Hathor
| Hathor in hieroglyphic |
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Hathor is one of the main goddesses of Ancient Egyptian religion who played a variety of roles. As a sky deity, she was the mother or consort of the sky god Horus and the sun god Ra, both associated with royalty, so Hathor was the symbolic mother of her earthly representatives, the pharaohs. She was one of the many goddesses who assumed the role of the Eye of Ra, the female counterpart of Ra, and in this form she had a vengeful nature that protected him from his enemies. The beneficent side of her represented music, dance, joy, love, sexuality, and maternal care, and she acted as consort to various male deities and mother to her children. These two aspects of the goddess exemplified the Egyptian conception of femininity. She crossed the border between the worlds, helping deceased souls in their transition to the afterlife.
She was often depicted as a cow, a symbol of her maternal and heavenly character, although her most common form was that of a woman with a headdress of cow's horns and a sun disk. She could also be represented as a lioness, aureus, or sycamore.
Similar depictions of bovine goddesses exist in Egyptian art from the fourth millennium BCE. BCE, but Hathor possibly did not appear until the Old Kingdom (c. 2686-2181 BCE). Under the auspices of the rulers of the Old Kingdom she became one of the most important deities in Egypt. More temples were dedicated to her than to any other goddess, of which the most prominent was that of Dendera, in Upper Egypt. She was also worshiped in the temples of her male consorts. The Egyptians linked her to foreign lands such as Nubia and Canaan and the valuable goods from her, such as incense and semi-precious gems, and some of the peoples of those lands adopted her worship. In Egypt she was one of the most invoked deities in private prayers and votive offerings, especially by women who wished to have children.
During the New Kingdom (c. 1550-1070 BC), goddesses such as Mut and Isis took Hathor's position in the ideology of kingship, but she remained one of the most revered deities. After the end of the New Kingdom, Hathor was increasingly eclipsed by Isis, but she continued to be worshiped until the extinction of the ancient Egyptian religion in the first centuries AD.
Origins
Images of cows appear frequently in the art of pre-dynastic Egypt (before 3100 BC), as do images of women with upraised and curved arms reminiscent of the shape of bovine horns. Both types of images may represent goddesses associated with cattle. Cows are revered in many cultures, including ancient Egypt, as symbols of motherhood and nourishment, caring for their calves and supplying milk to humans. The Gerzeh Palette, a stone palette from the prehistoric Naqada II period (c. 3500-3200 BCE), shows the silhouette of a cow's head with inward-curving horns surrounded by stars. The palette suggests that this cow was linked to heaven, as were several goddesses of later times who were represented in this way: Hathor, Meheturet, and Nut.
Despite these early precedents, Hathor is not clearly mentioned or depicted until the Fourth Dynasty (c. 2613-2494 BCE) of the Old Kingdom, although various objects referring to her may be dated to the Archaic Period (c. 3100-2686 BC). When Hathor appears clearly, her horns curve outward, rather than inward like those of predynastic art. A bovine deity with incurving horns appears on the Narmer Palette, from near the beginning of Egyptian history, both on the top of the palette and on King Narmer's belt. The Egyptologist Henry George Fischer suggested that this deity could be Bat, a goddess who was later depicted with the face of a woman and antennae that turned inward, apparently reflecting the curve of cow horns. For her part, the Egyptologist Lana Troy identifies a passage in the late Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts that associates Hathor with the king's "apron", reminiscent of the belt goddess of Narmer, and suggests that this goddess was not it is Bat but Hathor.
During the Fourth Dynasty, Hathor quickly became a prominent figure. She replaced an early crocodile god worshiped at Dendera in Upper Egypt to become the patron deity of this city, and increasingly assumed plus the cult of Bat in the neighboring region of Hu, until, in the Middle Kingdom (c. 2055-1650 BC), the two divinities were unified. The theology surrounding the pharaoh in the Old Kingdom, through Unlike that of earlier times, it largely focused on the sun god Ra as king of the gods and father and patron of the earthly king. Hathor ascended with Ra and became his mythological wife, and thus the divine mother of the pharaoh.
Functions
Hathor took many forms and served a wide variety of functions. Egyptologist Robyn A. Gillam suggests that this diversity of form arose when the royal goddess promoted by the Old Kingdom court replaced many local goddesses worshiped by the populace, later treated as manifestations of her. Egyptian texts often refer to manifestations of the goddess as the "Seven Hathores" or, less frequently, many more—even as far back as 362. Thus, Gillam considers her "a type of deity and not a single entity". This diversity reflects the great variety of attributes that the Egyptians associated with the goddesses. More than any other deity, she exemplifies the Egyptian conception of femininity.
Sky Goddess
She was given the epithets "mistress of the sky" and "mistress of the stars" and was said to inhabit the sky with Ra and other sun gods. The Egyptians believed that the sky was a body of water through which the sun god sailed and associated it with the waters from which, according to their creation myths, the sun emerged at the beginning of time. This cosmic mother goddess was often depicted as a cow. She regarded both Hathor and Meheturet as the cow that gave birth to the sun god and placed him between his horns. Like Nut, Hathor was said to give birth to the sun god each sunrise.
