(Auset, Ese; GR Isis) - “The Throne,” Aset is the power that makes kings; a feminine Name appearing in texts beginning in Dynasty IV as wife and sister to Wesir and daughter of Nut and Geb. In earliest times Aset is depicted as the “mistress of magic” (see Heka) Who learns Ra’s true name and thus the secrets of the universe. In the cult of Wesir Aset is attributed with having prepared Him for burial and conceiving a son upon His dead body, which She magically reanimates long enough to complete (in Kemetic texts, Wesir’s death is attributed to drowning; the dismemberment myth given by Plutarch does not appear until millennia later and may not even be Kemetic in origin. See Wesir.). In later periods and particularly after the New Kingdom, Aset was syncretized with a number of other Names, Hethert in particular, and took on “mother goddess” characteristics. During this period, Aset’s importance as mother of Heru-sa-Aset (“Horus, son of Isis”, a Name intimately connected with kingship and therefore within Aset’s purview as kingmaker) became paramount, in ways strongly suggestive of the Christian cult of the Virgin Mary. The Romans declared all feminine Names to be forms of Aset, crowning Her “Goddess of Ten Thousand Names,” though Kemetic mythology does not exhibit this specific archetype.
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