The Ancients - Isis and the Goddesses of Egypt

Episode Date: September 26, 2024

Isis, Hathor, Sekhmet and Bastet were adored and honoured in Ancient Egypt, with their stories passed between thousands of followers and down through the generations through spoken word and painted hieroglyph. But there weren't simply maternal, wifely, caring deitites. They could also transform into deadly beasts and deliver horrific vengeance when crossed.Tristan Hughes is joined by archaeologist and Egyptologist Dr. Joyce Tyldesley to unravel the myths of these ancient Egyptian goddesses.Presented by Tristan Hughes. Edited by Aidan Lonergan. The producer is Joseph Knight, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. Scriptwriter is Andrew Hulse. Voice Actor is Menna Elbezawy.The Ancients is a History Hit podcast.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Sign up HERE for 50% off your first 3 months using code ‘ANCIENTS’. https://historyhit.com/subscriptionYou can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. like beating gold. Their bones are shaped from the purest silver. But they are all also defended by their wives and their daughters from forces that would seek their ruin. In the ancient days when Ra still ruled the land of Egypt himself, mortals made pilgrimage from all across Egypt

to stand before his limestone throne and present their pleas, their prayers, their petitions. At first, Ra would answer them, he would offer some divine indulgence, some immortal insight. But no longer. Now, he doesn't respond. He doesn't even move. Does he wish to see how mortals might fare for themselves? Does he simply grow tired? His subjects do not know the reason. The whispers of rebellion begin with that image. In the deep deserts of the upper kingdom, where they eke out a harsh life amid the parched red earth,

they speak of a need for change. Perhaps a new ruler would be best, a younger god-king who might respond to their pleas, their prayers, their petitions. It is treachery. It is heresy. It is enough to raise Ra from his apathy. In this episode we are talking about some of the most famous goddesses of ancient Egypt, names like Isis, Hathor, Sekhmet and Bastet. Many of their stories are closely interlinked. Hathor, for instance, was a precursor to Isis as a goddess, with many parts of her cult ending up becoming part of Isis' as time went on. Now to explain all of this and much more

better than I ever could is Dr Joyce Tildesley from the University of Manchester. Joyce, she was the guest for our first episode of the series on the origins of the Egyptian gods and now she's back to talk about Egyptian goddesses. Before that, as with all of our episodes in this series, we're beginning this one with a story. It's the story of the Egyptian goddess Hathor, daughter of the sun god Ra, and how she transformed from gentle goddess into the lion-headed deliverer of vengeance, Sekhmet, and went on a horrific killing spree. It's quite the story, so let's get into it.

get into it. Humanity was born from the son God's emotions. From the tears of sadness when his children were lost to the waters of noon. From the tears of joy when finally they were returned. But now, the only tears shed are in rage. There is little debate among the council of gods. Revenge must be had. And it is Hathor, Ra's daughter, the eye of Ra, who will wreak it. She is a gentle goddess, the warm kiss of sun on a summer evening, the dance of dust motes in a ray of light. She is beloved by all the people for the joy and love she brings to their lives. But Hathor is many things, one being the defender of the sun god.

of the sun god. She stands before a mirror, a disc of polished bronze. And at first, the reflection shows simply her glittering gaze, the bloom of her cheeks, the rouge of her lips. Then, the reflection begins to work, to bend and twist. Now gleaming cat eyes, whiskers sharp as needles and fangs curved and deadly appear. She's transformed into Sekhmet, the lion goddess. The rebels are gathering deep in the desert when they hear her low growl. The kind of noise you feel, not hear. It is too late to run. here. It is too late to run. Sekhmet pounces and clothes. She rampages and roars. Her tongue grasps skin from bone, and she gorges herself in red ruin. Her jaws open wide, and she spills forth. Sun flares that blister and boil. The deep desert is a bloody massacre. The earth remains red, but it is no longer parched.

When all the rebels are dead, enough blood has been spilled to douse the flame of Ra's rage. But it is not enough to douse Sekhmet's bloodlust. Her loyalty to the throne goes beyond reason. She feels humanity's insult, this heresy, like a splinter in her bow. A redness, a rawness, an irritation that drives her to madness. Only when she has ruined humanity and reduced all men to meat will she have some relief. And so she loses all sense of time as she rampages the lower kingdom. When she skulks down, she finds the fields already awash with blood, as if they were irrigated by vein and artery. The red ruin tastes sweet and heady. Sekhmet

sips and slurps. She guzzles and gulps. Her world begins to spin. And then, quite suddenly, all goes to black. Ra's trick to Karn her has worked. It is not blood Sekhmet has drunk. It is beer. Every drop of every barrel in the entire lower kingdom died with red ochre and spilled across the Nile Delta. When Sekhmet finally awakes, it is to a mirror, a disk of polished bronze. Her reflection begins to warp, to bend and twist. And finally, the gentle goddess Hathor returns. Joyce, welcome back. Great to have you back on the podcast. Thank you for having me. Now, episode three in our Egyptian Gods and Goddesses miniseries, and episode two