Its Egyptian name was ḥwt-ḥrw or ḥwt-ḥr. It is often translated as "house of Horus", but can also be translated as "my house it is the sky". The falcon god Horus represented, among other things, the sun and the sky. The "house" referred to may be the heaven in which Horus lives, or the womb of the goddess from which he, as the sun god, is born each day.
Sun Goddess
She was herself a solar deity, a female counterpart to solar gods such as Horus and Ra, and was part of the divine retinue that accompanied Ra as he sailed across the sky in his boat. She was commonly known as "She of Gold", referring to the radiance of the sun, and texts from her temple at Dendera say that "its rays illuminate the whole earth". She was sometimes joined with another goddess, Nebethetepet, whose name may mean "Lady of Offerings"., "Lady of Joy" or "Lady of the Vulva". At Ra's cult center of Heliopolis, Hathor-Nebethetepet was worshiped as her consort, and Egyptologist Rudolf Anthes considered Hathor's name to refer to to a mythical "House of Horus" in Heliopolis that was tied to the ideology of the monarchy.
She was one of many goddesses to assume the role of the Eye of Ra, a female personification of the disk of the sun and an extension of Ra's own power, sometimes depicted within the disk, which Troy interprets as her Goddess Ojo was considered a womb from which the sun god was born. Hathor's seemingly contradictory roles as mother, wife, and daughter of Ra reflected the daily cycle of the sun. At sunset, the god entered the body of the goddess, fertilizing her and generating the deities born from her womb at dawn: himself and the goddess Ojo, who would later give birth to him. Ra gave birth to his daughter, the goddess Eye, who in turn gave birth to him, her son, in a constant cycle of regeneration.
The Eye of Ra protected the sun god from his enemies and was often depicted as an upright aureus or cobra, or as a lioness. A form of the Eye of Ra known as "Four-Faced Hathor", represented by a set of four cobras, said to face each of the cardinal directions to watch for threats against the sun god. A group of myths, known from the New Kingdom (c. 1550-1070 BC), describe what happens when the goddess Eye rages out of control. In the funerary text known as the Book of the Sacred Cow, Ra sends Hathor as the Eye of Ra to punish the humans for plotting a rebellion against her rule. She becomes the lioness goddess Sekhmet and slaughters the rebellious humans, but Ra decides to stop her from killing all of humanity. She orders the beer to be dyed red and distributed throughout the land. The goddess Eye drinks the beer, mistaking it for blood, and in her drunken state reverts to the benevolent and beautiful Hathor Related to this story is the myth of the Distant Goddess, from the late and Ptolemaic periods. The Eye goddess, sometimes in the form of Hathor, rebels against Ra's control and freely wreaks havoc in a foreign land: Libya to the west of Egypt, or Nubia to the south. Weakened by the loss of his Eye, Ra sends another god, Thot, to bring her back. Once pacified, the goddess returns to become the consort of either the sun god or the god who brings her back. The two Aspects of the Eye goddess, violent and dangerous rather than beautiful and joyful, reflected the Egyptian belief that women, as Egyptologist Carolyn Graves-Brown puts it, "embraced the extreme passions of fury and love".
Music, dance and joy
Egyptian religion celebrated the pleasures of the senses in life, which were considered among the gifts of the gods to humanity. The Egyptians ate, drank, danced, and played music at their religious festivals. They perfumed the air with flowers and incense. Many of Hathor's epithets associate her with the celebrations; she is mentioned as the lady of music, dance, garlands, myrrh and drunkenness. In hymns and temple reliefs, musicians play tambourines, harps, lyres, and sistrums in Hathor's honor.The sistrum, a rattle-like instrument, was particularly important in her worship; this instrument had erotic connotations and, by extension, alluded to the creation of new life.
These aspects of the goddess were related to the myth of the Eye of Ra. The Eye was pacified by beer in the myth of humanity's destruction. In some versions of the Distant Goddess myth, the Wild Eye's wild nature diminished when it was appeased with products of civilization such as music, dance, and wine. The water of the Nile's annual flood, colored red by sediment, was compared to the red-tinged wine and beer of the myth of destruction. Festivals held during the flood consequently incorporated drinking, music, and dancing as a way of appeasing the returning goddess. A text from the Temple of Edfu says of Hathor: "The gods play the sistrum to her, the goddesses dance for her to get rid of her temper". A hymn to the goddess Rattaui as a form of Hathor in the Medamud temple describes the "Festival of Drunkenness" as part of her mythical return to Egypt. Women carry bouquets of flowers, drunken revelers beat drums, and people and animals from other countries dance for her as she enters the temple's festival box. The noise of the celebration drives hostile powers away from her and ensures that the goddess remains in her joyful form as she waits for the temple's male god, her mythological consort Montu, whose son she will bear.
