Egypt: Ipy, A Mother of Osiris

Ipy

Ipy was a benign hippopotamus goddess first attested in the Pyramid Age where the monarch calls her his mother and requests her to suckle him with her divine milk. In another royal connection Ipy is carved as an amuletic force on the back of a statue of a Theban ruler of the 17th Dynasty. Funerary papyri described Ipy as "Lady of magical protection:" and show her lighting a bowl of incense cones.

At Karnak to the west of the temple of Khunsu is the temple of a goddess called the Great Ipet who is none other than Ipy. In Theban theology this goddess rested on this spot when she was pregnant and give birth to Osiris.