featuring yourself. And this time, we're focusing in on a few of the most well-known, most extraordinary goddesses of Egypt, and goddesses, particularly great mother goddesses. Do they form an important part in Egyptian beliefs, in Egyptian mythology? They do. I think motherhood is something that the Egyptians were very interested in and very impressed by. There are the great goddesses like Hathor and Isis who are associated with motherhood, and we also get lesser characters like Tawaret who is associated with motherhood. And there are lots of different ways of looking at it, but one way of looking at it is something that will affect all women in Egypt, or most women, because all women will be expected to marry, all women are

expected to have children, obviously they won't all be able to have children. So it's something that is very real to the Egyptian people, as opposed to gods who are riding chariots across the sky, maybe. It's a different experience. It's something that people can actually relate to. And it's quite interesting. This is sort of going away from that a bit. But when we had the Amarna period, the very short period in the middle of the New Kingdom, when Akhenaten got rid of all the

traditional gods, he actually put his wife Nefertiti beside him to serve as a sort of living queen slash god, because it seems like he'd noticed that there was a gap and that there was actually a real demand for some sort of female figure to be worshipped. So maybe I'm extrapolating too much, maybe I'm imagining too much, I don't know. But to my mind, that shows to me how important these female goddesses are to the running of the country, that there's a real interest in what they do. And it's something that really brings the women as well as the men into the religion because it's an experience that they can all relate to. Because there were certain queens, weren't there, that closely

aligned themselves with particular goddesses of Egypt. Yes. I think in the past, we've very much underestimated the role of the queen of Egypt. So we've just seen that they're sort of there as a baby machine and not really thought about them. But the more that we start to study their roles, they do have an important role. And one important role is that they will deputise for the king if he's not there. So it seems that it happens, say, if they're away in battle, that it'll be the queen who looks after the country, not his brothers, which is quite interesting. But the most important time that this happens, and the one that we really notice, is if the king dies unexpectedly, leaving a young

son who will inherit the throne. But it will be his mother who looks after Egypt until he's old enough to rule by himself. And of course, this is something that we see very much reflected in the story of Isis and Osiris. So I'm not saying that the queens are emulating Isis and Osiris. I suspect the myth is emulating actually what happens in the real Egypt. And Osiris is the husband of Isis. Yes, there's a myth that when he's not around, she's bringing up their son and she supports him. And this is something that we see reflected in actual behaviour of the queens of Egypt. And I'm not saying that the queens of Egypt are replicating what the myth does. Rather, I think the myth is replicating the actual way that Egypt functions. So in this case, the myth is reminding us

that the queens had a role beyond just producing children. They actually could do really quite important tasks. As pharaohs were largely men, let's say Hatshepsut, Tawasret, Cleopatra later excluded, or Cleopatra VII. But do we know whether pharaohs, particularly these male pharaohs, do we know whether they venerated female goddesses to the same extent as they would have, say, Amun-Ra or any of the other gods? Do we know how they were viewed, particularly by pharaohs, and how much they venerated them? They did venerate them, but they venerated them in different ways. So you would approach each god depending on what that god could offer you, if you like. It's a sort of reciprocal arrangement.

You make offerings to that God and you offer mart, and they will give you things back. So some of the gods will protect you in battle, because Sekhmet, fiery Sekhmet, will also protect you in battle. So you always want her inside. And Sekhmet will also protect you against illness. She's the lion goddess. She's the lion goddess.

Other goddesses will take more of a motherly role to you. It's quite interesting with the goddesses will take more of a motherly role to you. It's quite interesting with the goddess Isis that her name actually refers to the throne in Egyptian Asset. So she represents the throne. And in fact, the crown that the goddess Isis wears is like a throne. We call it a crown. It's more like a symbol on the head rather than a crown. So she's got this throne on her head. It means that if you see a picture or a statue of a king sitting on a throne, you can kind of see that it is a king with Isis. And you see a picture of a child with Isis. It could be a king on a throne.

