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Ninmah, the mother of humanity (Mah) is also known as Hathor.
Hathor was one of Egypt’s forty-two state gods and goddesses, and one of the most popular and powerful. She was the goddess of many things: love, beauty, music, dancing, fertility, and pleasure. She was the protector of women, though men also worshipped her. She had priests as well as priestesses in her temples.
Hathor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hathor
Hathor | |
---|---|
Composite image of Hathor’s most common iconography, based partly on images from the tomb of Nefertari | |
Name in hieroglyphs | Egyptian: ḥwt-ḥr![]() |
Major cult center | DenderaMemphis |
Parents | Ra |
Consort | RaHorusAtumAmunKhonsu |
Offspring | Ihy, Neferhotep, Ra (cycle of rebirth) |
Hathor (Ancient Egyptian: ḥwt-ḥr, lit. ‘House of Horus’, Ancient Greek: Ἁθώρ Hathōr, Coptic: ϩⲁⲑⲱⲣ, Meroitic: 𐦠𐦴𐦫𐦢 Atri/Atari) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion who played a wide variety of roles. As a sky deity, she was the mother or consort of the sky god Horus and the sun god Ra, both of whom were connected with kingship, and thus she was the symbolic mother of their earthly representatives, the pharaohs. She was one of several goddesses who acted as the Eye of Ra, Ra’s feminine counterpart, and in this form she had a vengeful aspect that protected him from his enemies. Her beneficent side represented music, dance, joy, love, sexuality, and maternal care, and she acted as the consort of several male deities and the mother of their sons. These two aspects of the goddess exemplified the Egyptian conception of femininity. Hathor crossed boundaries between worlds, helping deceased souls in the transition to the afterlife.
Hathor-WikipediaHathor was often depicted as a cow, symbolizing her maternal and celestial aspect, although her most common form was a woman wearing a headdress of cow horns and a sun disk. She could also be represented as a lioness, cobra, or sycamore tree.
Cattle goddesses similar to Hathor were portrayed in Egyptian art in the fourth millennium BC, but she may not have appeared until the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2181 BC). With the patronage of Old Kingdom rulers she became one of Egypt’s most important deities. More temples were dedicated to her than to any other goddess; her most prominent temple was Dendera in Upper Egypt. She was also worshipped in the temples of her male consorts. The Egyptians connected her with foreign lands such as Nubia and Canaan and their valuable goods, such as incense and semiprecious stones, and some of the peoples in those lands adopted her worship. In Egypt, she was one of the deities commonly invoked in private prayers and votive offerings, particularly by women desiring children.

During the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC), goddesses such as Mut and Isis encroached on Hathor’s position in royal ideology, but she remained one of the most widely worshipped deities. After the end of the New Kingdom, Hathor was increasingly overshadowed by Isis, but she continued to be venerated until the extinction of ancient Egyptian religion in the early centuries AD.





























































































Origins[edit]
Drawing of the Narmer Palette, c. 31st century BC. The face of a woman with the horns and ears of a cow, representing Hathor or Bat, appears twice at the top of the palette and in a row below the belt of the king.
