Talk:Mehit

Mehit and Menhit

I'd like to thank WANAX for creating this article, as it makes it easier to clear up the potential confusion between Mehit and Menhit. Egyptian lioness goddesses had closely similar roles, and of course the spellings are very similar. (Mehit's name is sometimes written as Mekhit and Menhit is sometimes spelled Menhyt. It would reduce the confusion if either of the two pages were moved to a more distinct spelling, but if the confusing name are the common names, then we can't.) For a long time, Menhit's article said that she was the Eye of Ra who was brought back from foreign lands by her husband Onuris/Anhur, as did the Eye of Ra article. Looking more carefully at the entries on Mehit and Menhit in Richard Wilkinson's Complete Gods and Goddesses, and the entry on Onuris in Geraldine Pinch's Egyptian Mythology, it seems clear to me that Mehit is the manifestation of the Eye of Ra whom Onuris tracks down, and both were worshipped in This/Thinis. I've changed the Eye of Ra and Menhit articles accordingly, and I'm about to write about that stuff for this article.

With Mehit given the role in the Onuris myth, it's now Menhit whose character seems comparatively nebulous. I would guess, though I can't claim in the article, that she did function as the Eye of Ra. Most goddesses took on that role in some context, lioness goddesses seem to have done so universally, and Richard Wilkinson says Menhit could act as the uraeus, which was the other major animal form of the Eye. A better understanding of Menhit is probably to be found in the German-language sources listed in the Menhit article.

Considering how much difficulty I've had keeping these goddesses straight, even when typing this comment, I'd like to suggest a mnemonic:

MENHIT = Not Onuris' wife

in case that helps anybody. A. Parrot (talk) 00:59, 22 January 2014 (UTC)