The moment of announcement
Meskhenet approaches each newborn in the Westcar story and declares that he will rule the land. The repeated statement distinguishes her action from the delivery itself and from Khnum’s strengthening of the body. The infants’ future position becomes part of the narrated birth. Ra’s intention and the goddess’s pronouncement reinforce one another, but the story does not offer a general formula by which every human future was inevitably determined. This is a specially constructed account of three royal children, embedded within a larger tale about the transfer of kingship beyond Khufu’s immediate descendants.
Source: Egyptian Tales, First Series: Tales of the Magicians · Hordedef’s Tale, pp. 36–38, Meskhenet’s pronouncements after the three births
The place of birth as a divine presence
UCL’s overview explains that the birth brick could take the name Meskhenet, associated in some contexts with a goddess and an aspect of individual identity. The connection places divine significance in something materially close to the act of being born. It also illustrates the danger of treating Egyptian religious language as a catalogue of neatly separated persons and objects. A name can connect a physical support, a divine power, and the beginning of a human life. Precisely which connection is active must be determined from the inscription or image under discussion.
Source: Childbirth · Childbirth, “Depictions of childbirth: birth bricks; divine birth cycle”
A life recalled at judgment
Meskhenet appears again in discussions of Ani’s judgment vignette, near other figures associated with the person’s life and destiny. Budge’s treatment includes uncertainties over the identification of a person-headed object and its relation to Shai and Renenet; those uncertainties should not be silently converted into a fixed universal diagram. What matters for this reading is that birth and a person’s course of life can be present at the assessment of the dead. The start and the hoped-for continuation of existence belong together. This gives the royal birth story a meaningful connection to funerary thought without making the two scenes interchangeable.
Source: Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life · Chapter IV, Ani’s judgment vignette, discussion of Meskhenet, Shai, Renenet, and the Westcar parallel
- Period / witness
- Selected Second Intermediate Period narrative and New Kingdom funerary imagery.
- Recording context
- Papyrus Westcar, Berlin 3033; Papyrus of Ani, British Museum EA10470, judgment scene.
A recording location is not necessarily a story’s origin. Dates of texts, copies, and translations answer different questions.
Explore time & place →Read the sources
These references support the explanation above. Rights and edition notes are recorded individually.
Egyptian Tales, First Series: Tales of the Magicians ↗
W. M. Flinders Petrie (1853–1942) · 1895; second edition 1899; ebook updated 2016
Edition & rights noteChildbirth ↗
Digital Egypt for Universities · Undated educational page; consulted 2026
Edition & rights noteEgyptian Ideas of the Future Life ↗
E. A. Wallis Budge · 1899; third edition 1908; ebook updated 2024
Edition & rights note