This
Goddess replica is a composite of several images found scattered from Libya to
Egypt. Dated in the pre-dynastic period, they also appear on cave wall paintings
from Paleolithic Algeria.
Her identity is a combination of the Ancient Bird and Serpent Goddess of
Regeneration and the Cow Horned Queen of Heaven represented by a category of
votive figurines called "Great Woman with Upraised Arms." The upraised
arms are a magical gesture of the evocation and appearance of the Deity. This
gesture is associated with the ancient female mystery rite of "drawing down
the Moon" and encountered also in the Egyptian hieroglyph for the Ka
(symbol of the soul).
This image was found as a votive funerary offering and in Her form as the
Bird/Serpent Goddess of Regeneration may represent a spiritual guide for the
deceased. Such Goddesses took the spirits of the newly dead into the Cloudy
Realms to await new bodies for them to be reborn into this World. The inside
lids of later Egyptian sarcophagi were often decorated by paintings of Nuit with
arms uplifted. It was through Her body that the soul of the deceased traveled in
the Boat of the Ages. As Hathor was also "the Opener of the Gateway of
Dreams," this function of spirit guide was not restricted to the dead, and
such figurines could have been given as a protection to people asleep or ill, or
to newborn and very young children. Such practices find a familiar modern echo
in the feminine-appearing Guardian Angels with uplifted wings placed in
nurseries and sickrooms even today.
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