Celestial Cow

seh-LES-tee-al cow

egyptian: Mḥt-wrt

Definition

The celestial cow is the Egyptian image of the sky as a great cow — an alternative way of picturing the heavens to the more familiar sky-goddess Nut. In this picture the Sun and the stars ride on the cow's belly, and the sun-god travels along her underside as if along a waterway. The cow is named in different texts as Mehet-Weret ("Great Flood"), Ihet, or simply the Heavenly Cow, and her story is told most fully in the New Kingdom composition called the Book of the Heavenly Cow.

In Tradition

Egyptologists treat the cow as one of Egypt's two main ways of imagining the sky — the bovine sky alongside Nut's human, arched-woman form. The cow-goddess is read as both the sky itself and a maternal, protective figure who gave birth to or carried the sun-god Re. Where Nut swallows and births the Sun, the cow lifts Re into the sky on her back and bears him along her star-marked belly.

In Practice

The celestial cow gives Egyptian sky-watching a second cosmological frame: the same daily journey of Sun, Moon, and stars, drawn on a cow's body instead of a woman's. The Book of the Heavenly Cow, known especially from the tomb of Sethy I, tells how the sky came to be: after humankind rebels against the aging sun-god Re, he withdraws to the sky on the back of the cow, and the air-god Shu holds her up while pairs of supporting gods (the Hehu) prop her four legs at the cardinal points. The stars run along her belly — what the text calls the "ever-luminous stars" — and the solar boat sails among them. The cow Mehet-Weret carries the Sun-disk between her horns and is read as the waterway of the sky that Re and the king sail upon. For an Egyptian-tradition reading, the celestial cow is the bovine sky-vault — the same canopy as Nut, told through a different divine body.

Historical Origin

The bovine-sky image is attested from the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts (PT 1131), with Mehet-Weret as the waterway of the sky. The Book of the Heavenly Cow survives from the New Kingdom — oldest under Tutankhamun (Dynasty 18), fullest in the tomb of Sethy I (KV 17, Dynasty 19); the cow-goddess Ihet appears in Book of the Dead Spell 162. Sources: Allen, *The Egyptian Book of the Dead* (Chicago 1974); Hornung, *Books of the Afterlife* (1999); Wilkinson, *Complete Gods and Goddesses* (2003); Belmonte & Lull, *In Search of Cosmic Order* (2009-2010).

Further Reading

  • T. G. Allen, The Egyptian Book of the Dead Documents in the Oriental Institute Museum
  • Erik Hornung, The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife
  • Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt