Mut- Egyptian GodDeity"Lady of Heaven"

Mother Without a Mother

Mut's name is the Egyptian word for "mother." Some texts call her self-created, born from nothing, mother of all things while having no mother herself. As consort of Amun, King of the Gods, she formed the Theban Triad with their son Khonsu, the divine family that ruled from Thebes during the New Kingdom.

Egyptian royal theology held that pharaohs were children of Amun and Mut. Temple reliefs at Luxor show the divine conception: Amun visiting the queen in the king's form, the child fashioned on Khnum's potter's wheel, Mut nursing the infant at her breast. Every king who sat on the throne of Egypt was her son.

The Vulture and the Lioness

Mut wore a vulture headdress surmounted by the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. The Egyptians regarded the vulture as a model of devoted motherhood, believed to reproduce without males and to guard their young with fierce attention. But Mut could also appear as a lioness. This second face was not gentle.

Her precinct at Karnak held both natures. Amenhotep III installed hundreds of statues of the lioness goddess Sekhmet across the grounds, one for every day of the year. The temple was surrounded by a crescent-shaped sacred lake called Isheru, where rituals to calm the furious lioness were performed. Destroyer and mother, the same goddess, across a body of still water.