You can combine them two. That's the glorious thing about hieroglyphs and Egyptian art, that there's no very clear cutoff between the art and the writing. So you can do this. You can read a picture and you can see words as pictures. So there is this very strong link between Isis and the throne. So Isis will protect the king on the throne, as will other goddesses. Some goddess will protect the king by suckling him because divine milk is very empowering. So we find that's happening as well. And of course,

some goddesses will protect him as he makes his way to his afterlife. And Isis, again, is one of those who will do that as well. Well, there we go. Well, I've got in my notes names of goddesses such as Isis, Hathor, Bastet, Nephthys, and Sekhmet. So we're going to be exploring all of those. But it's something also to highlight at the beginning, ancient Egyptian religion is complicated, and it covers a vast amount of time, thousands of years. So I'm guessing with these goddesses, do certain goddesses rise to the fore at different times and in different places in Egypt in Egyptian history? Yes, absolutely. A classic case of this is the goddess Isis, who we've talked about, and the goddess Hathor, who we haven't talked about yet. But Hathor can take the form of a

cow or a cow-headed woman. Having said that, that is how she is depicted. I'm not 100% sure this is how the Egyptians imagined her. I think in this case the art is trying to convey her aspects. I don't think they necessarily imagined her as being a cow-headed woman. I think they imagined her as being a being with the attributes of a woman and a cow. And it always reminds me a bit of like on Doctor Who, when quite often you get the aliens have basically a boiler suit, but with a different head on. I don't think you're meant to imagine that that's what they look like. It's just the sort of only way that it's possible to do it.

It's quite cheap to do. I think it's a bit the same with Egyptian art. So when we see Hathor in the form of a cow-headed woman, we don't necessarily have to imagine that they thought that she looked like that. But we can see going right the way back into the pre-dynastic times, so the time before Egypt unified and became one land, that cows have a great importance. And we can see a cow-headed goddess, for example, on the Nama palette, which is one of the first pieces of art that shows an Egyptian pharaoh ruling the United Land. So cows have

always been important and Hathor is always connected. She has this bovine characteristics. But as the dynastic age progresses, she starts off very, very powerful and slowly, slowly loses that power. And Isis, who is much more regarded as being human form, grows in power. So eventually, Isis takes over from Hathor. And the thinking on that one is what is happening is that particularly as you get to the end of the Dynastic Age and more in contact with lands outside Egypt, that the classical world is not comfortable with having animal-headed gods or anything that resembles worshipping an animal. So the Isis becomes far more acceptable. And the fact that Hathor has this ancient pedigree and goes back

right the way to the pre-dynastic doesn't matter. Isis picks up all her attitudes and carries on and becomes the more popular goddess. And Hathor, her cult continues, but it's far less popular. So it's a very clear example there, how you can see that one goddess actually takes over from another. That's interesting. And that's also a confusion that I need to get straight. When you say kind of replace, Hathor being replaced by Isis as time goes on, it's not that Hathor decreases in importance and then becomes Isis and Isis rises to the fore is the fact that there's still two distinct deities. It's just one has that downward curve and one

has the upward curve. Exactly. And they start to look like each other. So Hathor stops being as cow-like and Isis picks up the cow horns that Hathor had on her crown and puts them onto her headdress. So you can be confused. Sometimes you can't tell which is which. You have to have the names there sometimes to tell which is which. And I think it's deliberate. And then Isis carries on and is very popular in the Roman world, whereas Hathor isn't. So Isis today we see as the most popular Egyptian goddess. Whereas I would argue that for most of the dynastic age, actually, Hathor was far more important and had far more ancient pedigree but it's not something that translated well into more modern times well as she's the most famous goddess let's focus in depth on isis first it's interesting you mentioned kind of international

part of isis history i remember going to petra recently and then talking about isis being associated with nabataean religion and a couple of years ago going to pompeii and then there's a temple of isis there so it's fascinating as well there's There's one in London as well. There's one in London? Yes. Oh in Roman London? Yes, yes not now. But I think there is one in Ireland now, a current one because she is still worshipped. That's the thing isn't it? Ancient Egyptian religion and certain goddesses and gods, it isn't dead. I mean they're all dead, they're still worshipped in certain places. Yeah absolutely yes. Right. Well let's focus in on ISIS and I know we've kind of skirted around, I mean, who Isis was,

but just so we have it in one particular place in this episode. Joyce, give us an overarching idea of who was Isis. Okay, well, mythology will tell you that she was one of the four children born to Geb, the earth god, and Nut, the sky goddess. And there is Isis, Osiris, Seth or Set and Nephthys and Isis and Osiris, brother and sister married and Seth and Nephthys married. Through her marriage to Osiris she became the mother of Horus and eventually Osiris would become king of the dead or become recognised as the king of the dead.

He retreated from the living world to rule the alternative form of Egypt that was the afterlife. Very, very similar to the living Egypt, so it has a king. So that's where he was. He was sort of not quite dead, but definitely not alive. Is he the one depicted with the falcon head? Was that Osiris? No, he's the one that's depicted like a mummy. Oh, like a mummy, yes.

Yes, the son has a falcon head. That's it. He's Horus. So in their mythology, that's the one that's depicted like a mummy. Oh, like a mummy, yes. Yes, the son has a falcon head. That's it. He's Horus. So in their mythology, that's where she is. She is the mother of Horus. She protects Horus, but she's the wife of Osiris. But she's more than just a mother. She is also a great healer, and she can do really powerful magic.

