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This article is about the Egyptian
goddess. For the ancient Egyptian symbol, see Eye of Horus.
Two images of Wadjet appear on this carved wall in the HatshepsutTemple at Luxor.
Wadjet (/ˈwɑːdˌdʒɛt/ or /ˈwædˌdʒɛt/; Ancient Egyptian: wꜢḏyt "Green
One"),[1] known to the Greek world as Uto (Koine Greek: Οὐτώ /ˈuːtoʊ/) or Buto (Βουτώ /ˈbuːtoʊ/) among other names including Wedjat, Uadjet, and Udjo [2] was originally the ancient local goddess of the city of Dep.[3] It became part of the city that the Egyptians named Per-Wadjet "House of Wadjet" and the
Greeks called Buto (now Desouk),[4] which was an important site in prehistoric Egypt and the cultural developments of the Paleolithic.
Wadjet was said to be the patron and protector of Lower Egypt, and upon
unification with Upper Egypt, the joint
protector and patron of all of Egypt "goddess" of Upper Egypt. The
image of Wadjet with the sun disk is called the uraeus, and it was the emblem on
the crown of the rulers of Lower Egypt. She was also the protector of kings and
of women in childbirth. Wadjet was said to be the
nurse of the infant god Horus. With the help
of his mother Isis, they protected
Horus from his treacherous uncle, Set, when they took
refuge in the swamps of the Nile Delta. [5]
Wadjet was closely
associated in ancient Egyptian religion with
the Eye of Ra, a powerful
protective deity. The hieroglyph for her eye is shown below; sometimes two are
shown in the sky of religious images. Per-Wadjet also
contained a sanctuary of Horus, the child of the sun deity who would be
interpreted to represent the pharaoh. Much later, Wadjet
became associated with Isis as well as with many other deities.
In the relief
shown to the right, which is on the wall of the Mortuary Temple of
Hatshepsut at Luxor, there are two
images of Wadjet: one of her as the uraeus with her head through an ankh and
another where she precedes a Horus hawk wearing the Pschent, representing the
pharaoh whom she protects.
Contents
·
1Appearance
·
2Etymology
·
3Protector of country,
pharaohs, and other deities
·
4Associations with other
deities
·
5Other uses
·
6See also
·
7Footnotes
·
8References
·
9External links
As the patron goddess, she was associated with the
land and depicted as a snake-headed woman or
a snake—usually
an Egyptian cobra, a venomous
snake common to the region; sometimes she was depicted as a woman with two
snake heads and, at other times, a snake with a woman's head. Her oracle was in the
renowned temple in Per-Wadjet that was dedicated to
her worship and gave the city its name. This oracle may have been the source
for the oracular tradition that spread to Greece from Egypt.[6]
The Egyptian word wꜣḏ signifies
blue and green. It is also the name for the well-known "Eye of the
Moon".[7] Indeed, in
later times, she was often depicted simply as a woman with a snake's head, or
as a woman wearing the uraeus. The uraeus originally had been her body alone, which wrapped
around or was coiled upon the head of the pharaoh or another
deity.
Wadjet was depicted as
a cobra. As patron and protector, later Wadjet often
was shown coiled upon the head of Ra; in order to
act as his protection, this image of her became the uraeus
symbol used on the royal crowns as well.
Another early depiction of Wadjet is as a cobra entwined around a papyrus stem,
beginning in the Predynastic era (prior to 3100 B.C.) and it is thought to be
the first image that shows a snake entwined
around a staff symbol. This is a sacred image that appeared repeatedly in the
later images and myths of cultures surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, called
the caduceus, which may have
had separate origins.
Her image also
rears up from the staff of the "flagpoles" that are used to indicate
deities, as seen in the hieroglyph for "uraeus" and for "goddess" in other places.
The name Wadjet[8] is derived from the
term for the symbol of her domain, Lower Egypt, the papyrus.[9] Its
hieroglyphs differ from those of the Green Crown or Deshret of Lower Egypt only
by the determinative, which in the case of the crown was a picture of the Green
Crown[10] and, in
the case of the goddess, a rearing cobra.
The goddess Wadjet appears in the form of the living Uraeus to anoint your head with her flames. She rises up on
the left side of your head and she shines from the right side of your temples
without speech; she rises up on your head during each and every hour of the
day, even as she does for her father Ra, and through her the terror which you
inspire in the spirits is increased … she will never leave you, are of you
strikes into the souls which are made perfect. - The Book of the Dead[11]
Eventually, Wadjet was claimed
as the patron goddess and protector of the whole of Lower Egypt and became
associated with Nekhbet, depicted as
a white vulture, who held
unified Egypt. After the unification the image of Nekhbet joined Wadjet on the crown, thereafter shown as part of the uraeus.
Wadjet was associated
with the Nile Delta region and was more associated with the world of the
living. She was closely linked to pharaohs as a protective deity. She was
associated, along with other goddesses, as the ‘eye of Ra’. Wadjet
was often depicted as an erect cobra with its hood extended as though she were
ready to strike. At times she was depicted wearing the Red Crown of Lower
Egypt. Wadjet was depicted many times in her cobra
form alongside her Upper Egyptian counterpart Nekhbet, in her vulture form
wearing the Red Crown on wall paintings or on the pharaoh's headdress. [12]
Wadjet as Wadjet-Bastet, depicted as
the body of a woman with a lioness head, wearing the uraeus
Tutankhamun's funerary gold mask depicting Wadjet
in the form of a snake along with Nekhbet in the form of an Egyptian vulture.
