Hathor facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Hathor |
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Composite image of Hathor's most common iconography, based partly on images from the tomb of Nefertari
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| Offspring | Ihy, Neferhotep of Hu, Ra (Cycle Of Rebirth) |
| Parents | Ra |
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, both of whom were connected with kingship, and thus she was the symbolic mother of their earthly representatives, the pharaohs. She was one of several goddesses who acted as the Eye of Ra, Ra's feminine counterpart, and in this form, she had a vengeful aspect that protected him from his enemies. Her beneficent side represented music, dance, joy, love, and maternal care, and she acted as the consort of several male deities and the mother of their sons. Hathor crossed boundaries between worlds, helping deceased souls in the transition to the afterlife.
Hathor was often depicted as a cow, symbolizing her maternal and celestial aspect, although her most common form was a woman wearing a headdress of cow horns and a sun disk. She could also be represented as a lioness, a cobra, or a sycamore tree.
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). 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. She was also worshipped in the temples of her male consorts. 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 Egypt, she was one of the deities commonly invoked in private prayers and votive offerings, particularly by women desiring children.
During the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC), goddesses such as Mut and Isis encroached on Hathor's position in royal ideology, but she remained one of the most widely worshipped deities. After the end of the New Kingdom, Hathor was increasingly overshadowed by Isis, but she continued to be venerated until the extinction of ancient Egyptian religion in the early centuries AD.
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Origins
Images of cattle appear frequently in the artwork of Predynastic Egypt (before c. 3100 BC), as do images of women with upraised, curved arms, reminiscent of the shape of bovine horns. Both types of imagery may represent goddesses connected with cattle. 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. The Gerzeh Palette, a stone palette from the Naqada II period of prehistory (c. 3500–3200 BC), 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.
Despite these early precedents, Hathor is not unambiguously mentioned or depicted until the Fourth Dynasty (c. 2613–2494 BC) of the Old Kingdom, although several artifacts that refer to her may date to the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3100–2686 BC). When Hathor does clearly appear, her horns curve outward, rather than inward like those in Predynastic art.
A bovine deity with inward-curving horns appears on the Narmer Palette from near the start of Egyptian history, both atop the palette and on the belt or apron of the king, Narmer. The Egyptologist Henry George Fischer suggested this deity 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. The Egyptologist Lana Troy, however, identifies a passage in the Pyramid Texts from the late Old Kingdom that connects Hathor with the "apron" of the king, reminiscent of the goddess on Narmer's garments, and suggests the goddess on the Narmer Palette is Hathor rather than Bat.
In the Fourth Dynasty, Hathor rose rapidly to prominence. She supplanted an early crocodile god who was worshipped at Dendera in Upper Egypt to become Dendera's patron deity, and she increasingly absorbed the cult of Bat in the neighboring region of Hu, so that in the Middle Kingdom (c. 2055–1650 BC) the two deities fused into one. The theology surrounding the pharaoh in the Old Kingdom, unlike that of earlier times, focused heavily 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 divine mother of the pharaoh.
Roles
Hathor took many forms and appeared in a wide variety of roles. 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. Egyptian texts often speak of the manifestations of the goddess as "Seven Hathors" or, less commonly, of many more Hathors—as many as 362. For these reasons, Gillam calls her "a type of deity rather than a single entity". Hathor's diversity reflects the range of traits that the Egyptians associated with goddesses. More than any other deity, she exemplifies the Egyptian perception of femininity.
Sky goddess
Hathor was given the epithets "mistress of the sky" and "mistress of the stars", and was said to dwell in the sky with Ra and other sun deities. Egyptians thought of the sky as a body of water through which the sun god sailed, and they connected 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 represented as a cow. Hathor and Mehet-Weret were both thought of as the cow who birthed the sun god and placed him between her horns. Like Nut, Hathor was said to give birth to the sun god each dawn.
Hathor's Egyptian name was ḥwt-ḥrw or ḥwt-ḥr. It is typically translated "house of Horus" but can also be rendered as "my house is the sky". The falcon god Horus represented, among other things, the sun and sky. The "house" referred to may be the sky in which Horus lives, or the goddess's womb from which he, as a sun god, is born each day.
Solar goddess
Hathor was a solar deity, a feminine counterpart to sun gods such as Horus and Ra, and was a member of the divine entourage that accompanied Ra as he sailed through the sky in his barque. She was commonly called the "Golden One", referring to the radiance of the sun, said to "illuminate the whole earth."
The Eye of Ra protected the sun god from his enemies and was often represented as a uraeus, or rearing cobra, or as a lioness. A form of the Eye of Ra known as "Hathor of the Four Faces", represented by a set of four cobras, was said to face in each of the cardinal directions to watch for threats to the sun god.
Motherhood and queenship
Hathor was considered the mother of various child deities. As suggested by her name, she was often thought of as both Horus's mother and consort. As both the king's wife and his heir's mother, Hathor was the divine counterpart of human queens.
The milky sap of the sycamore tree, which the Egyptians regarded as a symbol of life, became one of her symbols. The milk was equated with water of the Nile inundation and thus fertility.
Fate
Like Meskhenet, another goddess who presided over birth, Hathor was connected with shai, the Egyptian concept of fate.
Foreign lands and goods
Hathor was connected with trade and foreign lands, possibly because her role as a sky goddess linked her with stars and hence navigation, and because she was believed to protect ships on the Nile and in the seas beyond Egypt as she protected the barque of Ra in the sky. The mythological wandering of the Eye goddess in Nubia or Libya gave her a connection with those lands as well.
Afterlife
Although the Pyramid Texts, the earliest Egyptian funerary texts, rarely mention her, Hathor was invoked in private tomb inscriptions from the same era, and in the Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts and later sources, she is frequently linked with the afterlife.
