ARCE- NC: Pakhet of Speos Artemidos: An exercise in divine and demonic ontologies by Beatrice De Faveri

The lioness goddess Pakhet, worshiped inside the Middle Egyptian rock-cut sanctuary known as the Speos Artemidos, is renowned within the ancient Egyptian pantheon for her fearsome qualities. Usually depicted as a lion-headed woman, her theonym can be translated as “The Slasher”, a vivid image alluding to her aggressive nature. Despite her various theological associations with more benevolent deities the likes of Hathor and Isis, most of Pakhet’s titles and epithets consistently emphasize the inherent violence of her figure, along with her animal features. While this is rather common for the divine lionesses taking on the role of guardians of the sun god, Pakhet’s attributes allow for an argument about her standing at the intersection between the category of the divine (nTry) and the elusive notion of the demonic. The identification of demonic ontologies within the ancient Egyptian religious thought remains a famously daunting task, mostly due to systemic discrepancies between emic and etic definitions of what can be described as a “demon”. Nevertheless, the analysis of textual sources of the Middle and New Kingdom related to the goddess offer some valuable insights for reconstructing Pakhet’s individual position with respect to the taxonomy of the divine and the demonic. This paper attempts to discuss some previously overlooked aspects of her conceptualization, examined through the lens of the relation between Pakhet and the sphere of ancient Egyptian magic.