An
interpretation of the Milky Way was that
it was the primal snake, Wadjet, the protector of
Egypt. In this interpretation she was closely associated with Hathorand other early deities
among the various aspects of the great mother goddess, including Mut and Naunet. The association with
Hathor brought her son Horus into association also. The cult of Ra absorbed
most of Horus's traits and included the protective eye of Wadjet
that had shown her association with Hathor.
When identified
as the protector of Ra, who was also a sun deity associated with heat and fire,
she was sometimes said to be able to send fire onto those who might attack,
just as the cobra spits poison into the eyes of its enemies.[13] In this role
she was called the "Lady of Flame".
She later became
identified with the war goddess of Lower Egypt, Bastet, who acted as
another figure symbolic of the nation, consequently becoming Wadjet-Bast. In this role, since Bastet was a lioness, Wadjet-Bastet was often depicted with a lioness head.
After Lower Egypt had been conquered
by Upper Egypt and they were unified, the lioness goddess of Upper Egypt, Sekhmet, was seen as
the more powerful of the two warrior goddesses. It was Sekhmet who was seen as
the "Avenger of Wrongs" and "the Scarlet Lady", a reference
to blood, as the one with bloodlust. She is depicted with the solar disk and Wadjet, however.
Wadjet, Horus, Ra and
Sekhmet were connected to the eclipsing binary Algol in the
Calendar of Lucky and Unlucky Days of papyrus Cairo 86637.[14]
Eventually, Wadjet's position as patron led to her being identified as
the more powerful goddess Mut, whose cult had
come to the fore in conjunction with rise of the cult of Amun, and eventually
being absorbed into her as the triple deity Mut-Wadjet-Bastet.
When the pairing
of deities occurred in later Egyptian myths, since she was linked to the land,
after the unification of Lower and Upper Egypt she came to be thought of as the
wife of Hapi, a deity of the Nile, which flowed
through the land.[15]
Wadjet, as the goddess
of Lower Egypt, had a big temple at the ancient Imet
(now Tell Nebesha) in the Nile
Delta. She was worshipped in the area as the 'Lady of Imet'.
Later she was joined by Min and Horus to form a
triad of deities. This was based on an Osiriac model
identified elsewhere in Egypt.[16]
Wadjet is not to be
confused with the Egyptian demon Apep, who is also represented as
a snake in ancient Egyptian religion.
The Nazit Mons, a mountain on Venus, is named for Nazit, an "Egyptian winged serpent goddess".[17] According
to Elizabeth Goldsmith, the Greek name for Nazit was Buto.[18]
·
Ethnoherpetology
·
Eye of Horus
·
Mehen
·
Serpent (symbolism)
·
Snake goddess
·
Snakes in mythology
·
Unut
·
Uraeus
1.
^ Also spelled Wadjit, Wedjet, Uadjet or Ua
Zit
2.
^ Budge, E. A. Wallis (1969). Gods of the Egyptians,
The (Studies in Egyptian Mythology)
3.
^ Wilkinson, Early Dynastic Egypt, p.297
4.
^ Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, 1,
268.18
5.
^ "Wadjet
| Egyptian goddess". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2018-04-19.
6.
^ Herodotus ii. 55 and vii. 134
7.
^ Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache 1,
268.13
8.
^ Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, 1,
268.17
9.
^ Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, 1,
263.7–264.4
10.
^ Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, 1,
268.16;
11.
^ "Wadjet
– Cobra Goddess". 2012-02-20. Retrieved 2018-04-19.
12.
^ "Nekhbet and
Wadjet". www.touregypt.net (in
Russian). Retrieved 2018-04-19.
13.
^ Curl, James Stevens (2013). The Egyptian Revival:
Ancient Egypt as the Inspiration for Design Motifs in the West. Routledge. p. 469. ISBN 978-1-134-23467-7.
14.
^ Jetsu, L.; Porceddu, S. (2015). "Shifting Milestones
of Natural Sciences: The Ancient Egyptian Discovery of Algol's Period
Confirmed". PLOS
ONE. 10 (12): e.0144140 (23pp). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0144140.
15.
^ Ruiz, Ana (2001). The Spirit of Ancient
Egypt. Algora Publishing. p. 119. ISBN 978-1-892941-69-5.
16.
^ Vincent Razanajao, D'Imet à Tell Farâoun : recherches sur la géographie,
les cultes et l'histoire d'une localité de Basse-Égypte
orientale. (English
synopsis)
17.
^ "Nazit
Mons". Gazetteer
of Planetary Nomenclature.
18.
^ Goldsmith, Elizabeth Edwards. Life Symbols as Related
to Sex Symbolism.
Putnam. p. 419.
·
James Stevens Curl, The Egyptian Revival: Ancient
Egypt as the Inspiration for Design Motifs in the West, Routledge 2005
·
Adolf Erman, Hermann Grapow, Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, Berlin 1963
·
Ana Ruiz, The Spirit of Ancient Egypt, Algora Publishing 2001
·
Toby A. H. Wilkinson, Early Dynastic Egypt,
Routledge 1999
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Egyptian goddesses
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This page was last edited on 30 December 2018, at
02:25 (UTC).
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