In
Egyptian mythology,
Wadjet, or the Green One
(Egyptian ; also spelt
Wadjit, Wedjet,
Uadjet or Ua Zit and in Greek,
Udjo, Uto, Edjo,
and Buto among other names), was originally the
ancient local goddess of the city of Dep, which became part of the
city that the Egyptians named Per-Wadjet,
House of Wadjet, and the Greeks called Buto
, a city that
was an important site in the Predynastic
era of Ancient Egypt and the cultural
developments of the Paleolithic.
She was said to be the patron and protector of Lower Egypt and upon
unification with Upper Egypt, the joint protector and patron of all
of Egypt with the "goddess" of Upper Egypt. The image of Wadjet
with the sun disk is called the
uraeus, and
it was the emblem on the crown of the rulers of Lower Egypt.
As the patron goddess, she was associated with the land and
depicted as a snake-headed woman or a
snake—usually an
Egyptian
cobra, a poisonous snake common to the region; sometimes she
was depicted as a woman with two snake heads and, at other times, a
snake with a woman's head.
Her oracle was in the
renowned temple in Per-Wadjet
that was dedicated to her worship and gave the city
its name. This oracle may have been the source for the
oracular tradition that spread to Greece from Egypt.
The
Going Forth of Wadjet was celebrated on
December 25 with chants and songs. An annual
festival held in the city celebrated Wadjet on
April 21. Other important dates for special worship
of her were
June 21, the
Summer Solstice, and
March 14. She also was assigned the fifth hour of
the fifth day of the moon.
Wadjet was closely associated in the
Egyptian pantheon with
Bast, the fierce goddess depicted as a
lioness warrior and protector, as the sun goddess whose
eye later became the eye of Horus, the eye of
Ra, and as the Lady of Flame. The hieroglyph for
her eye is shown below; sometimes two are shown in the sky of
religious images. Per-Wadjet also contained a sanctuary of
Horus, the child of the sun deity who would be
interpreted to represent the pharaoh. Much later, Wadjet became
associated with
Isis as well as with many other
deities.
In the
relief shown to the right, which is on the wall of the Hatshepsut Temple at Luxor
, there are
two images of Wadjet: one of her as the uraeus sun disk with her head through an ankh and another where she precedes a Horus hawk
wearing the double crown of united Egypt, representing the pharaoh
whom she protects.
Protector of country, pharaohs, and other deities
Eventually, Wadjet was claimed as the patron goddess and protector
of the whole of
Lower Egypt and became
associated with
Nekhbet, depicted as a
white vulture, who held the same
title in
Upper Egypt. When the two parts
of Egypt were joined together, there was no merger of the deities
as often occurred, both beliefs were retained and became known,
euphemistically, as the
two ladies, who were the protectors of
unified Egypt. After the unification the image of Nekhbet joined
Wadjet on the crown, thereafter shown as part of the
uraeus.
The ancient Egyptian word
Wedjat
signifies blue and green. It is also the name for the well known
Eye of the Moon, which later became the
Eye of
Horus and the
Eye of Ra as additional sun deities
arose. Indeed, in later times, she was often depicted simply as a
woman with a snake's head, or as a woman wearing the uraeus. The
uraeus originally had been her body alone,
which wrapped around or was coiled upon the head of the pharaoh or
another deity.
Depicted as an Egyptian cobra she became confused with
Renenutet, whose identity eventually merged with
hers. As patron and protector, later Wadjet often was shown coiled
upon the head of
Ra, who much later became the
Egyptian chief deity, in order to act as his protection, this image
of her became the uraeus symbol used on the royal crowns as
well.
Another early depiction of Wadjet is as a cobra entwined around a
papyrus stem, beginning in the Predynastic era (prior to 3100 B.C.)
and it is thought to be the first image that shows a
snake entwined around a staff symbol.
This is a sacred image that appeared repeatedly in the later images
and myths of cultures surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, called the
caduceus, which may have had separate
origins.
Her image also rears up from the staff of the "flag" poles that are
used to indicate deities, as seen in the
hieroglyph for
uraeus above and for
goddess in other places.
Associations with other deities
An interpretation of the
Milky Way was
that it was the primal snake, Wadjet, the protector of Egypt. In
this interpretation she was closely associated with
Hathor and other early deities among the various
aspects of the great mother goddess, including
Mut and
Naunet. The association
with Hathor brought her son Horus into association also. The cult
of Ra absorbed most of Horus's traits and included the protective
eye of Wadjet that had shown her association with Hathor.
When identified as the protector of Ra, who also was a sun deity
associated with heat and fire, she sometimes was said to be able to
send fire onto those who might attack, just as the cobra spits
poison into the eyes of its enemies. In this role she was called
the
Lady of Flame.
She later became identified with the war goddess of Lower Egypt,
Bast, who acted as another figure
symbolic of the nation, consequently becoming
Wadjet-Bast. In this role, since
Bastet was a
lioness, Wadjet-Bast
often was depicted with a lioness head.
When Lower Egypt had been conquered by Upper Egypt and they were
unified, the lioness goddess of Upper Egypt,
Sekhmet, was seen as the more powerful of the two
warrior goddesses. It was Sekhmet who was seen as the
Avenger
of Wrongs, and
the Scarlet Lady, a reference to
blood, as the one with bloodlust. She is depicted with the solar
disk and Wadjet, however.
Eventually, her position as patron led to her being identified as
the more powerful goddess
Mut, whose cult had
come to the fore in conjunction with rise of the cult of
Amun, and eventually being absorbed into her as the
Mut-Wadjet-Bast triad.
When the pairing of deities occurred in later Egyptian myths, since
she was linked to the land, after the unification of Lower and
UpperEgypt she came to be thought of as the wife of
Hapy, a deity of the
Nile, which
flowed through the land.
Etymology
The name Wadjet is derived from the term for the symbol of her
domain, Lower Egypt, the
papyrus.
Its hieroglyphs differ from those of the Green Crown (
Red Crown) of Lower Egypt only by the
determinative, which in the case of the crown was a picture of the
Green Crown and, in the case of the goddess, a rearing cobra.
References
- Adolf Erman, Hermann Grapow, Wörterbuch der
ägyptischen Sprache, Berlin 1963
- Ana Ruiz, The Spirit of Ancient Egypt, Algora
Publishing 2001
- Toby A. H. Wilkinson, Early Dynastic Egypt, Routledge
1999
- James Stevens Curl, The Egyptian Revival: Ancient Egypt as
the Inspiration for Design Motifs in the West, Routledge
2005
Footnotes
- Wilkinson, op.cit., p.297
- Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, 1, 268.18
- Herodotus ii. 55 and vii. 134
- Wilkinson, op.cit., p.292
- Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache 1, 268.13
- Curl, op.cit., p.469
- Ana Ruiz, op.cit., p.119
- Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, 1, 268.17
- Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, 1,
263.7-264.4
- Wörterbuch der ägyptischen Sprache, 1, 268.16;
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