The goddess Hathor was one of the pre-eminent divinities of ancient Egypt. Her origins are obscure but she came to be an important figure within the Egyptian pantheon. A bovine goddess, her name means 'Mansion of Horus' and designates:

"...the closed space through which Horus travels as sun-god. . .[Hathor] plays the role of protective, regenerative container. . .represented from ancient periods onwards as a female countenance seen face-on, she symbolises the face-to-face encounter between the sun and the element in which he appears at the moment of creation." (Meeks)

The name Hathor was used in Greco-Roman times and seems appropriate to use here as this is the name she has been most commonly referred to by Egyptologists both now and in the recent past. Throughout Egyptian history, a variety of related names were given to this cow goddess: Het Hert (Het Heret), Hathor, Hat-Hor. She has links with Isis (Aset) and both have shared characteristics at different times. Like Isis, Hathor's influence spread beyond Egypt and aspects of her incorporated in foreign goddesses. One writer/historian, Marina Warner, has even postulated that, as nurturer, she amongst others contributed to the formation of the Christian Mary, elements of Mary having been assimilated from pagan goddesses in the development of very early Christianity.

An ancient goddess whose origins stretch far back into prehistory, Hathor may be the goddess depicted as early as the First Dynasty on the Narmer Palette, a schist object that shows her as a human with the horns and ears of a cow, the stars figuring in the background pointing to her status as a cosmic and celestial goddess. She may have been an amalagation of both foreign divinity and a divinity native to Egypt. Her depictions include animal form, mixtures of animal and human form and as fully anthropomorphic, each one of these manifestations alluding to particular characteristics or aspects of her nature. Hathor was worshipped in all these forms concurrently.

As cow goddess, she is nurturing and protective. These aspects point to her likely origins as an animal divinity from prehistory when humans were involved in cattle herding, long before indigenious Egyptians moved from the Sahara to the Nile area. The cow goddess may have come about as a logical development from the nurturing of calves and cows by women in an unforgiving environment which forced a symbiotic relationship between animal and human as a simple method of mutual survival. Hassan suggests that:

"Both cow and woman gave milk. Both were the source of generation and life. Droughts not only enfeebled cattle and people, but also wrought starvation and death. In the desert, the birthplace of Egyptian theology, life and death are paramount. Water, cattle, milk, and women were the source of regeneration and nourishment. Without water or milk there was nothing but sickness and death. These mental associations were of deep psychological significance. Together they laid the foundation of the fundamental notions of Egyptian religion: birth, death, and resurrection." (Hassan)

When did the primordial cow goddess 'divide' into the named bovine goddesses such as Hathor, Isis, Nut and Neith amongst others? Did this begin with the development of small chiefdoms in the Nile area? Was it when the cow goddess began to be worshipped alongside local territorial deities? As this appears to have happened in prehistory, the answer to that is not obvious.

On the consolidation of Egypt as a nation state which possibly occurred around 3200 BCE, the cow goddesses came to be incorporated into the cosmogonic myth that supported the king’s claim to divinity. However, it was as secondary characters – the bovine goddesses were no longer the independent divinities they had been in the past. Hathor was one of three goddesses closely associated with kingship in early Egypt.

Even as their roles became more sophisticated and wrapped in myth, the roles of nurturer, nourisher, protector and regenerator were always essential aspects of their being. Hathor was no exception.

Sources:
Fekri Hassan, The Earliest Goddesses of Egypt ~ Divine Mothers and Cosmic Bodies, a chapter in the book Ancient Goddesses, British Museum Press.

David P Silverman, ed. Byron Shafer, Religion in Ancient Egypt ~ Gods, Myths & Personal Practice, Cornell University Press

Dimitri Meeks & Christine Favard-Meeks, Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London

Photograph credits: © D. Gonzalvez 2003