Property of Sekhmet

An annotated list of journal articles, and scholarly and popular books, compiled from my own reading. (Last update: 18 May 2010.)

( Inanna/Ishtar BibliographyCollapse )

A small bibliography from my own reading.

( Sekhmet and related goddesses bibliographyCollapse )

To find the postings where these books and journal articles have been referenced, check the authors' names in the tags.

( Partial bibliography for this LJCollapse )

I'm spending a great deal of time over on Tumblr, where I'm dwellerinthelibrary, trying to correctly identify photos - mostly Egyptian stuff - found round the Web. This shift to a visual emphasis has reduced my efforts to fill this blog with random facts. :)

But here's a great snippet from Traversing Eternity (p 413), a collection of translated funerary texts from Graeco-Roman Egypt - specifically, from the Book of Traversing Eternity from which the collection takes its name, a long catalogue of events the deceased will witness or participate in:

"You will behold the weary ones, the four united together in their manifestation as a young bull.
You will see their cows merged together in their form of Anat."

The glossary explains that the "cows" here are the four female members of the Ogdoad, the eight primeval deities of Hermopolis. I was struck by their identification with an imported goddess, one who doesn't seem to have been very significant to the Egyptians. (OTOH the image of Anat as a cow is more familiar.) It seems like a steep promotion to some sort of primeval creatrix. But who is the young bull?

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Mark Smith. Traversing Eternity: texts for the afterlife from Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Cambridge University Egyptian mummy restored with Lego

How Did Humans Figure Out That Sex Makes Babies? (We've always known, apparently.)

The Development and Symbolism of Maya Textiles

Tiny jar identifies mighty Maya queen

Cheese first made at least 7,500 years ago

Two Old Kingdom engraved blocks return home - on one of which is the head of a lioness-goddess with a cobra for a hat.

Online Sleuthing Casts Doubt on 'Gospel of Jesus' Wife'

Chocolate and Human Sacrifice - can't speak to the accuracy of this, but it certainly piqued my interest!

Examination of the Gayer-Anderson cat

Genes reveal grain of truth to Queen of Sheba story

Breakthrough in world's oldest undeciphered writing - proto-Elamite

Check out this Late Period stela:



Here's my best stab at rendering the inscription in English:

"Down! Down! You greedy creature that grabs with both arms for the Eye of Re and the Horus child! Fly to the block of Sekhmet, so that it burns your limbs and cuts off your fingers, and your footprints run away from Egypt, without your son taking your place. If you go to the Lake of Fire as an enemy devouring the Eye of Horus, may the flame be in your body; may she cut off your limbs, may your life on earth be miserable before you. Do not direct your wickedness against the prophets and priests of Haroesis, the prophet Pechrodise, son of mistress of the house Qris."

Sekhmet is captioned "Sekhmet, mistress of executioners' blocks, whose fire threatens all, the great". Set, not unusually, isn't directly named. He appears to have the head of an ass rather than the set-animal; Blok discusses the representation of Apophis as an ass, and also mentions the ass-faced, knife-wielding underworld demon I have inelegantly labelled face out donkey guy. Anywho, I'll have to have a proper crack at the German later. (I wonder what the significance of the lizard and, erm turtle? under his prison is?)

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Blok, H.P. Eine magische Stele aus der Spätzeit. Acta Orientalia 7,8, 1929, pp 7-112.

Read a large chunk of E. Jan Wilson's detailed analysis of the Mesopotamian ideas of "holy" and "pure" (which included a terrific summary of anthropological thought on the concepts). What struck me was the different attitude of the Sumerians to the Egyptians, and, IIUC, the Hebrews: "We are not told, for example, that only priests may enter certain parts of the temple complexes" (p 49), "Presumably, all Sumerians had access to the temple and thus to the realm of the divine, ie to holiness" (p 52). If that's right, it's radically different - an accessible god integrated into the city, rather than "set apart and forbidden".

ETA: Followed this up in Jean Bottéro's book Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia. He writes that it's an open question who was allowed in the temples, but that at the end of the poem Ludlul, the grateful worshipper "wanders around" Marduk's temple Ésagil, "going through one portal after another (there are thirteen in all)", performing rituals and receiving favours. Bottéro concludes that "The temples, at least some of them, were therefore more or less accessible to the common 'faithful', who were free to carry out their devotions there." (pp 118-9)

(He also quotes a priceless bit from the apocryphal Epistle of Jeremiah, reassuring the captive Hebrews that the local gods are merely statues: "Upon their bodies and heads sit bats, swallows, and birds, and the cats also." XD

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Bottéro, Jean. Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia. Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
Wilson, E. Jan. 'Holiness' and 'purity' in Mesopotamia. Kevelaer : Butzon und Bercker ; Neukirchen-Vluyn : Neukirchener Verlag, 1994.

Squeezing in a few notes before New Year's Day, when I start writing my novel in earnest. This time for sure! :D

Fourth Millennium BCE
(roughly, the Uruk Period, 4000-3100)

Westenholz: "Inanna first appears in the late fourth millennium as the patron deity of Uruk, the first urban centre on the Mesopotamian alluvium". (But Beaulieu suggests 'Inanna and Enki' could "reflect the rise of Uruk to hegemony during the second half of the 4th millennium, when Inanna's city replaced Eridu as the main center of urban civilization in the southern alluvium.") She appears in four manifestations, each with its own temple and cult:

• Inanna the Princely (NUN)
  
• Inanna of the Morning (húd)
  
• Inanna of the Evening (sig)
  
• Inanna of the Mountain (kur)

Beaulieu: at Uruk her cult "continued almost uninterrupted until the Hellenistic and Parthian periods". Her name was written MÙŠ. The two manifestations as Venus show that her "astral identity" was "a very old and fundamental aspect of the goddess".

