local deity of Hu; and the two goddesses share very similar iconography. These similarities have led to some confusion in the minds of modern scholars. Thus, the Bat-fetish, although sometimes accompanied, and hence identified, by its phonetic complement, is often referred to as the ‘Hathor emblem’, ‘on the basis of the later and abundant evidence for its identification with that goddess’ (Fischer 1962:11). There is no explicit reference to Hathor before the Fourth Dynasty, although the temple of Hathor at Gebelein apparently received royal patronage at the end of the Second Dynasty. It seems likely that, in this area, Egyptian theology was characterised by ‘a common substratum of ideas which lent the two goddesses a somewhat similar character’ (Fischer 1962:12).

Hathor’s name (‘house of Horus’) ‘proclaimed motherhood as her principal function’ (Frankfort 1948:171), so it is not surprising that the Egyptians portrayed her as a cow: there are parallels in other African, particularly Hamitic, cultures in which the cow is a powerful mother-image (Frankfort 1948:173–4).

Deshret (the red crown)

A shrine or enclosure dedicated to the red crown is shown on a year label of Djer from Abydos (Amélineau 1904: pl. XV.19; Emery 1961:59, fig. 20). The label seems to record a royal visit to the Delta, and a device in the top register probably indicates a sacred complex at Buto (see below). It is very likely that the shrine to the red crown—a symbol closely associated with Lower Egypt since the unification of the country—would have been located in the Delta. A connection between the red crown and Wadjet, the serpent goddess of Buto and tutelary goddess of Lower Egypt, is suggested by an ivory label of Djet from mastaba S3504 at Saqqara (Emery 1954: pl. XXXVb). In the writing of the Two Ladies’, the usual serpent is replaced by a red crown (cf. Gardiner 1958). We may perhaps conclude that the shrine to the red crown of Lower Egypt was located within the temple of Wadjet at Buto.

Geb

The earth god Geb is shown in human form on a relief fragment from a limestone chapel of Netjerikhet from Heliopolis (now in Turin). It has been suggested that the original decoration showed all nine members of the Heliopolitan ennead, since the figure of Seth is also preserved (cf. Baines 1991:96). However, it is also possible that the shrine was dedicated to the ‘corporation’
(h t),
an earlier grouping of gods, referred to in the names of Semerkhet, Netjerikhet and Sekhemkhet; the corporation may have been superseded by the Heliopolitan ennead when solar theology rose to prominence towards the end of the Third Dynasty (Hornung 1983:222). Originally, both groupings probably symbolised the gods in their ‘indefinite plurality’: in Egyptian writing, three represented the plural concept, three times three (making an ennead) a plural of pluralities (Hornung 1983:222). As one of the Heliopolitan ennead and as an earth god from the time of creation, Geb features prominently in the Pyramid Texts (for example in the ‘Cannibal Hymn’ Utterances 273–4 [§§393–414]). The king himself is identified with Geb in Utterance 599 (§1645).

Harsaphes

The ram god Harsaphes
(Hrỉ-š=f
in Egyptian) may have originated as a primitive fertility god (cf. B.Altenmüller 1977), but is better attested in historic times as the local god of Herakleopolis. The Palermo Stone records a visit by Den in his regnal year x+9 to Herakleopolis; in the same year the king also visited the temple of a ram deity, and it is tempting to identify this as the local god of Herakleopolis, Harsaphes. An inscribed stone vessel fragment of Den from his tomb at Abydos may refer to the same event: it shows an ornate sanctuary with a ram inside, and a shrine topped by a bucranium (Petrie 1901: pl. VII.8–9). A connection with the royal cult has been posited for Harsaphes, particularly given the Egyptian name for Herakleopolis,
Nn-nswt
(B.Altenmüller 1977).