Images of cattle appear frequently in the artwork of Predynastic Egypt (before c. 3100 BC), as do images of women with upraised, curved arms reminiscent of the shape of bovine horns. Both types of imagery may represent goddesses connected with cattle.[2] Cows are venerated in many cultures, including ancient Egypt, as symbols of motherhood and nourishment, because they care for their calves and provide humans with milk. The Gerzeh Palette, a stone palette from the Naqada II period of prehistory (c. 3500–3200 BC), shows the silhouette of a cow’s head with inward-curving horns surrounded by stars. The palette suggests that this cow was also linked with the sky, as were several goddesses from later times who were represented in this form: Hathor, Mehet-Weret, and Nut.[3]
Despite these early precedents, Hathor is not unambiguously mentioned or depicted until the Fourth Dynasty (c. 2613–2494 BC) of the Old Kingdom,[4] although several artifacts that refer to her may date to the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3100–2686 BC).[5] When Hathor does clearly appear, her horns curve outward, rather than inward like those in Predynastic art.[6]
A bovine deity with inward-curving horns appears on the Narmer Palette from near the start of Egyptian history, both atop the palette and on the belt or apron of the king, Narmer. The Egyptologist Henry George Fischer suggested this deity may be Bat, a goddess who was later depicted with a woman’s face and inward-curling horns, seemingly reflecting the curve of the cow horns.[6] The Egyptologist Lana Troy, however, identifies a passage in the Pyramid Texts from the late Old Kingdom that connects Hathor with the “apron” of the king, reminiscent of the goddess on Narmer’s garments, and suggests the goddess on the Narmer Palette is Hathor rather than Bat.[4][7]
In the Fourth Dynasty, Hathor rose rapidly to prominence.[8] She supplanted an early crocodile god who was worshipped at Dendera in Upper Egypt to become Dendera’s patron deity, and she increasingly absorbed the cult of Bat in the neighboring region of Hu, so that in the Middle Kingdom (c. 2055–1650 BC) the two deities fused into one.[9] The theology surrounding the pharaoh in the Old Kingdom, unlike that of earlier times, focused heavily on the sun god Ra as king of the gods and father and patron of the earthly king. Hathor ascended with Ra and became his mythological wife, and thus divine mother of the pharaoh.[8]
Roles[edit]
Hathor took many forms and appeared in a wide variety of roles.[10] The Egyptologist Robyn Gillam suggests that these diverse forms emerged when the royal goddess promoted by the Old Kingdom court subsumed many local goddesses worshipped by the general populace, who were then treated as manifestations of her.[11] Egyptian texts often speak of the manifestations of the goddess as “Seven Hathors”[10] or, less commonly, of many more Hathors—as many as 362.[12] For these reasons, Gillam calls her “a type of deity rather than a single entity”.[11] Hathor’s diversity reflects the range of traits that the Egyptians associated with goddesses. More than any other deity, she exemplifies the Egyptian perception of femininity.[13]
Sky goddess[edit]
Hathor was given the epithets “mistress of the sky” and “mistress of the stars”, and was said to dwell in the sky with Ra and other sun deities. Egyptians thought of the sky as a body of water through which the sun god sailed, and they connected it with the waters from which, according to their creation myths, the sun emerged at the beginning of time. This cosmic mother goddess was often represented as a cow. Hathor and Mehet-Weret were both thought of as the cow who birthed the sun god and placed him between her horns. Like Nut, Hathor was said to give birth to the sun god each dawn.[14]
Hathor’s Egyptian name was ḥwt-ḥrw[15] or ḥwt-ḥr.[16] It is typically translated “house of Horus” but can also be rendered as “my house is the sky”.[17] The falcon god Horus represented, among other things, the sun and sky. The “house” referred to may be the sky in which Horus lives, or the goddess’s womb from which he, as a sun god, is born each day.[18]
Solar goddess[edit]
Further information: Eye of Ra