Sexuality, beauty and love
Your joyous and exultant side indicates your feminine and procreative power. In some creation myths, it helped create the world itself. Atum, a creator god who contained all things within himself, was believed to have generated, through metaphorical masturbation, Shu and Tefnut and thus began the process of creation. creation. The hand he used for this act, the "Hand of Atum", represented the feminine aspect of himself and could be personified by Hathor, Nebethetepet or Iusaaset. In an ancient creation myth from the Ptolemaic period (332-30 BC. C.), the god Jonsu plays a pivotal role, and Hathor is the goddess Jonsu mates with to make creation possible.
Hathor could be the consort of many male gods, of which Ra was only the most important. Mut was the regular consort of Amun, the main deity during the New Kingdom, who was often related to Ra. But Mut was rarely depicted alongside Amun in contexts involving sex or fertility, and in those situations, Hathor or Isis were at his side. In later periods of Egyptian history, Hathor's form in Dendera and that of Horus at Edfu were considered man and wife, and in different versions of the Distant Goddess myth, Hathor-Rattaui was Montu's consort and Shu's Hathor-Tefnut.
His sexual aspect is appreciated in some short stories. In a cryptic fragment of a Middle Kingdom tale known as The Shepherd's Story, a shepherd encounters a furry, animal-like goddess in a swamp and reacts with terror. Another day he finds her as a naked and seductive woman. Most Egyptologists who have studied this story are of the opinion that this woman is Hathor or a goddess like her, one who can be wild and dangerous or benign and erotic. Thomas Schneider interprets the text to mean that between her two encounters with the goddess, the shepherd has done something to appease her. In The Disputes of Horus and Seth, a New Kingdom short story about the conflict between these two gods, Ra is upset after being insulted by another god, Babi, and lies down on the ground to rest. After a time, Hathor shows his genitalia to Ra, making him laugh and get up again to perform his duties as ruler of the gods. Life and order were believed to depend on the activity of Ra, so the story implies that Hathor avoided the disastrous consequences of his idleness. His act may have lifted Ra's spirits in part because he sexually aroused him, though why he smiled is unclear.
She was praised for her beautiful hair. Egyptian literature includes allusions to a myth that is not clearly described in any surviving text, in which Hathor lost a lock of hair that represented her sexual allure. One text compares this loss to Horus' loss of his Divine Eye and Seth's loss of his testicles during the fight between the two gods, implying that the loss of Hathor's loop was as catastrophic for her as the mutilation of Horus and Set was for them.
She was known as "lady of love", as an extension of her sexual aspect. In the series of love poems on the 20th Dynasty (c. 1189-1077 BC) Chester Beatty I papyrus, men and women ask Hathor to bring their lovers: "I prayed to her... Hathor] and she heard my prayer. She destined my lady [beloved] for me. And she came of her own free will to see me."
Motherhood and royal dignity
She was considered the mother of several child deities. As her name indicates, she was often considered both the mother and consort of Horus.As the king's wife and mother of her heir, Hathor was the divine counterpart to human queens.
Isis and Osiris were considered the parents of Horus in the Myth of Osiris as early as the Old Kingdom, but the relationship between Horus and Hathor may be even older. If so, Horus was only related to Isis and Osiris when the Osiris Mythos arose during the Old Kingdom. Even after Isis was clearly established as the mother of Horus, Hathor continued to appear in this paper, especially when nursing Pharaoh. Images of Hathor depicted as a cow with a child in a papyrus thicket represented her mythological upbringing in an isolated swamp. The milk of the goddesses was a sign of divinity and royal status. Thus, the images in which Hathor cares for the pharaoh represent her right to rule. Hathor's relationship with Horus lent a healing aspect to her personality, as she was said to have restored Horus's lost eye or eyes after he had died. Set will attack him. In this episode's version of The Disputes of Horus and Seth, Hathor finds Horus with his eyes gouged out and heals the wounds with gazelle milk.
Beginning in the Late Period (664-323 BCE), temples focused on the worship of a divine family: an adult male deity, his wife, and their still-infant son. Ancillary buildings known as mammisis, were built to celebrate the birth of the local child deity. The child god represented the cyclical renewal of the cosmos and an archetypal heir to kingship. Hathor was the mother in many of these local triads of gods. In Dendera, the adult Horus of Edfu was the father and Hathor the mother, while their son was Ihy, a god whose name meant "sistrum player" and who personified the joy associated with this instrument. Among Hathor's other children were a minor deity from the city of Hu, named Neferhotep, and various child forms of Horus.
The milky sap of the sycamore tree, which the Egyptians considered a sign of life, became one of their symbols. Milk was equated with the flood waters of the Nile and thus with fertility. In the late Ptolemaic and Roman periods, many temples included a creation myth that adapted ancient ideas about creation. The version from the Temple of Hathor at Dendera emphasizes that she, as the female solar deity, was the first being to emerge from the primordial waters that preceded creation, and that its life-giving light and milk nourished all living things.
Like Mesjenet, another goddess associated with motherhood, Hathor was linked to shai, the Egyptian concept of destiny, especially when she took the form of the "Seven Hathors." In two works of New Kingdom fiction, the Tale of the Two Brothers and the Tale of the Fated Prince, the Hathores appear at the births of the main characters and predict the shape in which they die.
