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Hathor's Star

The Egyptian Hathor provides an archetypal example of the mother
goddess.  From time immemorial, she was regarded as the mother of
Horus, the Egyptian war-god believed to be incarnate in the pharaoh.
The goddesses' very name commemorates this relationship, signifying
"House of Horus."1

Scholars have hitherto been at a loss to explain the fundamental
nature of this great goddess, puzzled not only by her name but by her
multifarious and seemingly incompatible characteristics.  Alison
Roberts, in a recent study of Hathor, offered the following complaint:
"My initial problem was how to find any coherent pattern in the many
representations of the goddess."2

For Roberts, as for other scholars, Hathor personifies the sun:

"To understand her transformational role we must turn to another
rhythm of time, the movement of the sun from dawn to dusk, rising in
the eastern horizon each morning, crossing the sky at noon, and then
sinking each evening into the west.  As a solar goddess, the
beneficient-destructive Hathor-Sekhmet participates in this daily
rhythm which also links her qualities with the biological life-cycle
of birth, maturity and death."3

But if Hathor represents the sun, how are we to understand her
intimate relationships with Horus or Ra, both of whom are typically
identified with the sun by Egyptologists?  Budge saw the difficulty
here and sought to interpret Hathor as a personification of the house
in which the sun god (Horus) lived; i.e., the sky.4  Erman offered a
similar opinion: "Although this name, House of Horus, abode of the sun
god, directly and unequivocally designates her as the sky"5

Yet it can be shown that Hathor has nothing whatsoever to do with the
sun.  That the Egyptian goddess was originally identified with another
celestial body altogether is amply confirmed by a survey of the
numerous Coffin Text passages invoking the goddess.  There Hathor is
clearly distinguished from Re, although she is described as shining
forth in the sky in the immediate vicinity of Re:

"I indeed have prepared a path to the place where Re is, to the place
where Hathor is."6

"You have taken my soul and my spirit, my magic and shade with Re and
Hathor to the place where Re is every day, to the place where Hathor
is every day."7

"Fair is your rising like the rising of Re, you shine like Hathor."8

Hathor is elsewhere invoked as the "Great Lady who is in the bow of
the bark of Re."9

In her role as the fire-spitting uraeus, Hathor is said to have once
taken up residence on the forehead of Re: "O Re and Hathor, take my
soul, my spirit and my shade with you, may I establish your [i.e.,
Hathor's] ornament on the vertex of Re."10

But if Hathor must be clearly distinguished from the sun, with which
celestial body is she to be identified?  A survey of the available
evidence, both within Egypt and without, confirms that Hathor is to be
identified with the planet Venus.  In identifying the Egyptian goddess
with their own Aphrodite, whom Plato and Aristotle had identified with
Venus11, it would appear that the ancient Greeks knew what they were
doing.

Properly understood, Hathor should be viewed as the Egyptian
counterpart of the Sumerian Inanna, the latter goddess being
explicitly identified with Venus in the earliest written sources.  The
fundamental identity of the two goddesses is clearly revealed upon
consideration of their respective epithets and characteristics.  As
Inanna/Venus was invoked as the "Lady of the Evening" or as the
"Evening Star," so too is Hathor invoked as "Lady of the Evening."12
As Inanna/Venus is said to "rise" from the horizon, so too is it said
that "Hathor rises within the horizon."13 As Inanna was depicted
"rising" between the two gates of heaven, so too was it said of the
Egyptian goddess: "[The gates?] of the horizon [are thrown open(?)]
for Hathor."14  As Inanna was said to reside on the mountain of
heaven, so too does Hathor live upon the "mountain of the west," the
latter described as a celestial mount on which the ancient sun-god was
wont to retire at night.  Early illustrations of Hathor on the
"mountain of the west" from the Book of the Dead show the cow-headed
goddess with her familiar menat-symbol, the latter of which shows an
eight-pointed star set on a disc, a striking analogue to
Inanna/Ishtar's eight-pointed star.15 Like Hathor, Inanna was likened
to a cow in early Sumerian literature, one hymn invoking her as "the
great cow among the gods of heaven and earth."16

As Inanna inspired terror as a fire-spewing dragon17, so too did
Hathor in the form of the uraeus serpent.  Thus, a hymn at Philae
invokes Hathor as "the Great One shining on the brow of her father,
the glorious one who causes fear of her father."18  Other hymns
describe the Egyptian goddess as a fiery serpent raging in the sky:

"Exalted is your power, O Burning One, O Sated One, O Mighty One,
Powerful, Skilful of Flames, Lady of the Sky, Mistress of the Two
Lands O Eye of Horus, and his guideLady of Eternity, Fiery One, O Red
One, whose Flame burns, Serpent Uraeus, who guides the people, O Lady
of Fire, O Searing One, O Devourer, O Scorching One"19

