Meretseger

Meretseger is a mountain with a temper. El-Qurn, the peak standing over the Valley of the Kings, is naturally pyramid-shaped when seen from the valley floor, and the men who spent their working lives cutting tombs underneath it treated it as a goddess: a cobra, 'she who loves silence', who would strike you blind or bite you if you robbed a tomb, swore falsely or lied. Their votive stelae survive, and several of them are confessions — a workman admitting what he did, describing the punishment, and recording that she forgave him when he asked. It is one of the most personal bodies of religious evidence Egypt has left.

Domains

• tutelary protection
• justice

Sources

• Meretseger is the Egyptian cobra goddess of the Theban necropolis, identified with the peak of el-Qurn as 'Peak of the West', worshipped by the workmen of Deir el-Medina and believed to punish tomb-robbers and oath-breakers with blindness or venom.: Reference treatments of Meretseger, el-Qurn, her iconography and her cult among the tomb-workers. (secondary)