Lecture VI. The Gods Of Egypt. 137
the god Atthar. But Atthar itself was borrowed from Babylonia.
It is the name of the Babylonian goddess Istar, originally the
morning and evening stars, who, an astronomical text tells us,
was at once male and female. As a male god she was adored
in South Arabia and Moab; as the goddess of love and war she
was the chief goddess of Babylonia, the patron of the Assyrian
kings, and the Ashtoreth of Canaan. When, with the progress
of astronomical knowledge, the morning and evening stars were
distinguished from one another, in one part of Western Asia she
remained identified with the one, in another part with the other.
Hathor is then, I believe, the Istar of the Babylonians. She
agrees with Istar both in name and in attributes. The form of
the name can be traced back to that of Istar through the Atthar [148]
of South Arabia, that very land of Punt from which Hathor was
said to have come. In Egypt as in Babylonia she was the goddess
of love and joy, and her relation to the sun can be explained
naturally if she were at the outset the morning star.^123 Even
her animal form connects her with Chaldæa. Dr. Scheil has
published a Babylonian seal of the age of Abraham, on which
the cow, giving milk to a calf, appears as the symbol of Istar, and
a hymn of the time of Assur-bani-pal identifies the goddess with
a cow.^124
I have left myself but little time in which to speak of the gods
who interpenetrated and transfigured Egyptian theology in the
period of which we know most. These are the gods of Thebes.
For centuries Thebes was the dominant centre of a powerful and
united Egypt, and its chief god Amon followed the fortunes of
his city.
(^123) It must be remembered that in Egypt the place occupied by the morning star
in the astronomy and myths of other peoples was taken by Sirius on account of
its importance for the rising of the Nile. And Sirius was identified with Isis.
(^124) Recueil de Travaux, xx. p. 62. Dr. Scheil further points out that the sacred
bark of Bau, with whom Istar is identified, was called“the ship of the holy
cow.”At Dendera also, Isis, in her bark as goddess of the star Sirius, becomes
Hathor under the form of a cow.