Third Millennium BCE
(including the Early Dynastic period, Sargon's Akkad, and the Ur III period)

Westenholz: Lots of local forms of the goddess, each with its own epithet: "In Kish she was known as Inanna-GAR, in Zabalam, as Inanna-Zabalam." It's in this millennium that the complex identification of the Sumerian Inanna with the semitic Ishtar takes place, and Enheduanna composes her hymns. Inanna was assigned a daughter (Nanaya) and three sons (Lulal, Latarak, and Shara), "although her maternity is of no consequence".

Beaulieu: Inanna is Uruk's most important deity - even superseding An. (Beaulieu discusses their relationship and relative status at length - I'll save that for another posting.) She is closely associated with the fortune of the city and its kings, as described in "the epic cycle centred on Enmerkar, Lugalbanda, and Gilgameš". The name Innin for Ishtar dates from this millennium.

Second Millennium BCE
(including the Old Babylonian and Middle Babylonian periods)

Westenholz: "The multiplication of manifestations... reaches its zenith... a cult of Inanna and/or Ishtar is performed in most major cities". (Beaulieu: the Canonical Temple List includes >79 temples dedicated to local Ištars.) Moreover, her character changes from a "troublesome young woman" into "the queen of heaven". But though Ishtar is the most prominent goddess, she and the other goddesses come second to the male gods. (Early in the millennium her astral manifestation is Ishtar-kakkabum "Ishtar the Star"; by the end it's Ishtar-kakkabi "Ishtar of the Stars". Just throwing this in 'cos I like it.)

Westenholz and Beaulieu: From the Middle Babylonian, cities have two major goddesses, a "lady" (beltu) and a "queen" (šarratu); Ishtar usually takes one of these roles. For example, at Babylon, Marduk's consort was Zarpanitu and Ishtar-of-Babylon was his "paramour". But at the same time, the two goddesses were identified - similarly, in late Uruk, Antu absorbed Ishtar's attributes (this syncretism is described in the hymn The Exaltation of Ishtar - not to be confused with Enhueduanna's Exaltation of Inanna!).

First Millennium BCE
(including the Neo-Babylonian period)

Beaulieu: "The tutelary goddess of Uruk appears under five different appellations in texts from the Eanna archive: Ištar, Ištar-of-Uruk, the Lady-of-Uruk (Beltu-ša-Uruk, Innin, and Beltiya." "In Neo-Babylonian Uruk it was Ištar who fulfilled the role of lady (beltu), and Nanaya that of queen (šarratu)." Nebuchadnezzar II states that he returned Ishtar to Uruk and restored her temple, Eanna - I'll save the possible abduction of the goddess ("who drives a team of seven lions") for another posting.

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Beaulieu, Paul-Alain. The pantheon of Uruk during the neo-Babylonian period. Leiden ; Boston : Brill : STYX, 2003.

Westenholz, Joan Goodnick. "Inanna and Ishtar in the Babylonian World". in
Leick, Gwendolyn (ed). The Babylonian World. New York : Routledge, 2007.

Dimitri Meeks points out that since the horse was introduced into Egypt from the Near East, it makes sense that horse-riding deities in Egypt are also from the Near East. The most prominent rider is Astarte, who's actually better known from Egyptian examples than from Near Eastern ones. He highlights three in particular:

• Hibis, where Astarte and Reshep are part of the pantheon of Heracleopolis;
  
• Edfu, where a lion-headed Astarte drives a chariot drawn by four horses - Meeks says she is "clearly identified with the goddess Sekhmet";
  
• Tod, where Astarte is shown in the form of Hathor and called "the one who controls the horse".
  

Meeks outlines the connections between these goddesses, royalty, and royal victory in battle - so, for example, at Denderah Hathor is given the title "mistress of royalty and mistress of horses".

Other gods were also horse-riders or charioteers, such as Horus the Saviour, shown in cippi riding a chariot drawn by griffins; and Thoth, called "master of horses" in a Ramesside inscription. Also at Tod, Raettawy is called "valiant in horseback battle".

ETA: Bit more on Sekhmet and royalty. Janet H. Johnson, reviewing Philippe Germond's Sekhmet et la Protection du Monde, discusses Sekhmet's dual character as destroyer and protector, with her violent rage "channeled into annihilating the enemies of the sun-god"; similarly, "the wrath of the king against his enemies was the transferred destructive wrath of Sekhmet being used to maintain Ma'at." It was the king's job, at the New Year's festivities, to make sure Sekhmet was pacified and her anger therefore safely aimed in the right direction.

When it came to ordinary folks struck by the goddess' ire in the form of sickness, Germond suggests, doctors worked alongside her appeasing w'b-priest. OTOH, in Les Pretres-Ouab De Sekhmet Et Les Conjurateurs De Serket, Frédérique von Känel argues that the w'b-priests were themselves medical doctors; for example, in the Papyrus Ebers, the w'b-priest is described taking the patients pulse.

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Clagett, Marshall. Les Pretres-Ouab De Sekhmet Et Les Conjurateurs De Serket by Frédérique von Känel [review]. Isis 76(4) Dec 1985 pp 628-629.

Johnson, Janet H. Sekhmet et la protection du monde by Philippe Germond [review]. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 104(2) Apr-Jun 1984, pp. 361-362.

Meeks, Dimitri. "L’introduction du cheval en Égypte et son insertion dans les croyances religieuses". in Gardeisen, Armelle (ed). Les Équidés dans le monde Méditerranéen Antique (Actes du colloque organisé par l’École française d’Athènes, le Centre Camille Jullian, et l’UMR 5140 du CNRS, Athènes, 26-28 Novembre 2003). Monographies d’Archéologie Méditerranéenne Occasional Publications 1, 2005, pp 51-59.