Seshat

Seshat, under various spellings, was the Ancient Egyptian goddess of wisdom, knowledge, and writing. She was seen as a scribe and record keeper, and her name means she who scrivens (i.e. she who is the scribe), and is credited with inventing writing. She also became identified as the goddess of architecture, astronomy, astrology, building, mathematics, and surveying. These are all professions that relied upon expertise in her skills. She is identified as Safekh-Aubi in some late texts.

Mistress of the House of Books is another title for Seshat, being the deity whose priests oversaw the library in which scrolls of the most important knowledge were assembled and spells were preserved. One prince of the fourth dynasty, Wep-em-nefret, is noted as the Overseer of the Royal Scribes, Priest of Seshat on a slab stela. Heliopolis was the location of her principal sanctuary. She is described as the goddess of history.

In art, she was depicted as a woman with a seven-pointed emblem above her head. It is unclear what this emblem represents. Pharaoh Tuthmosis III (1479-1425 BCE) called her Sefket-Abwy (She of seven points). Spell 10 of the Coffin Texts states "Seshat opens the door of heaven for you."

Seshat (project)

The Seshat: Global History Databank is an international scientific research project. The Seshat: Global History Databank gathers together the most up-to-date and complete body of knowledge about human history into one authoritative database. The Seshat Databank systematically collects state-of-the-art accounts of the political and social organization of human groups and how societies have evolved through time. Seshat: Global History Databank

The Seshat: Global History Databank is a nonprofit organization that uses the collective knowledge of thousands of expert researchers about historical societies to gather the information necessary to rigorously test a variety of competing hypotheses about the rise and fall of large-scale societies around the globe and provide scientifically valid and meaningful solutions to some of our most pressing problems. Seshat engages sociocultural evolutionary theory to identify the long-term dynamics of the traits and activities that have had significant effects on the course of human history. The Seshat: Global History Databank is an integral part of an exciting new scientific approach to historical research—Cliodynamics. The goal of Cliodynamics is to use the scientific method to produce the data necessary to empirically test competing theories. A large interdisciplinary and international team helps the Seshat project to produce a database that will enable researchers to rigorously study the past using well-established scientific techniques.