Hathor was a solar deity, a feminine counterpart to sun gods such as Horus and Ra, and was a member of the divine entourage that accompanied Ra as he sailed through the sky in his barque.[18] She was commonly called the “Golden One”, referring to the radiance of the sun, and texts from her temple at Dendera say “her rays illuminate the whole earth.”[19] She was sometimes fused with another goddess, Nebethetepet, whose name can mean “Lady of the Offering”, “Lady of Contentment”,[20] or “Lady of the Vulva”.[21] At Ra’s cult center of Heliopolis, Hathor-Nebethetepet was worshipped as his consort,[22] and the Egyptologist Rudolf Anthes argued that Hathor’s name referred to a mythical “house of Horus” at Heliopolis that was connected with the ideology of kingship.[23]
She was one of many goddesses to take the role of the Eye of Ra, a feminine personification of the disk of the sun and an extension of Ra’s own power. Ra was sometimes portrayed inside the disk, which Troy interprets as meaning that the eye goddess was thought of as a womb from which the sun god was born. Hathor’s seemingly contradictory roles as mother, wife, and daughter of Ra reflected the daily cycle of the sun. At sunset the god entered the body of the sky goddess, impregnating her and fathering the deities born from her womb at sunrise: himself and the eye goddess, who would later give birth to him. Ra gave rise to his daughter, the eye goddess, who in turn gave rise to him, her son, in a cycle of constant regeneration.[24]
The Eye of Ra protected the sun god from his enemies and was often represented as a uraeus, or rearing cobra, or as a lioness.[25] A form of the Eye of Ra known as “Hathor of the Four Faces”, represented by a set of four cobras, was said to face in each of the cardinal directions to watch for threats to the sun god.[26] A group of myths, known from the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC) onward, describe what happens when the Eye goddess rampages uncontrolled. In the funerary text known as the Book of the Heavenly Cow, Ra sends Hathor as the Eye of Ra to punish humans for plotting rebellion against his rule. She becomes the lioness goddess Sekhmet and massacres the rebellious humans, but Ra decides to prevent her from killing all humanity. He orders that beer be dyed red and poured out over the land. The Eye goddess drinks the beer, mistaking it for blood, and in her inebriated state reverts to being the benign and beautiful Hathor.[27] Related to this story is the myth of the Distant Goddess, from the Late and Ptolemaic periods. The Eye goddess, sometimes in the form of Hathor, rebels against Ra’s control and rampages freely in a foreign land: Libya west of Egypt or Nubia to the south. Weakened by the loss of his Eye, Ra sends another god, such as Thoth, to bring her back to him.[28] Once pacified, the goddess returns to become the consort of the sun god or of the god who brings her back.[29] The two aspects of the Eye goddess—violent and dangerous versus beautiful and joyful—reflected the Egyptian belief that women, as the Egyptologist Carolyn Graves-Brown puts it, “encompassed both extreme passions of fury and love”.[27]
Music, dance, and joy[edit]
Banquet scene from the tomb chapel of Nebamun, 14th century BC. Its imagery of music and dancing alludes to Hathor.[30]
Egyptian religion celebrated the sensory pleasures of life, believed to be among the gods’ gifts to humanity. Egyptians ate, drank, danced, and played music at their religious festivals. They perfumed the air with flowers and incense. Many of Hathor’s epithets link her to celebration; she is called the mistress of music, dance, garlands, myrrh, and drunkenness. In hymns and temple reliefs, musicians play tambourines, harps, lyres, and sistra in Hathor’s honor.[31] The sistrum, a rattle-like instrument, was particularly important in Hathor’s worship. Sistra had erotic connotations and, by extension, alluded to the creation of new life.[32]
These aspects of Hathor were linked with the myth of the Eye of Ra. The Eye was pacified by beer in the story of the Destruction of Mankind. In some versions of the Distant Goddess myth, the wandering Eye’s wildness abated when she was appeased with products of civilization like music, dance, and wine. The water of the annual flooding of the Nile, colored red by sediment, was likened to wine, and to the red-dyed beer in the Destruction of Mankind. Festivals during the inundation therefore incorporated drink, music, and dance as a way to appease the returning goddess.[33] A text from the Temple of Edfu says of Hathor, “the gods play the sistrum for her, the goddesses dance for her to dispel her bad temper.”[34] A hymn to the goddess Raet-Tawy as a form of Hathor at the temple of Medamud describes the Festival of Drunkenness (Tekh Festival) as part of her mythic return to Egypt.[35] Women carry bouquets of flowers, drunken revelers play drums, and people and animals from foreign lands dance for her as she enters the temple’s festival booth. The noise of the celebration drives away hostile powers and ensures the goddess will remain in her joyful form as she awaits the male god of the temple, her mythological consort Montu, whose son she will bear.[36]
