Hathor Egyptian Goddess of love Facts Part 1/2

Hathor Egyptian Goddess of love | Facts and Secrets Part 1
The archetype of the Earth Mother is common to many mythologies; at different times Isis, Sekhmet, and Nut-among others-have had this role in Egyptian mythology. Hathor Goddess, however, appears to have been the oldest example in Egypt and the prototype on which later ones were based. While substantial evidence of Hathor Goddess in this role exists from the earliest periods, R. T. Rundle Clark believed that during the Old Kingdom it was suppressed or ignored, only to resurface at the time of the Coffin Texts. By this time Isis and Nut had become important in their own right, and the texts contained an interesting version of creation in which all three goddesses in turn played the role of the Great Mother. The story contained a graphically gory account of the birth of Ihy, who was first called the son of Hathor Goddess , then of Isis, but in either case Hathor Goddess dominated the myth.

Hathor Egyptian Goddess

Hathor’s origin adds to the mystery about her roles. In the Coffin Texts she was called “the Primeval, the Lady of All, who lived on Truth,” and claimed to have been created before the sky and earth. This myth told of her coming into existence at the time Ra rose as the sun god, when she took her place beside him in the solar boat. A variation, however, told that she was actually the daughter of Ra and Nut (we have seen that in some accounts they were lovers). When Hathor Goddess was born, she was said to have been either black-skinned or reddish-black. As a result of these birth myths (and of her association with Horus as the sun god) she was considered a sky goddess, and wore the solar disk in her headdress.

The Destruction of Mankind
The fullest account of the relationship between Ra and Hathor Goddess as father and daughter came in another story from Ra’s declining years. As we have seen, in his old age Ra was grieved by a decline of respect for him in the world he had created, and especially among the human race, the product of his own tears. His human creations began to laugh derisively at him: “Look at Ra! He is old and his bones are like silver, his flesh is like gold, and his hair is like true lapis lazuli.” Ra objected to being called old; even the comparisons with precious metals and stones called attention to the fact that his flesh was not what it had been in his youth. He was angered by humankind’s ridicule and sought to teach them a lesson.

He called out to those followers who were close at hand and had them assemble his nearest relatives: “Summon here my daughter  Hathor Goddess , the apple of my eye, and summon also the gods Shu and Tefnut, Geb and Nut, and the great god Nun, whose dwelling is in the waters of the sky.” The messengers were instructed to summon the gods quietly so that mankind would not guess what was happening and seek refuge from the revenge being plotted.

At the mansion of Ra in the Hidden Place the gods and goddesses assembled to find out what their father demanded of them. They bowed down before him, touching the ground with their foreheads, and asked their leader what he wanted them to do. Ra addressed Nun as the eldest of all gods: “Behold the people whom I have created, how they speak against me. Tell me what you think I should do to them, for truly I will not slay them until I have heard your words.” Even though the last sentence suggests that the supreme god had decided on the punishment before hearing the other gods’ advice, Ra nonetheless consulted his lesser colleagues. Nun, not surprisingly, told the chief god what he wanted to hear. He suggested that Ra’s eye in the form of Hathor Goddess (the apple of her father’s eye) be sent out to kill those who attacked the great god. He reminded Ra that he was still the greatest of the gods and his throne was secure: humans should, therefore, have much to fear from his anger.

The other gods quickly agreed to this simple strategy and Hathor Goddess was sent out in the form of Sekhmet, a fierce lioness to seek revenge. She rushed to attack her prey and found that, like the lion, she took delight in slaughter. She discovered pleasure in shedding blood throughout the land and quickly taught Ra’s tormentors that they should not laugh at the chief god. As she hastened to and fro, killing everyone she met, her father observed her work and at first was pleased. Soon he sensed that his vengeance was complete and called to her to stop before she eliminated the entire human race: “Come in peace,  Hathor Goddess . Have you not done that which I gave you to do?” But there was no stopping her once she had tasted blood. She cried out, “By your life, 0 Ra, I work my will on the human race and my heart rejoices.”

For many nights the waters of the Nile ran red with the blood of mortals, and Hathor Goddess waded through blood until her feet became crimson. Ra took pity on humankind in spite of his former resentment, but no god or mortal could stop the ruthless carnage of the goddess who clearly enjoyed her role as lioness. Because of her divine power, no one could force her to cease her killing, not even Ra himself; she had to be stopped by persuasion or trickery.

