A name and a job. Nothing else survives — and that is the finding, not a gap in our work. Arrives with the Book of the Dead.
Men-t
possibly one of the Meskhenu
What the archive holds
In Budge's list of "The Names of Osiris in Every Shrine Wherein He Dwelleth," items 128–132 are a run of Meskhenu — birth-goddesses:
128. Ta ftu Meskhenu amu Abtu · 129. Meskhen Aat · 130. Meskhen Seqebet · 131. Meskhen Ment (?) · 132. Meskhen Nefert [budge-1904]
Budge's own question mark sits on the reading of Ment.
So the census name men-t most likely corresponds to the third of four named Meskhenu — an aspect of Meskhenet, the goddess of the birth brick, appearing here as one of a set of four inside a list of Osiris's names.
That is a chain of three inferences: that men-t is Budge's Ment, that Budge's uncertain reading is right, and that "Meskhen Ment" is a distinct figure rather than an epithet. The entry records the chain rather than the conclusion.
Why this is interesting even unresolved
The four Meskhenu sit inside a list of the names of Osiris. Birth-goddesses, enumerated among the titles of the god of the dead.
That is not obviously a contradiction — Egyptian funerary thought treats death as a birth to be assisted, and the same Meskhenet who attends a delivery attends the rebirth of the dead. But it is a striking place to find them, and it is the sort of detail that survives only because someone printed the whole list.
The record
Every claim above traces to a row here. Source, exact place in that source, and what it actually supports.
| Source | Locus | Attests |
|---|---|---|
[budge-1904] | *Gods of the Egyptians* II, Names of Osiris, nos. 128–132 | four **Meskhenu** — Aat, Seqebet, **Ment (?)**, Nefert — among the names of Osiris |
Sources
[budge-1904]— Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (1904), vol. II. Public domain, archived. The reading of Ment carries Budge's own query.
Open questions
- Confirm that census
men-tis Budge's Ment. The identification is plausible and unverified. - Resolve Budge's query on the reading.
- Establish whether the four Meskhenu are distinct goddesses or four epithets of meskhenet.
- Ask why birth-goddesses appear among the names of Osiris. The answer is probably that death is a delivery, but nothing archived says so.
Cite this entry
Research grade: ○name-only — A name and a function in a spell list. That is all that survives.
"Men-t", The Egyptian God Corpus,
graded name-only, retrieved 2026-08-10.