Friday, February 20, 2015
Ring featuring Set, Lord of Nubt
8:10pm


Goodison Bronze ring inscribed with the name of Set, Lord of Nubt, Dynasty 18
(My B/W image created from reference to museum website photo)

My newfound enthusiasm for Hathor hasn't dimmed my enthusiasm for gathering all the images of Set. So I was thrilled to learn of a new Set sighting, at the Atkinson museum.

There's an interesting story behind this and other pieces. I'd wondered why the piece was called a "Goodison bronze ring". There's a reason:

The Goodison Egyptology Collection was named after Anne Goodison of Liverpool, England. Ms. Goodison collected more than 1000 pieces during two trips to Egypt, based on the advice of Rev. Greville J. Chester, who had assisted in acquiring Egyptian antiquities for the British Museum. Goodison displayed the pieces in her home until she died in 1906. From there, the pieces went to the Bootle Museum. However that museum closed in the nineteen-seventies. Sadly, the pieces were in storage from then until just recently. British lottery funding allowed a new gallery to be established for them at the Atkinson museum in Merseyside.

Julia Thorne has a photo-filled blog post about her visit to the Atkinson gallery.

Saturday, February 21, 2015
Quote about Hathor and Ma'at
5:47pm

    

"Of great importance too is the association of 'vitality' (nefer) with Hathor and Maat, the two solar goddesses intimately connected with the throat and heart.1 Amun-Re is said to 'wear Maat' like an amulet at his throat, she rests on his breast. And guarding this vital region of his body she becomes his nourishing food:

"Your food is Maat, your drink is Maat
Your bread is Maat, your beer is Maat2

"Nurturing the vital life of the solar god, Maat manifests in the nutritive throat region when food offerings are brought. So, when bringing the god offerings, the king invokes the goddess who assists the ingestion of food:

"Receive Maat so that
   you may satisfy your heart.
This your Meret-goddess,
   who does not leave you.
The throat is before you every day
   so that you may live from her.3

"But as both are daughters of Re, Maat cannot be separated from Hathor. The guiding influence of Maat needs the energizing vitality and life-blood of Hathor to maintain her way of the world." - Alison Roberts, My Heart My Mother, Northgate Publishers 2000, (Pages 122-123)

Footnotes:
2. The 'offering of Maat' text in Amun-Re's cult is published in A Moret, Le rituel du culte divin journalier en Égypte d'après les Papyrus de Berlin et les textes du Temple de Séti Ier, à Abydos. Paris 1902, 138-47. For Maat's association with the throat see Bergman, Ich bin Isis, 182-90

3. H Junker and E. Winter, Das Geburtshaus des Tempels der Isis in Philä 2. Vienna 1965, 293, 1-4; Bergman, Ich bin Isis, 187. (Speech of the king whilst whilst offering Maat to Amun).

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