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Hathor Egyptian Goddess of love Facts Part 2/2

Hathor Egyptian Goddess of love | Facts and Secrets Part 2
Unknown to  Hathor Goddess , then, Ra asked for his swiftest messengers and sent them to Elephantine Island at Aswan with instructions to bring him a large quantity of the fruit of the mandrake, a plant that caused great sleepiness. Its fruit is crimson and scarlet and its juice is blood-red. After the messengers brought it to Ra in Heliopolis with the swiftness of wind, the women there crushed barley to make beer, which they mixed with the mandrake coloring to give it the appearance of blood. Working all night while Hathor Goddess rested, they made seven thousand measures of red beer and finished their task just as dawn broke. Ra and the other gods surveyed the night’s work and felt pleased with them; Ra told the rest that he would use the brew to save human beings from total destruction, and sent his messengers out with orders to spread it over the earth.

Hathor Egyptian Goddess of Love

Shortly Hathor Goddess arose and set out to continue her enjoyable task. She passed through the land looking for more prey to satisfy her thirst for blood, but saw none. Instead she saw that the earth was already deep in what appeared to be blood and rejoiced in the thought that she had spilled so much of the liquid of life. She stooped to drink of it, and found that the more she drank, the more she wanted. Finally the combination of the beer and the mandrake caused her to sink into a peaceful slumber. Her brain no longer urged her to kill, and her father quietly called to her: “Come, come in peace, 0 fair and gracious goddess.” So ended her slaughter.

Ra went on to command that in future there would be celebrations of this event in the city of Amen, the place where the goddess was worshipped. Ra assured her and her followers that there would be three vases of beer for each of his handmaidens who participated in the festival of the New Year, and for generations the followers of Hathor Goddess were rewarded with an annual beer party. (One amusing scholarly explanation of this story is that it was devised to justify the excessive drinking that accompanied the yearly Feast of  Hathor Goddess .)

Ra, however, was not perfectly content with the outcome of events. He had found his revenge and had stopped it from being total so that human beings might survive, but he was still weary of mortals. He was also wary of the implications of what he had done, for he realized that for a time he, the greatest of the gods, had been unable to control his own daughter. He told Nun, “For the first time my limbs have lost their power, and I will never permit this thing to happen a second time.”

The oldest physical form given to Hathor Goddess was probably the cow sometimes she was depicted as the full animal; at other times as a woman with a cow’s head. Sometimes she had a woman’s body and face, but was provided with a pair of horns encircling the solar disk. In the latter form she can be confused with Isis who, as we have seen, was also given a cow’s horns or head at times. At the temples of Dendera and Philae, her most important shrines, she was shown on the pillars as a woman with cow’s ears. The face has an appealing smile and considerable beauty.

Her titles were many, but most of them reflected her connection with happiness and joy. In the broadest sense she represented what was good and true, and these traits were found in her characterization as a woman. She was the epitome of a wife, a daughter, a woman. She was the goddess of beauty, and in the Coffin Texts she said, “Come with my horns and display my beauty; come with my face and I will cause you to be exalted.” She was the goddess of love, music, dance, and singing. Artists revered her, as did drinkers of beer and wine.

In the Book of the Dead Hathor Goddess was also assigned a role in the underworld. At first, it seems the role was not a prominent one: she was just one of the companies of gods overseeing the soul’s trial to attest to its fairness. Then she was thought of as provider of food and drink to souls making their way through the underworld. She was depicted as sitting within her sacred sycamore tree dispensing nourishment to the dead, who then sat and ate in its shade. By the Twenty-first Dynasty, however, her duties to the dead had been greatly expanded. In papyri from this period she is shown as the cow who greets the dead at the entrance to the Western Mountains, the location of the underworld.

She is placed on the slope of the mountain with her pleasant head and horns protruding from the sand. In some of these papyri there is an interesting combination of myths: the cow as greeter of the dead was identified with the rising and setting sun. The ancient idea that Hathor Goddess represented the sky and was associated with the sun was here connected with her newer role in behalf of the dead at the entrance of the underworld. Her titles here were now “Lady of the West” and “Lady of the Holy Country.” She was shown wearing a menat necklace, a beaded necklace that hung from the rear of the collar and was intended to symbol- 1Zed regeneration and rebirth.

As one might expect, the goddess associated with love, beauty and music and renowned as the Great Mother was celebrated widely in some of the most vivid rites recorded in ancient Egypt Fairly early the murals showed her holding a sistrum, a musical rattle of metal and wood. It depicted a flattened face of Hathor Goddess with cow’s ears and was used both for festive occasions and to frighten demons. Later she was celebrated in the Sacred Marriage.

