Temples/Shrines of Serqet

Hello everybody,

there are probably no temples or shrines for Serqet/Selket, but recently I read about a place,mentioned once in a book, called Hat Serket/ Shrine of Serket in Qedem(?) Have you ever heard about this place?

Hello Sat-Serqet,

Welcome to the forum!

I can see youā€™ve created a shrine, but there is one already. Do you want move your post over to the other shrine and delete this one? :slightly_smiling_face:

Iā€™m sure Kev will be interested to see your posts as heā€™s been a devotee if Selket for a very long time.

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Hello Littlelbis, thank you for your answer. How can I move my post to the other shrine? I know Kev from his book and Facebook :heart_eyes:Thatā€™s why I came hereā€‹:scorpion:

No worries! I have just renamed this thread instead and moved it to the ā€˜House of Lifeā€™ area. Thatā€™ll do I think!

Iā€™ve read Kevā€™s book as well. I think we could do with more books written about personal experiences. Iā€™m reading ā€˜A desert Priestessā€™ at the moment. Itā€™s pretty well written, but Iā€™m not getting on with it as much. Iā€™ll write a book review on this forum when Iā€™m finished through. Funnily enough, I donā€™t think Iā€™ve ever written a review of Kevā€™s book on here!

I canā€™t answer your question about a shrine to Serket in Qedem, but maybe @kev can assist.

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Qedem in Arabic means ā€˜in the old daysā€™ or ā€˜in antiquityā€™. It also seems to have crossed over into Hebrew

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Thank you, Sunworshipper,but I wonder where this place has been ( Upper or Lower Egypt, in the area which belongs now to Israel? )
I have no idea and couldnā€™t find it in older texts.

I am reading at the moment " The Cobra Goddess and The Chaos Serpent " by Lesley Jackson. Very interesting :+1:

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Having a quick search for ā€œhwt srqtā€ the transliteration corresponding to ā€œHat Serketā€ turns up some goodies:

https://www.google.com/search?q="hwt+srqt"

One mention in a tomb excavation hereā€¦

http://giza.fas.harvard.edu/ancientpeople/2166/full/

Fragments of relief probably inscribed for Kaemnefret, identified as [ā€¦m Hwt srqtā€¦wr-xafra Hrj-tp nswt] ā€¦in the temple of Selket, ā€¦the pyramid of Khafre, royal chamberlain; found in debris of G 8993 north tomb.

Also it seems to be mentioned in the Pyramid Texts

There is a transliterated version here where you can hover the words for translations, and searching by standard transliteration (e.g. srqt) works since they use a special font rather than the unicode characters. Although its tricky to work out exactly which utterance any given piece belongs to here.

Not much information really, although Serqet is mentioned quite a bit throughout, the enclosure is only mentioned onceā€¦ I think the ā€˜verseā€™ reads something like:

This imperishable one (Kingā€™s name), is the great roof (sky?) of the house of Serqet

Iā€™ll have to see if I can dig up some better reference so I can find this line in translated form.

EDIT: It is from Utterance 571 - the translation given here from Mercer.

1469a. N. is an imperishable star, the great ---- of heaven in the house of Śerįø³set .

EDIT 2: I kept digging and eventually found some references to srqt-m-qdm - ā€œSerqet of Qedemā€

image
(z:r:q*t-A40-M-qd:d-m-t:niwt)

It turns out this Qedem is identiied with Xois / Sakha, at least by Christian Leitz in his great work on deity epithets.

image

It would seem if there was not a temple there, or some enclosure, there was at least a priesthood sufficiently large to require a hem-netjer priest.

One of the inscriptions is detailed on page 2 of this work - the gray square shows where it is (in the sketch)

EDIT 3: Regarding the book, ā€œThe Cobra Goddess and The Chaos Serpentā€ its available on Kindle Unlimited, which has a 30-day free trial currently.

EDIT 4: I also find this one interestingā€¦ Serqet in the house of Renenutetā€¦
image
(s-r::q*t-L7-C9-m-Hwt-r::n:n-nw-w-t::t)

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A lot of research going on there! :slight_smile:

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Thank you so much, Sem, it means a lot to me :pray::heart::pray:

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You are most welcome.

Thank you for the opportunity to flex these muscles. :slight_smile:

If I had unfettered access to the Leitz book and sharing it I would, but it is a voluminous, expensive and ponderous tome consisting of multiple Ā£100+ volumes.

The current access I have does let me take digital images, but requires looking everything up by hand. Although it is inconvenient, doing this reminds me of the old saying that if something is worth doing it is worth doing properly, and the undertone that it should require time, care and diligence, and not be rushed.

If you can find a university library that has access to a copy, or an online subscription service that has it digitally, I would highly recommend it. The German authorship does provide an additional obstacle to translation and understanding, but the language is easy to pick up for English speakers and Google Translate will do a fantastic job otherwise.

The thoroughness of the referencing and the hieroglyphic spellings have been an invaluable resource for me.

EDIT: and thanks to @LittleIbis for pointing me at this talk where I learned of this marvelous workā€™s existence.

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As far as I know the only confirmed as having anything significant is the temple of Dakka which was mostly dedicated to Thoth, but had a wall devoted to her. The temple was possible much older than the Thoth portion, and could well be what is referenced in the pyramid text as Pselkis. But thanks for that other mention, might look into that.
K

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