Unveiling Seshat: The Divine Authority behind Ancient Egyptian Scribes & Architecture
Written words are now relatively accessible, and a layman can quickly grasp the fundamentals that govern how a language is written. However, before the modern world arrived in ancient Egypt, written words were reserved for a specific group of people: the scribes. These people looked up to a goddess called Seshat, whose divine duty was to record their words and store them in the celestial library of the gods.
In the Egyptian pantheon, gods like Ra and Anubis are very familiar even outside of Egypt. However, there are lesser-known gods and goddesses whose roles are quite prominent in Egyptian society, but due to how ‘unpopular’ their roles are, they are not as widely known as the others. Sheshat was one of those goddesses. She is considered the goddess of wisdom, writing, scribes, knowledge, measurement, and libraries, but she is not well-known among the common men because these people are not particularly connected to writing or documenting words. Dressed in a panther skin with a headdress composed of a seven-pointed star on top of a pair of inverted horns, Seshat is believed to have been born to Thoth, Egyptian god of wisdom & time, and Ma’at, Egyptian goddess of truth, law & order. Although there are a few conflicting stories that believe that she’s most often regarded as Thoth’s consort/wife. Paintings and carvings of her have been traced down to the early dynastic period (c. 2686 – c. 2134 B.C.E.) & the middle kingdom (c. 2040 – c. 1640 B.C.E.) [3]. Her role was said to have been influenced by her father, who was revered as the deity who invented hieroglyphics for the Egyptians.
She’s known as the keeper of knowledge and wisdom, which plays a big role in educating the younger generations in Egypt and ensures that knowledge is preserved in order for it to be passed down. She & Thoth were known as the divine scribes of the land, or to be concise, she was described as the female scribe, while Thoth was described as the chief male scribe. But her status wasn’t diminished, because as a great recorder, she ensured the continuity of the royal record, thereby preserving stories of major deities like Ra and the history of pharaohs in Egypt.
Seshat is normally depicted as a young woman in the hide/skin of a leopard/cheetah/panther with a seven-pointed star on top of a pair of inverted horns on her headdress. While her headdress is seen as a symbol of her divine authority, the hide she wears is seen as a depiction of a fierce goddess who protects her followers from predators. The ancient Egyptians' belief that wearing the hide of an enemy transfers their defeated power to the wearer suggests Seshat may have also syphoned or commanded the primal power of the previous owner to protect her followers.
As of this moment, the precise meaning of the inverted horns and the seven-pointed star remains unclear, but there are stories that state that the inverted horns were originally a crescent moon, representing her husband, Thoth, and a few others that say that it represents a bow. She also carries around a few pieces of equipment that aid her in her work, such as a knotted cord used to take measurements, a tablet used to record, and a stylus used to write. These objects have given her various names that people used to characterise her, such as mistress of the books, she who is the scribe, divine measurer and scribe and Sefkhet-Abwy, which means ‘she of two horns,’ referring to her headdress.
Seshat’s role can be described as writing a diary about the daily rudimentary activities in Egypt. Although most of her activities normally revolve around the Egyptian pharaohs, such as taking records of the tributes they receive from foreign rulers, recording their reigns, which is usually celebrated during the Sed festival (a festival that celebrates how long a pharaoh had lived), and recording censuses that had been taken. To be concise, her role can be described as the work of a scribe. A scribe is someone who writes, and it is seen as an extremely important and sacred duty in Egypt because the ancient Egyptians believe that the land of the living mirrors the realm of the gods. As a result, when scribes record what happens in the land of the living, they believe that the same records are taken in the realm of the gods. Then, while the scribes store the records they have taken, Seshat, in turn, takes these records and stores them in the celestial library of the gods, a process that enables the existence and survival of Egyptian sacred texts such as the Book of the Dead and the Pyramid Texts. She’s also known to record the actions of people on the leaves of the sacred persea tree. In fact, much of Seshat’s role might have been derived from her father, Thoth, but as she grew into her role, which expanded to include measurement and the association with knowledge and writing, many Egyptians came to respect her as a goddess. She’s the only known goddess consistently depicted actively writing on a tablet, unlike the other goddesses that are associated with scribal tools but never engage in writing. She’s revered by builders and architects as the patroness of mathematics, building and accounting due to her involvement in accurately measuring the foundation for buildings before construction. Egyptian pharaohs usually performed a ceremony known as the stretching the cord ritual ( pedj shes ), which oversaw the foundation of their temples and other religious structures and ensured that each building was astronomically aligned and perfectly orientated to the sacred directions. The ceremony is said to help invoke the blessings of the gods, and if a pharaoh were to be buried in a tomb, it is said to help the pharaoh make a safe passage to the afterlife. This earned her the description ‘divine measurer’.
She’s also known as the patroness of all earthly libraries & librarians because she’s known to look after the library of the gods. It earned her the title of the mistress of the house of books and the divine keeper of the house of life ( Per-Ankh ). She’s sometimes associated with the goddess Nephthys, but it is also believed that she, with the help of the goddess, helps the dead pass into the afterlife.
There’s no documented evidence of a temple ever erected or dedicated to Seshat in Egypt. However, there’s evidence that she had her own priests. For example, in the fourth dynasty, Prince Wep-em-nefret was described as the overseer of the royal scribes and priest of Seshat. There’s also evidence of priestesses in the second dynasty that were responsible for carrying out the stretching of the cord ceremony. But compared to other major Egyptian deities, Seshat doesn’t have a sizable cult following. Yet, even so, it is safe to say that she was honoured across every temple in Egypt.
