Deity · Egyptian · c. 2600 BCE
Hathor
Also called Het-Heru · also recorded as Lady of Mefkat, Lady of Faience, Lady of Amethyst, goddess of turquoise (per Wikidata)
Goddess of love and music who is also the one who meets the dead at the desert edge — and who, in the Sekhmet story, is the same goddess pacified.
Well sourced
Sky, love, music, drunkenness and the dead, in one goddess, and the list only looks incoherent from outside — the drinking and the music are how she is approached, and the welcome of the dead in the west is where she ends up. The Book of the Heavenly Cow is the entry's centre of gravity: sent against humanity as the Eye of Ra she kills until the killing is its own appetite, and is stopped by a flooded field of beer dyed red, which she drinks in mistake for blood. She and Sekhmet are the same goddess in two states, and Egyptian religion did not need to file the second one anywhere else.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
Dendera (Tentyra), whose temple survives nearly complete, ceiling zodiac and all.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- The Egyptian Book of the Dead · c. 1550 BCE onward
- Rank
- Lady of the Sycamore
- Pantheon
- Egyptian
- Order
- Egyptian pantheon
- Base of operations
- Dendera (Tentyra), whose temple survives nearly complete, ceiling zodiac and all.
- Era
- c. 2600 BCE
- Traditions
- Egyptian
- Placed in
- The Great Gods of Egypt
Traits
- Domain
- Love, music, drunkenness, motherhood, the western mountain of the dead
- Traditional form
- A cow, or a woman with cow's horns holding the sun disc
1 site
Where was it worshipped?
Attested cult sites, located against the Pleiades gazetteer of the ancient world where it reaches and against Wikidata everywhere else. An absence here is not evidence that no cult existed: a good number of figures never had one, and the entry above says so where that is the case.
now Dendera
Hathor's temple, standing almost complete with its zodiac ceiling.
26.143, 32.670 · Pleiades 786127
4 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 4 offices attributed to Hathor, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- social1
- material2
- transformation1
2 texts
Which texts say so?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names Hathor, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts spanning roughly 230 years
Receives the dead at the western mountain; goddess of music, love and intoxication, and in the Heavenly Cow narrative the calmed form of the raging Eye.
The same goddess as the one above, before and after the killing. The text does not present the gentle Hathor and the murderous Sekhmet as opposed figures but as one figure in two states, which is why Egyptian religion could hold both without needing a devil to file the second under.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Hathor?
Is Hathor the same as Astarte?
What rank is Hathor?
How else is Hathor spelled?
What is Hathor said to do?
How old is Hathor?
Nearest in the corpus
If Hathor is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Khepri
The Morning Sun · Egyptian
The sun at dawn, in the form of a scarab beetle rolling it up over the horizon — one of the three daily aspects of the sun, and a pun on the word for coming into being.
Anubis
Guide of the Dead · Egyptian
Embalmer and psychopomp, who leads the dead to the scales — the office Western tradition eventually gives to Michael and to Azrael.
Horus
Falcon King · Egyptian
Son of Osiris, who contends eighty years with Set for the throne. Every living pharaoh was understood to be his incarnation.
Isis
Great of Magic · Egyptian
The great magician who reassembles Osiris and tricks Ra into surrendering his secret name. Her cult eventually reached as far as Roman Britain.
Nephthys
Lady of the House · Egyptian
Set's wife who sides with her sister Isis against him, and mourns Osiris at the head of the bier.
Osiris
Lord of the Dead · Egyptian
Murdered by Set, reassembled by Isis, and installed as judge of the dead. He is the earliest fully developed dying-and-rising sovereign we have.
The books behind Hathor
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
The Egyptian Book of the Dead
Anonymous; tr. E. A. Wallis Budge · c. 1550 BCE onward · Egyptian
Read The Egyptian Book of the Dead in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Hunefer · Wikimedia file page
The Book of the Heavenly Cow
Anonymous; from the royal tombs of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties · c. 1320 BCE · Egyptian
Read The Book of the Heavenly Cow in full ↗
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.