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Great Goddesses of Egypt
The great goddesses of Egypt inspired magnificent temples and art and a literature that speaks of their supreme importance to the ancients--men and women, royalty and commoners. In this book Barbara S. Lesko follows the changing fortunes, over thousands of years, of the seven most significant Egyptian Nut, Neith, Nekhbet, Wadjet, Hathor, Mut, and Isis. Some appeared in prehistory, and some were later political creations. One became a universally revered goddess of the Greco-Roman world who successfully held her own against Christianity for five hundred years. Although they often assumed human form, some goddesses were associated with animals that Lesko traces back to African clan divinities. Understood as the sun’s heat, the Milky Way, the flood, and the mother of the king of Egypt, the great goddesses also assumed the caring role of protector for deserving humans, assisting with careers, romance, and fertility. They held out the promise of eternal life, and records show that they won fierce loyalty from their followers.
336 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1999
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 17, 2022
Full review to come.
Veredict: borrow it from a library or get a used copy. When you actually start reading it, be prepared for soreness around your eyes the next day (from raising your brows and rolling your eyes so many times).
Merlin Stone's "Ancient mirrors of womanhood" is much better. It has a section about Egyptian goddesses, and unlike Lesko Merlin Stone doesn't force modern bullshit ideologies into ancient Egyptian deities. That book also has detailed information on goddesses Lesko doesn't even mention.
This book contains some useful information, but that info is scanty and it's scattered throughout a Pacific Ocean of garbage and nonsense.
The book is a complete trainwreck. The author has a writing style that resembles the disorganized speech of a schizophrenic (that's not a compliment, in case you can't tell). The book's also full of padding/filler, irrelevant detail (including a lot of speculation about what "primitive" human religious beliefs may have been that has aged especially badly), pointless digressions, and the author's uneducated opinions (very often those opinions contradict what the Egyptians had to say about their own deities in their own words). The author has also omitted several important goddesses (notably Sekhmet and Seshat) for inexplicable reasons.
Veredict: borrow it from a library or get a used copy. When you actually start reading it, be prepared for soreness around your eyes the next day (from raising your brows and rolling your eyes so many times).
Merlin Stone's "Ancient mirrors of womanhood" is much better. It has a section about Egyptian goddesses, and unlike Lesko Merlin Stone doesn't force modern bullshit ideologies into ancient Egyptian deities. That book also has detailed information on goddesses Lesko doesn't even mention.
This book contains some useful information, but that info is scanty and it's scattered throughout a Pacific Ocean of garbage and nonsense.
The book is a complete trainwreck. The author has a writing style that resembles the disorganized speech of a schizophrenic (that's not a compliment, in case you can't tell). The book's also full of padding/filler, irrelevant detail (including a lot of speculation about what "primitive" human religious beliefs may have been that has aged especially badly), pointless digressions, and the author's uneducated opinions (very often those opinions contradict what the Egyptians had to say about their own deities in their own words). The author has also omitted several important goddesses (notably Sekhmet and Seshat) for inexplicable reasons.
March 16, 2020
This unfortunately suffers from implicit bias and a bit of cultural paternalism. :(
For example, when talking about Ancient Egyptian culture and it's spiritual/political relationship with animals, the author comments that Egyptians were very attuned to nature. ???? They were an agrarian culture which lived in an ecology which was abundant in wildlife including various large predators. Of course they would be.
Or when talking about a goddess who is referred to both as primary or first among the gods and also youthful and beautiful, the author assumes there must be an ulterior motive for one of these descipters as they can't both be true. She can't both be oldest and youthful. ???? So if we were speaking of a male deity would "first among the gods" have been converted to "oldest?" And would "oldest" be seen as negative or contrary to "youthful?" We can't know if Egyptian culture had this bias and it shouldn't be applied to our understanding of the goddess unless it's proven to be part of their perspective.
I found myself saying these things A LOT while reading this book:
*(Author says something 'may have' done or been or meant something) Nope.
*Oh my goodness, NO.
*Please don't assume things.
If you're interested in the goddesses I would recommend looking for other resources or goto the source material when possible.
For example, when talking about Ancient Egyptian culture and it's spiritual/political relationship with animals, the author comments that Egyptians were very attuned to nature. ???? They were an agrarian culture which lived in an ecology which was abundant in wildlife including various large predators. Of course they would be.
Or when talking about a goddess who is referred to both as primary or first among the gods and also youthful and beautiful, the author assumes there must be an ulterior motive for one of these descipters as they can't both be true. She can't both be oldest and youthful. ???? So if we were speaking of a male deity would "first among the gods" have been converted to "oldest?" And would "oldest" be seen as negative or contrary to "youthful?" We can't know if Egyptian culture had this bias and it shouldn't be applied to our understanding of the goddess unless it's proven to be part of their perspective.
I found myself saying these things A LOT while reading this book:
*(Author says something 'may have' done or been or meant something) Nope.