So she's really a force to be reckoned with and she's very clever as well. Is it also an important part of her story in the fact that she has these links both to the underworld, to the world of the dead and also the world of the living? Yes, yes. She will protect the dead on the way to the afterlife. So for example, if we imagine some of the coffins, like the coffins of the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun, Isis is featured there protecting the king. She's someone you want on your side. She can do a lot of good,

but also if she doesn't like you, I think she could be quite a dangerous enemy as well. Well, as with all of the Greek gods and goddesses, and that's kind of also shown in Egyptian mythology too. You've talked about her marrying her brother Osiris, but do we know much about her relationship in surviving mythology with her siblings? You mentioned Nephthys and Set. Nephthys is an interesting character. She's goddess of mourning, is she? Yes, sort of. But actually, we know very little about her.

The two of them, again, look very, very similar. They have different signs on their heads, so we know that they're different people. But it's almost like she's a shadowy form of Isis, if you like. She has virtually no mythology at all. We know that she's supposedly married to Seth and there's a legend or myth that she gave birth to a child by Osiris. Osiris mistakenly, or so he said, slept with his, well, I was going to say his sister. His other sister, right. His other sister, yes. It wasn't his wife, so that wasn't good. And she had a child, and Isis actually adopted this child. So we have that little tiny bit of a mythology,

but really for Nephthys, we know very little about her. To the extent that it all seems deliberate that we know very little about her, but she, again, will help people achieve their afterlife. And then we have Seth, who is entirely different. We know a lot about him. He features in mythology right the way through. He's a god of chaos, isn't he? He's a god of chaos. Which is a great title, by the way.

Yes. Redness and can be seen as an angry god. He looks odd. He's got a chaotic appearance. He's got sort of pointed, well, I don't want to say pointed because they haven't got pointed ends, but sort of tall ears and a sort of odd looking face. He looks a bit like an aardvark, which seems quite unlikely.

And he's very disruptive. He's very troublesome. But he's certainly not the devil or Satan because when push comes to shove at the end of the day, he does defend the solar boat of Rey. So when the gods are really, really threatened, he protects the sun. So he's chaotic. He's the sort of person you need in the pantheon to shake things up a bit. And he's certainly not nice to his brother, Osiris, or his nephew, Horus. But actually,

he's regarded as a good person. So we get kings of Egypt, Seti, named after him, which you wouldn't get if he was a really out and out bad person. But he gets quite a bad press because by the end of the dynastic age, when Egypt has come under a lot of classical influence, he is then regarded as a much worse person and he's virtually untouchable at that point. So nobody really wants anything to do with him. But that's another case of a reputation sort of developing. I always wanted to know about, I mean, how is ISIS portrayed? How is she viewed by everyday Egyptians? If we have that information available, let's say particularly women, is she seen as a role

model almost for motherhood or for being a wife? Do we know much about that part, how she is viewed by everyday Egyptians? In the royal family, we can see that she is. There's some interesting example. One very good example is the King Tuthmosis III, who shared his rule with Hatshepsut for a time. Is that second millennium BC, mid-second millennium BC? Yeah, it's New Kingdom, 18th dynasty, we say. And in his tomb, there's a picture of him standing before a tree and the tree has a breast. It can breastfeed the king because I've already said that breastfeeding the king is a thing that goddesses do. Normally, the tree goddess would

be Hathor because she's connected with the sycamore tree but in this tomb she is labeled as isis and we know that isis is actually the name of tuthmosis's birth mother so actually it's a whole reference that he is bringing the goddess isis in to label the tree as isis rather than labeling it as hathor which is what the name of the breastfeeding tree should really be so she is important and we get other women in the royal family named as Isis as well. Outside the royal family, though, it's difficult to say because the state gods, the really important gods that we're quite familiar with, how much they are divorced from actual, the normal way of life. I think they probably are quite divorced from it. I think

probably the ordinary Egyptian is going to be influenced far more by what's happening in their local temple, which might be a local god or a local form of a more widely known god, and by things like ancestor worship and the goddess Tawaret, who is part crocodile, part hippo, part lion, but strongly, yes, yes, quite a lot of quite dangerous animals in there. But she protects women in the family in childbirth. So she's really, really important. And she doesn't have a temple, but we have lots of figurines of her. And she's found in sort of quite humble context. She's also found in royal context. She's obviously very, very influential, but not given a state temple. So I think Isis, in theory, yes, is really, really important.

But I think actually practical level, she's much less important to the ordinary person than some of the demigods and goddesses would be. How interesting. One of the most well-known deities, not as important as lesser known deities, as you say, potentially for everyday Egyptians. Yes, yes.

