Hathor was the Egyptian goddess of love, beauty, music, joy, motherhood and the sky — one of the most beloved and ancient of all Egyptian deities, the cow-goddess who nurtured the living, welcomed the dead, and embodied feminine joy, yet who also held within her the fearsome destroying power of the Eye of Ra. She is the great goddess of all that is joyful and life-giving, and the tender protectress of the dead.
The Goddess of Joy and Love
Hathor (Egyptian Hwt-Hor, “House of Horus”) was the goddess of love, beauty, music, dance, joy, drunkenness, fertility and motherhood — the radiant deity of all the pleasures and joys of life. She was depicted as a cow, or as a beautiful woman with cow's horns cradling the solar disc, or with cow's ears. As the goddess of love and beauty she was Egypt's counterpart to the great love-goddesses of other lands, invoked in matters of romance, music, celebration and feminine joy; her festivals were occasions of music, dancing and drinking. She was a sky-goddess too, sometimes imagined as a great celestial cow whose body was the heavens.
The Nurturing Mother
Hathor was a great mother and nurturer. As a cow-goddess she was associated with the nourishing milk that sustains life, and she was depicted suckling and nurturing the pharaoh and the gods. She was a goddess of fertility and childbirth, watching over mothers and children, and she nurtured all living things. Her name, “House of Horus,” marked her as the mother (or consort) of the falcon-god Horus, and by extension a divine mother of the pharaoh, who was the living Horus. She embodied the warm, life-giving, maternal aspect of the divine feminine.
The Welcomer of the Dead
Hathor had a tender role in the afterlife as the welcomer and protectress of the dead. She was the “Lady of the West,” who greeted the setting sun and the souls of the dead as they entered the realm of the west (the land of the dead), receiving them with comfort and nourishment. She was depicted emerging from the western mountain to welcome the deceased, offering them food and drink and easing their passage into the afterlife. Thus the goddess of the joys of life was also the gentle goddess who met the dead at the threshold of the next world, making her beloved in both life and death.
The Eye of Ra and the Destroying Lioness
Yet Hathor had a terrible aspect too, for she was one of the goddesses who served as the Eye of Ra — the destroying power of the sun. In the famous myth, when mankind plotted against the aging sun-god Ra, he sent forth his Eye in the form of Hathor (transformed into the bloodthirsty lioness Sekhmet) to punish humanity — and she fell upon them in such a slaughter that she nearly destroyed the entire human race, drunk on blood. To stop her, the gods flooded the fields with beer dyed red like blood; the goddess drank it, became drunk, and was pacified, transforming back from the raging lioness Sekhmet into the gentle, joyful Hathor. This myth captures the dual nature of the goddess: the loving, nurturing Hathor and the destroying lioness Sekhmet were two faces of one power, joy and wrath, creation and destruction, within a single great goddess. Hathor endures as one of the most beloved goddesses of ancient Egypt — the radiant lady of love, beauty, music and joy, the nurturing cow-mother, the welcomer of the dead, and the bearer of the sun's terrible Eye.
The radiant goddess of love, music and joy who nurtures the living and welcomes the dead — yet within her sleeps the destroying lioness, the terrible Eye of the sun.