Iconography

Hathor was most often represented in anthropomorphic form as a woman wearing a long wig bound by a filet, or with a vulture cap with a low modius, surmounted by a sun disk between outward curving cow horns. In this form, in late representations, she is often indistinguishable from Isis, who took over many of her attributes and can only be identified by inscription. In her guise as mistress of the west Hathor wears a falcon perched upon a pole which served as the hieroglyphic sign for ‘west’. Often she is depicted in a turquoise or red sheath dress or in a

The architectural use of Hathor-headed columns such as this ts knoivn to have occurred from Middle Kingdom times and may ha ve originated earlier. Ptolemaic Period. Temple of his, Philae.

GarmeiU combining these colours, and at Edfu she is specifically called ‘mistress of the red cloth’. She is one of the few goddesses to be depicted carrying the was sceptre, and she may hold a papyrus stem or sistrum as a personal attribute. But the goddess could also be represented in bovine form as the ‘great wild cow’, as a woman with the head of a cow, or as a composite human-bovine face. Hathor was particularly venerated in fully bovine form in

The Theban area where we find monarchs such as Amenophis II. Ilatshepsut and Tuthmosis III depicted crouching under the belly of the cow goddess drinking from her udder, or standing before her bovine image. In the same area we also find Hathor depicted as a cow emerging from a papyrus thicket at the foot of the western mountain of Thebes. Usually only the head and neck of the cow are depicted in this form of the goddess and the motif is clearly expressed in the elegant gilded head of a cow found in the tomb of Tutankhamun which doubtless represented this aspect of Hathor. When depicted in the form of a pillar, Hathor’s image was a fusion of bovine and human characteristics. The capital of the pillar was formed as an essentially female face, but it was triangular in shape to incorporate the face of a cow and with a cow’s ears and a wig which curls at each side - perhaps in imitation of the bicornate uterus of the cow. In some contexts Hathor could also be represented in other zoomor-phic forms - primarily as a lioness, or as a serpent, and even in plant form as a papyrus plant or sycamore tree.