Her mothering can be compared to Isis and Mut, but there are many different nuances between them. Isis's devotion to her husband and care for their son represented a more socially acceptable form of love than Hathor's uninhibited sexuality, and Mut's character was more authoritarian than sexual. In the Papyrus Insinger, a text from the I century d. C., she compares herself to a faithful wife, the lady of a home, with Mut, while Hathor is compared to a strange woman who seduces a married man.
Foreign Lands and Trade
Egypt maintained trade relations with the coastal cities of Syria and Canaan, especially Byblos, bringing Egyptian religion into contact with those of that region. At some point, perhaps as early as the Old Kingdom, the Egyptians began to referencing the patron goddess of Byblos, Baalat Gebal, as a local form of Hathor. Her link to Byblos was so strong that texts from Dendera say she resided there. Egyptians sometimes equated Hathor with Anat, a also an aggressive and sensual Canaanite goddess who was worshiped in Egypt during the New Kingdom. Some Canaanite artwork depicts a nude goddess in a curly wig which stems from Hathor iconography. It is not known which goddess these images represent, but the Egyptians adopted her iconography and came to regard her as an independent deity, Qetesh, whom they related to Hathor.
Its solar character may have played an important role in its association with trade: it was believed to protect ships on the Nile and in the seas beyond Egypt, as it protected the barque of Ra in the sky. The mythological pilgrimage of the goddess Ojo in Nubia or Libya also linked her to those lands.
It was closely associated with the Sinai Peninsula, which was not considered part of Egypt proper, but was the site of Egyptian copper, turquoise, and malachite mines during the Middle and New Kingdoms. One of the epithets for Hathor, "Lady of Turquoise," can refer specifically to turquoise or to all bluish-green minerals. She was also called "Lady of Faience", a blue-green pottery that the Egyptians compared to turquoise. She was also worshiped at various quarries and mining sites in the Arabian desert of Egypt, such as the amethyst mines of Wadi el-Hudi, where she was sometimes called the "Amethyst Lady".
In southern Egypt, their influence is believed to have extended as far as Punt, which were along the Red Sea coast and were the main source of incense with which Hathor was bound, as well as Nubia, northwest of Punt. The autobiography of Hirjuf, an official of the 6th Dynasty (c. 2345-2181 BC), describes his expedition to a land in or near Nubia, from which he brought large quantities of ebony, panther skins and incense for the king; the text describes these exotic goods as a gift from Hathor to the pharaoh. Egyptian expeditions to mine gold in Nubia introduced her cult to the region during the Middle and New Kingdoms, and New Kingdom pharaohs built several temples to her in the regions. of Nubia in which they ruled.
Life after death
She was one of several goddesses believed to help deceased souls in the afterlife. One of these was Amentit, the goddess of the west, who personified the necropolises, or groups of tombs, on the west bank of the Nile and the realm of life after death itself. She was often considered a specific manifestation of Hathor.
Just as she crossed the border between Egypt and other lands, Hathor crossed the border between the living and the Duat, the realm of the dead. She helped the spirits of deceased humans enter the Duat and was closely linked to the tombs, where this transition began. The Theban Necropolis, for example, was often presented as a stylized mountain from which Hathor the cow emerged. Her role as sky goddess was also linked to life after death. death. As a sky goddess, either Nut or Hathor, who assisted Ra in his daily rebirth, she played an important role in Egyptian beliefs about the afterlife, according to which deceased humans were reborn as the sun god. Coffins, tombs and the underworld itself were interpreted as the womb of this goddess, from which the deceased soul would be reborn.
Nut, Hathor and Amentit could, in different texts, take the deceased to a place where they would receive food and drink for eternal sustenance. Thus Hathor, like Amentit, often appears in tombs, welcoming the deceased as her child in an afterlife. In New Kingdom funerary texts and artwork, the afterlife was illustrated often as a pleasant and fertile garden, which was sometimes presided over by Hathor. The welcoming goddess of the afterlife was often depicted as a goddess in the form of a tree, giving water to the deceased. Nut more commonly fulfilled this role, but the tree goddess was sometimes called Hathor.
Life after death also had a sexual component. In the Osiris myth, the slain god was resurrected when he copulated with Isis and conceived Horus. In solar ideology, Ra's union with the sky goddess allowed her own rebirth. Therefore, sex allowed the rebirth of the deceased, and goddesses such as Isis and Hathor helped awaken the deceased to a new life. However, they merely stimulated the regenerative powers of the male deities, rather than playing the central role.
The ancient Egyptians preceded the names of the deceased with the name Osiris to connect them with their resurrection. For example, a woman named Henutmehyt would be "Osiris-Henutmehyt". Over time, the deceased became increasingly associated with masculine and feminine divine powers. As early as the Old Kingdom, women were sometimes said to join Hathor's worshipers in the afterlife, as did men. men joined the followers of Osiris. In the Third Intermediate Period (c. 1070-664 BCE), the Egyptians began to add Hathor's name to deceased women instead of Osiris. In some cases, the women were called "Osiris-Hathor", indicating that they benefited from the reviving power of both deities. During these late periods, Hathor was sometimes said to rule the afterlife as Osiris did.
