Taweret

Summary

Taweret is an Egyptian goddess in the form of a hippopotamus, who guards birth, mother and child. Hers is one of the names of the hippopotamus goddess, whose other names include Ipet and Reret, and the images do not distinguish them. Her body is that of a pregnant female hippopotamus, her back a crocodile's, her feet a lion's and her hands human; she usually holds the sa sign, meaning protection, or the ankh, meaning life. Her chief work is to be mother and nurse: she drives evil away from weddings and births, and helps the sun to rise, since sunrise was sometimes seen as a birth from a mother. She is drawn on the "magical knives", on chairs, headrests and beds, and her amulets have been found in houses at Amarna; on beds she appears with her companion Bes. Global Egyptian Museum, Taweret.

She has no long story in the papyri; she is told in the words spoken at a birth. In the Brooklyn papyrus, a papyrus on childbirth, the words say "Ipet the Great makes her protection", and the goddess says in her own voice: "I am Reret, who subdues with her voice, her voice with an evil roar." In the vignettes of the Book of the Dead she is drawn with the label "Ipet, mistress of protection", and hymns to Ramesses VI and VII call her "Ipet the Great, who gave birth to the gods".

The one report that gives her a story is Plutarch's: as people were leaving Seth and coming over to Horus before the battle, "Thueris", Seth's concubine, also came over to Horus; a serpent pursued her and was cut to pieces by Horus's men, and in memory of it the people of his day threw down a rope among them and chopped it up. In the Egyptians' own stories Seth becomes a male hippopotamus: in The Contendings of Horus and Seth the two change into hippopotamuses and plunge into the water, and later Seth turns into a hippopotamus and wrecks Horus's ship. The Global Egyptian Museum notes that male hippopotamuses were regarded as destructive and associated with Seth.

Her image is also in the sky. The Global Egyptian Museum says that in the New Kingdom she appeared as a constellation of the northern sky, often with a crocodile on her back. The ceiling of the tomb of Senenmut, Hatshepsut's chief official, at Deir el-Bahri carries a guide to the night sky whose figures are constellations or protective deities, and at its foot a hippopotamus stands upright with a crocodile on her back and her hands resting on a post. One of her names in the Egyptian dictionary is "Ipet the Great, who is in the body of Nut", Nut being the sky.

The idea Taweret's image turns on is that the most dangerous animal of the river became the guard of the weakest people. For the Egyptians the male hippopotamus was Seth the destroyer, while the pregnant female stands by the bed of the woman in labour and drives evil away from her with her voice; the heavy pregnant body is itself the guard of pregnancy. So the Egyptians joined her with the great mothers: the Global Egyptian Museum says the name Taweret may date from the early New Kingdom and probably comes from her association with mother goddesses such as Hathor and Isis, and that she often wears the cow's horns and sun disc of Hathor.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Egyptian writes it Tꜣ-wr.t: the article ta, then wr, "great, big", then the feminine t, so the Egyptian meaning is "the great one". The project's Egyptian essay reads it from ʿaẓumat, "she became great", which gives the Egyptian meaning. The letters, on the method, read like this: tā is an Arabic demonstrative for the feminine, as al-Jawharī says: "tā is a noun by which the feminine is pointed to, like dhā for the masculine". And wer-et is wāriya, from wariya: al-Jawharī says "wariya al-mukhkh, the marrow was full", and "a wāriya she-camel, that is, a fat one". So Taweret, on this reading proposed on the method, is "tā al-wāriya", this full, fat one, which is what her image makes her: the female hippopotamus with her heavy pregnant body.

Linguistic Root

Tā and al-wāriya

The Egyptian essay says the Egyptian name means "the great one" and reads it from ʿaẓumat, with ʿ turned into a glottal stop and ẓ into w, plus -ret, grading the reading "likely". Beside it the essay puts thaʾarat, "she took revenge", making Taweret the avenger of her children, and calls that reading interpretive. It compares her with Juno Lucina among the Romans and Eileithyia among the Greeks.

The reading ʿaẓumat hits the meaning and misses the letters. The Egyptian letters are t, the Egyptian ꜣ, w, r and t; those of ʿaẓumat are ʿ, ẓ, m and t. And the Egyptian ꜣ was no glottal stop: Peust says it was a kind of liquid, that when Semitic names are written in Egyptian in the Middle Kingdom it renders Semitic r and l, and that it never corresponds to a Semitic glottal stop. No known witness turns ẓ into w, the m has nothing to answer it, and the r has nothing to answer it in ʿaẓumat. The reading thaʾarat needs the same glottal stop and leaves out the w.

