This book is a follow-up to Roberts' earlier book,
Hathor Rising
, about feminine divine power in ancient Egypt. Whereas that book focused on the early New Kingdom, this one discusses the Ramesside period (the latter half of the New Kingdom) and the role that female deities played in the complex afterlife beliefs found in funerary texts from the period.
The book doesn't focus very closely on its subject. It discusses a loosely connected variety of subjects, such as the Memphite Theology (centering on the male god Ptah), on the assumption that it was a product of the Ramesside period, and the rites performed at Abydos for Osiris. In both those cases Roberts points out the role of the relevant female deities, but when she does so it feels like something of an afterthought. The latter half of the book is better, as it has a built-in thematic structure: the journey of the sun god through the underworld as described in the funerary texts.
The last couple of chapters discuss alchemy, one of many esoteric traditions that arose in Greco-Roman times and were influenced, to varying degrees, by ancient Egyptian religion. She points out similarities between alchemical traditions and the transfiguration of the soul in Egyptian afterlife beliefs. In particular, she compares the transformation of the sun god in the Book of the Earth, in which the fiery Eye goddess seems to play a role, to the way metalworking and crucibles are depicted in other Egyptian sources. These similarities are interesting, but they don't seem strong enough by themselves to prove a direct connection. More detailed study is needed. As Roberts herself points out, scholars increasingly acknowledge the Egyptian background to another esoteric tradition, Hermeticism, but they haven't reexamined alchemy yet.
This book and its predecessor do give a sense of how female deities fit into ancient Egyptian beliefs. As much as Roberts wants to emphasize goddesses, though, it feels as if femininity was a major undercurrent in Egyptian theology rather than a central feature. Osiris and Ra were the agents of resurrection, even if Isis, Nut, and Hathor played large supporting roles. Things changed in the Late and Ptolemaic periods, even if Hathor herself was overshadowed by Isis, but Roberts can't cover that subject because she limits her scope to the New Kingdom. And because of the rather unfocused writing style, one has to pick out the nuggets of information related to the goddesses, rather than getting a coherent summary of the subject. For that reason, I think these two books are best used as supplements to other works on the Egyptian concept of femininity, such as
Dancing for Hathor
and, if you can find it,
Patterns of Queenship in Ancient Egyptian Myth and History
.
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