Sexuality, beauty, and love[edit]
Hathor’s joyful, ecstatic side indicates her feminine, procreative power. In some creation myths she helped produce the world itself.[37] Atum, a creator god who contained all things within himself, was said to have produced his children Shu and Tefnut, and thus begun the process of creation, by masturbating. The hand he used for this act, the Hand of Atum, represented the female aspect of himself and could be personified by Hathor, Nebethetepet, or another goddess, Iusaaset.[38] In a late creation myth from the Ptolemaic Period (332–30 BC), the god Khonsu is put in a central role, and Hathor is the goddess with whom Khonsu mates to enable creation.[39]
Hathor could be the consort of many male gods, of whom Ra was only the most prominent. Mut was the usual consort of Amun, the preeminent deity during the New Kingdom who was often linked with Ra. But Mut was rarely portrayed alongside Amun in contexts related to sex or fertility, and in those circumstances, Hathor or Isis stood at his side instead.[40] In the late periods of Egyptian history, the form of Hathor from Dendera and the form of Horus from Edfu were considered husband and wife[41] and in different versions of the myth of the Distant Goddess, Hathor-Raettawy was the consort of Montu[42] and Hathor-Tefnut the consort of Shu.[43]
Hathor’s sexual side was seen in some short stories. In a cryptic fragment of a Middle Kingdom story, known as “The Tale of the Herdsman”, a herdsman encounters a hairy, animal-like goddess in a marsh and reacts with terror. On another day he encounters her as a nude, alluring woman. Most Egyptologists who study this story think this woman is Hathor or a goddess like her, one who can be wild and dangerous or benign and erotic. Thomas Schneider interprets the text as implying that between his two encounters with the goddess the herdsman has done something to pacify her.[44] In “The Contendings of Horus and Set“, a New Kingdom short story about the dispute between those two gods, Ra is upset after being insulted by another god, Babi, and lies on his back alone. After some time, Hathor exposes her genitals to Ra, making him laugh and get up again to perform his duties as ruler of the gods. Life and order were thought to be dependent on Ra’s activity, and the story implies that Hathor averted the disastrous consequences of his idleness. Her act may have lifted Ra’s spirits partly because it sexually aroused him, although why he laughed is not fully understood.[45]
Hathor was praised for her beautiful hair. Egyptian literature contains allusions to a myth not clearly described in any surviving texts, in which Hathor lost a lock of hair that represented her sexual allure. One text compares this loss with Horus’s loss of his divine Eye and Set‘s loss of his testicles during the struggle between the two gods, implying that the loss of Hathor’s lock was as catastrophic for her as the maiming of Horus and Set was for them.[46]
Hathor was called “mistress of love”, as an extension of her sexual aspect. In the series of love poems from Papyrus Chester Beatty I, from the Twentieth Dynasty (c. 1189–1077 BC), men and women ask Hathor to bring their lovers to them: “I prayed to her [Hathor] and she heard my prayer. She destined my mistress [loved one] for me. And she came of her own free will to see me.”[47]
Motherhood and queenship[edit]
Hathor as a cow suckling Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh, at Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahari, 15th century BC
Hathor was considered the mother of various child deities. As suggested by her name, she was often thought of as both Horus’s mother and consort.[48] As both the king’s wife and his heir’s mother, Hathor was the divine counterpart of human queens.[15]
