Talk:Eye of Ra

Who are in the eye of ra
I think a lot of gods and goddesses 73.119.18.48 (talk) 00:37, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Eye of Horus vs. Eye of Ra
The Eye of Ra (right wedjat) and the Eye of Horus (left wedjat) are necessarily paired, being the mirror image of each other. A short hint to this info is obviously required, since they're often confused and overlapped. Est. 2021 (talk · contribs) 17:28, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

 
 * The problem is that I'm not certain there was ever a straightforward division in the iconography. That is, I don't think every left wedjat eye represented the Eye of Horus and every right wedjat eye was the Eye of Ra. Some Egyptian texts describe the right eye of the sky deity as the sun and the left eye as the moon, but according to Krauss 2002, all the texts that say so date to the New Kingdom or later. The wedjat symbol is a thousand years older than that. There simply isn't a tidy distinction here, as is so often the case with Egyptian mythology.
 * The absence of that tidy distinction seems to be implied by Darnell 1997, which talks about the interchangeability of the two concepts, and Andrews 1994 notes that in amulets, "curiously enough, both right eye and left eye can be represented". The amulet from Tutankhamun's tomb, which you got Commons to rename on the grounds that the name was an "obvious error", is frequently referred to by Egyptologists as an Eye of Horus amulet, but never as an Eye of Ra. E.g., Zahi Hawass's book Tutankhamun: The Treasures of the Tomb, says it is "in the shape of a wedjat, the eye of Horus", and describes the mythology of Horus and Set before saying "the right, undamaged eye was associated with the sun. This pectoral represents the right eye, and therefore can be understood to have solar connotations." In contrast, I've never seen the sources refer to this amulet as an "Eye of Ra".
 * Finally, while the goddess Wadjet can sometimes represent the Eye of Ra (like many other deities), no source that I'm aware of claims that she originated as a personification of the eye. This claim needs to be removed. A. Parrot (talk) 04:10, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Since you cite Darnell 1997 and Zahi Hawass's book, note that, as quoted from the article itself:
 * ''"The Egyptians often referred to the sun and the moon as the "eyes" of particular gods. The right eye [...], for instance, was equated with the sun, and [the] left eye equated with the moon. At times the Egyptians called the lunar eye the "Eye of Horus" and called the solar eye the "Eye of Ra"—Ra being the preeminent sun god in ancient Egyptian religion. Both eyes were represented by the wedjat symbol, a stylized human eye with the facial markings of the falcon [...]. The Egyptologist Richard H. Wilkinson believes the two Eyes [...] gradually became distinguished as the lunar Eye of Horus and the solar Eye of Ra;"
 * making clear that the sun/right side was Ra and the moon/left side was Horus. Left aside that Horus and Ra were often overlapped in ancient texts too, that's why we can talk about Ra-Horakhty as a single figure (a fusion of Ra/sun/right and Horus/moon/left and who knows how many other aspects), but that's also why both Ra and Horus can represent both sides: being associated into Ra-Horakhty, they just got mixed up too many times.
 * The goddess Wadjet/Wedjat/Uadjet is a different topic, but her name itself is just a different spelling of wedjat/uadjet, and she has always represented not the eye in physical terms, but as an extension of Ra's power and view/control over the world. The eye is just a metaphor.
 * ''"Wadjet was closely associated in ancient Egyptian religion with the Eye of Ra, a powerful protective deity. The hieroglyph for her eye is shown below; sometimes two are shown in the sky of religious images. Per-Wadjet also contained a sanctuary of Horus, the child of the sun deity who would be interpreted to represent the pharaoh."
 * By the way, as you cited, the paragraph goes on stating that:
 * ''"however, Rolf Krauss argues that no text equates the Eyes of Horus with the sun and moon until late in Egyptian history, so the Eye of Horus must have originally had some other significance."


 * As Krauss noted, the wedjat didn't just represent sun and moon, but aspects of the gods. This is not a theory of his, but a proven fact. But does this contradict the Ra/sun/right—Horus/moon/left symbology? No, these concepts evidently coexisted for at least four millennia, suffice to get mixed up and fused into Ra-Horakhty, who kept being also called simply Ra or Horus. Greetings, Est. 2021 (talk · contribs) 19:31, 23 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm saying that just because a visual depiction of an eye is a left or right eye, that does not mean you can assume it is the Eye of Horus or Eye of Ra. We have to go with what the sources say, not on what seems to make sense to us personally. The sources call the Tutankhamun amulet an Eye of Horus. Similarly, in the case of Wadjet, she was one of many, many goddesses who could be equated with the Eye of Ra, but the wording you inserted implies that she is even more closely connected with the Eye of Ra than those other goddesses, but to my knowledge, there is no source that makes such a claim. A. Parrot (talk) 05:17, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I didn't use any comparative term when I talked about Wedjat, she was not more nor less than any other goddess; probably, Wedjat was not even an actual goddess, but just an epithet for other feminine counterparts of Ra, e.g. Isis, like many sources suggest. Maybe you didn't study hieroglyphs, I don't want to guess, but her name and the eye symbol have always been written identically. Regarding the visual depiction of the the wedjat, based on combined sources, we may assume it. Regarding the wedjat amulet you refer to as "Eye of Horus": that name has sometimes been used as a generic synonym of wedjat by contemporary archeologists, but no ancient Egyptian text calls that amulet "Eye of Horus". Right eye hieroglyphs have never been called Eye of Horus by hieroglyph experts. The hieroglyph for the Eye of Horus, called D10, was exclusively a left eye. Check Gardiner's sign list and List of Egyptian hieroglyphs § D.  Est. 2021 (talk · contribs) 22:27, 27 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Post scriptum: I forgot to mention that according to sources Tutankhamun did own at least one Eye of Horus amulet – but that's a different amulet, a left eye (e.g. File:Tutankhamun pendant with Wadjet.jpg) – as well as an amulet displaying both eyes, that sources simply call wedjat, not Eye of Horus. Est. 2021 (talk · contribs) 22:44, 27 June 2023 (UTC)