Iconography
She is often depicted as a cow with the sun disk between her horns, especially when seen nursing the king. She could also appear as a cow-headed woman. However, the most common representation of her was that of a woman wearing a headdress with horns and a sun disk, often with a red or turquoise tube dress, or one that combined both colors. Sometimes the horns were placed on a low modius or the typical vulture headdress of the Egyptian queens of the New Kingdom. Since Isis adopted the same headdress during the New Kingdom, the two goddesses can only be distinguished if the image is labeled with writing. In her role as Amentit, Hathor wore the emblem of the west on her head instead of the horned headdress. The Seven Hathores were sometimes depicted as a group of seven cows, accompanied by a minor deity of heaven and the afterlife. death called the Bull of the West.
It could also be represented in the figure of other animals, in addition to the cow. The aureus was a common motif in Egyptian art and could represent various goddesses who were identified with the Eye of Ra.When shown as an aureus, it represented the more violent and protective aspects of her character; she also appears on occasion as a lioness, in a similar sense. By contrast, the domestic cat, which was sometimes associated with Hathor, often represented the peaceful form of the goddess Eye. When depicted as a sycamore, he appeared with the upper part of his human body emerging from the trunk.
Like other goddesses, she could appear with a papyrus stalk for a staff, although instead she sometimes held an uas scepter, a symbol of power normally restricted to male deities. The only goddesses to use the uas were the which, like Hathor, were related to the Eye of Ra. She also used to wear a sistrum or wear a menat necklace. The sistrum is shown in two variants: one in the form of a simple knot, or the more complex sistrum naos, which resembles a cella or naos from a temple and is flanked by volutes reminiscent of antennae. of the symbol of Bat. The necklace menat, shaped like a saucer composed of many rows of beads, was waved in ceremonies in honor of Hathor, similar to the sistrum. Images of this item are sometimes they were considered personifications of Hathor herself. Another of their symbols were mirrors, because in Egypt they were often made of gold or bronze and therefore symbolized the sun disk, and also because they were related to beauty and femininity. Some mirror handles included Hathor's face.
Sometimes it was depicted as a human face with bovine ears, seen from the front rather than from the profile perspective typical of Egyptian art. When depicted in this form, the hair on each side of her face is often twisted into ringlets. This mask-like face appeared on column capitals beginning in the Old Kingdom. Columns of this style were used in many temples for Hathor and other goddesses. These columns have two or four faces, which may represent the duality between the different aspects of the goddess or the vigilance of the Four-Faced Hathor. The designs of the hathoric columns have a complex relationship with those of the sistrums. Both styles of sistrum can include the Hathor mask on the handle, and hathoric columns often incorporate the shape of a sistrum naos above the head of the goddess.
Hathor Amulet as a hive that looks like a touch Naosfrom the beginning or the middle of the first millennium before Christ.
Sistro handle with her face with a curly wig, 16th to 14th centuries. C.
Necklace menat14th century a. C.
Mirror with his face in the mango, 15th century a. C.
Column with her face, crowned by a Naos with two ureos, in the funeral temple of Hatshepsut, 15th century B. C.
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Worship
Relationship with royalty
During the Archaic Period Neit was the dominant goddess in the royal court, while in the IVth Dynasty Hathor became the goddess most closely associated with the king. The founder of this dynasty, Seneferu, may have built a temple to her, and a daughter of Djedefra was the first recorded priestess of Hathor. Old Kingdom rulers only contributed to temples dedicated to particular kings or deities closely associated with royalty. Hathor was one of the few deities to receive such donations. The later rulers of the Old Kingdom especially promoted Hathor worship in the provinces, as a way of linking those regions to the royal court. Hathor may have assumed the attributes of contemporary provincial goddesses.
Many royal women, though not reigning monarchs, held positions in the administration of the cult of Hathor during the Old Kingdom. Mentuhotep II, who became the first pharaoh of the Middle Kingdom despite being completely unrelated with the rulers of the Old Kingdom, he tried to legitimize his rule by representing himself as the son of Hathor. The first images of Hathor the cow nursing the king date from his reign, and several of his priestesses were depicted as his wives, although he may not have actually married them. Queens were increasingly seen as the direct embodiment of the goddess, in the same way that the king embodied Ra. Interest in depicting the queen as Hathor continued throughout the New Kingdom. Queens were depicted wearing Hathor's headdress beginning in the late 18th Dynasty. An image from the Heb Sed of Amenhotep III, intended to celebrate and renew his reign, shows the king with Hathor and his wife Queen Tiy, which could mean that the king symbolically married the goddess in the course of from the party.
Hatshepsut, a woman who ruled as pharaoh in the early days of the New Kingdom, emphasized her relationship with Hathor in a different way. She used names and titles that linked her to various goddesses, including Hathor, to legitimize her rule, which was normally a male function. He built several temples to Hathor and erected his own mortuary temple, incorporating a chapel dedicated to the goddess, at Deir el-Bahari, which had been a place of worship for Hathor since the Middle Kingdom.
