Hathor

Hathor was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion who played a wide variety of roles. As a sky deity, she was the mother or consort of the sky god Horus and the sun god Ra. She was one of several goddesses who acted as the Eye of Ra, Ra’s feminine counterpart. Her beneficent side represented music, dance, joy, love, sexuality and maternal care.

About Hathor in brief

Summary Hathor Hathor was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion who played a wide variety of roles. As a sky deity, she was the mother or consort of the sky god Horus and the sun god Ra. She was one of several goddesses who acted as the Eye of Ra, Ra’s feminine counterpart. Her beneficent side represented music, dance, joy, love, sexuality and maternal care. Hathor was often depicted as a cow, symbolizing her maternal and celestial aspect. She could also be represented as a lioness, cobra, or sycamore tree. With the patronage of Old Kingdom rulers she became one of Egypt’s most important deities. More temples were dedicated to her than to any other goddess; her most prominent temple was Dendera in Upper Egypt. The Egyptians connected her with foreign lands such as Nubia and Canaan and their valuable goods, such as incense and semiprecious stones, and some of the peoples in those lands adopted her worship. In the Fourth Dynasty, she rose rapidly to prominence, and she increasingly absorbed the cult of Bat in the neighboring region of Hu. The two deities fused into one, so that in the Middle Kingdom in the Old Kingdom, unlike earlier times, Hathor became heavily focused on the gods and father of the earthly king. She became his mythological wife and thus ascended with Ra and became the divine mother of the pharaoh. She continued to be venerated until the extinction ofAncient Egyptian religion in the early centuries AD.

The Egyptologist Robyn Gillam suggests that these diverse forms of Hathor emerged when the royal court worshipped many local goddesses subsumed by the goddesses worshipped by the local court. She is not unambiguously mentioned or depicted until the 4th Dynasty of Egypt, although several artifacts that refer to her may date to the Early Dynastic Period. When Hathor does clearly appear, her horns curve outward, rather than inward like those in Predynastic art. The Gerzeh Palette, a stone palette from the Naqada II period of prehistory, shows the silhouette of a cow’s head with inward-curving horns surrounded by stars. The palette suggests that this cow was also linked with the sky, as were several Goddesses from later times who were represented in this form: Hathor, Mehet-Weret, and Nut. In Egypt, she is one of the deities commonly invoked in private prayers and votive offerings, particularly by women desiring children. After the end of the New Kingdom, Hath or was increasingly overshadowed by Isis, but she continued toBe venerated by women in the private prayers of women wanting children. The Egyptian goddesses such as Mut and Isis encroached on Hathor’s position in royal ideology, but Hathor remained one of most widely worshipped deities. The goddess may be Bat, a goddess who was later depicted with a woman’s face and inward- Curling horns, seemingly reflecting the curve of the cow horns.