Blogging from A to Z - day 2 - B

Here we go, second day of the challenge and already I had to make tough choices. Who should get my attention today: Bastet (I love cats!) or Baal - god of the thunder? After all I decided to dedicate this post to Bat.

 
Bat is the ancient celestial cow goddess of the Egyptians especially revered in Upper Egypt. She was initially the deification of the cosmos, especially the Milky Way. Ancient Egyptian cattle herders (as far back as 8000 BC) believed that the Milky Way resembled a pool of cow milk.

She is depicted as a woman with bovine ears and curled horns that grow from her temples and had a body in the shape of a necklace counterpoise. Stars most often surround her celestial bovine head. Her followers believe that she carries a sistrum (see the picture on the right)  all the time to drive away evil. When in human form, her sistrum is found in her head.

She comes by many different titles. She is known as “Ba of Two Faces” because of her uncanny ability to see the past and the future, and possibly because of her representation of the two banks of the Nile River. Because of Her bovine features, she acquired the titles “She Who Lows” and the “Great Wild Cow”.

Bat is seldom seen in paintings, sculptures and other art forms yet she is a permanent figure in amulets and jewelry.

In the Egyptian Book of the Dead and Pyramid Texts, a familiar text is dedicated to her and it goes:

“I am Praise; I am Majesty; I am Bata with Her Two Faces; I am the One Who Is Saved, and I have saved myself from all things evil.”

 

So long my friends,
Evalina