Hathor
(Revision as of 00:04, 2 Aug 2005)
Categories: Egyptian Gods | Egyptian Goddesses
In Egyptian mythology, Hathor ("the house of Horus") was an extremely popular fertility goddess, associated with the cow. Her name refers to her position as the celestial cow which encircles the sky and hawk god, Horus. She was also a goddess of royalty. Her cult was centered in Dendera and was led by priests who were also dancers, singers or other artists, for she was a goddess of art as well. Her priests were also oracles and midwives. She was the mother of Ihy and of Horus. Some academics have suggested a sacred marriage between Hathor and Horus as part of the annual festival at Luxor.
In earlier Egyptian mythology, Hathor was portrayed as a cow with a stylized sun between her horns, or a woman wearing a headdress with horns, the stylized sun and sometimes a uraeus. One of the myths of Hathor sees her as the wandering eye of Amun, which he replaced, when Hathor returned he made her into his uraeus. In addition to the cow, Hathor was associated with falcons, cobras, lionesses and hippopotami.
She was associated with the menat, the sistrum (a type of rattle), and mirrors, as well as the goddess Sekhmet, Bata and Bastet. She was eventually identified with Isis.
Hathor was both the daughter and wife of Ra. Hathor and Ra once argued, and she left Egypt. Ra quickly decided he missed her, but she changed into a cat that destroyed any man or god that approached. Thoth, disguised, eventually succeeded in convincing her to return.
Some of the many titles of Hathor were “Mistress of Heaven,” “The One Who Shines Like Gold,” “Eye of Ra,” “The One Who Fills the Sanctuary with Joy,” “The Great Cow Who Protects Her Child,” “Lady of the Scarlet-Colored Garment” (she was often pictured in a red dress), “Mistress of the Sanctuary of Women,” “Cow of Gold,” and “Lady of the House of Jubilation.” In the earliest dynasties, the name of Hathor was a component of all royal Egyptian names.
Hathor was a very old goddess of Egypt, worshiped as a cow-deity from the earliest times (about 2700 BCE). As a provider of milk, the cow is a universal symbol of motherhood, nourishment, and abundance. The cow’s large eyes with long lashes and her generally quiet demeanor suggest a gentle aspect of feminine beauty. There are still cultures in the world where to say that a girl is “as pretty as a heifer” is a great compliment. The cow’s careful tending of her calf was also a model for motherhood. Royal ladies often took the title of “Priestess of Hathor” in her honor. Yet although she was intrinsically connected to the female of the species, Hathor cannot be considered only a women’s deity. She also had a large and devoted following among men.
Hathor was deeply loved by the general population and truly revered by women, who aspired to embody her multifaceted role as wife, mother, and lover. Hathor’s cult was unusual, as both men and women were her priests (most Egyptian deities had clerics of the same gender as they.) A hymn to Hathor says:
- “Thou art the Mistress of Jubilation, the Queen of the Dance, the Mistress of Music, the Queen of the Harp Playing, the Lady of the Choral Dance, the Queen of Wreath Weaving, the Mistress of Inebriety Without End.”
Hathor was a loving mother and a goddess of joy, love, beer, song, dance, and foreign lands. Often called “Golden Hathor,” she was also the protector of lovers and the patroness of festivals. She greeted the souls of the dead in the underworld and offered them refreshments of food and drink. The worship of Hathor was so popular that more festivals were dedicated to her honor that any other Egyptian deity, and more children were named after this goddess than any other. Because her worship stretches back to pre-dynastic times, we find Hathor identified with many local goddesses, and it can be said that all the goddesses were forms of Hathor.
Hathor had so many manifestations that eventually seven of the most important ones were selected and widely worshiped as the “Seven Hathors,” also associated with the seven planets that the ancient Egyptians knew. These Seven Hathors were invoked to act as sort of fairy godmothers to children. Hathor was pictured as a cow (sometimes covered in stars), a lioness, a hawk, a cobra, a Nile goose, a hippopotamus, a sycamore tree, and as a woman with the ears of a cow and a headdress of horns holding the sun-disk. Sometimes Hathor was depicted as a cow standing in a boat, surrounded by tall papyrus reeds; the pharaoh was often pictured as a calf standing next to her. As the “Mistress of the Necropolis” Hathor was also shown as the head of a cow protruding from a mountainside, watching over the city. Interestingly, the Egyptian hieroglyphic of the head of the cow was the symbol for wisdom.
The image of Hathor the Divine Cow suckling the pharaoh was quite common in ancient Egyptian art—however, it was not confined to Egypt. Similar motifs have been found on a wide variety of objects throughout the ancient Near East—in Crete, Syria, Mesopotamia, Greece, and on Phoenician objects as well. This image was thought to express the joyous tenderness, warmth, and contentment that sustains the flow of life. The Egyptian hieroglyphs for “to be joyful” was represented by a cow turning round to a young calf nestling at her side.
Hathor’s image was often used to form the capitals of columns in Egyptian architecture. Unlike other Egyptian gods and goddesses, Hathor was sometimes shown full-face in images (highly unusual by Egyptian artistic conventions). The only other deity to ever be pictured this way was Bes. Hathor was also represented by the menat, the turquoise “musical necklace” often worn by women, the mirror, a field of reeds, and the Egyptian rattle called the sistrum. Hathor was thought to be the daughter of Nuit, the daughter-wife of Ra, and the mother of Anhur and Isis. Sometimes she was considered to be the mother-wife of Horus, the wife of Sobek, and the mother of Ihy.
The Greeks especially loved Hathor and equated her with their own goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite. Hathor was worshiped in Israel in the 11th century BC at her holy city of Hazor, which the Old Testament claims was destroyed by Joshua (Joshua 11:13, 21.) The Sinai Tablets show that the Hebrew workers in the mines of Sinai about 1500 BC worshiped Hathor, whom they identified with the goddess Astarte. Some theories state that the “golden calf” mentioned in the bible was a meant to be a statue of the goddess Hathor (Exodus 32:4-32:6.)
References
- Wikipedia. (2005). Hathor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hathor). Retrieved on 02/28/2005.
![[Main Page]](http://www.thelemapedia.org/images/logo.gif){kind=logo}