Unut
| Unut in hieroglyphics | |||||||
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Unut / Wenut Wnwt The hurrying one? / Unut on the king's forehead |
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Unut (also Wenut ) is an ancient Egyptian goddess who is already documented in the early dynastic period . From the Old Kingdom onwards she embodied the crown goddesses Nechbet and Wadjet as well as Isis and Hathor as the eye of Re .
Mythological connections
In the early dynastic period, Unut is attested to with the saying "The only one (Wˁ) leaves his eye intact". After the unification of the empire, she represented the Nebti goddesses whom the king offered to the sun god Re . It was attached to the head of "her master" Re between the lower and upper Egyptian crowns . In return, Unut von Re was symbolically attached to the crown of the king ( Pharaoh ) as his emblem of power.
The voices of the deceased joined in her and spoke through her. In addition, Unut performed the ritual of solution with the deceased . As part of the royal ascension to heaven, she consolidated the head of the deceased ruler.
Geographical reference
Unut originally comes from the 15th Upper Egyptian Hasengau , where she was venerated as the patron goddess and "mistress of Wenu", the later Hermopolis Magna . Already in the 4th dynasty she is depicted on one of the well-known triad, which shows the king Mykerinos together with the goddess Hathor and alternating goddesses, including Unut.
Representations
Unut was portrayed as a rabbit-headed person with two knives in his hands. Their sacred animal was the desert hare. In other depictions she appeared as a lion, as a human figure or as a mummy with a rabbit's head. The meaning of Unut also emerged early in the deity Thoth .
See also
literature
- Christian Leitz u. a .: LGG ; Vol. 2: ʿ-b . Peeters, Leuven 2002, ISBN 90-429-1147-6 , pp. 390-391.
- Richard H. Wilkinson: The world of the gods in ancient Egypt. Faith, power, mythology (= The complete gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt ). Theiss, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-8062-1819-6 .
Remarks
- ↑ As an additional title: Unut-em-tep-en-nesu.