Goddess' story

In the Egyptian society the woman could have important position of the state: no way was precluded.
We so find female pharaohs and priestesses whose fame has won over the passing of the centuries thanks to their unique personalities. The Egyptian civilization shows once more its high level of evolution putting the woman at the man’s same level. Moreover, man wasn’t considered a man without a woman.
This concept was included in the vision of the Egyptian dualism that corresponded to an harmonic equilibrium in agreement with the universal equilibrium.
The male part and the female part both had absolutely the same value and were indissoluble.
And not only on earth, in the world of the living, but even in the sky, in the pantheon of the gods.
This equality even in afterlife finds its confirmation in the analysis of the conception band to the principle of creation.
One of the most ancient myths concerning the origin of the world saw Atum, the only living in the universe, use his hand for the only creating act possible, the one of masturbation, considered as the symbol of the creating power of the mind and of the hand, the latter the maker of all human creations.
With the evolvement of theology the hand became the symbol of the female element in the divine mind and was identified with the goddess Iusaas, Atum’s consort, with whom the god created the first divine couple made by Shu, the male divinity who represented the bright atmosphere, the air and the light, and Tefnut, the female entity who indicated humidity.
From this first divine couple were later generated Geb, god of the earth, and Nut, goddess of the sky.
The Egyptian theologians elaborated various theories on the creations of the gods and of men, that were diffused in the world, according to the historical period and to the different political centres.
A costant element was the complementarity between the male and female part.
For example, for the priests in Hermopolis, the vital principle was formed by four couples of gods, male and female: Num and Naunet who represented the humidity, Kek and Keket the darkness, Hehu and Hehet the space infinite and finally the two hidden entities Amon and Amonet.
Remaining in the divin ambit, the woman as a goddess was represented with different facets and could express terrible and dangerous sides or arouse love and compassion.
In the “myth of the destruction of men”, a complicated female entity: the goddess Hathor.
This divinity was sant by Ra against those men who had threatned to drive him from his throne for his advanced age. Hather flung herself against those mortal beings who had uselessly taken refuge in the desert, with an incredible cruelty. The goddess found them and killed them, pleased at the sight of her victims’ blood. A version of this myth sees “the far away Goddess” as Tefnut who escapes in the Nubian oriental desert, where she took the appearance of a wild lioness, and spreads terror among the people.
The divine fury seemed to be endless but Shu and Thot, the heavenly messengers sent by Ra, were able to get near the terrible beast and entertained it with fascinating stories among which the famous one of the lion and the mouse that has reached us, thanks to the writer La Fontaines’s re-elaboration.
The goddess was touched and decided to return home but she certainly couldn’t go to Egypt as a bloodthirsty lioness. Thot so calmed the divinity’s raige pouring wine in the waters of Philae, where she drank. She, believing the wine was blood, drank it until she placated her thirst, she got drunk and was finally calm. When she awoke she had her positive aspect and was welcomed in Egypt as goddess Hathor with great celebrations and honors Hathor in fact had a beneficial aspect.
She was considered the mother of the sun, the heavenly cow that swallowed the diurnal star in the evening and delivered it in the morning, matron of dance, of music and of love. The Egyptians often inoked her “so she procured a hearth for the vergin and a husband for the widow”.
Among the beneficial goddesses in the Egyptian pantheon we can remember Isis and Mut.

Isis is Osiris’s bride and she represents the loving wife, who brings back to life her husband, who had been killed by the terrible Seth, and at the same time she was the affectionate and caring mother, who protects her son Horus.

This image had an incredible success: the loving mother, with her son Horus on her knees, was worshipped also by the Copts and passed to represent the christian vergin still present in our iconography.

As a divine mother we also find the goddess mut, Anon’s bride, whose Egyptian name means precisely mother.
The goddesses on earth were instead represented by the queens, the pharaohs’ brides, who had the role to complete the sovereign’s majesty and divinity.