The mythology surrounding the two goddesses also shares important
themes in common.  One of the most intriguing myths involving Hathor
finds that goddess abandoning Egypt for Nubia whereupon she goes on a
rampage of destruction in the form of a raging eye.  It is only
through the magical craft of Shu that the warrior-goddess is pacified
and made to return to Egypt.20  A very similar myth surrounds the
Sumerian Inanna, who abandons Eanna to journey to the underworld,
where she is raped by the gardener Sukalletuda.  It is through the
magical devices of Enki, in part, that Inanna eventually succeeds in
returning to her heavenly city (Eanna).21  Bendt Alster, in an
insightful analysis of the Sumerian myth and its analogues, suggested
that it originally had reference to the movements of the planet Venus:

"One will have to agree that, in view of the fact that Inanna is known
to be Venus, the cycle which is depicted here is likely to be that of
the disappearing and returning Venus star.  I do by no means wish to
deny, of course, that there may have been a terrestrial ritual journey
between Eridu and Uruk, but, if such a ritual journey actually took
place, it was an earthly representation of the celestial journey of
the god, as in fact all rituals are imitations of the divine acts."22

Now there's a learned opinion we can endorse, provided it is
understood that the myth has reference to Venus' movements during the
period of its involvement in the polar configuration.

But if Hathor is to be identified with the planet Venus, and Re with
the ancient sun-god, with which celestial body is Horus to be
equated?  As noted earlier, Egyptologists have tended to identify the
god with either the sun or the "Morning Star."  Budge's opinion may be
taken as representative here: "The house [i.e., Hathor] was the sky,
i.e. the eastern portion of it, and the hawk [Horus] is the
sun-god."23

Yet as we have elsewhere documented24, in the Pyramid Texts Horus is
clearly distinguished from Re, being explicitly identified with the
"Morning Star" shining in the celestial Duat, the latter being a sort
of Elysian Fields intimately associated with Hathor (as Sothis).
Horus as the "Morning Star," in turn, is to be identified with the
planet Mars.25  In this sense, the Egyptian traditions surrounding
Horus offer a close parallel to the situation prevailing in Skidi
Pawnee lore, where the red planet was known as "Morning Star."26

A recurring theme in the Pyramid and Coffin Texts finds the dead king,
as Horus, being implored to travel to the northern reaches of the sky,
whereupon he will come to be reunited with Re and Hathor.  Spell 769
in the Coffin Texts illustrates this idea:

"I am Horus; give me the ladder which you gave to my father, so that I
may ascend on it to the sky and escort [Re]As for any god who shall
oppose [himself] to me, he shall have no breadhe shall have no soul,
he shall not go up to Hathor who is in the sky."

Other passages speak of the dead king as traveling to a "Mansion"
associated with Hathor: "He shall ascend to the Mansion of Horus which
is in the sky."27  As Faulkner observed in his commentary upon this
passage, the name
Hwt-hr "'Mansion of Horus' has to be taken here as the name of the
goddess."28

Such passages raise a host of insoluble problems for Egyptologists
attempting to force-fit the ancient traditions to the current sky.
Where is the "Mansion" of Hathor in today's circumpolar heavens?  How
is it that Re, like Horus as the "Morning Star," is so intimately
connected to the northernmost regions of the circumpolar heavens?  Not
surprisingly, such anomalies typically receive little comment by
scholars.  Jan Assmann, for example, in a recent study of ancient
Egyptian ideas of the afterlife, notes that the Pyramid Texts, "our
oldest corpus of funerary literature, locate this eternal abode in the
northern sky."29 Yet the same scholar goes on to speak of the Old
Kingdom's "exclusively cosmic conception of a hereafter ruled by the
sun-god Re."30

Yet if we view these ancient traditions in light of the unique
perspective provided by the Saturn theory, Re's circumpolar location
and Hathor's singular relationship to Horus receive immediate
clarification.  During the period associated with the polar
configuration, the planet Saturn and Earth shared a common axis of
rotation with the result that the gas giant appeared fixed in the
northern circumpolar heavens.  As the ancient sun-god, Saturn/Re
presided over a veritable Golden Age.  Accompanying Saturn/Re at the
time, and also located along the shared polar axis, were the planets
Venus and Mars, the latter planet being closer to the Earth.
Terrestrial viewers looking to the northern heavensthe region
associated with Horus, Hathor, and the Duat by the ancient
Egyptianssaw the red planet nestled squarely within the larger Venus
(see image three).  The Egyptian name Hathor "House of Horus"likely
commemorates this remarkable celestial situation.

