This goddess is an ancient pre-dynastic goddess who was enormously popular with
the ancient Egyptians. Her name is
translated to mean “the House of Horus”, which connects her to the sky, and
also allows Her to be known as the Celestial Cow.
If Horus was the God whom the people associated with the living Pharaoh,
then it was Hathor that they associated to the living Queen.
She is depicted with the head of a cow and a sun disk between her horns, or
sometimes as a beautiful woman wearing the horns and sun disk headdress.
Hathor is also associated with the Egyptian Goddess of War, Sekhmet.
Hathor, as the Eye of Ra, "becomes" Sekhmet in the story "The
Destruction of Mankind". Engraved into one of the shrines of King Tut's
tomb, the story tells how Hathor, at the request of her father (Ra), turns into
Sekhmet in order to punish humans for transgressing against him. When she nearly
wipes out all of humanity, Ra tries to stop her and, failing in that, contrives
to get her drunk, whereupon she immediately forgets what it was she was doing
and goes back to being Hathor. Hathor also appears as a minor character in
"The Contendings of Horus and Set". Her father (Ra) falls into a black
mood so Hathor sets forth to cheer him up. Removing her clothing, she dances
around his throne until he smiles again.
An additional myth, sometimes called "The Distant Goddess", tells of
how Hathor became angry with Ra and wandered away from Egypt. Great sadness
falls over the land and Ra, lost without his Eye, decides to fetch her back.
However, Hathor has now become a deadly wild cat that destroys all that
approaches her, and so no man or god will volunteer to go get her. Thoth
eventually agrees to lure her back and, dressed in disguise, manages to coax the
angry goddess to return to Egypt by telling her stories. Back in her homeland,
she bathes in the Nile and once again settles into her normally gentle demeanor,
but not before the waters turn red from the effort of cooling her rage.
Hathor's symbols included such items as sistrum (a type of rattle), the
horns-and-sun disk headdress (in much later times incorporated into the attire
of Isis), the menat (a type of ritual necklace that may have been used for
percussive music), and mirrors. Many ancient mirrors and sistrum decorated with
smiling, often-nude Hathors on them have been uncovered over the years, and
Hathor's visage (with cow ears) commonly appeared at the top of stone columns in
Egyptian temples, many of which can still be seen today. Her cult flourished in
Ta-Netjer ("Land of God" -- modern day Dendera) in Upper Egypt and her
priests included both men and women, many of whom were dancers, singers, or
musicians as the arts fell under Hathor's domain. Priests of Hathor were also
oracles and midwives, and people could go to some temples of Hathor to have
their dreams interpreted by her priests. Hathor's protection was invoked over
children and pregnant women.
Hathor is associated with numerous other Egyptian goddesses. Her connections
with Bastet helped to "soften up" that deity's visage, and as
discussed previously Hathor was the other side of the Sekhmet coin.
Hathor is also known as the "Lady to the Limit" ("limit"
meaning the edges of the known universe) and the "Lady of the West";
her image is sometimes seen on funerary depiction as she stands behind Osiris,
welcoming the dead to their new home. Other titles of Hathor include the
"Divine (or Celestial) Cow", "Mistress of Heaven", and
"Lady of Gold", the last two of which were sometimes attributed to the
queens of ancient Egypt. Hathor was also known as the "Lady of Greenstone
and Malachite" due to her being regarded as a goddess of the desert fringes
where such mines existed.
The Greeks called Hathor by the name of their goddess, Aphrodite. In the very
late stages of Egyptian religion (over two millennia after Hathor had first
appeared) she became almost totally absorbed into Isis (who acquired, aside from
Hathor's headdress, the sistrum as well), resulting in frequent mistaken
identity between the two. There are, however, subtle differences.
When a child was born in Egypt, seven Hathors (somewhat like European fairy
godmothers) would appear to "speak with one mouth" and determine the
child's fate, which also links her to being a Goddess of Children and
Childbirth. Hathor's own child was
Ihy, who was worshipped in Dendera with her and Horus-Behdety. Like his mother,
Ihy was a god of music and dancing, and was always depicted as a child bearing a
sistrum.
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