The importance of Amun during the New Kingdom gave greater visibility to his consort Mut, and over the course of this period, Isis began to appear in roles that traditionally belonged solely to Hathor, such as that of the goddess in the solar barque. Despite the increasing relevance of these deities, Hathor remained important throughout the New Kingdom, particularly in relation to fertility, sexuality, and kingship.
After the New Kingdom Isis increasingly eclipsed Hathor and other goddesses in assuming their roles. During Egypt's Hellenistic Period, when the Greeks ruled the country and their religion developed a complex relationship with that of Egypt, the dynasty Ptolemaic adopted and modified the Egyptian ideology on the divinity of royalty. Beginning with Arsinoe II, wife of Ptolemy II, the Ptolemies closely associated their queens with Isis and various Greek goddesses, particularly their own goddess of love and sexuality, Aphrodite. However, when the Greeks referred to the Egyptian gods named after their own gods (interpretatio graeca), sometimes called Hathor Aphrodite. The traits of Isis, Hathor, and Aphrodite combined to justify the treatment of Ptolemaic queens as goddesses. Thus, the poet Callimachus alluded to the myth of Hathor's missing lock of hair when praising Berenice II for sacrificing her own hair to Aphrodite, and iconographic features shared by Isis and Hathor, such as bovine horns and vulture headdress, appeared. in images portraying Ptolemaic queens such as Aphrodite.
Temples in Egypt
More temples were dedicated to Hathor than to any other Egyptian goddess. During the Old Kingdom, her most important center of worship was in the Memphis region, where the "Sycamore Hathor" was worshiped in many places throughout the world. from the Memphite Necropolis. During the New Kingdom, the temple of the Southern Sycamore Hathor was her main temple in Memphis. There she was described as a daughter of the city's chief deity, Ptah. The cult of Ra and Atum at Heliopolis, northeast from Memphis, included a temple to Hathor-Nebethetepet that was probably built in the Middle Kingdom. A willow and sycamore tree stood near the sanctuary and may have been worshiped as manifestations of the goddess. Some cities further north in the Nile Delta, such as Yamu and Terenuthis, also had temples dedicated to her.
As the rulers of the Old Kingdom set about establishing cities in Upper and Middle Egypt, several Hathor cult centers were founded throughout the region, in places such as Cusae, Akhmim, and Naga ed-Der. Intermediate period (c. 2181-2055) his cult statue at Dendera was periodically moved to the Theban Necropolis. In the early Middle Kingdom, Mentuhotep II erected a permanent center of worship for him at the Deir el-Bahari necropolis. A nearby town, Deir el-Medina, home to the tomb workers of the necropolis during the New Kingdom, also It had temples dedicated to Hathor. One of them remained in operation and was periodically rebuilt until the Ptolemaic period, centuries after the town was abandoned.
Dendera, the oldest temple of Hathor in Upper Egypt, dates to at least the Fourth Dynasty. After the end of the Old Kingdom it surpassed its Memphite temples in importance. Many kings made additions to the temple complex throughout of Egyptian history. The latest version of the temple was built in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods and is today one of the best-preserved Egyptian temples from that era.
During the Old Kingdom most of Hathor's priests, including the highest ranking ones, were women. Many of these women were members of the royal family. Throughout the Middle Kingdom women were progressively excluded from the highest priestly positions, while queens became increasingly linked to the cult of Hathor. Thus, non-royal women disappeared from high positions in his priesthood, although women continued to serve as musicians and singers in temple cults throughout Egypt.
The most frequent rite in temples for any deity was the ritual of daily offering, in which the cult image or statue was dressed and fed. In general, the daily rite was the same in all Egyptian temples, although the items offered as offerings could vary depending on the deity receiving them. Wine and beer were common offerings in all temples, but especially in rituals honoring Hathor, and both She and related goddesses often received sistrums and menat necklaces. In the late and Ptolemaic periods they were also offered a pair of mirrors, representing the sun and moon.
Parties
Many of the annual festivals in his honor were celebrated with drinking and dancing that served a ritual purpose. Those who participated in these festivals may have been trying to achieve a state of religious ecstasy, which was otherwise rare or non-existent in ancient Egyptian religion. Egyptologist Graves-Brown notes that celebrants at Hathor festivals sought to achieve an altered state of consciousness that would allow them to interact with the divine realm. An example would be the Feast of Drunkenness, which commemorated the return of the Eye of Ra, which it was celebrated on the twentieth day of the month of Tot in the temples of Hathor and other Ojo goddesses. It was already celebrated during the Middle Kingdom, but it was best known in Ptolemaic and Roman times. The dancing, eating, and drinking that took place during the Feast of the Drunkenness represented the opposite of the pain, hunger, and thirst that the Egyptians associated with death. While the violence of the Eye of Ra brought death to humans, the Festival of Drunkenness celebrated life, abundance, and joy.
