| Iusaaset | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Consort Of Atum, Goddess Of Creation, and Acacia Trees. | ||||||||||||
 Iusaaset, Is an Ancient Egyptian Goddess. She represents the hand of the god Atum. Which was used in the act of Masturbation to create Shu and Tefnut. | ||||||||||||
| Name inhieroglyphs |
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| Major cult center | Heliopolis | |||||||||||
| Genealogy | ||||||||||||
| Consort | Atum | |||||||||||
| Children | Shu andTefnut | |||||||||||
Iusaaset,Iusaas, or, inGreek,Saosis, is a primordial goddess inAncient Egyptian religion, a feminine counterpart to the malecreator deityAtum.[1] Iusaaset was depicted as a woman with ascarab beetle on her head.[1] She was worshipped in the city of I͗wnw or Iunu, GreekHeliopolis, as was Atum.[2] Iusaaset was associated with theacacia tree and acacias stood at the sanctuary dedicated to Iusaaset at Heliopolis.[3]
The process of creation was said to have begun when Atum masturbated, or copulated with himself, to produce the deitiesShu andTefnut, thus beginning the process of creation. The hand he used in this act was personified as a goddess, the Hand of Atum. She was equated withHathor or Iusaaset andNebethetepet, two other, more minor goddesses.[4] The earliest texts to mention them seem to treat Iusaaset and Nebethetepet as two names for a single goddess, but after the time of theMiddle Kingdom (c. 2000–1700 BC) they were treated as separate, although similar, deities. The name "Iusaaset" means something resembling "She who grows as she comes" and "Nebethetepet" means "Lady of the Field of Offerings', so the Egyptologist Stephen Quirke suggests that they represented two aspects of creation: Iusaaset for growth and Nebethetepet for abundance.[5]
