The Twelve Thoueris Goddesses

The census this corpus is built on lists a group called "The Twelve Thoueris goddesses" and supplies, in place of a roster, two names and a parenthesis:

(first: Ami-pet-seshem-neterit, second: Ami-utchat-saakhu-Atemt)

Two of twelve. This page records what happened when the corpus went looking for the other ten.

What was searched

Every archived source, for every element of both names and for the group label [budge-1904]:

Nothing. Not a fragment of either name, and no occurrence of the group as a group.

Budge's own list-chapter is thorough — he prints the gods of the cubit, the days of the month, the months, the epagomenal days, the hours of the day and night, the winds, the senses, the planets, the dekans, the star-gods of both hemispheres, the zodiac, the gods in the tomb of Seti I, and the gods of the Theban recension [budge-1904]. A twelve-member Thoueris group is in none of them. The dekans were checked specifically, since a twelve-part list of goddesses with compound names is what a decanal list looks like; the dekan names (Tepa-Kenmut, Kenmut, Kher-khept-Kenmut, Ha-tchat, Pehui-tchat…) are unrelated.

Thoueris herself is very well attested

The goddess is not in doubt. Thoueris is the Greek form of Ta-urt — Taweret — the hippopotamus goddess of childbirth, and this corpus now has her at ● full.

Budge gives her a coloured plate captioned "Ta-urt (Thoueris)," an archaic breccia statue in the British Museum that he takes as proof "its cult is coeval with Egyptian civilization," a place beside the birth-couch of Hatshepsut, a role in the last vignette of the Theban recension, and an appearance on the Metternich healing stele [budge-1904].

So the group's patron is one of the best-evidenced goddesses in the corpus. It is the twelve that cannot be found.

What this probably is

Stated as a hypothesis, because that is what it is.

The two surviving names have the shape of decanal or hour-goddess names — long compounds beginning Ami- ("she who is in…"), of the kind that fill Ptolemaic and Roman temple ceilings. Egypt produced a great many such lists in its latest periods: twelve or thirty-six or seventy-two goddesses, each assigned a division of the sky or the calendar, each with a compound name naming its station.

If that is what these are, they belong to a late astronomical ceiling — Dendera, Esna, or a similar Graeco-Roman temple — and Budge, writing about gods rather than about astronomy, simply did not print them. That would make the group real and this corpus's sources simply the wrong ones.

It cannot be confirmed here, and the alternative — that the aggregate list has assembled a group from a source it did not cite, or misattached two names to Thoueris — is equally consistent with the evidence.

Why this is not recorded as a dead end

The corpus keeps three different verdicts apart, and the distinction matters:

• NO_ROSTER — searched, and the material does not exist in any form we can

reach. The Hemsut and The Shebtiu sit here.

• NEEDS_SOURCE — the roster demonstrably exists, in a public-domain text that

simply has not been fetched. The Cavern deities and The Gate deities sit here, both waiting on Budge's full Book of the Dead.

• ⚠ investigated — the group as stated cannot be reconciled with any source we

have, and the investigation is the content. The Aai sits here, and so does this.

This page is the third kind. Two names survive, the goddess they attach to is thoroughly documented, and the twelve-member group is currently unverifiable. Saying that plainly is more useful to a researcher than either quietly dropping the group or inventing ten names to fill it out.

Sources

• [budge-1904] — Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (1904), vols I–II, including ch. XIX "Miscellaneous Gods" in its entirety and the sacred-animals chapter. Public domain, archived in sources-texts/. Budge caveat applies (04-BIBLIOGRAPHY.md).
• [wilkinson-2003] — Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses. In copyright; cited only.

Open threads

• Find the astronomical-ceiling source. If the two surviving names are decanal or

hour-goddess names, the Ptolemaic and Roman temple ceilings at Dendera and Esna are where the other ten would be. Brugsch's Thesaurus — which Budge cites for the dekans — is public domain and is the obvious first place to look.

• Establish where the aggregate list got them. If a published source groups twelve

goddesses under Thoueris, it should be cited and this page rewritten. The conclusion above is falsifiable and is meant to be.

• Determine whether Ami- here is the "she who is in" element it appears to be, which

would confirm the names are stational.

• Check whether the twelve relate to the twelve hour-goddesses who tow the boat of Ra

in the tenth division — twelve goddesses, each with a star, each assigned an hour. See the Akhemu-seku. The names do not match, but the structure does.