Amesemi

Also Known As: Meroitic hieroglyphic spelling transliterated as ṃẹsmi; formerly called “the goddess with the falcons” and mistaken for the Egyptian Amentet, goddess of the west
Region/Culture: North Africa
Mythos: Nubian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: A native Kushite goddess of the Meroitic kingdom, consort of the lion god Apedemak, who takes part in choosing and crowning rulers and is shown nursing a royal child.
Role in Mythos: She is the companion of Apedemak in the temples of Musawwarat es Sufra and Naga and one of the principal divine witnesses at Meroitic coronations.
Relation to Humans: Kings and queens of Meroe had themselves carved beside her, with the goddess touching their crowns and leading them toward her enthroned consort. An oracular decree from Qasr Ibrim calls on her by name, which shows that her cult reached beyond the royal reliefs.

Two small falcons stand on her head. They perch side by side on a flat-topped crown, each with a sun disk, and on the reliefs of Naga they are the quickest way to tell the goddess from the queen she is escorting. Otherwise the two women could pass for sisters: the same close cap, the same chain of fat beads at the throat, the same heavy cuffs on the forearms. The goddess is Amesemi, and for most of the twentieth century nobody knew what to call her.

Scholars working on the temples of the kingdom of Meroe, in what is now Sudan, labelled her “the goddess with the falcons”, or took her for Amentet, the Egyptian goddess of the west. The correction came from a single stone. A stela from Naga, now in the Sudan National Museum in Khartoum as SNM 31338, spells her name out in full in Meroitic hieroglyphs. Once the name could be read, the scattered pictures resolved into one figure. Josefine Kuckertz, who gathered the evidence in the Berlin journal Der Antike Sudan in 2020, counts more than thirty attestations across eight temples, four stelae, jewellery, seal impressions and Meroitic texts. That makes Amesemi one of the best documented deities of the Meroitic age, a span of roughly 300 BCE to 350 CE.

Her husband is Apedemak, the lion-headed god whose cult was the great native religion of the Meroitic kingdom, and her story begins where his temples do. The oldest securely dated trace of her is on the Lion Temple at Musawwarat es Sufra, raised in the steppe under King Arnekhamani in the late third century BCE. It was the first known Meroitic temple built for local gods rather than for gods imported from Egypt, and it was dedicated to Apedemak. On its outer north wall, where the reliefs show male and female gods together, her name survives beside the worn traces of a falcon and a sun disk above her head. The building collapsed in antiquity, and its excavator, Fritz Hintze, stood it up again in 1969 and 1970. She was there at the start, and she is not Egyptian. In a religion that took Amun, Isis and Hathor from its northern neighbour and gave them grand temples, Amesemi has no Egyptian model at all. She is found only in Meroitic times and only in Kushite hands.

The later Meroitic kings built for her on a larger scale, above all at Naga, a desert town some thirty kilometres from the Nile where Natakamani and Amanitore raised temples to Amun and to Apedemak in the first century CE. Here she appears again and again in the same gesture. A queen stands before the gods, and Amesemi stands behind her with a hand at the crown, or at the elbow, as if settling the weight of it. In one scene she leads Queen Amanishakheto toward Apedemak on his throne. She is present at the choosing of a ruler and at the moment the ruler takes office. That is her work, and the temple walls return to it more than to anything else.

A sandstone stela from the temple of Amun at Naga shows what that work was for. It is small, about forty centimetres high. Amanishakheto stands at the centre, heavy and upright, with Apedemak on one side and Amesemi on the other, her falcon and sun disk on her head. Below them kneels a row of five bound prisoners, one of them wearing a helmet, a figure the Naga project reads as a foreigner and perhaps a sign of fighting with Rome. On the back, in cursive Meroitic, a list of places traces the reach of the kingdom north as far as Aswan. Gods, queen and captives are cut in the same warm stone, the grit still visible under the carving.

Her other duties are more intimate. A silver ring in the Egyptian Museum in Berlin shows her suckling a child, understood as the king, which places her among the divine nurses of royalty. She appears in chapels and kiosks where protection of the royal household seems to be the point. Far to the north, at the fortress town of Qasr Ibrim, an oracular decree written in Meroitic calls on Amesemi, and she is the only god named in it. That single text is the clearest sign that she was worshipped in her own right and not only painted onto walls as Apedemak’s partner.

No story about her survives. There is no account of her birth, her marriage or her death, only pictures, a name, and a handful of prayers and decrees. The Khartoum stela adds two strange details. It shows a crescent moon among her headgear, the only image of her that does, and three wavy lines scored into her cheeks. Those cheek marks are the same scarification the queens of Meroe wear, and together with the royal cuffs and the falcon headdress, which royal women also wore, they led Kuckertz to ask whether Amesemi began as a deified queen, remembered and raised to the gods before about 230 BCE. She is careful to add that gods were routinely carved in the likeness of the reigning monarch, so resemblance proves less than it seems. The occasional description of Amesemi as a moon goddess rests on that one crescent.

Her power, as the stone records it, is the power to confirm a ruler. She touches the crown and it holds. She stands behind the queen and the lion god receives her. She feeds the royal child and he grows into a king. Her limits are the limits of the state that honoured her. Every securely dated trace belongs to the Meroitic kingdom, and when that kingdom faded in the fourth century CE, so did every record of the goddess with the falcons.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Amesemi?

Amesemi is a goddess of the ancient Kushite kingdom of Meroe, in present-day Sudan, and the consort of the lion-headed god Apedemak. She is a native Kushite deity with no Egyptian precedent, attested from the late third century BCE to the end of the Meroitic period. More than thirty depictions and mentions of her are known.

What does Amesemi look like?

Amesemi is usually shown wearing one or two falcons with sun disks on a flat-topped crown, over a close cap with round ornaments and a diadem with a uraeus. She wears a robe with slanting stripes, a short chain of large beads and heavy cuffs on her forearms. One stela from Naga also shows a crescent moon and scarification marks on her cheeks.

What was Amesemi’s role in Meroitic religion?

Amesemi was closely tied to kingship. Temple reliefs show her touching the crowns and elbows of Meroitic queens during coronation scenes and leading Queen Amanishakheto to the enthroned Apedemak. A silver ring in Berlin shows her nursing a child understood as the king.

Where was Amesemi worshipped?

Amesemi’s earliest dated appearance is on the Lion Temple at Musawwarat es Sufra, built under King Arnekhamani in the late third century BCE. She appears most often at Naga, and also at Meroe, Amara, Faras, Qasr Ibrim and Tabo. An oracular decree from Qasr Ibrim names her as its only deity.

Was Amesemi a moon goddess?

The evidence for Amesemi as a moon goddess is thin. A crescent moon appears in her headgear on only one stela, Khartoum SNM 31338, while her usual emblem is the falcon with a sun disk. Her documented role centres on kingship, protection and nursing the royal child.