The proposed reading takes the name in two parts. The first is tꜣ, the feminine definite article of Late Egyptian, which began as a demonstrative. The Global Egyptian Museum says the name Taweret may date from the early New Kingdom, and by then the Egyptian ꜣ had weakened: Peust says it merged with j after the Middle Kingdom and was lost in most positions in Coptic. Tā in Arabic is a demonstrative for the feminine: al-Jawharī says "tā is a noun by which the feminine is pointed to, like dhā for the masculine", citing al-Nābigha's "Here, tā is an excuse". The Egyptian article and the Arabic demonstrative are one in their letter and in their work: they point to the feminine.

The second is wr.t: w and r, then the feminine t. Arabic has wariya, and al-Jawharī says "wariya al-mukhkh, when the marrow is full, and a wāriya she-camel, that is, a fat one"; elsewhere "laḥm wārin, fat meat". So w is w, r is r, and t is the feminine ending. The Egyptian word means "great, big, much"; the Arabic means fullness and fatness, a narrower sense, but it is the goddess's image: the female hippopotamus with her full pregnant body.

The reading we propose on the method: Taweret is "tā al-wāriya", this full one. The essay's reading is right in its meaning, because that is the Egyptian meaning. The limit of the proposed reading is that Egyptian wr is wider than fatness: it is great in rank as well as big in body.

Key Mythic Narratives

Taweret and Hathor at Deir el-Medina and Gebel el-Silsila

The Global Egyptian Museum says Taweret was especially revered around Thebes, and that many libation vessels and stelae showing her beside Hathor have been found at Deir el-Medina, the village of the royal tomb-builders. She had a special role at Gebel el-Silsila, 145 kilometres south of Luxor, where the river is very narrow: there she was linked with the annual inundation and is shown in several rock-cut chapels with a woman's face and Hathor's headdress. From the Twenty-sixth Dynasty on she also became a goddess of a month.

Her figurines

The Metropolitan Museum has a limestone figurine of Taweret from the Middle Kingdom, a painted limestone statuette from the early Eighteenth Dynasty, and many amulets of faience and carnelian from the New Kingdom to the Ptolemaic Period. Her image was present in households from the Middle Kingdom to the end of ancient Egypt.

"The mouth of the White Hippopotamus"

In chapter 110 of the Book of the Dead, which describes the Field of Offerings in the hereafter, one place in the vignette is labelled "the mouth of the White Hippopotamus, a thousand iteru is its length", the iteru being an Egyptian measure of distance. There the hippopotamus's name is given to one of the waterways of the other world.

Symbolic Reading

The Egyptian rereading essay says the Egyptians did not worship animals, as is often said, but used animal images as tools to explain the cosmos, as we use symbols in mathematics. Taweret is an example: the hippopotamus was the most dangerous thing people met at the Nile's edge, so its pregnant female was made the image of a mother's protecting strength.

Her body gathers three animals of the river that people feared, the hippopotamus, the crocodile and the lion that comes down to the water; gathered into one body, their danger becomes a guard. And her place in the northern sky sets the guardian who stands by the bed of the woman in labour in the sky as well, above every house.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Mesopotamia has an image that answers Taweret from the other side: Lamaštu, whom Anu created and Ea brought up, enters the house through the door socket, sees the child and seizes it seven times in its belly, and the exorcist commands her with his words to take off her nails and go out to the steppe before Ea the wise reaches her. In Mesopotamia the danger to mother and newborn is a body that enters the house and is driven out by speech; in Egypt a body stands by the bed and drives evil out with its voice.

The Egyptian essay compares Taweret with Eileithyia, the Greek goddess of childbirth, and with Juno Lucina, Juno who brings the newborn into the light, among the Romans; Juno as protector of women in childbirth is on her page.

In Egypt itself Taweret stands with Bes by beds and in birth houses, and wears the crown of Hathor. Her help to the sun at its rising, which was a birth from a mother, is one of the forms of the sun's journey.

Among the Greeks Leto's labour is held up nine days and nine nights because Hera keeps back the goddess of childbirth, and Herodotus calls the goddess of Buto Leto and makes her hide the child Horus from Seth, as Thueris leaves Seth for Horus in Plutarch, in Leto.