Isis and Osiris were considered Horus’s parents in the Osiris myth as far back as the late Old Kingdom, but the relationship between Horus and Hathor may be older still. If so, Horus only came to be linked with Isis and Osiris as the Osiris myth emerged during the Old Kingdom.[49] Even after Isis was firmly established as Horus’s mother, Hathor continued to appear in this role, especially when nursing the pharaoh. Images of the Hathor-cow with a child in a papyrus thicket represented his mythological upbringing in a secluded marsh. Goddesses’ milk was a sign of divinity and royal status. Thus, images in which Hathor nurses the pharaoh represent his right to rule.[50] Hathor’s relationship with Horus gave a healing aspect to her character, as she was said to have restored Horus’s missing eye or eyes after Set attacked him.[18] In the version of this episode in “The Contendings of Horus and Set”, Hathor finds Horus with his eyes torn out and heals the wounds with gazelle’s milk.[51]
Beginning in the Late Period (664–323 BC), temples focused on the worship of a divine family: an adult male deity, his wife, and their immature son. Satellite buildings, known as mammisis, were built in celebration of the birth of the local child deity. The child god represented the cyclical renewal of the cosmos and an archetypal heir to the kingship.[52] Hathor was the mother in many of these local triads of gods. At Dendera, the mature Horus of Edfu was the father and Hathor the mother, while their child was Ihy, a god whose name meant “sistrum-player” and who personified the jubilation associated with the instrument.[53] At Kom Ombo, Hathor’s local form, Tasenetnofret, was mother to Horus’s son Panebtawy.[54] Other children of Hathor included a minor deity from the town of Hu, named Neferhotep,[53] and several child forms of Horus.[55]
The milky sap of the sycamore tree, which the Egyptians regarded as a symbol of life, became one of her symbols.[56] The milk was equated with water of the Nile inundation and thus fertility.[57] In the late Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, many temples contained a creation myth that adapted long-standing ideas about creation.[58] The version from Hathor’s temple at Dendera emphasizes that she, as a female solar deity, was the first being to emerge from the primordial waters that preceded creation, and her life-giving light and milk nourished all living things.[59]
Hathor’s maternal aspects can be compared with those of Isis and Mut, yet there are many contrasts between them. Isis’s devotion to her husband and care for their child represented a more socially acceptable form of love than Hathor’s uninhibited sexuality,[60] and Mut’s character was more authoritative than sexual.[61] The text of the first century AD Insinger Papyrus likens a faithful wife, the mistress of a household, to Mut, while comparing Hathor to a strange woman who tempts a married man.[61]
Fate[edit]
Like Meskhenet, another goddess who presided over birth, Hathor was connected with shai, the Egyptian concept of fate, particularly when she took the form of the Seven Hathors. In two New Kingdom works of fiction, the “Tale of Two Brothers” and the “Tale of the Doomed Prince“, the Hathors appear at the births of major characters and foretell the manner of their deaths. The Egyptians tended to think of fate as inexorable. Yet in “The Tale of the Doomed Prince”, the prince who is its protagonist is able to escape one of the possible violent deaths that the Seven Hathors have foretold for him, and while the end of the story is missing, the surviving portions imply that the prince can escape his fate with the help of the gods.[62]
Foreign lands and goods[edit]
Hathor was connected with trade and foreign lands, possibly because her role as a sky goddess linked her with stars and hence navigation,[63] and because she was believed to protect ships on the Nile and in the seas beyond Egypt as she protected the barque of Ra in the sky.[64] The mythological wandering of the Eye goddess in Nubia or Libya gave her a connection with those lands as well.[65]
Egypt maintained trade relations with the coastal cities of Syria and Canaan, particularly Byblos, placing Egyptian religion in contact with the religions of that region.[66] At some point, perhaps as early as the Old Kingdom, the Egyptians began to refer to the patron goddess of Byblos, Baalat Gebal, as a local form of Hathor.[67] So strong was Hathor’s link to Byblos that texts from Dendera say she resided there.[68] The Egyptians sometimes equated Anat, an aggressive Canaanite goddess who came to be worshipped in Egypt during the New Kingdom, with Hathor.[69] Some Canaanite artworks depict a nude goddess with a curling wig taken from Hathor’s iconography.[70] Which goddess these images represent is not known, but the Egyptians adopted her iconography and came to regard her as an independent deity, Qetesh,[71] whom they associated with Hathor.[72]