It's a mistake to imagine that the temples, those great state temples, were like cathedrals and that people went to services there and things. It wasn't like that. It was far more private. So yes, they might well be attracted to Isis, but there would be others as well who would be batting for them. Did Isis have many temples dedicated to her over the course of Egyptian history? No, no. Interesting. It is interesting, isn't it? Neither Isis nor Osiris, her husband, did. And yet they're so intertwined with some of the most famous myths we know of from Egypt today. Yeah, I mean, because we have the Philae Temple, which is a very, very beautiful temple in the south.

And that was dedicated to Isis. And that carried on serving as a temple of Isis for a long time. It was one of the last functioning temples in Egypt before they converted to Christianity. But no, not really. Which again is interesting, isn't it? I mean, absolutely. I'm glad you mentioned the Philae Temple there because I did a documentary about a year ago now on William John Banks. And he visited Philae and said it was one of the most beautiful temples he ever saw.

And going down the river Nauru. Is there a sense of beauty sometimes associated with Isis? Do we know of? Yes, although we get that to a certain extent with all elite women who are described as being beautiful. It obviously matters to the Egyptians that they're beautiful. We don't really know what their idea of beauty is, but it matters that they're described as beautiful. I think also one thing that interests me about Isis is actually the way that Cleopatra VII relates to her, because Cleopatra very much, after the birth of Caesarian,

aligns herself with Isis. And remember, Cleopatra is of Macedonian Greek descent, so she's not, at least in part of her, we don't know her entire set of grandparents, but we do know that she's of Macedonian descent. There might be Egyptian in there as well. But she's very much relating to this purely Egyptian goddess who also has a child and an absentee husband and is using her politically to boost her role and boost her standing in Egypt. So she must have thought, I mean, I think she did this deliberately. I think Cleopatra is a very clever woman. By using Isis, they would strike a chord with the Egyptians. So there must have been some understanding there. People did understand the myth of Isis and they did appreciate it. Otherwise, I think that she wouldn't have used it in that way.

But Cleopatra even dressed as Isis. When she met Mark Antony, she dressed as Isis, for example, for the first time. She did in her baby boy, Caesarian, isn't it? And reenacting that myth of Horus and so on and so forth. I mean, of course, that is at the end of ancient Egyptian history, Cleopatra, like the last pharaoh of Egypt. I mean, do we know of any other particular periods or figures who really try and propel Isis into the limelight to make her become Egypt's dominant female deity, who really try and promote Isis of all the goddesses, of all the deities maybe even. No, we don't. And it's interesting because obviously, technically, kings should promote all the gods equally, but they did have their favourites.

but they did have their favourites but I guess that Isis is always seen as a more nurturing mothering, healing type of person rather than being seen for example if you're on a battlefield you're probably not going to call on Isis and that would be recorded on your temple walls, your battle scenes

but Isis won't be there so I think some of the things that she did was possibly I'm speculating here I think she was important but we're not picking up on that importance because of the sort of evidence that we have. Well, I remember you talking about in the last episode on the Aeneid, on the creation, right at the start, we were talking about the different types of sources we have. That one type of source we have is medical texts. Now, if you're saying that Isis is closely associated with healing, do we have her mentioned in medical texts at all? She is mentioned in healing contexts, and there are stories about her also healing people. So

she's got a little mythology of that. Sekhmet, who we've also briefly mentioned, a lion goddess, she also is a great healer. Which is interesting, because we tend to think, when we think about doctors in the ancient world, we tend to think about men, but actually it's the healing goddesses are the ones who you would really apply for to be assisted if you needed it. Well, you mentioned Sekhmet there, so we'll move on to the other goddesses. But just before we do, you mentioned that there are a few mythologies, myths associated with Isis. Are there any other key myths to highlight about Isis before we move on that we haven't mentioned yet? Well, mainly connected with her healing and her caring for her son.

So there are several stories about how Horus, her son, gets ill and she is able, by one means or another, to cure him and make him healthy again. This leads on to her being associated with healing. And of course, there's a myth of the death of her husband, Osiris. But I think we're going to maybe cover that in a little bit. The Osiris myth. Yeah, we're going to explore that in detail in the next episode. Yeah, that is her big story. So I don't want to put a spoiler in here. Okay.

But that's something to look forward to. Absolutely. But of course, we're talking about more than one goddess. And as you mentioned, Isis becomes very popular later on in Egyptian history. But let's explore some of those other goddesses that seemed to have been important and popular before that time too. Earlier in the story of ancient Egyptian history, with one of those being that woman, that goddess that you've mentioned already, Hathor. Now, the cow, of all creatures, becomes closely associated, a divine symbol of fertility early on. Why do you think that? Is it associated with agriculture, with the pastoral part of

Egyptian society? Probably, yes. Obviously, the first people in Egypt are hunter-gatherers, and then they go away, and the climate changes. People start to settle. They settle along by the Nile, and they keep cows and bulls, and they farm and so on. So they become agriculturalists or semi-nomadic pastoralists. So they're very familiar with cows and bulls. And bulls obviously are magnificent, fierce creatures. They get very strongly associated with kingly authority. And we see the bull associated with the king, again, throughout the dynastic age. And we've mentioned that the god Targ can also be associated with bulls. There are other bulls also in religious context. But at the same time, we find the cow also appearing.

