Satis

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Satis

In Egyptian mythology

Egyptian mythology

Ancient Egyptian religion encompasses the various religious beliefs and rituals practiced in ancient Egypt over at least 3,000 years, from the Predynastic Egypt until the adoption of Coptic Christianity in the early centuries Common Era....
, Satis (also spelt Satjit, Sates, Satet, and Sati) was the deification of the flood

Flood

A flood is an overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land, a deluge. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide....
s of the Nile River, and her cult originated in the ancient

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an Ancient history civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile in what is now the modern nation of Egypt....
city of Swenet, now called Aswan

Aswan

Aswan , Egyptian language: Swenet , Coptic language: Swan; Greek language: Syene; ) is a city in the south of Egypt, the capital of the Aswan Governorate....
on the southern edge of Egypt

Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
. Her name means she who shoots forth referring to the annual flooding of the river. She was an early war, hunting

Hunting

Hunting is the practice of pursuing living animals for food, recreation, or trade. In present-day use, the term refers to lawful hunting, as distinguished from poaching, which is the killing, trapping or capture of the hunted species contrary to law....
, and fertility

Fertility goddess

The fertility goddesses are the female deities to watch over and promote fertility, pregnancy, and birth in many Polytheism cultures. In some cases these deities were directly associated with sexual intercourse, and in others they simply embodied related attributes....
deity who was seen as the mother of the Nile River, Anuket

Anuket

In Egyptian mythology, Anuket originally was the personification and goddess of the Nile river, in areas such as Elephantine, at the start of the Nile's journey through Egypt, and in nearby regions of Nubia....
, and a protector of southern Egypt.

One of her titles was She Who Runs Like an Arrow, which is thought to refer to the river current, and her symbols became the arrow and the running river.

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Encyclopedia

In Egyptian mythology

Egyptian mythology

Flood

Ancient Egypt

Aswan

Egypt

Hunting

Fertility goddess

Anuket

Crown (headgear)

A crown is the traditional symbolic form of headgear worn by a monarch or by a deity, for whom the crown traditionally represents Political power, legitimacy, Crown of Immortality, righteousness, victory, Roman triumph, resurrection, honour and glory of life after death....
of Upper Egypt

Upper Egypt

File:Ancient Egypt map-en.svgUpper Egypt is a narrow strip of land that extends from the Cataracts of the Nile section of Upper Egypt, between El-Ayait and Asyut is sometimes known as Middle Egypt....
, the Hedjet

Hedjet

Hedjet is the formal name for the White Crown of Pharaoh Upper Egypt. The crown was white and, after the unification of Ancient Egypt, it was combined with the Deshret of Lower Egypt, with the Nile Delta to form the Pschent, the Double Crown of Egypt....
, with gazelle

GAZelle

A GAZelle is a series of mid-sized trucks, vans and buses made by Russian car manufacturer GAZ. GAZelles are similar to the later launched GAZ Sobol and GAZ Valdai line of vans and light trucks....
or antelope

Antelope

Antelope are ruminant hoofed mammals of the family Bovidae in the order of even-toed ungulates. These animals are spread relatively evenly throughout the various subfamily of Bovidae and many are more closely related to cows or goats than to each other....
horns, or as an antelope, a fast moving creature living near the banks of the river in the southern portion of Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt was an Ancient history civilization in eastern North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile in what is now the modern nation of Egypt....
. She also was depicted with a bow and arrows.

Other interpretations say her primary role was that of the war goddess, a guardian of Egypt's southern (Nubian) frontier and killing the enemies of the Pharaoh with her arrows.

She usually is depicted as holding an ankh

Ankh

The ankh was the Egyptian hieroglyphic character that read "eternal life", a triliteral sign for the consonants Ayin-Nun -?a'. Egyptian gods are often portrayed carrying it by its loop, or bearing one in each hand, arms crossed over their chest....
also, due to her association with the life giving flooding of the Nile. Consequently, it is true that Satis acted as a fertility goddess, thus granting the wishes of those who sought love. Satis is also described as offering jars of purifying

Purification

Purification is the process of rendering something pure, i.e. clean of foreign elements and/or pollution, and may refer to:* List of purification methods in chemistry...
water. Later she became regarded as one of the consorts of Khnum, the god identified as the guardian of the source of the Nile, with whom she was worshipped at Elephantine

Elephantine

Elephantine is an island in the Nile, located just downstream of the Cataracts of the Nile at at the southern border of Ancient Egypt. This region is referred to as Upper Egypt because the ancient Egyptians oriented themselves toward the direction from which the river flowed....
(the First nome

Nome (Egypt)

A nome was a subnational administrative division of ancient Egypt. Today's use of the Greek nome rather than the Egyptian language term sepat came about during the Ptolemaic Egypt period....
of Egypt

Egypt

Egypt is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia. Covering an area of about , Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Red Sea to the east, Sudan to the south and Libya to the west....
), indeed the centre of her cult was nearby, at Sahal, another island of the Nile. Since she was most dominant at the southern end of Egypt, she became regarded as the guard of Egypt's southern border with Nubia

Nubia

Nubia is a region in Southern Egypt along the Nile and in what is now northern Sudan. Most of Nubia is situated in Sudan with about a quarter of its territory in Egypt....
.

Satis's child was Anuket

Anuket

In Egyptian mythology, Anuket originally was the personification and goddess of the Nile river, in areas such as Elephantine, at the start of the Nile's journey through Egypt, and in nearby regions of Nubia....
, goddess of the Nile River herself, who formed the third part of the Elephantine triad of deities when formed.

After Khnum became considered a form of Ra

Ra is an ancient Egyptian Solar deity . By the Fifth dynasty of Egypt he became a major deity in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the noon, with other deities representing other positions of the sun....
, Satis became known as the Eye of Ra. This eye had begun as the wedjat, advanced to being called the Eye of Horus

Eye of Horus

The Eye of Horus or is an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection and royal power from deities, in this case from Horus or Ra. The symbol is seen on images of Horus' mother, Hathor, and on other deities associated with her....
, and finally being called the Eye of Ra as the importance of the cults changed the nature of the pantheon

Egyptian pantheon

Most Egyptologists today side with Sir Flinders Petrie that Egyptian religion was strictly polytheistic. His contemporary adversary, E. A. Wallis Budge, however, thought Egyptian religion to be primarily monotheistic where all the gods and goddesses were aspects of the God Ra, similar to the Trinity in Christianity and devas in Hinduism....
during the long history of Ancient Egypt.