Hathor was closely connected with the Sinai Peninsula,[73] which was not considered part of Egypt proper but was the site of Egyptian mines for copper, turquoise, and malachite during the Middle and New Kingdoms.[74] One of Hathor’s epithets, “Lady of Mefkat“, may have referred specifically to turquoise or to all blue-green minerals. She was also called “Lady of Faience“, a blue-green ceramic that Egyptians likened to turquoise.[75][76] Hathor was also worshipped at various quarries and mining sites in Egypt’s Eastern Desert, such as the amethyst mines of Wadi el-Hudi, where she was sometimes called “Lady of Amethyst”.[77]
South of Egypt, Hathor’s influence was thought to have extended over the land of Punt, which lay along the Red Sea coast and was a major source for the incense with which Hathor was linked, as well as with Nubia, northwest of Punt.[64] The autobiography of Harkhuf, an official in the Sixth Dynasty (c. 2345–2181 BC), describes his expedition to a land in or near Nubia, from which he brought back great quantities of ebony, panther skins, and incense for the king. The text describes these exotic goods as Hathor’s gift to the pharaoh.[73] Egyptian expeditions to mine gold in Nubia introduced her cult to the region during the Middle and New Kingdoms,[78] and New Kingdom pharaohs built several temples to her in the portions of Nubia that they ruled.[79]
Afterlife[edit]
Hathor, in bovine form, emerges from a hill representing the Theban necropolis, in a copy of the Book of the Dead from the 13th century BC
Although the Pyramid Texts, the earliest Egyptian funerary texts, rarely mention her,[80] Hathor was invoked in private tomb inscriptions from the same era, and in the Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts and later sources, she is frequently linked with the afterlife.[81]
Just as she crossed the boundary between Egypt and foreign lands, Hathor passed through the boundary between the living and the Duat, the realm of the dead.[82] She helped the spirits of deceased humans enter the Duat and was closely linked with tomb sites, where that transition began.[83] The necropolises, or clusters of tombs, on the west bank of the Nile were personified as Imentet, the goddess of the west, who was frequently regarded as a manifestation of Hathor.[84] The Theban necropolis, for example, was often portrayed as a stylized mountain with the cow of Hathor emerging from it.[85] Her role as a sky goddess was also linked to the afterlife. Because the sky goddess—either Nut or Hathor—assisted Ra in his daily rebirth, she had an important part in ancient Egyptian afterlife beliefs, according to which deceased humans were reborn like the sun god.[86] Coffins, tombs, and the underworld itself were interpreted as the womb of this goddess, from which the deceased soul would be reborn.[87][88]
Nut, Hathor, and Imentet could each, in different texts, lead the deceased into a place where they would receive food and drink for eternal sustenance. Thus, Hathor, as Imentet, often appears on tombs, welcoming the deceased person as her child into a blissful afterlife.[89] In New Kingdom funerary texts and artwork, the afterlife was often illustrated as a pleasant, fertile garden, over which Hathor sometimes presided.[90] The welcoming afterlife goddess was often portrayed as a goddess in the form of a tree, giving water to the deceased. Nut most commonly filled this role, but the tree goddess was sometimes called Hathor instead.[91]
The afterlife also had a sexual aspect. In the Osiris myth, the murdered god Osiris was resurrected when he copulated with Isis and conceived Horus. In solar ideology, Ra’s union with the sky goddess allowed his own rebirth. Sex therefore enabled the rebirth of the deceased, and goddesses like Isis and Hathor served to rouse the deceased to new life. But they merely stimulated the male deities’ regenerative powers, rather than playing the central role.[92]
Ancient Egyptians prefixed the names of the deceased with Osiris’s name to connect them with his resurrection. For example, a woman named Henutmehyt would be dubbed “Osiris-Henutmehyt”. Over time they increasingly associated the deceased with both male and female divine powers.[93] As early as the late Old Kingdom, women were sometimes said to join the worshippers of Hathor in the afterlife, just as men joined the following of Osiris. In the Third Intermediate Period (c. 1070–664 BC), Egyptians began to add Hathor’s name to that of deceased women in place of that of Osiris. In some cases, women were called “Osiris-Hathor”, indicating that they benefited from the revivifying power of both deities. In these late periods, Hathor was sometimes said to rule the afterlife as Osiris did.[94]
