Onography

Veret is depicted with pendulous breasts and the Hen belly of a pregnant woman. The goddess '-..ally wears a female wig which may be sur-::nted with a feathered headdress, a modius, or

W'ith horns and solar disk. She is usually shown with her mouth open or her lips pulled back to reveal rows of teeth in a grimace which perhaps emphasizes her protective function. The main attributes of the goddess are the sa symbol of protection, the ankh symbol of life, and the torch, the flame of which was intended both to dispel darkness and to expel inimical forces. Usually the sa symbol is the largest of these attributes and is placed on the ground before the goddess who rests one or both paws upon it. Variants of Taweret include forms of the goddess with the head of a cat or the head of a human woman, as seen in a carved wooden unguent jar in the form of Taweret (or Ipet) but with the features of Queen Tiye. A small faience figure (probably a copy of an 18th-dynasty object) is known of much later - Ptolemaic - date which follows this same form, but with the more pronounced facial features of the Amarna Period.

Worship

Although she appears in some late temple scenes as a protective deity and there is a temple dedicated to

(Above) Wooden statuette of Queen Tiye, wife of A menophis III, in the form of Taweret 18th dynasty. Egyptian Museum, Turin.

The deceased toorships Taweretand the goddess Hathor, in bovine form, who emerges from the hid representing the western necropolis of Thebes. The two deities, associated with childbirth and love respectively, and both having ties to the afterlife, were sometimes juxtaposed. Vignette to Sped 186, Book of the Dead of Userhatmose. I9th dynasty. Egyptian Museum, Cairo.