Buto
Encyclopedia
Buto Butus , or Butosus, , now Tell al-Fara'in (Pharaohs' Mound)near the city of Desouk , was an ancient city located 95 km east of Alexandria
in the Nile Delta
of Egypt
. The city stood on the Sebennytic arm of the Nile
, near its mouth, and on the southern shore of the Butic Lake . It is the modern Kem Kasir.
Buto originally was two cities, Pe and Dep, which merged into one city that the Egyptians named Per
-Wadjet
. The goddess Wadjet
was its local goddess, often represented as a cobra
, and she was considered the patron deity of Lower Egypt. Her oracle
was located in her renowned temple in that city. An annual festival held in the city celebrated Wadjet. Her image formed the royal crown, the Uraeus
, worn by the rulers of Lower Egypt. It encircled their heads and the cobra flare and head extended from their foreheads. Wadjet was closely associated in the Egyptian pantheon
with Bast (Bastet) the fierce goddess depicted as a lioness warrior and protector, a sun goddess whose eye later became the eye of Horus
or the eye of Ra, the Lady of Flame. The city also contained a sanctuary of Horus
and much later, became associated with Isis
.
The city was an important site in the Predynastic era of Ancient Egypt
that includes the cultural developments of ten thousand years from the Paleolithic
to 3100 BC. Archaeological evidence shows that Upper Egypt
ian culture replaced the Buto-culture at the delta when Upper and Lower Egypt
were unified, and the replacement is considered important evidence for the unification of the two portions of Egypt into one entity. At that time Wadjet joined Nekhbet
, who was represented as a white vulture
and held the same position as the patron of Upper Egypt, and together they were known as the two ladies
[4] who were the patrons of the unified Egypt. The image of Nekhbet joined Wadjet on the Uraeus
that would encircle the crown of the pharaohs who ruled the unified Egypt.
Being called Buto by the Greeks during Ptolemaic Egypt, a Greek dynasty ruling from 305 to 30 BC, it was the capital town, or according to Herodian, merely the principal village of the Nile Delta, which Herodotus (l. c.) calls the Chemmite nome; Ptolemy
, the Phthenothite nome , and Pliny the Elder
, (v. 9. s. 11), Ptenetha.
The Greek historians record that the town was celebrated for its monolithite temple and oracle of the goddess Wadjet (Buto) (Herod. ii. 155) (Aelian. V. Hist. ii. 41), whom the Greeks identified with Leto
or Latona. A yearly feast was held there in honour of the goddess.
They noted that at Buto there was also a sanctuary of Horus
(associated by the ancient Greeks with Apollo
) and of Bastet (associated with Artemis
). (Champollion, l'Egypte, vol. ii. p. 227.) In Egyptian mythology, Bast (also spelled Bastet, Baset, Ubasti, and Pasht) is an ancient goddess, worshipped at least since the Second dynasty of Egypt
, which is dated 2890 to 2690 BC. The centre of her cult was in Per-Bast (Bubastis in Greek), which was named after her. Originally she was viewed as the protector goddess of Lower Egypt, and consequently depicted as a fierce lioness. Indeed, her name means devourer. As protector, she was seen as defender of the pharaoh (and consequently of the later chief god, Ra), who was a solar deity, gaining her the titles Lady of Flame and Eye of Ra. Bast was originally a sun goddess, but later changed by the Greeks to a goddess of the moon. In Greek mythology, Bast is also known as Aelurus.
The Greek name, Buto, is nearly allied to that of Muth or Maut, their appellations for Isis
, as Mother of the World. (Plut
. Is. et Osir. 18, 38.)
According to these same late sources, the shrew
was worshipped at Buto. (Herod. ii. 67.)
Alexandria
Alexandria is the second-largest city of Egypt, with a population of 4.1 million, extending about along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea in the north central part of the country; it is also the largest city lying directly on the Mediterranean coast. It is Egypt's largest seaport, serving...
in the Nile Delta
Nile Delta
The Nile Delta is the delta formed in Northern Egypt where the Nile River spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of the world's largest river deltas—from Alexandria in the west to Port Said in the east, it covers some 240 km of Mediterranean coastline—and is a rich...
of Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. The city stood on the Sebennytic arm of the Nile
Nile
The Nile is a major north-flowing river in North Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. It is long. It runs through the ten countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Egypt.The Nile has two major...
, near its mouth, and on the southern shore of the Butic Lake . It is the modern Kem Kasir.
Buto originally was two cities, Pe and Dep, which merged into one city that the Egyptians named Per
Pr (hieroglyph)
Pr is the hieroglyph for 'house', the floor-plan of a walled building with an open doorway. While its original pronunciation is not known with certainty, modern Egyptology assigns it the value of per, but purely on the basis of a convention specific to the discipline...
