Egyptian Figure of Hathor

Hathor was a goddess that the Egyptians considered to be the divine mother who renews everything that exists. As far back as the Ancient Kingdom, she absorbed the functions of the cow Mehet-Urt, with whom she was identified. She represented the cow that had given birth to the world and everything in it, who nourished the beings and the dead, to whom it offers bread and water after death. Hathor was the goddess of joy, of maternity and of love. They considered her to be the protector of pregnant women, birth and midwives, helping to bring children into the world as goddess of fertility and life. As goddess of fertility and humidity, Hathor was associated with the flooding of the Nile and the star Sothis, which presaged the annual rise of the waters of the Nile with its appearance on the horizon. This goddess has a cow’s head and is seated with her feet resting on a trapezoidal base. She wears a long slim dress and a three-part wig that winds up in horns and a solar disk with the uraeus. She holds the ankh, the symbol of life, in her right hand. There is an inscription on the base that reads, “Hathor, Mistress of life, giver... for Sa-sobek, son of Horus, son of Pady Osiris."