Tawaret

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Tawaret

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....
, Taweret (also spelt Taurt, Tuat, Taueret, Tuart, Ta-weret, Tawaret, and Taueret, and in Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
, T?????? "Thoeris" and Toeris). Her name means (one) who is great. When paired with another deity, she became the demon-wife of Apep

Apep

In Egyptian mythology, Apep was an evil demon, the deification of darkness and chaos , and thus opponent of light and Ma'at , whose existence was believed from the Middle Kingdom of Egypt onwards....
, the original god of evil. Since Apep was viewed as residing below the horizon, and only present at night, evil during the day then was envisaged as being a result of Taweret's maleficence.

As the counterpart of Apep, who was always below the horizon, Taweret was seen as being the northern sky, the constellation

Constellation

A constellation is a group of stars that appear to have a physical proximity in the sky. The stars in a constellation are often vastly distant from each other, but they appear close to each other from the perspective of Earth....
roughly covering the area of present-day Draco

Draco (constellation)

Draco is a constellation in the far northern sky. Its name is Latin for dragon. Draco is circumpolar star for many observers in the northern hemisphere....
, which always lies above the horizon.

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Does anyone have a printed source for the statement that Taweret was seen as the wife of Apep? Would...

Encyclopedia

In Egyptian mythology

Egyptian mythology

Greek language

Apep

Constellation

Draco (constellation)

Draco is a constellation in the far northern sky. Its name is Latin for dragon. Draco is circumpolar star for many observers in the northern hemisphere....
, which always lies above the horizon. Thus Taweret was known as mistress of the horizon, and was depicted as such on the ceiling of the tomb of Seti I

Seti I

Menmaatre Seti I was a Pharaoh of Ancient Egypt , the son of Ramesses I and Queen Sitre, and the father of Ramesses II. As with all dates in Ancient Egypt, the actual dates of his reign are unclear, and various historians claim different dates, with 1294 BC – 1279 BC and 1290 BC to 1279 BC being the most commonly used by scholars today...
in the Valley of the Kings

Valley of the Kings

The Valley of the Kings is a valley in Egypt where, for a period of nearly 500 years from the 16th century BC to 11th century BC, tombs were constructed for the Pharaoh and powerful nobles of the Conventional Egyptian chronology#New Kingdom ....
.

In their art, Taweret was depicted as a composite of all the things the Egyptians feared, the major part of her being hippopotamus, since this is what the constellation most resembled, with the arms and legs of a lioness, and with the back of a crocodile. On occasion, later, rather than having a crocodile back, she was seen as having a separate, small crocodile resting on her back, which was thus interpreted as Sobek

Sobek

Sobek was the deification of crocodiles, as crocodiles were deeply feared in the nation so dependent on the Nile River. Egyptians who worked or travelled on the Nile hoped that if they prayed to Sobek, the crocodile god, he would protect them from being attacked by crocodiles....
, the crocodile-god, and said to be her consort.

Early during the Old Kingdom

Old Kingdom

The Old Kingdom is the name commonly given to that period in the 3rd millennium BCE when Ancient Egypt attained its first continuous peak of civilization in complexity and achievement ? this was the first of three so-called "Kingdom" periods, which mark the high points of civilization in the lower Nile Valley ....
, the Egyptians came to see female hippopotamuses as less aggressive than the males, and began to view their aggression only as one of protecting their young and being good mothers, particularly since it is the males that are territorially aggressive. Consequently, Taweret became seen, very early in Egyptian history, as a deity of protection in pregnancy and childbirth. Pregnant women wore amulet

Amulet

An amulet , a close cousin of the talisman consists of any object intended to bring good luck and/or protection to its owner.Potential amulets include: Gemstone or simple Gemstone, statues, coins, drawings, pendants, jewelry ring, plants, animals, etc.; even words said in certain occasions?for example: vade retro satana?, to repe...
s with her name or likeness to protect their pregnancies. Her image could also be found on knives

Knife

A knife is a handheld sharp-edged instrument consisting of a handle attached to a blade that is used for cutting. Knives were used at least Stone Age, as evidenced by the Oldowan tools....
made from hippopotamus ivory

Ivory

File:Ivory decoration.jpgIvory is formed from dentine and constitutes the bulk of the teeth and tusks of animals such as the elephant, hippopotamus, walrus, mammoth and narwhal....
, which would be used as wands in ritual

Ritual

A ritual is a set of repeated actions, often thought to have symbolic value, the performance of which is usually prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community by religious or political laws because of the perceived efficacy of those actions....
s to drive evil spirits away from mothers and children.

In most subsequent depictions, Taweret was depicted with features of a pregnant woman. In a composite addition to the animal-compound she was also seen with pendulous breasts, a full pregnant abdomen, and long, straight human hair on her head.

As a protector, she often was shown with one arm resting on the sa symbol, which symbolized protection, and on occasion she carried 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....
, the symbol of life, or a knife, which would be used to threaten evil spirits.

(623-595 BCE), in Nubia.]]As such a protector, Taweret also was given titles reflecting a more positive nature, including Opet (also spelt Ipet, Apet, and Ipy), meaning harem, and Reret (also spelt Rert, Reret, seen as the offspring of Nut

Nut (goddess)

In the Ennead mythology, Nut , was the goddess of the sky. Her name means Night. Some of the titles of Nut were Coverer of the Sky, She Who Protects, Mistress of All, and She Who Holds a Thousand Souls....
)

As the hippopotamus was associated with the Nile

Nile

The Nile is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the List of rivers by length in the world.The Nile has two major tributary, the White Nile and Blue Nile, the latter being the source of most of the Nile's water and silt, but the former being the longer of the two....
, these more positive ideas of Taweret allowed her to be seen as a goddess of the annual flooding of the Nile and the bountiful harvest that it brought. Ultimately, although only a household deity

Household deity

A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in pagan religions as well as in folklore across many parts of the world....
, since she was still considered the consort of Apep, Taweret was seen as one who protected against evil by restraining it.

When Set

Set (mythology)

In Ancient Egyptian religion, Set is an ancient god, who was originally the god of the desert, Storms, Darkness, and Chaos. Because of the developments in the Egyptian language over the 3,000 years that Set was worshipped, by the Greek period, the t in Seth was pronounced so indistinguishably from th that the Greeks spelled it a...
fell from grace in the Egyptian 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....
, as a result of being favoured by the (xenophobically

Xenophobia

Xenophobia is an intense dislike and/or fear of people from other countries. It comes from the Greek language words ????? , meaning "foreigner," "stranger," and f???? , meaning "fear." The term is typically used to describe a fear or dislike of alien s or of people significantly different from oneself....
) hated Hyksos

Hyksos

The Hyksos were an Asiatic people who invaded the eastern Nile Delta, in the Twelfth dynasty of Egypt initiating the Second Intermediate Period of Ancient Egypt....
rulers, he gradually took over the position of Apep, as the god of evil. With this change away from Apep, Taweret became seen only as the concubine of Set. She was seen as concubine rather than wife, as Set already was married to the extremely different goddess, Nephthys

Nephthys

In Egyptian mythology, Nephthys is the Greek form of an epithet . Nephthys, therefore, is a member of the Great Ennead of Heliopolis , a daughter of Nut and Geb....
, to whom no parallels could be drawn. It then was said that Taweret had been an evil goddess, but changed her ways and held Set back on a chain.

As the goddess of motherhood, Taweret was eventually assimilated into the identity of Mut

Mut

Mut, which meant mother in the ancient Egyptian language, was an ancient Egyptian mother goddess with multiple aspects that changed over the thousands of years of the culture....
, the great-mother goddess.