Hedjet (the white crown)

A chapel of the white crown (or, less plausibly, an estate named after the white crown) is named on an inscribed stone vessel of Hetepsekhemwy from the Step Pyramid complex (Lacau and Lauer 1959: pl. 11, no. 55). An institution by the same name is mentioned on a vessel of Ninetjer (Lacau and Lauer 1959: pl. 16, no. 78), suggesting a special reverence towards the white crown by the kings of the early Second Dynasty. One possible interpretation is that homage to Upper Egypt and its iconography may have been stressed following the relocation of the royal necropolis to Saqqara at the beginning of the Second Dynasty, and the concomitant loosening of ties between the kingship and Upper Egypt. It has been suggested that the inscriptions of Hetepsekhemwy and Ninetjer refer to shrines set up at the Residence in Memphis (R.Friedman 1994:422, quoting Kaplony 1963). In origin, the white crown may have been particularly closely associated with the Predynastic rulers of Hierakonpolis. The local god of Hierakonpolis, Horus of Nekhen, was customarily depicted as an archaic falcon, often wearing the white crown (B.Adams 1977).

Hedjwer

The baboon deity named
h -wr,
‘the Great White’, is first attested unequivocally on an ivory label of Semerkhet from Abydos (Petrie 1900: pl. XII.l =pl. XVII.26). However, a baboon statue from the reign of Narmer (E.Schott 1969) may represent the same deity, as may the figure of an enthroned baboon shown before a statue of Den on a seal-impression from Saqqara (Kaplony 1963, III: fig. 211; F.D.Friedman 1995:33, fig. 19c). One scholar has suggested that the royal ancestors—in whose presence the king took possession of the symbols of rule at the beginning of his reign and again at the beginning of the Sed- festival—were manifest as a white baboon (Helck 1952:75, 1972:97; cf. Kemp 1989:60, fig. 20). The middle relief panel of Netjerikhet from beneath his Step Pyramid shows the king standing at the
( h-)h wrw,
‘the white shrine of the great ones’ (an alternative reading is
wrw h-h ,
‘the great ones of the white shrine’) (F.D.Friedman 1995:24). The
wrw,
‘great ones’, are determined by the figure of a large, squatting baboon. If Helck’s interpretation is correct, ‘the plurality of ancestors denoted by the baboon may be handing over rulership to Djoser, as signified by the testament he holds’ (F.D.Friedman 1995:26).

It is possible that the baboons of glazed composition and stone, frequently deposited as votive offerings in early shrines, were connected with Hedjwer, although other baboon deities are known to have existed. References to a baboon deity, sometimes explicitly identified as Hedjwer, are common in the Early Dynastic period and Pyramid Texts, but are rare in subsequent periods (Kaplony 1977).

Heqet

The frog goddess Heqet was associated with fertility and childbirth. This connection probably derived from the myriad tadpoles which a frog produces, a fact which also led to the tadpole being used as the hieroglyph for one-hundred-thousand. Heqet is mentioned only once in the Pyramid Texts, but her cult seems to have been popular in the Early Dynastic period (Cooney and Simpson 1976:205–7). Two high-status individuals (including a royal prince) buried at Helwan in the Second Dynasty bore theophorous names compounded with Heqet, indicating that her cult was active at the time (Saad 1957:7–10, pls III, IV [nos 2, 3]). The Early Dynastic stela of Wepemnofret (now at Berkeley) also mentions Heqet. A large travertine statuette of a frog in the Cleveland Museum of Arts (CMA 76.5) may be an early cult image of Heqet (Cooney and Simpson 1976). One of only a few surviving examples of large-scale stone animal sculpture from the late Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods, it has been tentatively dated to the reign of Narmer, largely on the basis of stylistic parallels with the baboon statue in Berlin. Although acquired on the art market and unprovenanced, the frog statuette may have come from Abydos where there seems to have been a particular emphasis on the cult of Heqet: small frog figurines were found in the votive deposits underneath the Abydos temple (Petrie 1903: pls X.214, 227, XI.240, 245; cf. Dreyer 1986: pls 32.170–2, 61.d, i, 62.i), and the goddess Heqet is shown in her shrine in the temple of Seti I (Cooney and Simpson 1976:207, fig. 12).