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The Festival of the Sacred Marriage and Hathor Goddess

The Festival of the Sacred Marriage
The name of the cow goddess,  Hathor Goddess , meant “the house of Horus,” but the relationship between Hathor and Horus remains confused, in part because she was an earth mother and therefore associated with numerous other goddesses. In one important story Horus is Hathor’s son. According to this myth  Hathor Goddess was the cow whose legs held up the sky. Horus, as the sun god in the shape of a falcon, flew into her mouth every night and then was born again each morning.

Hathor Egyptian goddess

There is, however, a surviving Ptolemaic ritual that was based on a different myth in which Hathor Goddess and Horus were husband and wife. The Sacred Marriage, one of the more elaborate Egyptian religious rituals, began on the eighteenth day of the tenth month, called Paoni, when the image of Hathor Goddess was taken from her sanctuary at Dendera to sail up-river toward Horus’ temple at Edfu. The goddess and her followers made numerous stops on the way, and reached Edfu on the day of the new moon toward the end of summer. There, on the eve of the anniversary of his victory over Seth, Horus left his temple and greeted his consort on the waters. The divine pair traveled by canal up to the temple amid numerous festivities, including the Opening of the Mouth and the offering of the first fruits. This interesting combination of funerary and harvest rituals is probably the result of Horus’ identification with Osiris, the god of both funerals and vegetation. That night the couple spent their time in the Birth House.

On the next day the celebration continued but with a differed emphasis. This part was called the Festival of Behdet and consisted 0f rituals performed to assure the people of Horus’ presence on the throne and his full authority. The activities included visits to the necropolis and ceremonies performed on behalf of the departed. A red ox and a red goat were sacrificed, and four geese were released to fly to the four corners of the earth announcing that Horus the Behdetite had again taken the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. Four arrows were shot to the four points of the compass to kill his enemies, and words of praise were said in his honor as the sun god: “Praise to you, Ra, praises to you, Khepri, in all these your beautiful names. You came here strong and mighty, have ascended beautiful, and have slain the dragon.”

His enemies were symbolically ravaged; fish and models of a hippopotamus and a crocodile were trampled on while the names of his other enemies were inscribed on papyrus for all to know. Following the destruction of the enemies, the celebrants gave themselves up to a night of joy. At some point during the festival Horus and Hathor Goddess were intended to celebrate their marriage with a “beauteous embrace,” and it can be assumed that this part of the ritual was a signal to the priests, priestesses, king, queen, and most of the commoners to do the same. Myth tells us that the mortals observed the festival by “drinking before the god” and “spending the night gaily,” which was probably one of the chief reasons for the festival in the first place. After two weeks of merriment Hathor Goddess was returned to her home at Dendera.

Today in Upper Egypt the visitor will find numerous representations of Hathor Goddess in various historic sites. In the Temple of Seti I at Abydos she can be found greeting the king, and in the adjacent Temple of Ramses II she was depicted suckling the young king. Just to the south, at Dendera, Hathor Goddess had her chief cult center. She was Worshipped there long before the Ptolemaic temple was built the site, but this temple, whose columns are embellished with her face, is the building most frequently associated with her. The inner walls show scenes of her worship. The sites at Luxor that depict Hathor Goddess are too numerous to describe here, but several important ones must be mentioned briefly. Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahri from the Eighteenth Dynasty contains a chapel dedicated to Hathor Goddess with numerous wall representations of the queen her descendants, and Hathor Goddess . Actually the best of these representations has been moved to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, where there is sandstone chapel and a large and striking statue of Hathor Goddess as the cow, which shows her nursing the boy Amenophis II. Near Luxor at Deir el-Medina there is another chapel that commemorated Hathor’s role in the birth of royal children. At the museum in Luxor, among several representations of Hathor Goddess , is a beautiful wooden head of the cow, one of the most important artistic pieces found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun. Its horns are copper; its eyes-in the shape of the eye of Horus-are lapis lazuli. The head and part of the neck are gilded, and the base of the neck is painted black to suggest the underworld in which she resided.

At Aswan, Hathor Goddess had a temple at Philae, near another temple dedicated to Horus. This entire island complex, which was of course designed to honor Isis, demonstrated the association of these two important earth mothers. Finally, at Abu Simbel, Ramesses II dedicated to Hathor Goddess the second of the two great temples, built for his favorite wife, Nefertari, and images of the goddess are to be found inside.

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• Hathor Egyptian Goddess of love

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