Mars cover.jpeg

Figure three

The Eye Goddess

In 1937, while excavating at an ancient temple at Tell Brak, Max
Mallowanthe archaeologist husband of Agatha Christiefound thousands of
figurines distinguished primarily by their prominent eyes (see figure
four).  On the basis of their stratigraphical position, Mallowan dated
the peculiar figurineswhich he called "eye-idols"to the first half of
the third millennium B.C. (the Jamdat Nasr period).32 It was
Mallowan's opinion that the idols represented the Sumerian goddess
Inanna33, although he remained pessimistic that archaeologists would
ever discover their original significance:

"The enigma of these unique objects is one that has long exercised the
ingenuity of scholars.  There is some satisfaction in reflecting that
the true answer may never be known."34

Eyegod.jpg

Figure four

Similar objects have been found all across prehistoric Europe and
Asia.  At Troy, for example, "Eye-idols" occur continuously from the
First Settlement (c. 3000-2500 B.C.) to the end of the Fifth
Settlement (c. 1900-1800 B.C.).35  The cult of the "Eye Goddess" was
very widespread, occurring as far North as Great Britain and as far
East as Mohenjodaro.36  Of the latter examples, Dhavalikar has noted
that the images "have a high antiquity in India going back to well
into the latter half of the third millennium B.C."37

Gimbutas would trace the European examples back further still: "The
west European Eye Goddess of France, Spain, Portugal, and Great
Britain is manifested in the stelae, figurines, and amulets of
megalithic cultures dating from the 5th to the 3rd millennia B.C."38
That the Inanna-figurines from Tell Brak are analogous to those from
prehistoric Europe is generally accepted.  Here Gimbutas observed:
"Indeed, the resemblance of figurines from the temple of Tel Brakto
stone idols of Spain and Portugal with the oculi-motif, is quite
astonishing."39

Why ancient peoples around the globe would choose to represent their
beloved mother goddess by an eye or by a figurine distinguished by
concentric circles or "eyes" remains unexplained to this day.  In this
instance, as in countless other mysteries surrounding the cult of the
mother goddess, it is the goddesses' celestial identification which
provides the key to unlocking the mystery.  As is well documented,
Inanna was identified with the planet Venus already in prehistoric
times.40 Venus, in turn, was compared to an "eye" by peoples
throughout the ancient world.  The Maya, for example, knew Venus as
Nohoch Ich, "Great Eye."41   Polynesian islanders half way around the
world described Venus as Tamata-nui, "Great-Eye."42  Similar ideas are
apparent among the Ringa-Ringaroo of Australia, who referred to Venus
as Mimungoona, "Big Eye."43

It was in Mesoamerican iconography, perhaps, that the ocular symbolism
of Venus reached its greatest expression.  Figure five, for example,
is held to signify the planet Venus.  Of this sign, which is
ubiquitous in Aztec iconography, Miller has observed:

"It has long been recognized that a lidded, circular eye framed by
rays and lobes also containing eyes is almost certainly a star or
planet and that it sometimes represents the planet Venus.  It forms
part of sky bands represented in codices of the Mixteca and of the
Borgia Group as well as in the murals of Mitla in Oaxaca and of Tulum
and Santa Rita.  The eye-and-ray motif is also found in association
with the sun disc, a motif that is also prominent at Chichen Itza."44

highlandVenus.jpg

Figure five

Why an "eye-and-ray" motif should be associated with the sun disc is
not obvious given the current solar system.  Yet if the polar
configuration reconstructed in figure three once prevailed, the origin
of the imagery becomes perfectly obviousVenus was the central eye of
the ancient sun god.

The greatest strength of the Saturn-theory, in dramatic contrast to
other models of ancient myth, is that it leads directly to a seemingly
endless series of tests, many of which are immediately obvious given
the basic outlines of the model.  Consider the example provided by the
"Eye of Ra," one of the most important and enduring symbols in ancient
Egyptian tradition.  In accordance with our interpretation of the
Ra-sign shown in figure three, whereby Venusthe celestial prototype
for the mother goddessforms the central "eye" of the Ra disc, it
follows that the eye of Ra must be identified with the mother
goddess.  And so it is that nearly every ancient Egyptian goddess is
explicitly described as the "Eye of Ra."  Here Rundle Clark observed:

"The Eye is the commonest symbol in Egyptian thought and the strangest
to usOne fact does stand outthe Egyptian Eye was always a symbol for
the Great Goddess, whatever name she may have had in any particular
instance."45