*Oh my goodness, NO.
*Please don't assume things.
If you're interested in the goddesses I would recommend looking for other resources or goto the source material when possible.
May 24, 2020
This book is a good resource that coalates information about the places a certain set of goddesses attained in Egyptian history. This work is mostly concerned with presenting the original sources but does a solid job of presenting the opinions of other Egyptologists so the reader gets a well rounded idea of the possibilities.
Any complaints come from the book teetering on the edge of being too scholarly. There seem to be some idea on the part of the author that the person picking up the book knows a bit about Egyptian mythology. If you're a newbie you might get a bit lost sometimes, but will still do okay with the book.
Any complaints come from the book teetering on the edge of being too scholarly. There seem to be some idea on the part of the author that the person picking up the book knows a bit about Egyptian mythology. If you're a newbie you might get a bit lost sometimes, but will still do okay with the book.
August 3, 2024
Most of the book is taken up by chapters on individual deities: Nut, Neith, the Two Ladies (Nekhbet and Wadjet, with other cobra goddesses thrown in), Hathor, Mut, and Isis. A chapter at the beginning traces the evidence for the emergence of Egyptian goddesses in prehistory. The last chapter before the conclusion describes how deities were worshipped in temples and in folk religion. Much of that chapter isn't about goddesses per se, but it does illustrate how deities of both genders fit into the on-the-ground reality of Egyptian life.
Lesko isn't as careful with the evidence as she could be. For instance, she points out that there's no certain evidence that Hathor was worshipped before the Fourth Dynasty (true, though there's a lot of circumstantial and undated evidence suggesting she is older). But then she assumes Isis is older than Hathor, even though the first certain mentions of Isis date to the Fifth Dynasty—apparently on the assumption that the Pyramid Texts, which mention Isis, date to centuries before their first attestation in the Fifth Dynasty (possible but very uncertain), and even though Hathor also appears in the Pyramid Texts!
Lesko also seems biased in favor of giving goddesses a high status. She says she hasn't read the feminist theories about prehistoric goddesses in other cultures. But she clearly favors Fekri Hassan's hypothesis that goddesses were the most important deities in predynastic Egypt, and that their status was largely usurped by the emerging monarchy and the male gods that bolstered it. To her credit, she acknowledges that not all Egyptologists accept that hypothesis, but there are smaller instances of pro-goddess editorializing, along similar lines, throughout the book.
Despite these faults, and although it leaves out or only briefly discusses some second-tier goddesses like Sekhmet, Nephthys, or the cluster of goddesses imported from the Near East, the book fills several gaps in scholarly coverage of the pantheon. I don't know of any English-language sources that survey the evidence about Nut, Neith, or Mut as broadly as this book does. Even a full examination of Isis is hard to come by. For a better, more rigorous treatment of these deities' early history, I recommend Five Egyptian Goddesses: Their Possible Beginnings, Actions, and Relationships in the Third Millennium BCE. But to survey the roles and evolution of each goddess across all of Egyptian history, there is no better single source than this book.
Lesko isn't as careful with the evidence as she could be. For instance, she points out that there's no certain evidence that Hathor was worshipped before the Fourth Dynasty (true, though there's a lot of circumstantial and undated evidence suggesting she is older). But then she assumes Isis is older than Hathor, even though the first certain mentions of Isis date to the Fifth Dynasty—apparently on the assumption that the Pyramid Texts, which mention Isis, date to centuries before their first attestation in the Fifth Dynasty (possible but very uncertain), and even though Hathor also appears in the Pyramid Texts!
Lesko also seems biased in favor of giving goddesses a high status. She says she hasn't read the feminist theories about prehistoric goddesses in other cultures. But she clearly favors Fekri Hassan's hypothesis that goddesses were the most important deities in predynastic Egypt, and that their status was largely usurped by the emerging monarchy and the male gods that bolstered it. To her credit, she acknowledges that not all Egyptologists accept that hypothesis, but there are smaller instances of pro-goddess editorializing, along similar lines, throughout the book.
Despite these faults, and although it leaves out or only briefly discusses some second-tier goddesses like Sekhmet, Nephthys, or the cluster of goddesses imported from the Near East, the book fills several gaps in scholarly coverage of the pantheon. I don't know of any English-language sources that survey the evidence about Nut, Neith, or Mut as broadly as this book does. Even a full examination of Isis is hard to come by. For a better, more rigorous treatment of these deities' early history, I recommend Five Egyptian Goddesses: Their Possible Beginnings, Actions, and Relationships in the Third Millennium BCE. But to survey the roles and evolution of each goddess across all of Egyptian history, there is no better single source than this book.
January 15, 2009
This book covers all of the major goddesses of ancient Egypt and can be considered an essential reference book for anyone researching this field. Ms. Lesko takes you through the various incarnations of these goddesses and shows how their popularity was influenced by political situations and what families from where were in power. A good overview of this topic.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews