(Unut, Wenet) Wennut, the Goddess of the 15th nome, or district, of Upper Egypt, in which the city of Hermopolis was located, is depicted as a hare, or as a woman with the head of a hare or with the sign of a hare over her head. Wennut’s name has been interpreted as meaning ‘the swift one’, from wni, ‘to hasten’, but it also may be related to wnn, ‘to be, exist’, as well as to wnwt, ‘hour’ or division of time generally. The element wnn meaning to exist is also part of the almost constant epithet of Osiris, wnn-nfr or ‘Onnophris’, ‘He who exists/persists in well-being’. The little that is known about the nature of Wennut, therefore, should perhaps be read in the light of Egyptian ideas concerning being and non-being, wnn and tm wnn or nn wnn, on which see especially Hornung, 1982, pp. 172-185.
The antiquity of Wennut’s cult is suggested by BD spell 137A, which claims to have been discovered by “the king’s son Hardedef,” that is, the son of the Fourth Dynasty king Khufu (Cheops), “in a chest of secrets in the God’s own writing in the house of Wennut, the lady of Hermopolis, when sailing upstream making inspections in the temples, in the fields, and in the mounds of the Gods.” In CT spell 47 the operator, acting on behalf of the deceased, juxtaposes Wennut with Thoth: “May Thoth ennoble you [the deceased] with his [var., 'your'] beauty, may Wennut make firm your head for you.” In CT spell 495 the deceased states, “I extend my arm in company with Shu, I am released in company with Wennut.” In spell 720, “To become a dawn-God and to live by means of magicians,” the deceased affirms “I will act as one who is sent to the Gods, and my voice is that of Wennut.” The voice of Wennut is, we might say, the voice of being as opposed to the voice of nonbeing; in a similar vein, one of the denials from the so-called ‘negative confession’ of BD spell 125 is “I do not know the nonexistent.” In CT spell 316, for “Becoming the fiery eye of Horus,” the operator states “I am the wnwn.t of the Lady of Unu [Wennut],” punning on Wennut’s name with a word, wnwn, that means to move about, either in the sense of travelling or in the stationary sense, as a child moves about in the womb (as in PT utterance 430). A spell to ease childbirth (no. 61 in Borghouts) invokes, among others, ‘Wennut, lady of Wenu’. In the fragmentary CT spell 942, an unknown deity is identified with Wennut by the phrase “…she has nothing which has been done against her, in this her name of Wennut”; perhaps because what is not being, is not, and hence is nothing?
Too much speculation in regards to “being and non-being“, which doesn‘t really tell us much. If what I read about her being a wife of Thoth is true, then that gives us a better understanding of her nature. It was also said that she was a serpent before she became a hare. If you can, you should try to confirm both of these for yourself, then update your site.
I forgot to add that she is also a predynastic deity. Which is worth mentioning.
BTW, nice website.
[...] rabbits in the store and knowing they’d be discounted soon, I made plans to honor the goddess Wenut (Wenet, Unut), the Swift One. She was shown associated with the snake, and also the rabbit (hare.) [...]