And she seems to be connected with the sky. So we have images of what looked like a cow with stars. Is this a divine mother cow that we're talking about now? We don't know. This is the thing. This is the pre-dynastic time. There's no writing. But it has been suggested, yes.

It has been suggested that there was some sort of universal… We have the mother cow here. I don't think many people believe that. I think it's a local thing. But certainly, the cow is important. And I think I've mentioned on the Nama palette where we see the first king of the United Egypt, Nama, performing as a king. At the top of it, there are two heads of cows. Looking forwards, actually, which is interesting, because if you think about it, most Egyptian gods and goddesses,

they're shown in profile, aren't they? The heads in two-dimensional art. But Hathor and this forerunner of Hathor, who we think is a goddess called Bat, look straight at you. So right from very early times, we can see that the cow is important. And of course, cows are good mothers. If you're a pastoralist, you would know that cows are but fierce mothers. They're fierce to protect. And then we find our first reference of Hathor coming in in the old kingdom. And from then on, she becomes a very powerful and important person.

In terms of mythology, rather than archaeology, where does she come from? Difficult to say. There are some indications that maybe she's a daughter of the sun god, Rey. Maybe comes from his tears, maybe not. But also she can be his wife. It varies. She can be the mother of Horus, who could also be the son of Isis. Or she can be the mother of Horus, who could also be the son of Isis, or she can be the wife of Horus.

So in different mythologies, she's got quite a lot of varied mythology associated with her. And she also protects the king. So for example, when Isis is trying to protect her son in the absence of her husband Osiris, Hathor can help to protect them as well. Aside from the image of the cow, which becomes closely associated with Hathor, as you've explained there, are there any other key symbols or attributes that are often associated to Hathor? Well, she wears horns on her headdress, which is quite key to her nature. But she also is very strongly associated with the cistrum, which is a sort of rattle. It's a rattle, isn't it? It's a rattle, yes.

She seems to like percussive noises. And it's one of the things that obviously we're missing from ancient Egypt. Well, the smells we're missing, but we're also missing the sounds. But we get very much the idea that anything that rattles is considered stimulating to the gods. So priestesses will hold this rattle. It goes right the way through again to the Roman period. And you shake it, and it'll stimulate the gods. So priestesses will hold this rattle and it goes right the way through again to the Roman period and you shake it and it'll stimulate the gods. But there are also sort of festivals where you rattle papyrus. Even rattling beads and making them click together

is a noise that can be associated with Hathor. She's also associated obviously with motherhood, I've mentioned that, and dr drunkenness i'm not saying the two go hand in hand but yes she's also associated with drunkenness and there's the famous story about how she saves the people by getting drunk yes well come on i mean for someone that's you know cows sometimes to peach to docile i said hathor being associated with motherhood explain this story joyce this fascinating story that has also been at the top of this episode, which explores this more almost, dare I say, bloodthirsty side of Hathor. Yes, that's the interesting thing about her.

Well, there are many interesting things about her. But one of the interesting things about her is that she can split into two. She's two different personas. Hathor is docile and likes music, likes percussive sounds, is good with children. Sekhmet, her alter ego, is fierce as a defender of the king and likes a good drink. And we have this story about how Ray, who was ruling Egypt,

is a time when Egypt was populated by both people and gods. So they're living side by side. They're living side by side ruling Egypt. It's a time when Egypt was populated by both people and gods. So they're living side by side. They're living side by side in Egypt. And he's the king, but he's getting really old. And we're told that he's sort of almost fossilizing. His bones are turning to silver and so on. And the people aren't happy and they plot against him and they're hiding in the desert.

And he doesn't know what to do. He gets very angry and he summons a council of gods and they advise him. And in the end, he decides that he will send his daughter Hathor to sort it out. So he summons Hathor and she transforms into Sekhmet, fierce Sekhmet, a lion goddess. And she goes out of the palace and to the people

and she kills the people who are plotting the rebels. But she gets a taste of human blood and she decides she'll go back the next day so Rayna realizes that he's done what he wants to do he wants to stop the slaughter and he doesn't know how to stop his daughter because once she's started it's hard to stop her so he commissions many many jars of beer to be made and he mixes red ochre into them and then he pours that out on the fields so that when she turns up next to start slaughtering people she looks down and she sees the red fields

and she's presumably she sees her reflection reflected in it which is interesting because she's connected with mirrors we could come back to that and she drinks what she thinks is the blood and she falls asleep presumably because she's drunk quite a lot of beer. And disaster is averted. That's it. The rest of mankind is saved and raised. It's not happy. He abdicates.

