(Amset) One of the four sons of Horus, Imsety, whose name means perhaps “he who smoothes/pleases,” is depicted as a mummiform human on the jar which contains the liver of the deceased. Together with Horus and Hapy, Imsety is said in CT spell 157/BD spell 112 to be among the “Souls [Bau] of Pe,” a district of the town of Buto in Lower Egypt. Sometimes Imsety’s name is written in a manner (i.e., with terminal -t, “Imset”) that would generally indicate feminine gender. Furthermore, some depictions of Imsety are lighter in color than the other sons of Horus and beardless, perhaps suggesting female sex (Taylor 2001, p. 68). It has been suggested that an originally feminine Imsety lies behind a possible reference in PT utterance 482 to Horus having an “eldest [or ‘great’] daughter who is in Ḳdm.” (Alternately, the text would identify the unknown female as the eldest/’great’ daughter of Osiris.) It has also been suggested (Taylor 2001, p. 65) that the “-ty” ending is originally a feminine dual, and hence that “Imsety” refers to a pair of female deities.

Allen, T. G. 1974. The Book of the Dead or Going Forth by Day. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [BD]
Faulkner, R. O. 1969. The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [PT]
Faulkner, R. O. 1973-8. The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts. 3 vols. Warminster: Aris & Phillips Ltd. [CT]
Taylor, J. H. 2001. Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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One Response to “Imsety”

  1. NEGRIER said

    Thank you ; Imsety was a figure of the passivity in the exercise of the pedagogy. Patrick Négrier

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