Iconography[edit]
Hathor was often depicted as a cow bearing the sun disk between her horns, especially when shown nursing the king. She could also appear as a woman with the head of a cow. Her most common form, however, was a woman wearing a headdress of the horns and sun disk, often with a red or turquoise sheath dress, or a dress combining both colors. Sometimes the horns stood atop a low modius or the vulture headdress that Egyptian queens often wore in the New Kingdom. Because Isis adopted the same headdress during the New Kingdom, the two goddesses can be distinguished only if labeled in writing. When in the role of Imentet, Hathor wore the emblem of the west upon her head instead of the horned headdress.[95] The Seven Hathors were sometimes portrayed as a set of seven cows, accompanied by a minor sky and afterlife deity called the Bull of the West.[96]
Some animals other than cattle could represent Hathor. The uraeus was a common motif in Egyptian art and could represent a variety of goddesses who were identified with the Eye of Ra.[97] When Hathor was depicted as a uraeus, it represented the ferocious and protective aspects of her character. She also appeared as a lioness, and this form had a similar meaning.[98] In contrast, the domestic cat, which was sometimes connected with Hathor, often represented the Eye goddess’s pacified form.[99] When portrayed as a sycamore tree, Hathor was usually shown with the upper body of her human form emerging from the trunk.[100]
Like other goddesses, Hathor might carry a stalk of papyrus as a staff, though she could instead hold a was staff, a symbol of power that was usually restricted to male deities.[76] The only goddesses who used the was were those, like Hathor, who were linked with the Eye of Ra.[101] She also commonly carried a sistrum or a menat necklace. The sistrum came in two varieties: a simple loop shape or the more complex naos sistrum, which was shaped to resemble a naos shrine and flanked by volutes resembling the antennae of the Bat emblem.[102] Mirrors were another of her symbols, because in Egypt they were often made of gold or bronze and therefore symbolized the sun disk, and because they were connected with beauty and femininity. Some mirror handles were made in the shape of Hathor’s face.[103] The menat necklace, made up of many strands of beads, was shaken in ceremonies in Hathor’s honor, similarly to the sistrum.[73] Images of it were sometimes seen as personifications of Hathor herself.[104]
Hathor was sometimes represented as a human face with bovine ears, seen from the front rather than in the profile-based perspective that was typical of Egyptian art. When she appears in this form, the tresses on either side of her face often curl into loops. This mask-like face was placed on the capitals of columns beginning in the late Old Kingdom. Columns of this style were used in many temples to Hathor and other goddesses.[105] These columns have two or four faces, which may represent the duality between different aspects of the goddess or the watchfulness of Hathor of the Four Faces. The designs of Hathoric columns have a complex relationship with those of sistra. Both styles of sistrum can bear the Hathor mask on the handle, and Hathoric columns often incorporate the naos sistrum shape above the goddess’s head.[102]
- Statue of Hathor, fourteenth century BC
- Amulet of Hathor as a uraeus wearing a naos headdress, early to mid-first millennium BC
- Naos sistrum with Hathor’s face, 305–282 BC
- Mirror with a face of Hathor on the handle, fifteenth century BC
- Head of Hathor with cats on her headdress, from a clapper, late second to early first millennium BC
- The Malqata Menat necklace, fourteenth century BC
- Hathoric capital from the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, fifteenth century BC
Worship[edit]
Copy of a statue of Hathor (center) with a goddess personifying the Fifteenth Nome of Upper Egypt (left) and the Fourth Dynasty king Menkaure (right); 26th century BC
Relationship with royalty[edit]
