Csornay Boldizsár - Dobos Zsuzsa - Varga Ágota - Zakariás János szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 99. (Budapest, 2003)
LIPTAY, ÉVA: Between Heaven and Earth. The Motif of the Cow Coming out of the Mountain
a festival event. 34 The rite performed by the deceased is to capture the benevolence of the goddess in the netherworld. 35 The scene, as it was mentioned above, is the eastern or western horizon where the deceased wishes to ascend to the morning or evening bark. Spell 484, however, comes up with further allusions: I have come herefrom the river-hank ofHu on my ascents of the Mountain of the shsh-bird so that I may put the cloak (tjm var. B2L tstn m t}m) of this Great Lady 36 on who is in the bow of the bark of Re and in the middle of the bark ofKhopri. It is beyond doubt that Hathor functions within this cycle as a sky-goddess, who is reckoned among those in the sun bark. This time the deceased happens to meet the goddess on the Mountain of shsh-bird, that is, on a riverbank, and he is again engaged in ritually dressing up Hathor with a veil or cloak (var. B2L relates this piece of cloth with the tstn\). It forms a striking parallel to the former situation: dressing up the divinity on the mountainside. The tstn- dress - in its archaic form ntstn - is related to the sky-goddess (Nut) even in the Pyramid Texts. Utterance 564 tells about a ritual bath in the Field of Jlrw, which symbolizes the purification of the sun god, Shu who raises up the sun, and the deceased (who becomes identified with the former ones) prior to the ascension to the sky. The following utterances (565-568) served to promote the deceased pharaoh in his flying up to the sky ('ascension text'). So, purification is the prerequisite of deification and rising up as the sun god: „I am pure, I am conveyed to the sky thereby, I remain more than human, I appear in glory for the gods. I have appeared with Re at his appearing" 1,7 Here, ascension to the sky means meeting and uniting with the sky-goddess Nut, who wears the t_stn-c\oth., and acts as the mother of Osiris and thus that of the deceased, too. This makes her fundamental to his resurrection. 38 Pyr. Utt. 568 reports that a boat carries the king before he climbs up to the sky on a ladder. This all happens again in the nocturnal sky, since the dead pharaoh proceeds to „the lakes of Dar", and the eastern half of the sky is located on the other (gs pf) side. In other word, the cycle (Pyr. Utt. 564-568) is very likely to be concerned with ascending to the nocturnal sky. These references should have made it clear that the tstn-cloth of the sky-goddess was mentioned already in the Pyramid Texts in connection with reaching the (nocturnal) sky. The determinative of the word, however, has altered in the course of CT Spell 482; Ryhiner, op.cit (n. 28) 48-49. CT VI 65 i; and also Altenmüller, Synkretismus (n. 4) 135: Hathor anoints (I 192c) and dresses up (I 258f, VI 54i, 55a, 61b, 65j) the deceased. It is worth mentioning that these Middle Kingdom funerary texts refer to the goddess with the title Wr.t, which is commonly used in the New Kingdom versions of BD Ch. 186 (see above). Pyr. (565) § 1423 a-c. Translation: Faulkner, R.O., The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Oxford 1969, 220. In his Abydos temple, this kind of garment ensures that Sethi I succeeds in preserving his vital power and in becoming the sungod's heir: Ryhiner, op.cit. (n. 28) 48 and n. 208.
