Taweret is one of those strange and unusual secondary goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon. Her very appearance is very unusual and quite frightening as she is an accumulation of body parts taken from the most dangerous and dreaded animals of Egypt: her body is the one of a hippo, her limbs are those of a lion, her back and tail are those of a crocodile, and her head is either the one of a hippo or the one of a crocodile. Add to that the fact she has the breast of a human woman, walks on her hind legs like a human, and sometimes human hands (or even a woman’s head!), and the strangeness grows stronger.
You might be surprised to learn that this monster uniting all the worst fears of the Ancient Egyptian was actually a positive, helpful and beloved deity: Taweret was a protectress goddess who helped and defended women when they were giving birth. Her role as a goddess of motherhood and pregnancy can be seen in her silhouette: large and heavy human breasts, a round and prominent belly. She was the spirit of feminine fecundity, and she was depicted holding in her hands (or paws) the Sa symbol, the symbol of protection – Taweret was even sometimes nicknamed “the mother that birthed all the gods”! (Taweret itself means “The Great One” – Taweret is actually, for once, her proper Egyptian name, since the Greek name, still used in France today for example, is Thoueris). The reason Taweret was depicted in such a monstrous form was because the Egyptian used the apotropaic logic. Taweret had elements taken from the most dangerous animals of Egypt because she was the ferocity of the mother ready to do anything to defend her child. Sometimes she was depicted with the head of a roaring lioness and holding a dagger in her hand – it was because she battled and destroyed the wicked spirits and evil demons that tried to harm the newborn or the mother in labor.
Taweret was a VERY popular goddess that all women prayed to and thanked – from the lowest-class mother to the queen of Egypt herself, all were helped by Taweret who clearly had no social bias whatsoever. Small statues of Taweret or amulets in her shape surrounded all childbirths. As a goddess of the house and the family, Taweret was often depicted alongside the god Bes, another strangely-shaped familiar god, that I do plan on talking about later. Taweret and Bes were actually merely two of the host of deities that looked over each childbirth: Taweret and Bes were here to defend the mother and the baby against evil spells and wicked spirits, Hathor was here to ease the pain and accelerate the labor, Khnum was here to make sure the labor started at the right time, not before and not after the pregnancy was to end, Bes also helped the woman when it came to expelling the placenta – and I won’t even talk of Isis, Nephtys, Hequet, Nekhbet, Mut, Neit, and all the other goddesses of motherhood… Taweret, beyond protecting the mother/baby and helping with the labor, also had the power to help the lactation and the breast-feeding of the baby: there was a type of small figurine of Taweret with a hole in one of its breasts, that had to be filled with milk, and from the miniature teat the milk would fall drop by drop. This was a magical amulet that was supposed to ensure the mother would keep lactating for as long as the statue dropped her liquid.
Since Taweret is the hippo-goddess, I will talk a bit more about hippos in Ancient Egypt, because the hippopotamus is an… ambiguous beast. Taweret and Seth are actually the two “hippo gods”, and reflect the two sides of the beast: Taweret is the female, positive, protectress, nurturing hippopotamus, while Seth is the male, aggressive, destructive and killing hippopotamus. Yes, the hippopotami were actually needed for the ecosystem of Egypt – for example, by eating the plants growing in the swamps of the Nile, they allowed a passageway for the waters of the flood to fertilize the lands nearby, and thus worked in the shaping and orientation of the arms of the Delta ; their mass extermination would mean a great fracture and unbalance of the Egyptian ecosystem… But Ancient Egyptians didn’t know that, and tried as much as they could to kill all the hippos they could find. Because hippos were perceived as threats and dangers, either direct (they attack, mauled and devoured the people that went in the Nile, either swimming or on boat), either indirect (hungry hippos could devour entire fields in one night). Yes, the hippopotami were considered sacred animals and divine beasts… But only in one nome of Egypt, the one of Papremis. Hippos would only be considered kindly if they were female, since there was the whole “benevolence and fertility” thing. But a male hippo? No mercy, no pity. Especially if it is a WHITE MALE HIPPO! Gosh, those were pure evil and the embodiment of wickedness for Ancient Egyptians. The hippo was, for an Ancient Egyptian, a cursed animal, enemy of both the pharaoh and the gods – in fact, the hippo was the only beast thought to be able to challenge the great power of the pharaoh.
This was because of an incident where the first pharaoh of Egypt, Menes, was killed by a hippopotamus he was hunting – ever since, Egyptians thought that the hippo was the servant of Seth, god of disorder and chaos, and notorious mythological pharaoh-killer. When you see Egyptian paintings of a hippo holding a crocodile in his mouth, it is actually an allegory for the death of Menes, since Menes was the founder of a crocodile-cult. The association of the hippopotamus with violence and murder manifests itself in the myth surround Seth’s various political treacheries. Most people know the story of how Seth killed his brother Osiris by locking him up in a box and throwing him in a river – but older variants of the legend rather talk of Seth drowning Osiris by taking the shape of a hippo and dragging him down the Nile. One of the most famous episodes of the battle between Seth and Horus is notably the breathing-holding contest, where the uncle and the nephew both turned into hippopotami to see who could stay the longest under water. It is no surprise that it was by taking the shape of a hippo that the usually good and kind Horus turned berserk with rage, so much he beheaded his own mother… And in another legend, this time a boat race opposing Horus and Seth, the latter turned into a hippo to try to destroy his rival’s boat, openly cheating. If it wasn’t for Taweret, the hippo would only be known as the devil-monster of Ancient Egypt…
Interestingly, there are other hippopotamus-goddesses associated with childbirth and mother: Ipet, Reret, Hedjet… But they are very obscure figures we know barely anything about, so either they were very early and ancient goddesses that were “absorbed” within the popular Taweret, either they were just alternate names and identities of Taweret all along. In fact, in my personal books, they go with this second explanation, listing Hedjet (The White One), or Ipet (The Nurse) as epithets of Taweret rather than separate goddesses. As a little trivia, Reret means “The Sow”, because for the Egyptians hippos were actually considered “water-pigs” (which ties to the Seth symbolism, as the pig was another one of the sacred animals of Seth) – which I find hilarious because the name “hippopotamus”, which is the Greek name of the animal, means “water-horse”.
While Taweret did not have any myth or legend associated to herself for a very long time, starting with the New Kingdom some stories were invented to include this popular deity in the mythology. One of those stories is a variation of the “exiled Eye of Ra” legend, a tale that is usually told about other goddesses such as Tefnut. In this story, the Eye of Ra becomes angry with Ra for one reason or another, and leaves Egypt for Nubia, taking the shape of a lioness and hiding in the desert. Ra, not knowing what to do without his Eye (which acted as its bodyguard and executioner) does everything he can to appease the Eye and have her return to Egypt. This is the traditional story – now, the New Kingdom variation claims that upon returning to Egypt, the Eye of Ra turned into a female hippo – Taweret – and brought as a gift of reconciliation the flood of the Nile. This story might be why one of her nicknames is “Mistress of the Pure Water”. A Late Period legend also claims that Taweret and Bes both nursed together Horus for Isis, being referred to as “the sow and the dwarf” – but this is very clearly a VERY late addition to the Egyptian myths (as I said in my previous posts, Nephthys was usually the one filling the role of “nurse of Horus for Isis”).
