Wadjet
ancient Egyptian snake-headed goddess, symbolizing Lower Egypt
Wadjet (; Ancient Egyptian: wꜢḏyt "Green One"), known to the Greek world as Uto (; Koine Greek: Οὐτώ) or Buto (; Βουτώ) among other renderings including Wedjat, Uadjet, and Udjo, was originally the ancient Egyptian local goddess of the city of Dep or Buto in Lower Egypt, which was an important site in prehistoric Egypt. Wadjet's worship originally started in the Predynastic period, but evolved over time from a local goddess to a patron goddess.
Wadjet was closely associated in ancient Egyptian religion with the Eye of Ra and the Eye of Horus symbols, each powerful protective deities. The hieroglyph for her eye is shown below; sometimes two are shown in the sky of religious images. There is little consensus on which eye is truly tied to Wadjet as both have some importance to her. The main differences between her eyes are which side of the face they are on, left or right. The color of these eyes in amulets and ceramics are usually created in vibrant blue and green colors, which resemble the goddess's name of "the green one". The green Wadjet eye amulets found in Egyptian daily life provided a token of fertility and protection to those who had them.
Etymology
The name Wadjet is derived from the term for the symbol of her domain, Lower Egypt, the papyrus. Its hieroglyphs differ from those of the Green Crown or Deshret of Lower Egypt only by the determinative, which in the case of the crown was a picture of the Green Crown and, in the case of the goddess, a rearing cobra.
“Wadjet” enters the record as ancient Egyptian snake-headed goddess, symbolizing Lower Egypt. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Wadjet, ancient and Egyptian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wadjet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.