THE TEMPLE OF TAWARET
Hippopotamus-goddess, protectress of women in child-birth.
Her name means "the great one", rendered into Greek as Thoueris. According to Plutarch, Tawaret was the concubine of the god Seth but deserted him for Horus' side in the dispute over the Egyptian throne. This episode perhaps reflected the differentiation between the beneficent Tawaret and the male hippopotamus as a manifestation of Seth, a destructive force for boats on the Nile,a nd in the cornfields adjoining the habitat of the Nile marshes.
Her iconography is composite :
the head of a hippopotamus, the legs and arms of a lion, the tail of a crocodile
and human breasts. This ferocious appearance deters malevolent forces from
harming women at the time of labour and childbirth. Tawaret often rests one arm
of the 'sa'-amulet which indicates "protection".
Her well-disposed nature made
Tawaret a great favourite with ordinary Egyptians. Charms of glazed composition
in the shape of the goddess, with suspension loops, were manufactured on a large
scale to be worn by pregnant women. In these figurines her association with
childbirth is emphasised by the goddess's own fulsome belly. Vases moulded into
the form of the goddess had a perforation at one of her nipples so that milk,
magically endowed by being in the effigy of Tawaret, could be poured out to
accompany a spell. In magical texts the goddess can be referred to as the
"reret" or "sow", benign and protective towards the child
Horus, and so invoked on behalf of children poisoned by scorpion stings.
Tawaret becomes a cosmic goddess in her title "mistress of the horizon" which emphasises her as the pharaonic constellation of the Hippopotamus, placed by the Egyptians in the northern hemisphere of the sky. An excellent painting of the goddess in this astronomical role is on the ceiling of the sarcophagus chamber in the tomb of Seti I (dynasty XIX) in the Valley of the Kings