Iati

    Iati (jA.tj) is a milk (jA.t.t) god according to Beinlich, Iat (jA.t) a milk goddess according to Faulkner. [Iat]

Iat, carrying a bowl and milk pot on his head.
Hall of Birth of Hatshepsut

    Milk was among the most divine of nourishments. As personification of milk Iat was referred to as the dead king's foster mother in the Pyramid Texts:
The abomination of Unas is hunger, he does not eat it. The abomination of Unas is thirst, he does not eat it. Unas it is, indeed, who gives bread to the Existing Ones, his nurse is the Milk-goddess. It is she who makes him live again, it is she, indeed, who gives Unas birth.
Pyramid Texts, Utterance 211
J. Degreef's compilation after translations by Faulkner, Piankoff and Speleer
    Milk was the food with which Isis fed her son Horus. Hathor is depicted as letting some pharaohs - reincarnations of Horus - suckle. It was offered to the gods and to the deceased. Thutmose III's instructions to the priests were among others: ... fill ye for me the altar with milk.

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October 2005
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