Statue of Sekhmet
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On the west bank of the Nile river in city Luxor, more than seventeen statues of Sekhmet were discovered around the temple of Amenhotep III. Each statue is a sculpture in the round and larger than life-size. Most of them are broken but the one in Royal Ontario Museum is in better condition. It is called “The statute of Sekhmet”.
The statue was dated at 1360 BCE, in New Kingdom, Ancient Egypt. They were craved from a block of polished black rock called granodiorite. This lion-headed goddess with chipped nose is seated on a throne, with arms on her legs. A wig covered her head with two hanks fell on each side of her shoulder. Hieroglyphs were carved on each side of her throne.(“British Museum”)
Sekhmet is a goddess of destruction but also healing. The statue was assumed to be part of the regular ritual. But if we perceive an art piece like this with only focus on the function of it, we missed a lot of precious information. We might draw a quick conclusion that it is a simply religious tool and the decoration for the temple. In that way, we would consider the Ancient Egyptian culture simple and primitive. However, the statue of Sekhmet contains more historical value. It is an example of complex culture and well-developed visual language system. This paper will discuss the role of god and goddess in the religion system of Egyptian culture and the visual language used in this statue.
To understand the role of gods and goddess in Egyptian culture, we have to consider the interrelated beliefs and religion in Ancient Egyptian culture. Ancient Egyptian had polytheist beliefs. The concept of god or goddess originated from sensation to nature. “The trees and springs, the stones and hill-tops, the birds and beasts, were creatures like himself (Ancient Egyptian), or possessed of strange and uncanny powers of which he was not master. Nature thus makes the earliest impression upon the religious faculty, the visible world is first explained in terms of religious forces, and the earliest gods are the controlling forces of the material world.”(Breasted 4) Such belief deeply impacted the spiritual and social formation. In order to maintain the harmony order of the society, they carried out religious obligations to worship the gods and goddess. The developments of rituals and the mythology formed a complex religion system. Each god and goddess deliberate different definition either in the appearance or the name in Hieroglyphic.)
According to the myth, Sekhmet is the eye of the sun god Re. Her name “Sekhmet” means “She who is powerful”. She is the goddess of warrior who was associated with war, destructive, disease as well as recovery. She, with cat goddess Bast and Hathor, are said to be the oldest religious being in Ancient Egypt. (Monaghan 201) Her characteristic are raged, mighty and fury. She was sent by sun god re to kill all the evil human being; Therefore, she had another title called “Lady of Slaughter”.
One of the central part in Egyptian life is the cults to please gods and goddess. The egyptians are revered but are in a sense of fear of the goddess and her destructive power. The priests has to performed daily ritual in-front of different statues of her in order to appease her fury. They treated the statues as a living figure, therefore they feed and change clothes for these statues. Most of the rituals were practiced in temple. Moreover, only priest and people who were in higher social statue could enter the inner room to revered the statues of god. For Ordinary people, they would join the celebration, but there are social hierarchy in the connection with religious practice. (Stokstad, and Cothren 66) As a result, she appeared in statues and wall carvings in various way and time throughout Egyptian period. There are around 700 similar statues of Sekhmet erected in the temple of King Amenhotep III. The numerous number of statues preserved implied her significance in Egyptian religion. “Fiery, fecund, and magical, the energy of life itself- the lion goddess protected the pharaoh. More statues of her remain in Egypt that of any other divinity.” (Monaghan 203 ) The king collected many statues of Sekhmet to protect himself. Another assumption is that the king had health problems