Goddess Hathor | Goddess of Fertility, Love, and Motherhood
Goddess Hathor
In the Ancient Egyptian religion, Goddess Hathor was the goddess of joy, beauty, music, dance, poetry, and love. The sacred instrument of Hathor was the sistrum.
As in many other ancient religions, the goddess of love is also the goddess of death (Venus, Libitina, Astarte, etc.). Thus Hathor assumes, by order of God Amun Ra, the deadly aspect of the lioness Sekhmet in the myth of the destruction of mankind.
Ptolemy Philopator consecrated the necropolis of Deir el-Medina for Hathor. The goddess was also worshiped in Northern Aphroditopolis, Apollinofolio Magne, and El-Deir El-Bahri. She was identified in Kadesh, the bride of Reshep, an Asian divinity who also patronized love and death. She has also considered God Sobek's wife in the divine triad worshiped at Kom Ombo.
The Goddess of Joy, Beauty, and Music
Widely regarded as the Goddess of Joy, Music, Dance, and Love, Hathor was the personification of beauty, extending her influence through all forms of art to expression. The sistrum—an ancient Egyptian percussion instrument—is revered as her sacred symbol. In ceremonial environments, Hathor worship usually entailed music and dance to indicate her mastery over pleasure and enjoyment. The goddess was a common invocation for women with regard to love, fertility, or protection, as her blessings were believed to nurture and protect both personal and social well-being.
The Dual Nature: Love and Death
Like many ancient gods, Hathor also ruled the dead, a particular complement in her complex duality. This dark aspect of her was a deadly lioness, Sekhmet in other words, as her myth enacts: the destruction of mankind. In this myth, Hathor was commanded by god Amun Ra to turn into Sekhmet and punish humanity for disobedience. Therefore, her tale indicates Hathor's duality: a nurturing goddess of life and love and a fierce, destructive one when the equilibrium of the cosmos was disturbed.
Sacred Sites and Devotion
The worship of Hathor stretched throughout Egypt and even beyond her frontiers, and this alone proved her latter-day importance to the religious world of the ancient days. During that era, Sacred City Deir el-Medina was made a shrine of Hathor by Ptolemy Philopator. This necropolis housed the tombs of workers who built the royal ones in the Valley of the Kings and became a prime place of worship of Hathor.
