Imentet - Friend of the Dead

Alaine Baker

​

From the Pyramid Texts. Utterance 452. Par. 282-284

​

'Behold, she comes to meet thee, does the Beautiful West, meeting you with her lovely tresses, and she says; “Here comes whom I have borne, whose horn is upstanding, the eye-painted Pillar, the Bull of the sky! Your shape is distinguished, pass in peace, for I have protected you.” So says the Beautiful West to the King.’

 

The Maghreb, the land where the sun sets, has been traversed by the Imazighen, the Berbers for more than 20,000 years. They are a free people with a history of mythology based on a Mediterranean pantheon acculturation of gods and goddesses.

​

It is on this Barbery coast that Imentet known as ‘She of the West’, ‘Friend of the Dead’ or ‘the Beautiful West’, inhabited a sycamore tree at the edge of the desert. She greeted the dead offering them sustenance for their journey to the netherworld. With her victuals the souls were able to be reborn and enter the Field of Reeds, Paradise.

​

Imentet, goddess of the land of the dead, rebirth, of fertility, personified the West, where the sun ‘died’. The Cult of the Dead still exists today amongst the matriarchal Berber tribes who perform prophecy rituals.

​

In Imazighen mythology the proud and beautiful Imentet appears with wings and a red feather, whilst in Egyptian mythology she, as Amentet, is depicted with a hieroglyph of the west atop her head, manifested as a falcon or a feather, holding the sceptre and ankh, symbol of life.