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
all is finished she makes a pronouncement about the newborn which in all three cases is customarily rendered as an act of clairvoyance, "A king who will assume the kingship in this whole land"* This leaves us with the question, what Khnum's role was during the delivery. It is generally assumed that "Khnum gave health to his (i.e., the baby 's) body" 9 As far as I am aware, nobody seems to have bothered to comment on the passage, which appears to be dangling in the nowhere. It is a pseudo-verbal clause, hnmw hr swd? h r w.f, which according to the established rules of grammar can only be understood as stating an ongoing extended or concomitant event. As such it can not stand in isolation, but has to be part of a larger syntactical unit. The outcome of these grammatical reflections is that the sentence is not an independent unit, but belongs to the preceding and is part of the statement by the goddess Meskhenet, which in toto reads thus: "A king who can carry out kingship in the entire land, while Khnum is sustaining all its/his members'" The tenor is that the newborn could eventually be a king during a time when Khnum sustains all the members of the land, i.e., its inhabitants. Khnum here has nothing to do with the birth of the newborn, but is mentioned solely in his role as controlling the Nile and thus supporting mankind. Returning now to Rudjedet's delivery, Khnum did not participate in it and was also not in the room during the labor, which was attended by women only. It is also they who try to calm down the nervous prospective father, because only they would carry "menat-necklaces and sistra." The assurances to the excited Rawoser about the experience in the delivery comes also from the four women making up the group. Each one of them has her specific task, as already pointed out. Only Meskhenet is not directly involved in the birth. Clearly the roles played by the three goddesses Nephthys, Heqat and Isis, are a direct reflection of the delivery practices. But, what is Meskhenet's role? I think the answer is quite simple, namely, that of the mother or mother-in-law of the delivering woman, who in the human practice would look the child over and make complimentary comments before it is presented to the child's father. Needless to say, those comments are first of all wishful projections. That wishes are only to be readily believed in makes them into birth-prognoses, a role attributed to one or seven Hathors. 10 8 E.g. Lichtheim, op. cit. (note 2), pp. 220f. '' Lichtheim, op. cit. (note 2). 10 LAW col. 1033.
