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Ancient Egyptian deities: Meret The divine songstress Merti Other roles and associations 
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Meretalso Mert, MeritThe divine songstress Headdress of Meret of Lower Egypt  Headdress of Meret of Upper Egypt  or  , transliteration mr.t, was a goddess of rejoicing and song, especially of the vocal apparatus.[6][9]
Thou shalt not take thy stand in his throat; Meret is against thee—Lady of the Throat.Music was very important in the cults of the gods, but also in daily life. A goddess involved in music could easily move a person. A New Kingdom harper sang: The utterances of Meret which stir your heart from the outside, gladden you.and to Wennefer who lived in the Ptolemaic Period and said of himself that he "fulfilled [his] life on earth in heart's content", Meret was the goddess singers emulated when performing for him: No sorrow arose in my dwelling.Music came into this world with its creation, or perhaps rather creation happened thanks, among other things, to music: with her music and gestures Meret had a part in establishing the cosmic order,[1] and the Book of the Dead speaks of her calming influence, though the means to achieve this appear to have been quite forceful: Contented one, Meret, who suppresses (lit. tramples on) the uproarShe has been referred to as "the personification of the priestess as singer" and she is at times shown as a woman clapping her hands. She was associated with the sed-festival, where she was shown to introduce the king in the attire of Osiris to the gods of the North and the South,[8] and pictures of her are found on or near the royal barques,[4] but rarely in the naoi.[7] Merti Merti: Meret of Upper and Meret of Lower Egypt [3] Other roles and associationsMeret was also the "Queen of the Treasury" and in this role she was depicted standing on the hieroglyph for gold.[2] She was associated with the goddess Mut.[5]
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Footnotes:
[1] Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, Thames and Hudson 2003, p.152 [2] Manfred Lurker, The Routledge Dictionary of Gods, Goddesses, Devils and Demons, Routledge 1987, p.124 [3] W. Max Müller, Egyptian Mythology, Kessinger Publishing, 2004, p.136 [4] Carolyn Graves-Brown, Dancing for Hathor: Women in Ancient Egypt, pp.90f. [5] James Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Kessinger Publishing, 2003, Part 24, p.712 [6] Farid Atiya, Abeer El-Shahawy, Mathaf al-Misri, Farid S. Atiya, The Egyptian Museum in Cairo: a walk through the alleys of ancient Egypt, American Univ in Cairo Press, 2005, p.275 [7] The Journal of Egyptian archaeology, Egypt Exploration Fund, 2007, Volumes 93-94, pp.258ff. [8] Karol Mysliwiec, Eighteenth dynasty before the Amarna period, Brill, 1985, p.15 [9] mr.t, written differently, means throat, gullet or the like (Wb 2, 107.7-9) [10] Joseph Kaster, The wisdom of Ancient Egypt, Barnes & Noble, 1993, p.146 [11] After a German translation on the website of the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae: Altägyptisches Wörterbuch, Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig => Literarische Texte => 5. Poetische Literatur => Harfnerlieder => Harfnerlieder Texte seit LÄ II, 1977 => Nefersecheru (Saujet el-Meitin) => Harfnerlied [12] After a German translation on the website of the Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae: Totenbuchprojekt, Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften => pTurin Museo Egizio 1791 Tb 114-165 => Tb 164 [13] Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Vol 3, The University of California Press 1980, p. 56 |
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