Hedvig Győry: Mélanges offerts a Edith Varga „Le lotus qui sort de terre” (Bulletin du Musée Hongrois des Beaux-Arts Supplément 1. Budapest, 2001)

HANS GOEDICKE: Anthropological Problems - Gynecological Questions

"I made that their hearts are not disposed to forget the West in order that sacred offerings be made to the gods of the nomes. This is one of the deeds. "I have made the gods to come about from my sweat, while men are the tears of my eye. " The all-Lord or godhead does not claim in this statement to be the maker of men, but only their guardian. It is the "gods" whose existence he is said to bring about, but not that of men. They are rather seen as a cause of sadness and concern, using the phonetic pun of rome, "men" and remy, "tears". The differentiation between the divine and men comes out clearly in the earliest literary account we have from ancient Egypt about childbirth. In the stories of the Papyrus Westcar, written probably in the second half of the Twelfth Dynasty, although the sole extant copy is, of course, of Hyksos date,

4 the birth of triplets by a lady named Rudjedet is described. The import of the story is the fact that those three children will eventually become king. When told about it, Khufu is first rather upset about the prospect that someone else will "assume the beneficent office in the whole land." It is only the assurance "first your son, then his son, then one of them (i.e., the three children)" that restores Khufu's self-confidence to a point that he rewards Djedi, the teller of this future development. The three children, though destined to become rulers of Egypt, are not only assigned to a mortal mother, namely Rudjedet, but also have a human father, a priest of Re' named Rawoser. The interest of Re' in these children is not due to any direct involvement (or techtcl-mechtel) with the lady, as Zeus would probably have had, but stems from his awareness of their future role as holding "the bénéficient office in this whole land' which will be to the benefit of the gods. When Rudjedet "felt the pangs and her labor was difficult," Re' dispatches a party to assist the lady in her critical time. The party is made up of four ladies and one man, namely, Isis, Nephthys, Heqat and Meskhenet, as well as Khnum. Each one has a clearly defined role, but there is nothing miraculous about it. Dispatched by Re' to assist, they go to Rawoser's house, where they find the father of the children and husband of the woman ready to deliver in as agitated state of affairs as one could expect under the circumstances. The text quite nicely conveys how upset Rawoser was, by describing him on encountering 4 Cf. II. Goedicke, Thoughts about the Papyrus Westcar, ZÄS 120 (1993), pp. 23-36.