THE CREATION STORY: The untold story of Mrs. Gods role in these momentous events
Bleeker thought the Beautiful Reunion was another celebration of the return of the Distant Goddess, citing allusions in the temple's festival texts to the myth of the solar eye. She points out that the birth of Horus and Hathor's son Ihy was celebrated at Dendera nine months after the Festival of the Beautiful Reunion, implying that Hathor's visit to Horus represented Ihy's conception. Egyptian kings as early as the Old Kingdom donated goods to the temple of Baalat Gebal in Byblos, using the syncretism of Baalat with Hathor to cement their close trading relationship with Byblos.
A few artifacts from the early first millennium BC suggest that the Egyptians began equating Baalat with Isis at that time. Egyptians in the Sinai built a few temples in the region. The largest was a complex dedicated primarily to Hathor as patroness of mining at Serabit el-Khadim , on the west side of the peninsula. It included a shrine to Hathor that was probably deserted during the off-season. The local Midianites , whom the Egyptians used as part of the mining workforce, may have given offerings to Hathor as their overseers did.
Ancient Egyptian creation myths
After the Egyptians abandoned the site in the Twentieth Dynasty , however, the Midianites converted the shrine to a tent shrine devoted to their own deities. In contrast, the Nubians in the south fully incorporated Hathor into their religion. During the New Kingdom, when most of Nubia was under Egyptian control, pharaohs dedicated several temples in Nubia to Hathor, such as those at Faras and Mirgissa.
Therefore, Hathor, Isis, Mut, and Nut were all seen as the mythological mother of each Kushite king and equated with his female relatives, such as the kandake , the Kushite queen or queen mother , who had prominent roles in Kushite religion. Thus, in the Meroitic period of Nubian history c.
In addition to formal rituals inside temples, individual Egyptians worshipped deities for personal reasons, including in their homes. Birth was hazardous for both mother and child in ancient Egypt, yet children were much desired. Thus fertility and safe childbirth are among the most prominent concerns in Egyptian popular religion, and fertility deities such as Hathor and Taweret were commonly worshipped in household shrines.
Egyptian women squatted on bricks while giving birth, and the only known surviving birth brick from ancient Egypt is decorated with an image of a woman holding her child flanked by images of Hathor. Hathor was one of a handful of deities, including Amun, Ptah, and Thoth, who were commonly prayed to for help with personal problems. Most offerings to Hathor were used for their symbolism, not for their intrinsic value. Cloths painted with images of Hathor were common, as were plaques and figurines depicting her animal forms. Different types of offerings may have symbolized different goals on the part of the donor, but their meaning is usually unknown.
Images of Hathor alluded to her mythical roles, like depictions of the maternal cow in the marsh. Some Egyptians also left written prayers to Hathor, inscribed on stelae or written as graffiti.
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In contrast, prayers to Hathor mention only the benefits she could grant, such as abundant food during life and a well-provisioned burial after death. As an afterlife deity, Hathor appeared frequently in funerary texts and art. In the early New Kingdom, for instance, Osiris, Anubis, and Hathor were the three deities most commonly found in royal tomb decoration.
Reliefs in Old Kingdom tombs show men and women performing a ritual called "shaking the papyrus". The significance of this rite is not known, but inscriptions sometimes say it was performed "for Hathor", and shaking papyrus stalks produces a rustling sound that may have been likened to the rattling of a sistrum. In the Third Intermediate Period, Hathor began to be placed on the floor of the coffin, with Nut on the interior of the lid.
Tomb art from the Eighteenth Dynasty often shows people drinking, dancing, and playing music, as well as holding menat necklaces and sistra—all imagery that alluded to Hathor. These images may represent private feasts that were celebrated in front of tombs to commemorate the people buried there, or they may show gatherings at temple festivals such as the Beautiful Feast of the Valley.
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Thus, texts from tombs often expressed a wish that the deceased would be able to participate in festivals, primarily those dedicated to Osiris. Drinking and dancing at these feasts may have been meant to intoxicate the celebrants, as at the Festival of Drunkenness, allowing them to commune with the spirits of the deceased. Hathor was said to supply offerings to deceased people as early as the Old Kingdom. Several spells in the Coffin Texts from the Middle Kingdom were written to allow deceased people, including both men and women, to join Hathor's retinue in the afterlife.