That the "Eye of Ra" was somehow related to the planet Venus has
actually been recognized by Egyptologists, although they were at a
complete loss to explain the original basis of the connection.
Witness the following statement by Rudolf Anthes:

"Only the Eye of Re is identified as a heavenly body in a few
sentences of the Pyramid Texts.  We used to understand them as though
the Eye of Re was identified as the sun, but a careful interpretation
of them has unmistakably shown that the Eye of Ra was the morning
star."46

But there is more.  If the Eye of Ra is to be identified with the
planet Venus, and if that planet was only recently involved in a
series of spectacular catastrophes, as is readily deducible from the
myths surrounding Inanna and her analogues47, it follows that the "Eye
of Ra" might be linked with catastrophic events of one sort or the
other.  And so it is that, already in the Egyptian Pyramid Texts and
Coffin Texts from the third millennium BCE, there appear numerous
references to the terrifying time when the "Eye" raged across the
skies.  A passage from the Coffin Texts reads as follows: "I am the
fiery Eye of Horus which went forth terrible, Lady of slaughterI am
indeed she who shoots."48

Other passages recount the fire and devastation which accompanied the
Eye's rampage: "The fire will go up, the flame will go upthe fiery one
will be against them as the Eye of Ra."49  Yet another passage
announces that "Its flame is to the sky."50  Other passages speak of
the hair raised from the Eye, a strikingly appropriate image if the
reference was to a planet presenting a comet-like apparition, as per
the reconstruction offered by the Saturn theory: "I raised up the hair
from the Sacred Eye at the time of its wrath."51

The wrath of the ancient sun-god's "Eye," properly understood, is the
wrath of the planet-goddess in her terrible aspect.52 A classic
example of this theme can be found in an Egyptian tale known as the
Destruction of Mankind, where Ra dispatches Hathor to rain fire and
destruction upon his enemies:

"Let go forth thine Eye, let it destroy for thee those who blaspheme
with wickedness, not an eye can precede it in resistancewhen it goeth
forth in the form of Hathor.  Went forth then this goddess, she slew
mankind on the mountain."53

As the warring Eye, Hathor is also attested in Egyptian ritual.  One
text invokes Hathor as follows: "The Eye of Re, lady of heavendaughter
of Re, who came forth from his body."54 Yet another passage links the
heavenly "Eye" to raging fire: "The eye of Rethe fire-spreading
goddess who spreads fire on the enemies."55  Another passage compares
the warring "eye" to a fire-spewing dragon: "The cobra-snake of Rewho
came forth from himwho burns the enemy of Re with her heatThe Eye of
ReShe is the flaming goddess."56

With reference to the myth of Hathor as the warring eye, Erman laments
that "we must abandon any hope of understanding the original."57  Yet
the mystery disappears if Hathor is approached from the vantage point
of the Saturn theory, for Venus was once positioned on the face of the
ancient sun-god, whereupon it was viewed as the latter's "eye".  The
same interpretation holds for the aforementioned references whereby
Hathor (as the uraeus) is set upon the face or forehead of Ra,
needless to say.

Now it can hardly be a coincidence that descriptions of Inanna's
rampage closely mirror that of Hathor.  Witness the following passage
from the Exaltation to Inanna:

"Like a dragon you have deposited venom on the land, When you roar at
the earth like Thunder, no vegetation can stand up to you.  A flood
descending from its mountain, Oh foremost one, you are the Inanna of
heaven and earth!  Raining the fanned fire down upon the nation"58

Like Hathor, Inanna is described as "dragon-like" and as raining fire
from heaven.  A better description of a comet-like apparition it would
be difficult to imagine.

The logic applied here to the example provided by the "Eye of Ra"
might be applied to any one of a hundred sacred symbols associated
with the ancient sun-god or Venus, all of which would lead to the same
conclusion: Venus only recently moved upon a radically different
orbit, one which brought it perilously close to the Earth and into an
enigmatically intimate relationship to the ancient sun-god.

Footnotes

1. H. Bonnet, Reallexikon der agyptischen Religionsgeschichte
(Berlin, 1952), p. 277.

2. A. Roberts, Hathor Rising (Devon, 1995), p. v.

3. Ibid., p. 16.

4. E. Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians, Vol. 1 (New York, 1969), pp.
428-429.

5. A. Erman, A Handbook of Egyptian Religion (London, 1907), p. 12.

6. VI:78e.

7. VI:80f.

8. I:261b.

9. VI:55a.

10. VI:82h.

11. Epinomis 987B; Metaph. 1073 B 31-32.

12. 387a.

13. 48d.

14. 137.

