My Heart My Mother: Death and Rebirth in Ancient Egypt

by Alison Roberts

My Heart My Mother looks at many different aspects of Egyptian religion from the role of Hathor-Sekhmet, the serpent eye goddess, in the cult of Osiris, to the reliefs in the temple at Abydos, and more general discussions of temple life, ancestor ritual, death, rebirth and regeneration. An original piece of work on female divinities and their role in the passage of the pharaohs from death to rebirth that takes us beyond the New Kingdom period and into the Greco-Roman world.

Genres: Egypt, Egyptology

272 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2000

Reviews

[DAJ]

This book is a follow-up to Roberts' earlier book, Hathor Rising, about feminine divine power in ancient Egypt. Whereas that book focused on the early New Kingdom, this one discusses the Ramesside period (the latter half of the New Kingdom) and the role that female deities played in the complex afterlife beliefs found in funerary texts from the period.

The book doesn't focus very closely on its subject. It discusses a loosely connected variety of topics, such as the Memphite Theology (centering on the male god Ptah), on the assumption that it was a product of the Ramesside period, and the rites performed at Abydos for Osiris. In both those cases Roberts points out the role of the relevant female deities, but when she does so it feels like something of an afterthought. The latter half of the book is better, as it has a built-in thematic structure: the journey of the sun god through the underworld as described in the funerary texts.

The last couple of chapters discuss alchemy, one of many esoteric traditions that arose in Greco-Roman times and were influenced, to varying degrees, by ancient Egyptian religion. She points out similarities between alchemical traditions and the transfiguration of the soul in Egyptian afterlife beliefs. In particular, she compares the transformation of the sun god in the Book of the Earth, in which the fiery Eye goddess seems to play a role, to the way metalworking and crucibles are depicted in other Egyptian sources. These similarities are interesting, but they don't seem strong enough by themselves to prove a direct connection. The most extensive study of connections between Egyptian religion and alchemy, Becoming Gold: Zosimos of Panopolis and the Alchemical Arts in Roman Egypt, doesn't reach as far back as the New Kingdom, which ended nearly 1500 years before Zosimos was born, and I doubt there's enough evidence to determine when the Egyptians began to link metallurgy with religion.

This book and its predecessor do give a sense of how female deities fit into ancient Egyptian beliefs. As much as Roberts wants to emphasize goddesses, though, it feels as if femininity was a major undercurrent in Egyptian theology rather than a central feature. Osiris and Ra were the agents of resurrection, even if Isis, Nut, and Hathor played large supporting roles. Things changed in the Late and Ptolemaic periods, even if Hathor herself was overshadowed by Isis, but Roberts can't cover that subject because she limits her scope to the New Kingdom. And because of the rather unfocused writing style, one has to pick out the nuggets of information related to the goddesses, rather than getting a coherent summary of the subject. For that reason, I think these two books are best used as supplements to other works on the Egyptian concept of femininity, such as Dancing for Hathor and, if you can find it, Patterns of Queenship in Ancient Egyptian Myth and History.

[Narkitsa Orada]

It's a really interesting, vibrant introduction to Egyptian afterlife beliefs --- but also rather purple prose, so much so that it becomes hard to read at times.