Under the aegis of the cow goddess: Mehetweret and her seven creative utterances in the tomb of the general Menekhibnekau
Abstract
The study presents a translation and interpretation of the text providing protection of the goddess Mehetweret and her seven creative utterances, which is currently documented only in the tombs of the priest Iufaa and the general Menekhibnekau in Abusir. The deceased is identified in the text with both Osiris, the god of the dead, and Re, the sun god.
He is also credited with sacred knowledge of the seven creative utterances and their names. The deceased can thus ask them for daily protection as they fly out in the morning with the sunrise, just as they descend to earth each new year with the coming of the Nile flood.
In Menekhibnekau's tomb, the text is part of a decorative program designed to allow the deceased to join the sun god's daily journey through the underworld and the heavens and emerge into new life. Like Re, the deceased needed the protection of very powerful forces during the particularly dangerous transitional moments of sunrise and sunset and the regeneration of the body in the middle of the night.
The cow-goddess Mehetweret and her seven creative utterances are foremost among these powerful protective forces.