In a local Theban festival known as the Fair Festival of the Valley, which began in the Middle Kingdom, the cult image of Amun from the temple of Karnak would visit the temples of the Theban Necropolis as members of the community made their way to the tombs of their dead relatives to drink, eat and be merry. Hathor did not take part in this festival until the early New Kingdom, after which Amun's presence in the temples of Deir el-Bahari was seen as her sexual union with the goddess.
Several Ptolemaic-era temples, including Dendera, celebrated the Egyptian New Year with a series of ceremonies in which images of the deity in the temple were supposed to be revitalized by contact with the sun god. In the days leading up to the new year, the statue of Hathor from Dendera was taken to the wabet, a specific room in the temple dedicated to the union of cult images with the sun disk, and placed under a ceiling decorated with images of the sky and the sun. On the first day of the new year (the first day of the month of Thoth) the image of Hathor was brought up to the ceiling to be bathed in true sunlight.
The best-documented celebration centered on her cult is another Ptolemaic holiday, the Feast of Beautiful Reunion. It took place over fourteen days in the month of Apep. The image of Hathor in Dendera was taken by boat to various temples to visit the gods of those temples; the final point of the journey was the temple of Horus at Edfu, where his image met that of Horus and the two were placed together. During one day of the festival, these images were taken to a shrine where they were said to be buried. primordial deities such as the sun god and the Ennead. The texts state that the divine couple performed offering rites to these buried gods. Many Egyptologists consider this festival a ritual marriage between Horus and Hathor, although Martin Stadler disputes this idea and in his view it represented the rejuvenation of the buried creator gods. C. J. Bleeker considered the Beautiful Gathering to be another celebration of the return of the Distant Goddess, citing allusions to the myth of the sun's eye in temple texts about the festival. Barbara Richter argues that the festival represented all three things at once; she points out that the birth of Horus and Hathor's son, Ihy, was celebrated in Dendera nine months after the Feast of Beautiful Reunion, so Hathor's visit to Horus represented Ihy's conception.
The third month of the Egyptian calendar, Hathor or Athyr, is named after the goddess. Festivities in her honor were held throughout the month, although they are not recorded in the Dendera texts.
Cult outside Egypt
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Already in the days of the Old Kingdom, the Egyptian kings offered goods to the temple of Baalat Gebal in Byblos, using the syncretism of Baalat with Hathor to strengthen their intense commercial relationship with Byblos. During the reign of Thutmosis III, a temple dedicated to Hathor as Mistress of Byblos, although it is possible that she was simply a shrine within the temple of Baalat. After the fall of the New Kingdom, Hathor's relevance in Byblos waned along with Egypt's trade links with the city. Some objects from the early 1st millennium BC seem to indicate that around this time the Egyptians began to equate Baalat with Isis. A myth about the presence of Isis in Byblos, recounted by the Greek author Plutarch in his work e Isis and Osiris in the II century AD. C., seems to indicate that at her time Isis had already completely replaced Hathor in the city.
The Sinai Egyptians built some temples in the region. The largest was a complex at Sarabit al-Jadim, on the west side of the peninsula, dedicated primarily to Hathor as patroness of mining. It was occupied from the mid-Middle Kingdom to near the end of the New Kingdom. East of the peninsula Timna Valley, on the fringes of the Egyptian empire, was the site of seasonal mining expeditions during the New Kingdom; it included a shrine to Hathor that was probably abandoned during the off-season. The local Midianites, whom the Egyptians used as part of the mining workforce, may have made offerings to Hathor as did her superiors. However, after the Egyptians abandoned the site during the 20th Dynasty, the Midianites turned the sanctuary into a chapel dedicated to their own deities.
In contrast, the southern Nubians fully incorporated it into their religion. During the New Kingdom, when most of Nubia was under Egyptian control, the pharaohs dedicated several temples in Nubia to Hathor, including those at Faras and Mirgissa. Amenhotep III and Ramesses II built temples in Nubia honoring their respective queens. as manifestations of the female deities, including Hathor: Amenhotep's wife Tiy at Sedeinga, and Ramesses's Nefertari at the Lesser Temple at Abu Simbel. The independent kingdom of Kush, which arose in Nubia after the end of the New Kingdom, he centered his beliefs about the Kushite kings on the ideology of Egyptian kingship. Thus, Hathor, Isis, Mut and Nut were considered as the mythological mother of each Kushite king and equated with their female relatives, such as the kandake, the Kushite queen or the queen mother, who played a prominent role. in Kushite religion. At Gebel Barkal, a site sacred to Amun, the Kushite King Taharqo built a pair of temples, one dedicated to Hathor and one to Mut as Amun's consorts, replacing the New Kingdom Egyptian temples, which is It is possible that they were dedicated to these same goddesses. Isis, however, was the most prominent of the Egyptian goddesses worshiped in Nubia and her position there increased over time. Thus, in the Meroitic period of Nubia's history (c. 300 BC–AD 400), Hathor appeared in temples primarily as a companion of Isis.