Horus

Perhaps originally a sky god, Horus became the deity most intimately associated with the kingship from the late Predynastic period onwards (cf. Hayes 1953:29, fig. 22; Williams 1986: pls 33, 34). It is difficult to be sure exactly how the Egyptians envisaged the relationship between Horus and the king (Hornung 1983:192), but the adoption of Horus as the supreme royal title suggests that the Egyptians ‘found in the soaring falcon their perfect metaphor for majesty’ (Quirke 1992:21).

Falcon deities were worshipped at several sites in Egypt. Whilst they are usually regarded as local gods of independent origin, it is equally possible that ‘they were predynastic differentiations of one and the same deity’, regarded as the supreme god by Egyptians in general (Frankfort 1948:39–40). Perhaps the most important cult centre of Horus in Early Dynastic times was Hierakonpolis. Even in later dynastic times the cult image of the local god, Horus of Nekhen, was depicted as an archaic falcon, apparently emphasising the antiquity of the Horus cult at the site. The association of Horus with the kingship may reflect the importance of Hierakonpolis as a centre of Predynastic political power.

A distinctive form of Horus attested by name from the early Third Dynasty is
Hr- Bhdtỉ,
‘Horus the Behdetite’. The northernmost relief panel under the Step Pyramid shows the king, wearing the white crown, ‘standing in the Upper Egyptian shrine of Horus the Behdetite’ (Kemp 1989:58, fig. 19; F.D.Friedman 1995:18). The corresponding panel from the South Tomb gives this same name to the falcon hovering over the king and holding an
ankh
(F.D.Friedman 1995:20). In origin, the word
bhdt
means ‘throne seat’, and
bhdtỉ
may mean ‘he of the throne seat’ (Otto 1975; F.D.Friedman 1995:18). Hence, there may have been a special connection between Horus the Behdetite and kingship. Although Behdet was later identified with Tell el-Balamun in the northern Delta (Gardiner 1944) or with Edfu in southern Upper Egypt, ‘in Djoser’s day the Behdetite may not have been associated with a fixed locality, possibly being understood more generally as a protective power of the king’ (F.D.Friedman 1995:20; cf. Kemp 1989:41).

The middle relief panel from the South Tomb mentions another distinct form of Horus:
Hr H m,
‘Horus of Letopolis’. It is significant that this panel is the only one on which the king wears the red crown, and the accompanying inscription uses the archetypal Lower Egyptian shrine as the determinative for the cult-place of Horus of Letopolis. The god ‘had important royal associations in the early Old Kingdom’ (F.D.Friedman 1995:36), various aspects of his insignia being depicted on the funerary furniture of Queen Hetep-heres.

Iat/Iamet

On the Palermo Stone, the fifth regnal year of an unidentified First Dynasty king is denoted by the fashioning or dedication of a divine image of Iamet. Iat/Iamet (the reading of the name is uncertain) is also mentioned in the Pyramid Texts, and she was possibly a milk goddess, responsible for nourishing and nursing the king (Helck 1980).

Isis (?)

The
tyet
-girdle associated with Isis is attested as early as the First Dynasty. An amulet of this shape made of glazed composition was found in an Early Dynastic tomb at Helwan. However, unambiguous references to Isis by name do not appear until the Fifth Dynasty (in the Pyramid Texts of Unas). The throne-sign used to write the name of Isis occurs on a sealing of Peribsen (Petrie 1901: pl. XXI.176), but it is unclear whether the goddess herself is meant. An Early Dynastic rock-cut inscription on Hill B near Buhen may mention Isis (H.S.Smith 1972:59–60).

Khentiamentiu

The god of the Abydos necropolis, ‘the Foremost of the Westerners’, is named on the necropolis seals of Den (Dreyer 1987) and Qaa (Dreyer
et al.
1996:72, fig. 25). It is likely that the first temple at Abydos, founded in the late Predynastic period, was dedicated to Khentiamentiu (perhaps already an epithet used as a euphemism for Osiris). The temple retained this dedication throughout the Old Kingdom (a stela set up in the temple refers to statues of Pepi II ‘in the temple of Khentiamentiu’ [O’Connor 1992:89]), only becoming a cult centre dedicated explicitly to Osiris in the First Intermediate Period.