Hathor


 * __ Hathor __**
 * The Egyptian's found it hard to define the Cow goddess Hathor’s role because she was such a complex goddess. She took the roles of being a daughter, a wife, and a protectoress of women, childbirth, and the dead. Hathor was also the queen of peace and love, the queen of the palm tree and the sycamore. And finally Hathor was the mistress of music, dancing, and drinking. All Egyptian’s however considered her as a fertility god. **
 * Hathor was the common mother who raised the Sun, Horus. Younger pharaoh’s were represented being suckled by her, and were often called the sons of Hathor. She also assisted childbirth and welcomed the dead to their new reincarnated life in the underworld, offering them food and drink but also carrying them to protect them from danger. **
 * The rattle or sistrum, was Hathor’s sacred instrument and the features of her temple at Dendera, her main sanctuary, were designed as rattles in honour to her responsibility of goddess of music, dancing and sexual love. She was represented as a cow or a woman wearing a crown with cow horns and a solar disk in between them. The papyrus which grows in the marshes by the Nile was Hathor’s sacred plant. **
 * A mini festival was held on the first day of each New Year, where Hathor climbed onto the roof of the temple and showed her image to the rising sun. Singing, dancing and drinking all happened afterwards to celebrate the beginning of each New Year. **
 * Hathor was also was a healer and her temple housed the ill in mud-brick cubicles, where they bathed in water from a sacred lake. **