But the world comes back to normal, which is interesting because then Hathor is able to transform back into his daughter or his wife, if you want it to be that way. She's usually his daughter. She's also connected with the God's eye, so she can be. The God's eye, sorry? Yes, the creation myth. Oh, the eye of Artem. Yeah, or the eye of Ray.

Oh, the eye of Ray. Because you would have it in either myth. So she can be connected with that. And she can also be connected with the hand of Artem or the hands of Ray. So she's sort of very strongly connected to Ray, who is probably her father if he's not her husband. I'm sorry, that sounds really deliberately confusing. I'm really not meaning to be confusing. I just want to give some sense of how what you understand by Hotha

will depend about where you are. For most of us, we would regard her as the daughter of Rey, but some people wouldn't. Should we go to that to Mira's points that you highlighted there? So are Mirra's associated with Sekhmet or Hathor? Which version? Hathor. Hathor, okay. Hathor, because Mirra's are obviously very expensive items. They're made out of polished metal, so they're not glass Mirra's. And we can see them in scenes. Women quite often

have them under their chairs in little mirror bags. And it seems to almost express femininity, which is slightly strange because men must have used mirrors too. Men were using cosmetics, men were shaving. There'd be no reason for a woman to use a mirror that a man wouldn't be using a mirror. And they're curious because you can see yourself in it. And most people could never see themselves.

They're called a sea face. And to be able to see yourself in a mirror is a sort of mystical, magical thing, isn't it? Because you're there, but you're here. And how does it work? So yes, they're magical aspects to a mirror. But also if we can picture an Egyptian mirror, it is round, almost like a sun.

And then quite often underneath it, there's a cow's head looking forward. So connecting it again to Hathor and femininity. I like that thing of looking in the reflection, as you say, and it's the auto-ego. It's the auto-ego looking back at you. And that kind of auto-ego part I find particularly interesting. I mean, are there any depictions, let's say, in ancient Egyptian art? There may well not be, or in temples, which may depict Hathor, but next to her, you can also see Sekhmet.

Not that I can think of, no. But we do have Sekhmet herself being a goddess who is depicted, but we don't have the story told in that way. And the story, again, is quite late. So, you know, it's possibly the two cults have been put together, Sekhmet and Hathor, to tell a better story. And I remember doing an interview a couple of years ago, I think actually it was with our friend Glenn Gudenho, but he was talking about a temple at Dendera, I believe, dedicated to Hathor. But quite interestingly, that seems to date to a late period, the Ptolemaic period. So after Alexander the Great's death, when, as we've already talked about earlier,

Hathor is not as popular as she was earlier. I mean, does that all line up? Yes, yes. It's an important temple because it's near the temple of her husband, Horus, and there are processions that go out from it. But the Ptolemies did a lot of temple building because they wanted to please the Egyptian people. So although they lived in Alexandria, they would restore or rebuild temples. All the way along the River Nile. Yes, yes. Well, I assume as a political gesture to make the Egyptian priesthood and the Egyptian people, and they would support the traditional gods and goddesses. What the Ptolemies themselves believed, we're not quite sure,

but we've already mentioned that Cleopatra VII was strongly connected to Isis. Cleopatra III was as well. She also modelled herself on Isis. So they were very interested in the old religions, and that was an important temple that they preserve. So let's move on to the last figure in this list, which does seem to have a connection with Hathor, which is the goddess Bastet. Now, I mean, how are potentially Hathor and Bastet linked? Well, Bastet, or Bast, she's also an early goddess, but when she first appears, she's much more like a lion in form. By the end of the dynastic period, she's associated with the cats and kittens. And she's a goddess who's sort of become more gentle. Well, cute and friendly. Yes, cute and friendly. Some of the classical authors associated her with female cults.

But again, I'm not sure that earlier in Egyptian history, she would have been associated in quite the same way. So the classical authors describe ceremonies that are performed for the goddess Bastis. But whether they would have been performed in the Old Kingdom, for example, we just don't know. But she's interesting because, again, an ancient goddess, and we don't tend to think much about her. She hasn't got a great deal of mythology associated with her, like the others do. But it is interesting, isn't it? We won't keep on Bastis very long before we wrap up. But I'd like to ask, I mean, we talked the last time we chatted about our good old pal herodotus the father of history and his ventures to egypt and he describes a few things including i believe it's the cult of bastet and that's quite an interesting description he has yes yes of women going to to see her and

