[67] Which goddess these images represent is not known, but the Egyptians adopted her iconography and came to regard her as an independent deity, Qetesh,[68] whom they associated with Hathor. [2] Cows are venerated in many cultures, including ancient Egypt, as symbols of motherhood and nourishment, because they care for their calves and provide humans with milk. Nut most commonly filled this role, but the tree goddess was sometimes called Hathor instead. If so, Horus only came to be linked with Isis and Osiris as the Osiris myth emerged during the Old Kingdom. [135] The dancing, eating and drinking that took place during the Festival of Drunkenness represented the opposite of the sorrow, hunger, and thirst that the Egyptians associated with death.
[36], Hathor's joyful, ecstatic side indicates her feminine, procreative power. [117] Nevertheless, when the Greeks referred to Egyptian gods by the names of their own gods (a practice called interpretatio graeca), they sometimes called Hathor Aphrodite. [16] It is typically translated "house of Horus" but can also be rendered as "my house is the sky". For official Godchecker merch please visit our God Shop where a wide range of items are available to buy. Different types of offerings may have symbolized different goals on the part of the donor, but their meaning is usually unknown. In some versions of the Distant Goddess myth, the wandering Eye's wildness abated when she was appeased with products of civilization like music, dance, and wine. An image of the sed festival of Amenhotep III, meant to celebrate and renew his rule, shows the king together with Hathor and his queen Tiye, which could mean that the king symbolically married the goddess in the course of the festival. [175], Major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion, Composite image of Hathor's most common iconography, based partly on images from the, Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, "Gender Transformation in Death: A Case Study of Coffins from Ramesside Period Egypt", "The Role of the Temple of Ba'alat Gebal as Intermediary between Egypt and Byblos during the Old Kingdom", "A Newly Identified Stela from Wadi el-Hudi (Cairo JE 86119)", "Enjoying the Pleasures of Sensation: Reflections on A Significant Feature of Egyptian Religion", "Priestesses of Hathor: Their Function, Decline and Disappearance", "The Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian Banquet: Ideals and Realities", "Hathor and Isis in Byblos in the Second and First Millennia BCE", "B 200 and B 300: Temples of the Goddesses Hathor and Mut", "Household and Domestic Religion in Egypt", "Cosmogony (Late to Ptolemaic and Roman Periods)", "Sacred and Obscene Laughter in 'The Contendings of Horus and Seth', in Egyptian Inversions of Everyday Life, and in the Context of Cultic Competition", "O. Gardiner 363: A Spell Against Night Terrors", "Contextualising the Tale of the Herdsman", "Zšš wꜣḏ Scenes of the Old Kingdom Revisited", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hathor&oldid=979528478, Articles having same image on Wikidata and Wikipedia, Articles containing Ancient Egyptian-language text, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 21 September 2020, at 08:04. [11] Hathor's diversity reflects the diversity of traits that the Egyptians associated with goddesses. [53] At Kom Ombo, Hathor's local form, Tasenetnofret, was mother to Horus's son Panebtawy. [78], Hathor was one of several goddesses believed to assist deceased souls in the afterlife. [10] The Egyptologist Robyn Gillam suggests that these diverse forms emerged when the royal goddess promoted by the Old Kingdom court subsumed many local goddesses worshipped by the general populace, who were then treated as manifestations of her. [115], After the New Kingdom, Isis increasingly overshadowed Hathor and other goddesses as she took on their characteristics. [103] These columns have two or four faces, which may represent the duality between different aspects of the goddess or the watchfulness of Hathor of the Four Faces. [128] In the course of the Middle Kingdom, women were increasingly excluded from the highest priestly positions, at the same time that queens were becoming more closely tied to Hathor's cult. Bat – Cow goddess from early in Egyptian history, eventually absorbed by Hathor Hathor – One of the most important goddesses, linked with the sky, the sun, sexuality and motherhood, music and dance, foreign lands and goods, and the afterlife. Sometimes the horns stood atop a low modius or the vulture headdress that Egyptian queens often wore in the New Kingdom. [132] In Late and Ptolemaic times, they were also offered a pair of mirrors, representing the sun and the moon. In contrast, prayers to Hathor mention only the benefits she could grant, such as abundant food during life and a well-provisioned burial after death. In the mammisi of the Dendera temple, Ihy is a young, naked boy. Egyptian women squatted on bricks while giving birth, and the only known surviving birth brick from ancient Egypt is decorated with an image of a woman holding her child flanked by images of Hathor. a+='lto:' b='info' Hathor ascended with Ra and became his mythological wife, and thus divine mother of the pharaoh. Cattle goddesses similar to Hathor were portrayed in Egyptian art in the fourth millennium BC, but she may not have appeared until the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2181 BC). [60], Hathor's maternal aspects can be compared with those of Isis and Mut, yet there are many contrasts between them. [137] Hathor was not involved in this festival until the early New Kingdom,[138] after which Amun's overnight stay in the temples at Deir el-Bahari came to be seen as his sexual union with her. On the days leading up to the new year, Dendera's statue of Hathor was taken to the wabet, a specialized room in the temple, and placed under a ceiling decorated with images of the sky and sun. [122] In the First Intermediate Period (c. 2181–2055) her cult statue from Dendera was periodically carried to the Theban necropolis. [149] A temple to Hathor as Lady of Byblos was built during the reign of Thutmose III, although it may simply have been a shrine within the temple of Baalat. She also appeared as a lioness, and this form had a similar meaning. His responsibility for writing was shared with the goddess Seshat. [27] Related to this story is the myth of the Distant Goddess, from the Late and Ptolemaic periods. [118] Traits of Isis, Hathor, and Aphrodite were all combined to justify the treatment of Ptolemaic queens as goddesses. [39], Hathor could be the consort of many male gods, of whom Ra was only the most prominent. [38] In a late creation myth from the Ptolemaic Period (332–30 BC), the god Khonsu is put in a central role, and Hathor is the goddess with whom Khonsu mates to enable creation. Festivals during the inundation therefore incorporated drink, music, and dance as a way to appease the returning goddess. Sitemap - Privacy policy, Represented joyous childhood and the perfect child. Cloths painted with images of Hathor were common, as were plaques and figurines depicting her animal forms. [79] One of these was Imentet, the goddess of the west, who personified the necropolises, or clusters of tombs, on the west bank of the Nile, and the realm of the afterlife itself.