Beginning in the Third Intermediate Period, Hathor's name was prefixed to the names of deceased women in texts on burial equipment and funerary monuments. Some burial goods that portray the deceased like goddesses may refer to this same belief, although whether the imagery refers to Hathor or Isis is not known. The link between Hathor and deceased women was maintained into the Roman Period, the last stage of ancient Egyptian religion before its extinction.
Media related to Hathor at Wikimedia Commons. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For other uses, see Hathor disambiguation. Sistrum handle bearing the face of Hathor with a curling wig, 16th to 14th century BC. Amulet of Hathor as a uraeus wearing a naos headdress, early to mid-first millennium BC. Menat necklace, 14th century BC. Assmann, Jan []. Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt. Translated by David Lorton. Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt. The Many Faces of the Goddess: Darnell, John Coleman In Redford, Donald B.
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology. The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago. Fischer, Henry George In Fisher, Marjorie M. African Kingdoms on the Nile. The American University in Cairo Press. Frandsen, Paul John Their Function, Decline and Disappearance". Goedicke, Hans October Journal of Near Eastern Studies. Women in Ancient Egypt. In Draycott, Catherine M. In Friedman, Renee; Adams, Barbara.
The Followers of Horus: Studies Dedicated to Michael Allen Hoffman. Hollis, Susan Tower Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections. Jebel Barkal History and Archaeology. Retrieved 10 September The Great Goddesses of Egypt. University of Oklahoma Press. Household and Family Religion in Antiquity. Egyptian Culture and Society: Studies in Honour of Naguib Kanawati. Meeks, Dimitri; Favard-Meeks, Christine []. Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods. In Schneider, Thomas; Szpakowska, Kasia.
Lloyd on the Occasion of His Retirement. Votive Offerings to Hathor. Pinch, Geraldine []. Poo, Mu-Chou []. The Cult of Ra: Sun Worship in Ancient Egypt.
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The Theology of Hathor of Dendera: A Spell Against Night Terrors". Roberts, Alison []. The Power of the Goddess in Ancient Egypt. My Heart My Mother: Death and Rebirth in Ancient Egypt. Popular Religion in Egypt during the New Kingdom. The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt. Perspectives on the Osirian Afterlife from Four Millennia.
Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt. The different creation myths have some elements in common. They all held that the world had arisen out of the lifeless waters of chaos, called Nu. They also included a pyramid-shaped mound, called the benben , which was the first thing to emerge from the waters. These elements were likely inspired by the flooding of the Nile River each year; the receding floodwaters left fertile soil in their wake, and the Egyptians may have equated this with the emergence of life from the primeval chaos.
The imagery of the pyramidal mound derived from the highest mounds of earth emerging as the river receded. The sun was also closely associated with creation, and it was said to have first risen from the mound, as the general sun-god Ra or as the god Khepri , who represented the newly-risen sun. Another common element of Egyptian cosmogonies is the familiar figure of the cosmic egg , a substitute for the primeval waters or the primeval mound.
One variant of the cosmic egg version teaches that the sun god, as primeval power, emerged from the primeval mound, which itself stood in the chaos of the primeval sea. The different creation accounts were each associated with the cult of a particular god in one of the major cities of Egypt: Hermopolis , Heliopolis , Memphis , and Thebes. The creation myth promulgated in the city of Hermopolis focused on the nature of the universe before the creation of the world.
The inherent qualities of the primeval waters were represented by a set of eight gods, called the Ogdoad. The god Nu and his female counterpart Naunet represented the inert primeval water itself; Huh and his counterpart Hauhet represented the water's infinite extent; Kek and Kauket personified the darkness present within it; and Amun and Amaunet represented its hidden and unknowable nature, in contrast to the tangible world of the living. The primeval waters were themselves part of the creation process, therefore, the deities representing them could be seen as creator gods.
From it emerged the sun, which rose into the sky to light the world. In Heliopolis , the creation was attributed to Atum , a deity closely associated with Ra, who was said to have existed in the waters of Nu as an inert potential being. Atum was a self-engendered god, the source of all the elements and forces in the world, and the Heliopolitan myth described the process by which he "evolved" from a single being into this multiplicity of elements.
