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Reinterpreting the Influence of the Feminine in Ancient Egypt

From its earliest indications, goddesses held superior position in the religious pantheon, with little or no comment on male consorts. Rather than strictly "mother goddesses", early Egyptian goddesses such as Neith, Hathor and Nut, held sway as the overwhelming rulers of their elements (specifically the watery void, the day-sky and the night sky) and later male gods were enclosed within their realms as would be children enclosed within the womb of the mother.

Goddesses WERE the creative principle that gave life, and males were often a more passive element that had to be "sparked" into the creative process by the feminine principle. Egyptian mythology makes much of the fact that later male creator gods attempt to recreate this "enclosing function" in their creation of the world, and end up in a replication of the female birthing function (such as Atum placing his own seed into his mouth to incubate it and give life to the world).

Later periods show identification of females with such values and virtue concepts as ma'at, the power of words in utterance and writing, and the duality/synthesization of conflicting values as mercy and devastation into feminine forms. The concept of power with a feminine face was altered over the course of the Egyptian history to that of trivializing and "pedestalizing" women and their contributions to fit an increasingly male and war-like ruling class.

It is hard to examine the place and importance of women in a system we do not fully comprehend. It is made even more difficult by the fact that much of the original myths of goddesses of Egypt have been overlaid with later overtone of a more patriarchal society and structure. However, in the language of myth, we can derive the primitive concepts of the importance of the female within a society, albeit from a more ancient time even to the ancient Egyptian. From these concepts, we can determine what was valued and what was despised as a quality in women (and men), and how that quality was either diminished or transferred to men as a desired quality while diminishing its original feminine identification.

This online paper is an ongoing work in progress, and is extrapolated from research performed by the Author and presented to the American Research Center in Egypt Annual Meeting, in 1995. All rights are reserved by the Author.