Serket

The sting usually comes after dark. A scorpion crosses a mud-brick threshold in the cool hour after sunset, a bare foot comes down, and within minutes the pain is running up the leg like hot wire and the breathing has gone shallow. In a village along the Nile, someone would run for a particular kind of priest. He would arrive, kneel by the mat, and begin speaking, not to the patient but to the venom itself, in the borrowed voice of a goddess who wore a scorpion on her head.

Serket is old enough that Egypt appears to have forgotten where she came from. She was worshipped across the Delta in the Predynastic Period, when the scorpion carried maternal rather than murderous associations across much of the Near East, and finds bearing her name tie her to the Scorpion Kings whose line ended somewhere around the reign of Narmer. No surviving story tells how she was born. She is simply there at the creation of the world, doing something the texts never bother to specify, and by the First Dynasty she has drifted into the orbit of Nun, the watery abyss from which everything else climbed. Some evidence suggests she was the wife of Nun, or of Atum. The sources disagree, and none of them elaborate.

Her full name, Serqet-hetyt, means she who causes the throat to breathe. That is less a title than a diagnosis. A scorpion sting brings burning pain and a tightening chest, and it kills the very young and the very old more readily than anyone else, so a goddess who could pull air back into a closing throat mattered more inside an ordinary house than most of the great gods of the state temples. People wore her name on amulets, on the reasonable theory that the being who owned the poison was the one worth arguing with.

She appears as a woman with her arms held wide, elbows slightly bent, in the posture Egyptian art keeps for shelter rather than greeting, and above her head stands the scorpion. What that scorpion is doing depends on who is looking. Some pieces render it stripped of sting and pincers, visibly disarmed. Geraldine Pinch notes that representations of the goddess show the tail raised in the stinging position. Both readings sit in the record together, which suits her well enough, since she was the one who sent the venom and the one who called it off.

In the tomb of Tutankhamun she stands at a corner of the gilded canopic shrine, gold-skinned, her head turned slightly aside, arms spread across the wood as though the chest behind her were a sleeping child. Neith, Isis and Nephthys hold the other three corners. That arrangement is far older than the boy king. The Pyramid Texts already place the four of them around the dead like the points of a compass: “My mother is Isis, my nurse is Nephthys… Neith is behind me, and Serket is before me.” The same texts show her nursing kings. In the Pyramid and Coffin Texts she takes charge of the canopic equipment alongside the other three, and her particular ward is Qebehsenuef, the falcon-headed son of Horus who keeps the intestines. The pairing follows a grim internal logic. Egyptians associated the gut with poison, and poison was her department.

Drawn into the cult of Horus, she acquired the title Lady of the Beautiful Tent, the tent in question belonging to the embalmers. From there her work spread through the whole geography of the afterlife. She guards a bend in the river on the watery road to paradise. She rides in the barge of Ra among the deities who watch the dark water for Apophis. She hands the justified dead their breath back at the moment of rebirth and withholds it from those judged unworthy, which is a quieter punishment than being eaten but not a kinder one.

The story everyone remembers is not really hers, and that is part of her problem. While Isis hid the infant Horus in the Delta marshes, Serket sent seven scorpions to walk with her: Petet, Tjetet and Matet ahead to check the road, Mesetet and Mesetetef at her flanks, and Tefen and Befen bringing up the rear, the two worst of them, in case Set came from that direction. Isis went out at night disguised as a beggar woman. A wealthy woman watched the procession from an upper window and shut her door against it. A poor woman further along took them in and shared what little she had.

Serket, back in the swamp with the child, saw everything her scorpions saw, and she took the insult personally. The other six emptied their poison into Tefen’s stinger. While Isis ate in the peasant woman’s house, Tefen crept under the rich woman’s door and stung her small son, and the boy went down where he stood. His mother carried him into the street, screaming for help nobody could give her. Isis heard, went to the child, called each scorpion by its secret name to strip it of power, and spoke the poison out of him until he woke. Her own weapon had almost killed an innocent boy. She swore afterwards to protect all children.

Nobody has found a temple to Serket anywhere in Egypt, which has led some scholars to conclude that she never had one, or that she was folded early into older goddesses like Neith and Hathor. What she had instead was a profession. Her clergy were doctors. They held the title kherep Serqet, controller of Serqet, and men and women alike practised the rites. The Brooklyn Papyrus, a hieratic manuscript of the Late Period copied from something older, preserves their snakebite manual: species, symptoms, prognosis, treatment, with less than a tenth of it given over to incantation. One passage instructs the healer to say “I know it” while drawing a broken fang out of the wound, then to spit the fang into a bowl of beer and dates and have the bitten man drink the lot. Another opens with the practitioner turning to speak to the venom directly: “It is Ra who wards off venom.” In a papyrus from the reign of Ramesses II the physician says her line aloud in the first person: “You poisons, come forth to me. I am Serqet.”

Her powers all run along the same nerve. She commands venom in both directions, drawing it out of a body or driving it into one, and snakes and scorpions went where she sent them, against the cruel and the guilty as readily as away from the sick. Breath is hers by the same right, on the mat and in the tomb, which is why the dead wanted her name near their organs. Her limits are just as consistent. She has no birth story, no cult centre, no temple estate and no priesthood that was not also a medical practice. When the Osiris myth took hold across Egypt, Isis absorbed the motherhood, the magic and the marsh, and in most later retellings of the seven scorpions Serket is not mentioned at all. She works through other hands: a physician’s recitation, a jar lid, a name scratched into an amulet, seven small bodies moving through the reeds ahead of a woman in disguise. Take away the practitioner and there is nothing for her to do.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the Egyptian goddess Serket?

Serket is an ancient Egyptian goddess of scorpions, venom and healing, worshipped from the Predynastic Period onward. Her name, Serqet-hetyt, means “she who causes the throat to breathe”, a reference to the shortness of breath caused by a scorpion sting. She protected the living against venomous bites and guarded the dead in the afterlife.

What does Serket protect in the tomb?

Serket is one of four goddesses, with Isis, Neith and Nephthys, who guard the canopic equipment holding the internal organs of the dead. Her specific charge is Qebehsenuef, the falcon-headed son of Horus who keeps the intestines. Egyptians associated the intestines with poison, which is why the goddess of venom was given that post.

Why is the scorpion on Serket’s head sometimes missing its sting?

Some depictions show her scorpion stripped of its stinger and pincers, an image of the threat disarmed by the goddess who controls it. Other representations show the tail raised in the stinging position instead. Both versions survive, matching her double role as the sender of venom and the one who calls it back.

Who were the priests of Serket?

The clergy of Serket were practising physicians, known by the title kherep Serqet, or controller of Serqet, and both men and women held it. They specialised in treating snakebite and scorpion stings. The Brooklyn Papyrus preserves their manual, with species identification, symptoms, prognosis and treatment making up the great majority of the text and incantations only a small fraction.

What is the story of Isis and the seven scorpions?

Serket sent seven scorpions to escort Isis while she hid the infant Horus in the Delta marshes. When a wealthy woman shut her door on the disguised goddess, the scorpion Tefen stung the woman’s young son, and Isis healed the boy by calling each scorpion by its secret name and drawing the poison out. Serket, who had ordered the punishment, afterwards vowed to protect all children.

Related Entries

Isis, Nephthys, Neith, Horus, Osiris, Set, Ra, Apep/Apophis, Anubis, Mafdet, Wadjet, Taweret, Imhotep