But perhaps the true sign of Paul's importance is that even nearly years after his death he still inspires passion; whatever you feel, it's hard to feel neutral about Paul. However one explains the phenomenon, there is little doubt that the events of the first Easter, sometime in the early 30s of the first century, made a powerful impact on the first followers of Jesus. Yet the utterly bizarre nature of the claims that they were making is easy to miss after two thousand years of familiarity with Christianity.
Let us pause to consider for a moment what it was that they were saying. God has acted decisively, once for all, by sending his beloved Son to his own people, Israel. This Jesus, whom some acknowledged as Christ, was subjected to an appalling and humiliating death.
Hathor - Wikipedia
Everyone in the Roman Empire knew about crucifixion and the fact that Jesus died in this way was not something one would expect anyone to have been proud of. That God's Anointed One could have been so publicly humiliated seemed outrageous. But for these early Jesus people, the public humiliation was conquered through resurrection, God's vindication of Jesus, and this convinced them that Jesus was not a criminal who had died for his own sins; he had died for the sins of others. At this stage, it is incorrect to talk about Christianity.
These earliest followers of Jesus were devout Jews who continued to offer sacrifice at the Temple and to observe the whole Jewish Law. Essentially, they were a small sect within Judaism. So how would such a sect have been viewed by other Jews who were not members of it? Thankfully, we have a pretty clear answer to this question because one of the most famous converts to the new Messianic sect was a Jew named Paul and before his conversion he was so horrified by the claims of this new movement that, he tells us, he persecuted it violently.
So why did people like Paul persecute Jesus' followers? The problem seems to have focused around the cross. It was simply intolerable to zealous Jews like Paul that God's special envoy could have died a criminal's death. He describes it as a "stumbling block" to Jews 1 Corinthians 1. It was unthinkable that the Messiah could have suffered in this way. The problem would have been sharply focused for someone like Paul.
He was not from Israel but was born in Tarsus, in modern Turkey. Jews like Paul, who lived outside the Jewish homeland, were called diaspora Jews. Since they lived among pagans, they were particularly conscious of how their religion might appear to those around them. Jews were called to be a light to the nations Isaiah It could hold Judaism up to ridicule.
The importance of Paul's conversion, his turn-around from persecuting Jesus to preaching Jesus, cannot be underestimated. Paul himself finds it difficult to describe what had happened and in a fascinating passage in one of his letters he explains this as a resurrection appearance of Jesus 1 Corinthians The Damascus Road experience was both a conversion and a call. It was a conversion away from his previous life as a zealous persecutor of Jesus' followers and it was a call to a new life advancing the cause of the new movement with even more vigour than he had shown before.
Now, with boundless energy, Paul preached the gospel of the Christ crucified for the sins of all people far and wide, beginning at Jerusalem and continuing all the way to Rome. His achievement was a matter of some pride for him:. Luke tells us of three enormous missionary journeys, charting [Paul's] progress from Antioch in Syria and moving westwards through modern day Turkey and Greece and finally back to Jerusalem again. For Paul this was a particularly punishing business. Unlike other early Christian missionaries, Paul earned his own living wherever he went.
Luke says that he was a tentmaker Acts Paul's life was remarkable and there is little doubt that it changed the course of Christianity. He made an impact as apostle, as theologian, and as letter-writer. Paul the apostle had expanded the church far and wide, flinging open the doors to Gentiles, strenuously fighting for his conviction that the gospel was for all people and that no barriers should be put in the way of Gentiles. Paul the theologian was the first to work through many of the intriguing questions that Jesus' life, death and resurrection had thrown up.
And Paul the letter-writer gave us not only some of the profoundest pieces of early Christian theological reflection, but also some of the finest, most poignant writing in history. At the end of the Bible, though, lies not Paul but Revelation, a book that at first sight looks like the black sheep in the New Testament family. With its fantastic visions of heaven, its gory stories of the future, its impenetrable signs and symbols, many a reader has given up in exasperation in the attempt to fathom out its mysteries.
Some Christians have struggled with Revelation; Luther wished it was not in the New Testament at all. Yet at heart, Revelation is a profoundly Christian book.
Its central message is that in spite of any appearance to the contrary, God is still Lord and King over the universe.