15. H. Bonnet, op. cit., p. 279.  See also plate 37 in Faulkner's
Book of the Dead.

16. A. Sjoberg, "in-nin sa-gur-ra A Hymn to the Goddess Inanna,"
Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie 65 (1976), p. 197.

17. W. Hallo & J. van Dijk, The Exaltation of Inanna (New Haven,
1968), p. 15.

18. A. Roberts, op. cit., p. 58.

19. Ibid., p. 8.

20. H. Junker, Der Auszug der Hathor-Tefnut aus Nubien (Berlin,
1911).

21. B. Alster, "On the Interpretation of the Sumerian Myth 'Inanna
and Enki," pp. 30-31.

22. Ibid., pp. 28-29.

23. E. Budge, From Fetish to God in Ancient Egypt (New York, 1988),
p. 228.

24. E. Cochrane, "Sothis and Morning Star in the Egyptian Pyramid
Texts," Aeon 3:5 (1994), pp. 77-94.

25. Ibid., pp. 85-93.

26. J. Murie, "Ceremonies of the Pawnee," Smithsonian Contributions to
Anthroplogy 27 (1981), pp. 38-39.  See also the discussion in E.
Cochrane, "The Female Star," Aeon 5:3 (1999), pp. 54-63.

27. 1026-7.

28. R. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts: Vol. II Spells
355-787 (Warmnister, 1977), p. 300.

29. J. Assmann, "Death and Initiation in the Funerary Religion of
Ancient Egypt," in W. Simpson ed., Religion and Philosophy in Ancient
Egypt (New Haven, 1989), p. 143.

30. Ibid.

31. D. Talbott, The Saturn Myth (New York, 1980).  See also E.
Butterworth, The Tree at the Navel of the Earth (Berlin, 1970), p.
124.

32. M. Mallowan, Early Mesopotamia and Iran (London, 1965), pp.
44-48.

33. See also E. van Buren, "New Evidence Concerning an Eye-Divinity,"
Iraq 17 (1955), pp. 164-175.

34. M. Mallowan, op. cit., p. 48.

35. H. Frankfort, "Ishtar at Troy," JNES, pp. 194-200.  See also M.
Dhavalikar, op. cit., p. 537

36. On the evidence from the latter site see M. Dhavalikar, "'Eye
Goddesses' in India and their West Asian Parallels," Anthropos 60
(1965), pp. 533-540.

37. M. Dhavalikar, op. cit., p. 537.

38. M. Gimbutas, op. cit., p. 54.

39. Ibid., p. 54.

40. W. Heimpel, "A Catalog of Near Eastern Venus Deities,"
Syro-Mesopotamian Studies 4:3 (1982), pp. 9-22.

41. E. Thompson, Maya Hieroglyphic Writing (Norman, 1975), p. 218.

42. M. Makemson, op. cit., pp. 194, 256.  In Polynesian myth Venus
appeared as the Eye of Tane, a great god associated with the Creation.

43. E. Curr, The Australian Race (1886), as cited by Allan Beggs,
"Exploring the Saturn Myth," (1990), p. 46.  The latter monograph was
privately distributed.

44. V. Miller, "Star Warriors at Chichen Itza," in W. Hanks & D. Rice,
Word and Image in Maya Culture (Salt Lake City, 1989), pp. 290-291.

45. T.R. Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt (London, 1959), p.
218.

46. R. Anthes, "Mythology in Ancient Egypt," in S. Kramer ed.,
Mythologies of the Ancient World (New York, 1961), pp. 89-90.

47. In addition to the numerous articles by Talbott and myself, see
the compelling argument of Bernard Newgrosh in "The Case for
Catastrophe in Historical Times," Kronos XI:1 (1985), pp. 3-22.

48. R. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Coffin Texts (Warminster,
1973-1978), Vol. I, p. 238.

49. Ibid., Vol. II, p. 69.

50. Ibid., p. 193.

51. Ibid., p. 260.  In the Papyrus of Ani, similarly, it is written:
"I raise up the hair at the time of storms in the skyIt is the right
Eye of Ra in its raging against him after he hath made it to depart."
See E. Budge, The Egyptian Book of the Dead (London, 1901), pp. 36-37.

52. T. Rundle Clark, Myth and Symbol in Ancient Egypt (London, 1959),
p. 185.

53. E. Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (New York, 1969), Vol. I, p.
392.

54. J. Bourghouts, "The Evil Eye of Apopis," J. of Egyptian
Archaeology 59 (1973), p. 130.

55. Ibid., p. 134.

56. Ibid., p. 131.

57. A. Erman, op. Cit., p. 28.

58. W. Hallo & J. van Dijk, The Exaltation of Inanna (New Haven,
1968), p. 15.

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