then um exposing themselves slightly as part of the best yes and we have a bit the same thing with the festivals apparently associated with hathor when with drunkenness was encouraged because the drinking thing it seems that sometimes these female cults were a way of allowing some some of the women particularly maybe slightly more high-born women to relax a bit like going on a hen do and then you go back to normal life again after it you know know, and a bit of tension has been relieved, maybe it's been a bit of fun. But I do wonder how much some of those are more classical than Egyptian. I think so, because I was going to ask, I mean, how do you think Greeks and Romans, especially those visiting ancient Egypt, I mean, how do you think they viewed

these powerful, interesting Egyptian goddesses? Well, they were used to powerful goddesses. They didn't have a problem with that. And it didn't really conflict with the idea of what a woman should be doing because they could differentiate between the goddesses and actual people. But I don't think they understood them. And particularly any goddess that's associated with an animal form like Hathor or Bastet, they looked down on them because they regarded them as some sort of animal worship and thought that that was primitive. And they respected the Egyptians for a lot,

but not necessarily animal worship. And it's not animal worship. It's far more than that. It's far more sophisticated. As I said before, it's a way of expressing the personality of the god or the integral nature of the god it's not necessarily what they look like and of course if you want to show a goddess doing something it's very difficult if they are a cat or a lion or a cow so it's easier to give them a human body to do it but we have to be careful not to confuse that not to think that the art is very primitive so the religion must be very primitive but to actually understand that this is a sophisticated way of thinking. Having said that, of course, yes, maybe the artists and the people

who were well-educated understood that the goddesses and goddesses didn't actually look like cows and cats and so on. But maybe the people who saw the images in the form of the animal did think that they were like that. It's a difficult one, isn't it? It's a very difficult one, but it also leads me on to the question. So did Egyptian cults, let's say to Hathor or to Bastet, one of these goddesses, did they have like an actual,

a sacred cow or a sacred cat which had like attributes that they were looking for to almost represent that particular goddess on earth? Not in the same way that they did with, say, the Apis Bull. That's what I'm thinking, yes. That we've talked about. But the Apis Bull did have a harem of cows. But that's different, isn't it?

It's not quite what you're asking. And we also have lots and lots of mummies of cats. So we know that cats were kept at important temples and sacrificial places. They would be sacrificed. Probably you went as a pilgrim and you bought a cat, possibly already mummified, that you would offer. To Bastet. Yes, or to...

Or Segnet or whoever. But that is, again, at the end of the dynastic period. All this idea that people would be lynched in the street if they insulted a cat, that is much later and via the classical authors. It's not your typical old kingdom behaviour at all. Got it. Well, Joyce, this has been fantastic. I mean, lastly, I want to go back to Hathor because she seems incredibly important. And in one kind of way, not because of the role

she represented, but she reminds me a bit of Demeter, how I feel that of all the Greek goddesses and deities, in fact, she is sometimes overlooked. And yet, you know, being goddess of Harvard, she was incredibly significant. Was this a similar thing with Hathor, that she seems sometimes to be overlooked to others than others compared to Isis or Horus or Anubis? But she was incredibly significant. Yes, I think so. And there's another goddess, I'll just name check. I know I don't want to throw too many because it gets really confusing.

The goddess Neith as well. Very important sign suggested at the beginning of the dynastic age and continues to be important. And she's a warrior. She has crossed arrows and a shield as her sign. But again, we tend to overlook her. We tend to almost give them a hierarchy and rank the male gods as more important than the female goddesses. And yet there's no reason to do that. It's just, I think, what the classical authors have slightly done.

And it's possibly what the early Egyptologists did. But when we look at the female deities, they are extremely important. And as we've said, they have a way to reach the ordinary person that maybe a sun god doesn't. In the same way, it's hard to relate to a sun god going in a chariot, sorry, a boat, not chariot. They didn't have chariots across the sky. No, that's ancient Greek mythology. That's ancient Greek mythology, yes. I mean, you can relate to being in a boat, yes, but you can't relate to necessarily being the sun, but you can relate to being a mother.

So possibly they have more to offer than the male gods do. Yes, to my knowledge, there is no Egyptian equivalent of Elijah and his chariot of fire ascending into heaven, but that's a story for another day. Joyce, this has been absolutely fantastic. It just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast. Thank you. Well, there you go. There was Dr. Joyce Tildesley talking all the things these great goddesses of ancient Egypt, the likes of Isis, Hathor, Bastet and Sekhmet. Joyce is such a fantastic speaker, wonderful Egyptologist. She will be back for one final episode in this series in the coming weeks.

So stay tuned for that. Now, the script for the story at the beginning of this episode, it was written by Andrew Hulse, it was narrated by Mena Elbezawi, the whole episode, the assistant producer was Joseph Knight, the lead producer was Anne-Marie Luff, and it was all mixed together by our editor, Aidan Mulligan. Thank you to you all for making this episode a reality. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Ancients. Please follow this show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour. And don't forget, you can also listen to us and all of History Hits podcasts ad-free

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