Amunet
| Amunet | ||||||||||
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 Amunet wearing the red crown; a modern drawing based on depictions from antiquity | ||||||||||
| Name in hieroglyphs |
or
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| Major cult center | Thebes Hermopolis (as a member of the Ogdoad) | |||||||||
| Consort | Amun | |||||||||
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Amunet (/ˈæməˌnɛt/) or Imnt (The Hidden One in hieroglyphics; also spelled Amonet or Amaunet; Koinē Greek: Αμαυνι)[2][3] is a primordial goddess in ancient Egyptian religion.[4][5] Thebes was the center of her worship through the last dynasty, the Ptolemaic Kingdom, in 30 BCE. She is attested in the earliest known of Egyptian religious texts and, as was the custom, was paired with a counterpart who is entitled with the same name, but in the masculine, Amun. They were thought to have existed prior to the beginning of creation along with three other couples representing primeval concepts.
Description and history
[edit]Primeval counterparts
[edit]The goddess originated as a female doublet of the god Amun.[4] Female doublets are distinguished from their male counterparts mainly by the feminine ending of their name. They did not a receive a cult worship of their own until the late period.The most famous Female doublets are the four pairs of the Ogdoad of which Amunet was originally a part of.[6] Her name, jmnt, is a feminine noun that means "The Hidden One".As a member of the Ogdoad of Hermopolis, she represented aspects of the primeval existence before the creation: Amunet was paired with Amun—whose name also means "The Hidden One", with a masculine ending (jmn)—within this divine group, from the earliest known documentation.[4] Such pairing of deities is characteristic of the religious concepts of the ancient Egyptians. In early concepts known as the Ogdoad, the primeval deity group to which they belonged as "Night" (or as the determinative D41 meaning "to halt, stop, deny", suggesting the principle of inactivity or repose),[7] was composed of four balanced couples of deities or deified primeval concepts.[8]
The Pyramid Texts, the earliest known religious texts of Ancient Egypt, mention "the beneficent shadow of Amun and Amunet":[9]
O Amun and Amunet! You pair of the gods, who joined the gods with their shadow.
— PT 446c
The German Egyptologist Kurt Sethe suggestes that the names Amun and Amaunet were originally used as epithets for the twin pair Shu and Tefnut, who, in the Heliopolitan tradition, were the first children of the creator god Atum. Sethe further proposed that the eight primeval gods were established in the early religion of Memphis as the manifestations of the creator-god Ptah. The theology of Memphis placed Ptah on the top of the creation chain by making him the embodiement of the primordial waters from which Atum was born.[10] riginally, Amunet was intended as the consort of Amun, just as the other female members of the Ogdoad formed pairs with their male counterparts. The cosmogonic text Theb. T. 283b describes the emergence of the female members of the Ogdoad with the following words: "The Eight came into being there (in Thebes), consisting of their four men and one woman for each."[11]
The move of the cult of Amun and Amunet from Hermopolis to Thebes likely occurred no earlier than in the 11th Dynasty. The earliest records of Theban worship of Amun appear during the reign of King Intef the Great, who expanded Theban control northward, seizing Abydos and pushing the frontier to the 10th nome.At that time, Hermopolis, the home of the Ogdoad and Amunet as one of its members, belonged to the kings of th 10th dynasty who ruled from Heracleopolis Magna. The establishment of a distinct cult for Amun and Amunet in Thebes may have been a strategic move by the Thebans to undermine their rivals by appropriating a deity of significant importance to them.It is possible that a Theban king established a new sanctuary for Amun in Thebes to claim the god’s support and strengthen his rule. Amun’s role as an oracle deity may have also positioned Thebes as a competing religious center against Hermopolis [12]
Cult becomes localized
[edit]By at least the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt (c. 1991–1803 BC), Amunet often was superseded by Mut as Amun's partner, as cults evolved or similar ones in other regions were merged following Mentuhotep II's reunification of Egypt—but Amunet remained locally important in Thebes, where Amun was worshipped.[4] In that capitol of the unified country she was seen as a protector of the king, playing a preeminent role in rituals associated with the royal coronation (khaj-nisut) and Sed festivals (heb-sed) celebrating its well-celebrated anniversaries,[5] and priests were dedicated to Amunet's service at Karnak, Amun's cult center.[13]
In the Festival Hall of Thutmose III (c. 1479–1425 BC), Amunet is shown with the fertility god Min while leading a row of deities to visit the king in the anniversary celebration.[5] In spite of Amunet's stable position as a local goddess of Egypt's most important city, her cult began to have very little following outside the Theban region that developed into a dominant religious center for the unified country.[4]
Amunet was depicted as a woman wearing the Deshret "Red Crown of Lower Egypt" and carrying a staff of papyrus—as in her colossal statue placed during the reign of Tutankhamun (c. 1332–1323 BC) into the Record Hall of Thutmose III at Karnak. The reason for this iconography is uncertain.[4] At that time, the cult of Amun was being restored after being displaced by worship of Aten during the reign of Akhenaten.
Although she remained a distinct deity as late as the Ptolemaic Kingdom (323–30 BC), in some late texts from Karnak Amunet was syncretized with Neith and she was carved suckling pharaoh Philip III of Macedon (323–317 BC) who appears as a divine child immediately after his own enthronement, onto an exterior wall of the eighteenth dynasty Festival Hall of Thutmose III at Karnak.[5]
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Gallery
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Colossal statue of Amunet erected by Tutankhamun in Karnak
References
[edit]- ^ Hart, George (2005). The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. Taylor & Francis. pp. 136–137. ISBN 978-0-203-02362-4.
- ^ Daniel, Robert W. (2013). Two Greek Magical Papyri in the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden: A Photographic Edition of J 384 and 395 (=PGM XII and XIII). Springer-Verlag. p. 64. ISBN 978-3-663-05377-4.
- ^ Henrichs, Albert (2013). Papyri Graecae magicae / Die griechischen Zauberpapyri. Walter de Gruyter. p. 123. ISBN 978-3-11-095126-4.
- ^ a b c d e f Wilkinson (2003), pp. 136–137.
- ^ a b c d Hart (1986), p. 2.
- ^ Hornung, Erik (1982).Conceptions of God in ancient Egypt : the one and the many. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. pp. 85-86
- ^ Budge, Wallis A., The Gods of the Egyptians: Or, Studies in Egyptian Mythology, 1904, volume 1
- ^ Hart (1986), p. 148.
- ^ "ANCIENT EGYPT : Amun and the One, Great & Hidden". www.maat.sofiatopia.org. Retrieved 2018-04-25.
- ^ Sethe, Kurt Heinrich (1929). Amun und die acht Urgötter von Hermopolis eine Untersuchung über Ursprung und Wesen des aegyptischen Götterkönigs. Berlin: Verlag der Akademie und Wissenschaft. pp.34-41
- ^ Sethe (1982), p.86
- ^ Sethe (1982), pp.116-117
- ^ Wilkinson (2003), p. 136.
Bibliography
[edit]- Hart, George (1986). A Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-05909-7.
- Wilkinson, Richard H. (2003). The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-05120-8.