| Mut | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 A contemporary image of goddess Mut, depicted as a woman wearing the double crown plus a royal vulture headdress, associating her with Nekhbet. | |||||
| Name in hieroglyphs |
| ||||
| Major cult center | Thebes | ||||
| Symbol | the Vulture | ||||
| Genealogy | |||||
| Parents | Ra | ||||
| Siblings | Sekhmet, Hathor, Ma'at and Bastet | ||||
| Consort | Amun | ||||
| Offspring | Khonsu | ||||
Mut, also known as Maut and Mout, was a mother goddess worshipped in ancient Egypt. Her name means mother in the ancient Egyptian language.[2] Mut had many different aspects and attributes that changed and evolved greatly over the thousands of years of ancient Egyptian culture.
Mut was considered a primal deity, associated with the primordial waters of Nu from which everything in the world was born. Mut was sometimes said to have given birth to the world through parthenogenesis, but more often she was said to have a husband, the solar creator god Amun-Ra. Although Mut was believed by her followers to be the mother of everything in the world, she was particularly associated as the mother of the lunar child god Khonsu. At the Temple of Karnak in Egypt's capital city of Thebes, the family of Amun-Ra, Mut and Khonsu were worshipped together as the Theban Triad.
In art, Mut was usually depicted as a woman wearing the double crown of the kings of Egypt, representing her power over the whole of the land.
During the high point of Mut's cult, the rulers of Egypt would support her worship in their own way to emphasize their own authority and right to rule through an association with Mut. Mut was involved in many ancient Egyptian festivals such as the Opet Festival and the Beautiful Festival of the Valley.