#renenutet

Stele dedicated by two women to the snake goddess Renenutet

New Kingdom, 19th Dynasty, ca. 1292-1290 BC.

Renenutet

Although serpentine in form, Renenutet (Egyptian for ‘snake who nourishes’) was a popular and beneficent deity. Protective in nature and of a nurturing rather than venomous disposition, she was a goddess of the harvest and a divine nurse. In the Old Kingdom Renenutet was venerated as a guardian of the king in this life and in the beyond, being identified, like Wadjet, with the flame-breathing royal uraeus and also the king’s robe ‘of which the gods are afraid’. In the latter aspect she came to be sometimes associated with the bandages of the mummy. Her aspect as a goddess of fertility and harvest is clearly denoted in her epithets ‘lady of the fertile land’, ‘lady of the threshing floor’ and ‘lady of the granaries’, and her role in this area may have originated in the imagery of the serpent who protects the crops and store grain alike. Renenutet was also identified with the household and family life in her role as provider, nourisher and as a nurse of infants. The interrelationships of the goddess with other deities were extensive. In the Fayum Renenutet came to be linked with Sobek and Horus as a member of a triad named by the Greeks Hermouthis, Sekonopos and Ankhoes. As a grain goddess she was identified as the mother of Osiris in his form of the child Nepri, and in the Book of the Dead Renenutet is said to be the mother of Horus by Atum and thus came to be identified with Isis, with whom she shared the trait of divine nurse. Her associations with children also identified her with Meskhenet as a birth goddess and with Hathor whose headdress she wore. In the New Kingdom Litany of Re she appears in the underworld as the ‘Lady of Justification’ and in this form she may be associated with the goddess Maat. Finally, in the Late Period, like the god Shay, Renenutet was associated with the idea of fate and destiny, deciding not only the length of an individual’s life but also many of its events.

The iconography of Renenutet is most frequently that of an erect cobra with a sun disk and horns atop its head, often with two tall plumes surmounting the solar disk. The goddess may also be depicted anthropomorphically as a woman or a woman with a snake’s head, standing or enthroned and sometimes holding or nursing a child which may be her son Nepri or a more generalized infant. In vignettes of the Litany of Re Renenutet is depicted as a mummiform being with the head of a cobra, through this is a specialized iconography not usually applied to the goddess. Sometimes she is the object of veneration of minor gods as in a granary at Karnak where the god Hapy was shown presenting offerings to her. Terracotta figures of the Ptolemaic Period depict the goddess as a form of Isis with a snake’s head rising from a woman’s body or with a woman’s head atop a snake.

Primeval One in the house of offerings Daughter of Ra, She who gives the name (Ren) She who creates the great throne of Ra At the beginning of all things that the horizon holds Lady of the harvests, She created food and barley She who increases the grain and makes it sprout Lady of the residence and Merciful to visitors Great One of Feasts The beautiful divine serpent who slays evil

Flocking Together #65

Dromaeosaurus/Ceratosuchops