Word: sekhmet
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...extremely female, if you will, since these were also the goddesses who presided over childbirth. Even more striking is the association of ancient goddesses with nature's original hunters, the predatory animals. In Anatolia, the predator goddess was Kybele, known as the commander of lions. In Egypt she was Sekhmet, portrayed as a lioness whose "mane smoked with fire [and whose] countenance glowed like the sun." Images of goddesses tell us nothing about the role of actual women, but they do suggest that about 3,000 years ago, at the dawn of human civilization, the idea of the fearsome huntress...
Digging into the mysteries of Mut, Tut and Sekhmet...
...statues of Mut-she is sometimes unflatteringly if elegantly depicted as a vulture -have yet been found in the temple that is dedicated to her or on the surrounding grounds. But the site abounds with statues of Sekhmet, the lion-headed goddess whose association with fire, war and pestilence made her one of the most powerful in the Egyptian pantheon...
...Brooklyn archaeologists, this suggests that Sekhmet, who was consort to Ptah, the major god of Egypt during an earlier period, became associated and later identified with Mut, mate of the new king of the gods, Amon. The identification got a boost during the reign of Tutankhamen, who revived the once-suppressed Theban religious cult. Manning speculates that Tut's linking of the temples of Mut and Amon may have been a move to bring harmony and prosperity to a weakened and disordered land. Says Manning: "He had to restore order to Egypt if he was going to rule effectively...
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