Hathor

Seth seized Horus during a pause in their battle and threw him onto his back on a mountain. The two gods fought on and off for many days. Horus rested beneath a tree in a desert oasis when Seth appeared and attacked him. Seth removed both of Horus’s eyes from their sockets and buried them in the mountain. He then left, laughing, because he believed that he had won the war against his nephew.

Horus remained in the desert, weeping and unable to see. After some time, Hathor found him. She captured a gazelle and milked it. She told Horus to open his eyes so that she could put the milk into them. Horus followed her instruction. The milk treated his injured eyes, and his sight returned. Hathor’s treatment healed him.

The struggle between Horus and Seth concerned the kingship that Horus claimed after the death of his father, Osiris. The gods examined and contested that claim while Horus and Seth fought repeatedly. Seth’s attack on Horus formed one episode in their prolonged conflict. After Horus’s eyes were healed, the dispute continued until the question of kingship was finally settled.

Hathor found the people who plotted against Ra in the desert. They had come into being from his Eye, and they fled when they learned of his anger. Ra summoned the gods and asked their advice. Nun and the other deities told him to send his Eye against the rebels. Hathor went forth as the Eye Goddess and slaughtered the fugitives. She waded through their blood and drank it. When she returned, she told Ra that she had overpowered humanity and that the work had pleased her. Ra declared that he would rule over them by culling them, and the Powerful One came into being.

Hathor intended to continue the slaughter on the following day. During the night, Ra changed his mind. He summoned swift messengers and sent them to obtain a great quantity of red material. In one telling, they brought red stone from Elephantine. The High Priest of Heliopolis ground it and used it to colour beer. In another, they brought mandrakes from Abu. Sekti of Heliopolis crushed them, and they were mixed with the blood of the slain. Women servants prepared the beer in seven thousand vessels.

Ra inspected the vessels with the gods and ordered the beer to be carried to the place where Hathor was still killing people. During the night, it was poured across the meadows. At daybreak, Hathor saw what appeared to be a lake of blood. She drank the beer, mistaking it for the blood of her victims. It made her drunk, and she abandoned the slaughter. Ra called her Amit, which meant beautiful one.

Hathor joined with the Bull of Ra and bore Ihy, who became a god of music. He wore the royal double crown and the sidelock of youth. His birth placed him among the divine children connected with Hathor and Horus.

In another telling, Horus was Hathor’s husband, and she bore him Ihy and Harsomtus. Harsomtus was known as Horus, Uniter of the Two Lands, and his cult centre was at Dendera. Ihy remained linked with Hathor through music, while Harsomtus carried the family’s connection with Horus and kingship.

Hathor had several forms and duties. She acted as the mother, consort, and daughter of the creator sun god. She helped women give birth, helped the dead to be reborn, and helped the cosmos to renew itself. By giving birth to the sun child, she also became her own mother or grandmother, because she had first come into being as the Eye of Ra, the adult form of the sun god.

Hathor was the goddess of music and dancing, and the sistrum was her emblem. Ihy carried that instrument as her son. Through him, music and the sistrum were joined to the birth of a divine child and to the renewal that followed his arrival.