Popular worship
In addition to formal, public rituals in temples, Egyptians worshiped deities privately for personal reasons, even in their homes. Childbirth was dangerous for both mother and child in ancient Egypt, but children were highly desired, which is why fertility and a safe delivery were among the main concerns of their folk religion and fertility goddesses like Hathor. and Tueris were often worshiped in home shrines. Egyptian women to give birth kneeled or squatted on a "delivery chair" made of mud bricks with a hole in the center, and the only known surviving birthing brick from ancient Egypt is decorated with an image of a woman holding her child flanked by images of Hathor. In Roman times, some terracotta figurines, sometimes found in a domestic setting, depicted a woman wearing an elaborate headdress that exposed her genitalia, as Hathor did to animate to Ra. The meaning of these figures is unknown, but it is believed that they represent Hathor or Isis combined with Aphrodite making a gesture that represented fertility or protection against evil.
Hathor was one of the few deities, including Amun, Ptah, and Thoth, who were routinely prayed to for help with personal problems. Many Egyptians left offerings at temples or small shrines dedicated to the gods they prayed to. Most of the offerings to Hathor were used for their symbolism, not their material value. Cloths painted with images of Hathor were frequent, as well as plaques and figures representing her animal forms. Different types of offerings may have symbolized different goals on the part of the giver, but their meaning is generally unknown. Some images allude to her mythical functions, such as depictions of the maternal cow in the swamp. The sistrum offerings may have been made to appease the dangerous aspects of the goddess and bring out her positive qualities, while the phallus it represented a prayer for fertility, as evidenced by an inscription found on a homemade stone carving of a figurine made by a worker asking for a family.
Some Egyptians also left written prayers to Hathor, engraved on stelae or written as graffiti. Prayers to some deities, such as Amun, indicate that they were believed to punish wrongdoers and heal people who repented of their misbehavior. Instead, the prayers to Hathor only mention the benefits she could bestow, such as plenty of food during life and a well-provided burial after death.
Funeral Practices
As a goddess of the afterlife, she appears frequently in funerary texts and art. Along with Osiris and Anubis, Hathor was one of the most common deities in the decoration of royal tombs during the early New Kingdom. At that time she often appeared as the goddess who received the dead in the afterlife. Some images made refer to it more indirectly. Tomb reliefs from the Old Kingdom show men and women performing a ritual called "waving the papyrus"; the meaning of this rite is unknown, but some inscriptions indicate that it was performed "for Hathor", and shaking the papyrus stems produces a crackling noise that can be compared to the sound of a sistrum. Other Hathoric images on tombs include the cow emerging from the mountain of the necropolis and the figure of the goddess seated presiding over an afterlife garden. Images of Nut were often painted or engraved on the inside of coffins, indicating that the coffin was its womb, from which the occupant would be reborn in the afterlife. During the Third Intermediate Period Hathor began to position herself at the bottom of the coffin, with Nut inside the lid.
Eighteenth Dynasty funerary art often shows people drinking, dancing and playing music, as well as holding menat necklaces and sistrums, imagery alluding to Hathor. These images may represent private parties held in front of the tombs to commemorate the people buried there, or may show gatherings at temple festivals such as the Beautiful Festival of the Valley. The festivals were believed to allow for contact between the human and realms. divine and, by extension, between the living and the dead. Thus, the tomb texts often expressed the wish that the deceased could participate in festivals, especially those dedicated to Osiris. However, the images of the festivals in the tombs may refer to the festivals in which Osiris participates. Hathor, as the Feast of Drunkenness, or to private parties, which were also closely related to it. Drinking and dancing at these festivals may have been to intoxicate the celebrants, as in the Feast of Drunkenness, allowing them to commune with the spirits of the deceased.
Hathor was said to provide offerings to deceased people as far back as the Old Kingdom, and spells allowing both men and women to join her retinue in the afterlife appeared as early as the Texts of the sarcophagi in the Middle Kingdom. Some grave goods depicting deceased women as goddesses may represent these women as followers of Hathor, although it is not known whether the images refer to Hathor or Isis. The link between Hathor and the deceased women was maintained in the Roman period of Egypt, the last stage of the ancient Egyptian religion before its demise.
Additional bibliography
- Allam, Schafik (1963). Beiträge zum Hathorkult (bis zum Ende des mittleren Reiches) (in German). Verlag Bruno Hessling. OCLC 557461557.
- Derchain, Philippe (1972). Hathor Quadrifrons (in French). Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut in het Nabije Oosten. OCLC 917056815.
- Hornung, Erik (1997). Der ägyptische Mythos von der Himmelskuh, 2d ed (in German). Vandehoeck & Ruprecht. ISBN 978-3525537374.
- Posener, Georges (1986). «The Legen of the Threese d'Hathor». In Lesko, Leonard H., ed. Egyptological Studies in Honour of Richard A. Parker (in French). Brown. pp. 111-117. ISBN 978-0874513219.
- Vandier, Jacques (1964-1966). «Iousâas et (Hathor)-Nébet-Hétépet». Revue d'Égyptologie (in French). 16-18.