-Wadjet
Papyrus stem (hieroglyph)
The ancient Egyptian papyrus stem hieroglyph is one of the oldest language hieroglyphs from Ancient Egypt. Along with the hieroglyph for the Papyrus clump, a symbol of the Nile god Hapy, it is one of the foundation hieroglyphs at the core of the history of Ancient Egypt...
. The goddess Wadjet
Wadjet
In Egyptian mythology, Wadjet, or the Green One , was originally the ancient local goddess of the city of Dep , which became part of the city that the Egyptians named Per-Wadjet, House of...
was its local goddess, often represented as a cobra
Cobra
Cobra is a venomous snake belonging to the family Elapidae. However, not all snakes commonly referred to as cobras are of the same genus, or even of the same family. The name is short for cobra capo or capa Snake, which is Portuguese for "snake with hood", or "hood-snake"...
, and she was considered the patron deity of Lower Egypt. Her oracle
Oracle
In Classical Antiquity, an oracle was a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic predictions or precognition of the future, inspired by the gods. As such it is a form of divination....
was located in her renowned temple in that city. An annual festival held in the city celebrated Wadjet. Her image formed the royal crown, the Uraeus
Uraeus
The Uraeus is the stylized, upright form of an Egyptian spitting cobra , used as a symbol of sovereignty, royalty, deity, and divine authority in ancient Egypt.The Uraeus is a symbol for the goddess Wadjet, who was one of the earliest Egyptian deities and who...
, worn by the rulers of Lower Egypt. It encircled their heads and the cobra flare and head extended from their foreheads. Wadjet was closely associated in the Egyptian pantheon
Egyptian pantheon
The Egyptian pantheon consisted of the many gods worshipped by the Ancient Egyptians. A number of major deities are addressed as the creator of the cosmos. These include Atum, Ra, Amun and Ptah amongst others, as well as composite forms of these gods such as Amun-Ra. This was not seen as...
with Bast (Bastet) the fierce goddess depicted as a lioness warrior and protector, a sun goddess whose eye later became the eye of Horus
Eye of Horus
The Eye of Horus is an ancient Egyptian symbol of protection, royal power and good health. The eye is personified in the goddess Wadjet...
or the eye of Ra, the Lady of Flame. The city also contained a sanctuary of Horus
Horus
Horus is one of the oldest and most significant deities in the Ancient Egyptian religion, who was worshipped from at least the late Predynastic period through to Greco-Roman times. Different forms of Horus are recorded in history and these are treated as distinct gods by Egyptologists...
and much later, became associated with Isis
Isis
Isis or in original more likely Aset is a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the matron of nature and magic...
.
The city was an important site in the Predynastic era of Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was an ancient civilization of Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh...
that includes the cultural developments of ten thousand years from the Paleolithic
Paleolithic
The Paleolithic Age, Era or Period, is a prehistoric period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools discovered , and covers roughly 99% of human technological prehistory...
to 3100 BC. Archaeological evidence shows that Upper Egypt
Upper Egypt
Upper Egypt is the strip of land, on both sides of the Nile valley, that extends from the cataract boundaries of modern-day Aswan north to the area between El-Ayait and Zawyet Dahshur . The northern section of Upper Egypt, between El-Ayait and Sohag is sometimes known as Middle Egypt...
ian culture replaced the Buto-culture at the delta when Upper and Lower Egypt
Lower Egypt
Lower Egypt is the northern-most section of Egypt. It refers to the fertile Nile Delta region, which stretches from the area between El-Aiyat and Zawyet Dahshur, south of modern-day Cairo, and the Mediterranean Sea....
were unified, and the replacement is considered important evidence for the unification of the two portions of Egypt into one entity. At that time Wadjet joined Nekhbet
Nekhbet
In Egyptian mythology, Nekhbet was an early predynastic local goddess who was the patron of the city of Nekheb, her name meaning of Nekheb...
, who was represented as a white vulture
Vulture
Vulture is the name given to two groups of convergently evolved scavenging birds, the New World Vultures including the well-known Californian and Andean Condors, and the Old World Vultures including the birds which are seen scavenging on carcasses of dead animals on African plains...
and held the same position as the patron of Upper Egypt, and together they were known as the two ladies
Two Ladies
In Ancient Egyptian texts, Two Ladies is a religious euphemism for Wadjet and Nekhbet, the deities who were the patrons of the Ancient Egyptians and worshiped by all after the unification of its two parts, Lower Egypt, and Upper Egypt...
