Hathor as a cow, wearing her necklace and showing her sacred eye – Papyrus of Ani.

Dendera Temple complex | Dendera Temple, showing Hathor on the capitals of a column.

Dendera Temple complex | Dendera Temple, showing Hathor on the capitals of a column

This is the only decorated chamber in the tomb, with scenes from the Opening of the Mouth ritual ( showing Ay, Tutankhamun's successor acting as the king's son, despite being older than he is ) and Tutankhamun with the goddess Nut on the north wall, the first hour of Amduat ( on the west wall ), spell one of the Book of the Dead ( on the east wall ) and representations of the king with various deities ( Anubis, Isis, Hathor and others now destroyed ) on the south wall.

Hathor as a cow, wearing her necklace and showing her sacred eye – Papyrus of Ani.

Earlier Egyptian myths imply that the sun is within the lioness, Sekhmet, at night and can be seen reflected in her eyes or that it is within the cow, Hathor during the night, being reborn each morning as her son ( bull ).

Due to her attributes as a protector and mother, as well as a lusty aspect gained when she absorbed some aspects of Hathor, she became the patron goddess of sailors, who spread her worship with the trading ships circulating the Mediterranean Sea.

After she assimilated many of the roles of Hathor, Isis's headdress is replaced with that of Hathor: the horns of a cow on her head, with the solar disk between them.

Notably, even after assuming the formal regalia, Hatshepsut still described herself as a beautiful woman, often as the most beautiful of women, and although she assumed almost all of her father's titles, she declined to take the title " The Strong Bull " ( the full title being, The Strong Bull of his Mother ), which tied the pharaoh to the goddesses Isis, the throne, and Hathor, ( the cow who gave birth to and protected the pharaohs )— by being her son sitting on her throne — an unnecessary title for her, since Hatshepsut became allied with the goddesses, herself, which no male pharaoh could.

In a later myth developed around an annual drunken Sekhmet festival, Ra, the sun god, created her from a fiery eye gained from his mother, Hathor ( daughter of Ra ), to destroy mortals who conspired against him ( Lower Egypt ).

The trick was, however, that the red liquid was not blood, but wine so that it resembled blood, making her so drunk that she gave up slaughter and became an aspect of the gentle Hathor to some moderns.

This merging of identities of similar goddesses has led to considerable confusion, leading to some attributing to Bastet the title Mistress of the Sistrum ( more properly belonging to Hathor, who had become thought of as an aspect of the later emerging Isis, as had Mut ), and the Greek idea of her as a lunar goddess ( more properly an attribute of Mut ) rather than the solar deity she was.

The cult of Hathor pre-dates the historical period and the roots of devotion to her are, therefore, difficult to trace, though it may be a development of predynastic cults who venerated the fertility, and nature in general, represented by cows.

Hathor may be the cow goddess who is depicted from an early date on the Narmer Palette and on a stone urn dating from the 1st dynasty that suggests a role as sky-goddess and a relationship to Horus who, as a sun god, is " housed " in her.

Another artifact from the 1st dynasty shows a cow lying down on an ivory engraving with the inscription " Hathor in the Marshes " indicating her association with vegetation and the papyrus marsh in particular.

It was said that, with her motherly character, Hathor greeted the souls of the dead in Duat, and proffered them with refreshments of food and drink.

Sculpture of Hathor as a cow, with all of her symbols, the sun disk, the cobra, as well as her necklace and crown.

Essentially, Hathor had become a goddess of joy, and so she was deeply loved by the general population, and truly revered by women, who aspired to embody her multifaceted role as wife, mother, and lover.

The worship of Hathor was so popular that a lot of festivals were dedicated to her honor than any other Egyptian deity, and more children were named after this goddess than any other deity.

She drank so much of it — thinking it to be blood — that she became drunk and returned to her former gentle self as Hathor.

Hathor was worshipped in Canaan in the eleventh century BC, which at that time was ruled by Egypt, at her holy city of Hazor, or Tel Hazor which the Old Testament claims was destroyed by Joshua ( Joshua 11: 13, 21 ).

Most often Isis is seen holding only the generic ankh sign and a simple staff, but in late images she is seen sometimes with items usually associated only with Hathor, the sacred sistrum rattle and the fertility-bearing menat necklace.

See Gerhart Haeny's ' A Short History of Philae ' ( BIFAO 1983 ) and numerous other articles which incontrovertibly identify Isis ( not Hathor ) as the primary goddess of the sacred isle.

It was the eye of one of the earliest of Egyptian deities, Wadjet, who later became associated with Bast, Mut, and Hathor as well.

In early artwork, Hathor is also depicted with this eye.

Horus may take back the lost eye, or other deities, including Isis, Thoth, and Hathor, may retrieve or heal it for him.

The cult of Ra absorbed most of Horus's traits and included the protective eye of Wadjet that had shown her association with Hathor.

Hathor is also depicted with this eye.

The majority of the eye was restored by either Hathor or Thoth ( with the last portion possibly being supplied magically ).

Wadjets existed long before the rise of this cult when they originated as the eye of Wadjet as cobra and are the name of the symbols also called the Eye of the Moon, Eye of Hathor, the Eye of Horus, and the Eye of Ra — depending upon the dates of the references to the symbols.

" However, the stone benches were carved with headrests in a style borrowed from Egyptian Hathor wig.

The Dendera Zodiac, a star-map from the Hathor temple at Dendera from a late ( Ptolemaic ) age, supposedly records precession of the equinoxes ( Tompkins 1971 ).

This small temple of Hathor was unearthed south of the great wall of the Hout-Ka-Ptah by Abdullah al-Sayed Mahmud in the 1970s and also dates from the time of Rameses II.

Artifacts from pre-dynastic times depict cow deities using the same symbolism as used in later times for Hathor and Egyptologists speculate that these deities may be one and the same or precursors to Hathor.

The evidence pointing to the deity being Hathor in particular is based on a passage from the Pyramid texts which states that the King's apron comes from Hathor.

Deir el-Bahri, on the west bank of Thebes, was also an important site of Hathor that developed from a pre-existing cow cult.

Hathor among the deities greeting the newly dead pharaoh, Thutmose IV, from his tomb in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt.

Inscriptions from the entrance way have been found which mention Hathor and Bubastis.

Sinuhe comes under the protective orbit of divine powers, in the form of the King, from whom he first tries to run away, and that of the Queen, a manifestation of Hathor.

In the original myth concerning the Ogdoad, the Milky Way arose from the waters as a mound of dirt, which was deified as Hathor.

During the Christian era the temple of Hathor was converted into a Church from which the Arabic name Deir el-Medina (" the monastery of the town ") is derived.

The characteristics of the Eye of Ra were an important part of the Egyptian conception of female divinity in general, and the Eye was equated with many goddesses, ranging from very prominent deities like Hathor to obscure ones like Mestjet, a lion goddess who appears in only one known inscription.

The name of the month comes from Hathor, the Ancient Egyptian Goddess of Beauty and Love.