BUTO

This article appears in Volume V04, Page 889 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BUN-CAL

BUTO , the Greek name of the Egyptian goddess Uto (hierogl. W'zy.t), confused with the name of her city Buto (see BuSIRIs). She was a cobra-goddess of the marshes, worshipped especially in the city of Buto in the north-west of the

Delta

DELTA (from the shape of the Gr. letter A, delta, originally used of the mouth of the Nile)

, and at another Buto (Hdt. ii. 75) in the north-

east

EAST
EAST, ALFRED (1849- )

of the

Delta

DELTA (from the shape of the Gr. letter A, delta, originally used of the mouth of the Nile)

, now Tell Nebesheh. The former city is placed by Petrie at Tell Ferain, a large and important site, but as yet yielding no

inscriptions

INSCRIPTIONS (from Lat. inscribere, to write upon)

. This western Buto was the

capital

CAPITAL (i.e. capital stock or fund)
CAPITAL (Lat. caput, head)

of the kingdom of Northern

Egypt

EGYPT

in prehistoric times before the two kingdoms were united; hence the goddess Buto was goddess of Lower

Egypt

EGYPT

and the North. To correspond to the vulture goddess (Nekhbi) of the

south

SOUTH
SOUTH, ROBERT (1634–1716)

she sometimes is given the form of a vulture; she is also figured in human form. As a serpent she is commonly twined round a papyrus

stem

STEM (O. Eng. staefn, stemn, cf. Du. stain, Ger. Stamm, &c., probably related to " staff ")

, which latter spells her name; and generally she wears the crown of Lower Egypt. The Greeks identified her with Leto; this may be accounted for partly by the resemblance of name, partly by the myth of her having brought up

Horus

HORUS (Egyptian Hor)

in a floating

island

ISLAND (O.E. ieg =isle, +land')

, resembling the story of Leto and Apollo on Delos. Perhaps the two myths influenced each other. Herodotus describes the temple and other sacred
places of (the western) Buto, and refers to its festival, and to its oracle, which must have been important though nothing definite is known about it. It is strange that a city whose leading in the most ancient times was fully recognized throughout Egyptian history does not appear in the early lists of nome-capitals. Like Thebes, however (which lay in the 4th nome of Upper Egypt, its early

capital

CAPITAL (i.e. capital stock or fund)
CAPITAL (Lat. caput, head)

being Hermonthis), it eventually became, at a very

late

LATE

date, the capital of a nome, in this case called Phtheneto, " the land of (the goddess) Buto." The second Buto (hierogl. 'Imt) was capital from early times of the 19th nome of Lower Egypt.
See Herodotus ii. r55; Zeitschr. f. gyptische Sprache (1871), 1; K. Sethe in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopadie, s.v. ' Buto "; D. G. Hogarth, Journal of Hellenic Studies, xxiv. 1; W. M. F. Petrie, Ehnasya, p. 36; Nebesheh and Defenneh. (F. LL. G.)

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