Lecture VI. The Gods Of Egypt. 135
her, as the gods were resolved into forms of Ra. The kings of
the Sixth Dynasty called themselves her sons, just as they also
called themselves sons of the sun-god. She presided over the
underworld; she presided also over love and pleasure. The seven
goddesses, who, like fairy godmothers, bestowed all good things
on the newborn child, were called by her name, and she was
even identified with Mut, the starry sky. Her chief sanctuary was
at Dendera, founded in the first days of the Pharaonic conquest
of Egypt. Here she was supreme; even Horus the elder and the
younger,^119 when compelled to form with her a trinity, remained
lay figures and nothing more.
She was pictured sometimes as a cow, sometimes as a woman
with the head of a cow bearing the solar disc between her
horns: for from the earliest days she was associated with the sun.
Sometimes she is addressed as the daughter of Ra;^120 sometimes
the sun-god is her son. At Dendera the solar orb is represented [146]
as rising from her lap, while its rays encircle her head, which
rests upon Bâkhu, the mountain of the sun. In another chamber
of the same temple we see her united with her son Horus as a
hawk with a woman's head in the very middle of the solar disc,
which slowly rises from the eastern hills. When Isis is figured as
a cow, it is because she is regarded as a form of Hathor.^121
The original character of Hathor has been a matter of dispute.
Some scholars have made her originally the sky or space
generally, others have called her the goddess of light, while
she has even been identified with the moon. In the legend of
(^119) Horus Ahi. The meaning of Ahi, the local title assigned to Horus the
younger, is doubtful.
(^120) Thus at Dendera we read:“Ancestral mother of the gods, thou unitest
thyself with thy father Ra in thy festal chamber.”
(^121) The so-called Hathor head with the horns of a cow is already found on the
slate plaque of Kom el-A%mar, which is either of the time of the First Dynasty
or pre-Menic (Zeits. f. Aegypt. Spr.xxxvi. pl. xii.). A head of similar type is
engraved under the name of PepiII.{FNS, discovered at Koptos (Petrie,Koptos,
pl. v. 7).