[4] who were the patrons of the unified Egypt. The image of Nekhbet joined Wadjet on the Uraeus
Uraeus
The Uraeus is the stylized, upright form of an Egyptian spitting cobra , used as a symbol of sovereignty, royalty, deity, and divine authority in ancient Egypt.The Uraeus is a symbol for the goddess Wadjet, who was one of the earliest Egyptian deities and who...
that would encircle the crown of the pharaohs who ruled the unified Egypt.
Being called Buto by the Greeks during Ptolemaic Egypt, a Greek dynasty ruling from 305 to 30 BC, it was the capital town, or according to Herodian, merely the principal village of the Nile Delta, which Herodotus (l. c.) calls the Chemmite nome; Ptolemy
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy , was a Roman citizen of Egypt who wrote in Greek. He was a mathematician, astronomer, geographer, astrologer, and poet of a single epigram in the Greek Anthology. He lived in Egypt under Roman rule, and is believed to have been born in the town of Ptolemais Hermiou in the...
, the Phthenothite nome , and Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
, (v. 9. s. 11), Ptenetha.
The Greek historians record that the town was celebrated for its monolithite temple and oracle of the goddess Wadjet (Buto) (Herod. ii. 155) (Aelian. V. Hist. ii. 41), whom the Greeks identified with Leto
Leto
In Greek mythology, Leto is a daughter of the Titans Coeus and Phoebe. The island of Kos is claimed as her birthplace. In the Olympian scheme, Zeus is the father of her twins, Apollo and Artemis, the Letoides, which Leto conceived after her hidden beauty accidentally caught the eyes of Zeus...
or Latona. A yearly feast was held there in honour of the goddess.
They noted that at Buto there was also a sanctuary of Horus
Horus
Horus is one of the oldest and most significant deities in the Ancient Egyptian religion, who was worshipped from at least the late Predynastic period through to Greco-Roman times. Different forms of Horus are recorded in history and these are treated as distinct gods by Egyptologists...
(associated by the ancient Greeks with Apollo
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
) and of Bastet (associated with Artemis
Artemis
Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name and indeed the goddess herself was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...
). (Champollion, l'Egypte, vol. ii. p. 227.) In Egyptian mythology, Bast (also spelled Bastet, Baset, Ubasti, and Pasht) is an ancient goddess, worshipped at least since the Second dynasty of Egypt
Second dynasty of Egypt
The second dynasty of ancient Egypt is often combined with Dynasty I under the group title Early Dynastic Period. It dates approximately from 2890 to 2686 BC. The capital at that time was Thinis.-Rulers:...
, which is dated 2890 to 2690 BC. The centre of her cult was in Per-Bast (Bubastis in Greek), which was named after her. Originally she was viewed as the protector goddess of Lower Egypt, and consequently depicted as a fierce lioness. Indeed, her name means devourer. As protector, she was seen as defender of the pharaoh (and consequently of the later chief god, Ra), who was a solar deity, gaining her the titles Lady of Flame and Eye of Ra. Bast was originally a sun goddess, but later changed by the Greeks to a goddess of the moon. In Greek mythology, Bast is also known as Aelurus.
The Greek name, Buto, is nearly allied to that of Muth or Maut, their appellations for Isis
Isis
Isis or in original more likely Aset is a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the matron of nature and magic...
, as Mother of the World. (Plut
Plutarch
Plutarch then named, on his becoming a Roman citizen, Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus , c. 46 – 120 AD, was a Greek historian, biographer, essayist, and Middle Platonist known primarily for his Parallel Lives and Moralia...
. Is. et Osir. 18, 38.)
According to these same late sources, the shrew
Shrew
A shrew or shrew mouse is a small molelike mammal classified in the order Soricomorpha. True shrews are also not to be confused with West Indies shrews, treeshrews, otter shrews, or elephant shrews, which belong to different families or orders.Although its external appearance is generally that of...
was worshipped at Buto. (Herod. ii. 67.)
See also
- Desouk
- Kafr el-Sheikh GovernorateKafr el-Sheikh GovernorateKafr el-Sheikh Governorate is one of the governorates of Egypt. It lies in the northern part of the country, along the western branch of the Nile in the Nile Delta. Its capital is the city of Kafr el-Sheikh.-History:...
- Sais, EgyptSais, EgyptSais or Sa el-Hagar was an ancient Egyptian town in the Western Nile Delta on the Canopic branch of the Nile. It was the provincial capital of Sap-Meh, the fifth nome of Lower Egypt and became the seat of power during the Twenty-fourth dynasty of Egypt and the Saite Twenty-sixth dynasty of Egypt ...