Nut, Hathor, and Imentet could each, in different texts, lead the deceased into a place where they would receive food and drink for eternal sustenance. Thus, Hathor, as Imentet, often appears on tombs, welcoming the deceased person as her child into a blissful afterlife. In New Kingdom funerary texts and artwork, the afterlife was often illustrated as a pleasant, fertile garden, over which Hathor sometimes presided. The welcoming afterlife goddess was often portrayed as a goddess in the form of a tree, giving water to the deceased. Nut most commonly filled this role, but the tree goddess was sometimes called Hathor instead.
Iconography
Hathor was often depicted as a cow bearing the sun disk between her horns, especially when shown nursing the king. She could also appear as a woman with the head of a cow. Her most common form, however, was a woman wearing a headdress of the horns and sun disk, often with a red or turquoise sheath dress, or a dress combining both colors. Sometimes the horns stood atop a low modius or the vulture headdress that Egyptian queens often wore in the New Kingdom. Because Isis adopted the same headdress during the New Kingdom, the two goddesses can be distinguished only if labeled in writing.
Like other goddesses, Hathor might carry a stalk of papyrus as a staff, though she could instead hold a was staff, a symbol of power that was usually restricted to male deities. The only goddesses who used the was were those, like Hathor, who were linked with the Eye of Ra. Mirrors were another of her symbols, because in Egypt they were often made of gold or bronze and therefore symbolized the sun disk, and because they were connected with beauty and femininity.
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Statue of Hathor, fourteenth century BC
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Amulet of Hathor as a uraeus wearing a naos headdress, early to mid-first millennium BC
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Naos sistrum with Hathor's face, 305–282 BC
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Mirror with a face of Hathor on the handle, fifteenth century BC
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Head of Hathor with cats on her headdress, from a clapper, late second to early first millennium BC
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The Malqata Menat necklace, fourteenth century BC
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Hathoric capital from the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, fifteenth century BC
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Relationship with royalty
During the Early Dynastic Period, Neith was the preeminent goddess at the royal court, while in the Fourth Dynasty, Hathor became the goddess most closely linked with the king.
Many female royals, though not reigning queens, held positions in the cult during the Old Kingdom. Mentuhotep II, who became the first pharaoh of the Middle Kingdom despite having no relation to the Old Kingdom rulers, sought to legitimize his rule by portraying himself as Hathor's son. The first images of the Hathor-cow suckling the king date to his reign, and several priestesses of Hathor were depicted as though they were his wives, although he may not have actually married them. In the course of the Middle Kingdom, queens were increasingly seen as directly embodying the goddess, just as the king embodied Ra.
After the New Kingdom, Isis increasingly overshadowed Hathor and other goddesses as she took on their characteristics.
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 region of Memphis. During the New Kingdom era, the temple of Hathor of the Southern Sycamore was her main temple in Memphis.
As the rulers of the Old Kingdom made an effort to develop towns in Upper and Middle Egypt, several cult centers of Hathor were founded across the region, at sites such as Cusae, Akhmim, and Naga ed-Der.
In the Old Kingdom, most priests of Hathor, including the highest ranks, were women. Many of these women were members of the royal family. 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. Thus, non-royal women disappeared from the high ranks of Hathor's priesthood, although women continued to serve as musicians and singers in temple cults across Egypt.
The most frequent temple rite for any deity was the daily offering ritual, in which the cult image, or statue, of a deity would be clothed and given food. The daily ritual was largely the same in every Egyptian temple, although the goods given as offerings could vary according to which deity received them. Wine and beer were common offerings in all temples, but especially in rituals in Hathor's honor, and she and the goddesses related to her often received sistra and menat necklaces. In Late and Ptolemaic times, they were also offered a pair of mirrors, representing the sun and the moon.
Festivals
Several temples in Ptolemaic times, including that of Dendera, observed the Egyptian new year with a series of ceremonies in which images of the temple deity were supposed to be revitalized by contact with the sun god. 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. On the first day of the new year, the first day of the month of Thoth, the Hathor image was carried up to the roof to be bathed in genuine sunlight.
The third month of the Egyptian calendar, Hathor or Athyr, was named for the goddess. Festivities in her honor took place throughout the month, although they are not recorded in the texts from Dendera.
Worship
In addition to formal and public rituals at temples, Egyptians privately worshipped deities for personal reasons, including at their homes. Birth was hazardous for both mother and child in ancient Egypt, yet children were much desired. Thus fertility and safe childbirth are among the most prominent concerns in popular religion, and fertility deities such as Hathor and Taweret were commonly worshipped in household shrines.
Hathor was one of a handful of deities, including Amun, Ptah, and Thoth, who were commonly prayed to for help with personal problems. Many Egyptians left offerings at temples or small shrines dedicated to the gods they prayed to. Most offerings to Hathor were used for their symbolism, not for their intrinsic value. Cloths painted with images of Hathor were common, as were plaques and figurines depicting her animal forms. Different types of offerings may have symbolized different goals on the part of the donor, but their meaning is usually unknown.
Some Egyptians also left written prayers to Hathor, inscribed on stelae or written as graffiti. Prayers to some deities, such as Amun, show that they were thought to punish wrongdoers and heal people who repented for their misbehavior. 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.
Funerary practices
As an afterlife deity, Hathor appeared frequently in funerary texts and art. In the early New Kingdom, for instance, she was one of the three deities most commonly found in royal tomb decoration, the others being Osiris and Anubis. In that period she often appeared as the goddess welcoming the dead into the afterlife.
Images for kids
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Banquet scene from the tomb chapel of Nebamun, 14th century BC. Its imagery of music and dancing alludes to Hathor.
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Remains of the Hathor shrine in the Timna Valley
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See also
In Spanish: Hathor para niños
