Is it possible that the "Neterw" were angels?
Women In Ancient Egypt
General
No society, past or present, did or does value their women like the ancient Egyptians did. Whenever a society values women so highly, equality between men and women is the natural outcome.
The most important aspects/attributes/principals of God were personified by women. The netert (wrongly translated as ‘goddess’), Ma-at, personifies the cosmic-ordering principle. She keeps the universe in balance, order and harmony. Her cosmic power is the source without which the other neterw (gods and goddesses) are functionless and nil.
And there are Isis, Mut, Sekhmet, Nephthys, Hathor, Seshat, and many other female neterw, who personify the greatest aspects of the One Universal God.
Power Behind the Throne
The Egyptian women were entrusted with the civilization. The woman (princess), and not the male, was the legal heir to the throne, and the man she chose to marry, would become the ruling Pharaoh.
The royal authority and supreme direction of affairs were entrusted, without reserve, to women. Throughout Egyptian history, it was the princess who transmitted the solar blood. She was responsible for the purity of the line and for dynastic continuity. Egyptian kings claimed the right to the throne through marriage with the heiress. Egyptians knew that unless women were treated with respect, and made to exercise an influence over society, the manners and morals of men would suffer.
In High Positions
As mentioned earlier, women personified major aspects/attributes of the One God. How much higher can a woman get than that?
Since women were the legal heirs to the throne, they played an important part in the affairs of State, performing as a kind of power broker. The Queens of Egypt sometimes wielded exceptional influence, as advisers to the Pharaohs. Some queens governed Egypt for long durations. Hatshepsut, in particular, is a good example of a woman Pharaoh.
Women could hold any position in the temple. There were priestesses of the neterw. Several of them reached the position of ‘holy women.’
Some of those ‘holy women’ (similar to nowaday saints) had their own special shrines.
As early as the fourth or early fifth Dynasty, there are records of female doctors. One had the title ‘Lady director of Lady physicians’.
The office of scribe was not limited to males; women were known to have held the title, too.
Women enjoyed every right pertaining to property, and had legal status which enabled them to buy, sell and take legal action.
As a Wife
It has been stated by some that the Egyptian priests were only allowed to have one wife, while the rest of the community had as many as they chose. On the contrary, the monuments depict each individual with a single consort. Mutual affection, tenderness and expression of endearment can be noticed by the fond manner, in which they are seated together, and with their children.
Men and women either sat together, or separately, in a different part of the room. They were not kept in the same secluded manner as those of ancient Greece. The Egyptians treated their women very differently, as the accounts of ancient writers and the sculptures sufficiently prove. At some of the public festivals, women were expected to attend, in the company of their husbands or relations.
The ancient Egyptian woman was described best by a widower, writing of his late wife:
She is profitable of speech, agreeable in her conversation, of good counsel in her writings; all that passes her lips is like the work of Ma-at, the netert of Truth, a perfect woman, greatly praised in her city, giving the hand to hall, saying that which is good, repeating what one loves, giving pleasure to all, nothing evil has ever passed her lips, most beloved by all....The historian Diodorus reported that part of the agreement entered into at the time of marriage was, that the wife should have control over her husband, and that no objection should be made to her commands.
An instruction from the New Kingdom (c. 1500 B.C.) affirms Diodorus’ account
Do not control your wife in her house,
When you know she is efficient;
Don’t say to her: 'Where is it? Get it!'
When she has put it in the right place.
Let your eye observe in silence,
Then you recognize her skill:
It is joy when your hand is with her,
There are many who don’t know this.
The woman was referred to as Nebt-Het, literally meaning The Golden (meaning highest/noblest) Lady of the House. There is not a single reference made to a man as the “master of the house”.
In the Osiris Legend, Isis and Osiris, the sister and brother got married. The relationship between Isis and Osiris was purely an allegorical fable. Within a larger cosmology, it can be viewed as a type of divine love. Their relationship is an image of devotion that we confuse with sexuality, and then get frightened by the act of incest.
This concept of devoted love was carried over to common people. Devoted lovers called each other brothers and sisters. The consonants are the same in the ancient Egyptian words for both brother and husband. Likewise, the consonants in the words for both sister and wife are also the same. Since the ancient Egyptian language was written without vowels, this may have also contributed to the confusion of some historians, such as the Greek Diodorus, who reported that marriages, between brothers and sisters, were owing to and inspired by the Isis/Osiris myth!
During certain periods of the ancient history, it was lawful for ancient Egyptians, Athenians and Hebrews to marry a sister by the father’s side, not however, born by the same mother. Very few Egyptians married their half-sister (from the father’s side), and only if she was the legal heir, so as to inherit the throne. The Ptolemies did not observe the restrictions of the father’s side, but Ptolemies were not Egyptians.
The Wise Man, Ptah-hotep, gives the following advice to men:
If thou art a man of note, found for thyself an household, and love thy wife at home, as it beseemeth. Fill her belly, cloth her back; unguent in the remedy for her limbs. Gladden her heart, as long as she lives; she is a goodly field for her lord.
As a Mother
Motherhood was revered in ancient Egypt. The following sage sums it up:
Thou shalt never forget what thy mother has done for thee. ...She bore thee and nourished thee in all manner of ways. If thou forgettest her, she might blame thee, she might lift up her arms to God, and He would hear her complaint. After the appointed months she nursed thee for three years. She brought thee up, and when thou didst enter the school, and was instructed in the writings, she came daily to thy master with bread and beer from her house.
Love, Egyptian Style
The expressions and poses of married couples in Egyptian artwork, show deep feelings of love, affection and warmth. A number of poems express a notable element of romantic love. These external signs of warmth and love, particularly among married couples, are unique in the art of the ancient world.
Egyptian love poetry left us some outstanding outpourings of emotions, by both young lovers and married people.
In Egyptian love-songs the words ‘sister’ and ‘brother’ simply mean ‘beloved’ and do not denote a blood relationship. It is symbolic of the ultimate love made in heaven, between the mythical brother and sister, Osiris and Isis.
The following is a bouquet of some love poems:
‘Let her come to the lotus pond,
My beautiful loved one,
In her transparent shift
Of fine linen.
Let her bathe herself near me
Among the flowers,
So that I may behold her
As her limbs emerge from the Water.’
I shall lie down inside and feign sickness.
My neighbors shall come in to see me
and my girl will come and put the physicians to shame
For she knows my disease.
Moustafa Gadalla
Article found at: http://www.velocity.net/~bastet/women.html