During the Early Dynastic Period, Neith was the preeminent goddess at the royal court,[106] while in the Fourth Dynasty, Hathor became the goddess most closely linked with the king.[66] The later dynasty’s founder, Sneferu, may have built a temple to her, and a daughter of Djedefra was the first recorded priestess of Hathor.[107] Old Kingdom rulers donated resources only to temples dedicated to particular kings or to deities closely connected with kingship. Hathor was one of the few deities to receive such donations.[108] Late Old Kingdom rulers especially promoted the cult of Hathor in the provinces, as a way of binding those regions to the royal court. She may have absorbed the traits of contemporary provincial goddesses.[109]
Many female royals, though not reigning queens, held positions in the cult during the Old Kingdom.[110] Mentuhotep II, who became the first pharaoh of the Middle Kingdom despite having no relation to the Old Kingdom rulers, sought to legitimize his rule by portraying himself as Hathor’s son. The first images of the Hathor-cow suckling the king date to his reign, and several priestesses of Hathor were depicted as though they were his wives, although he may not have actually married them.[111][112] In the course of the Middle Kingdom, queens were increasingly seen as directly embodying the goddess, just as the king embodied Ra.[113] The emphasis on the queen as Hathor continued through the New Kingdom. Queens were portrayed with the headdress of Hathor beginning in the late Eighteenth Dynasty. An image of the sed festival of Amenhotep III, meant to celebrate and renew his rule, shows the king together with Hathor and his queen Tiye, which could mean that the king symbolically married the goddess in the course of the festival.[114]
Hatshepsut, a woman who ruled as a pharaoh in the early New Kingdom, emphasized her relationship to Hathor in a different way.[115] She used names and titles that linked her to a variety of goddesses, including Hathor, so as to legitimize her rule in what was normally a male position.[116] She built several temples to Hathor and placed her own mortuary temple, which incorporated a chapel dedicated to the goddess, at Deir el-Bahari, which had been a cult site of Hathor since the Middle Kingdom.[115]
The preeminence of Amun during the New Kingdom gave greater visibility to his consort Mut, and in the course of the period, Isis began appearing in roles that traditionally belonged to Hathor alone, such as that of the goddess in the solar barque. Despite the growing prominence of these deities, Hathor remained important, particularly in relation to fertility, sexuality, and queenship, throughout the New Kingdom.[117]
After the New Kingdom, Isis increasingly overshadowed Hathor and other goddesses as she took on their characteristics.[118] In the Ptolemaic period (305–30 BC), when Greeks governed Egypt and their religion developed a complex relationship with that of Egypt, the Ptolemaic dynasty adopted and modified the Egyptian ideology of kingship. Beginning with Arsinoe II, wife of Ptolemy II, the Ptolemies closely linked their queens with Isis and with several Greek goddesses, particularly their own goddess of love and sexuality, Aphrodite.[119] Nevertheless, when the Greeks referred to Egyptian gods by the names of their own gods (a practice called interpretatio graeca), they sometimes called Hathor Aphrodite.[120] Traits of Isis, Hathor, and Aphrodite were all combined to justify the treatment of Ptolemaic queens as goddesses. Thus, the poet Callimachus alluded to the myth of Hathor’s lost lock of hair in the Aetia when praising Berenice II for sacrificing her own hair to Aphrodite,[46] and iconographic traits that Isis and Hathor shared, such as the bovine horns and vulture headdress, appeared on images portraying Ptolemaic queens as Aphrodite.[121]
Temples in Egypt[edit]
Hypostyle hall of the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, first century AD
More temples were dedicated to Hathor than to any other Egyptian goddess.[82] During the Old Kingdom her most important center of worship was in the region of Memphis, where “Hathor of the Sycamore” was worshipped at many sites throughout the Memphite Necropolis. During the New Kingdom era, the temple of Hathor of the Southern Sycamore was her main temple in Memphis.[122] At that site she was described as the daughter of the city’s main deity, Ptah.[86] The cult of Ra and Atum at Heliopolis, northeast of Memphis, included a temple to Hathor-Nebethetepet that was probably built in the Middle Kingdom. A willow and a sycamore tree stood near the sanctuary and may have been worshipped as manifestations of the goddess.[22] A few cities farther north in the Nile Delta, such as Yamu and Terenuthis, also had temples to her.[123]
Dendera, Hathor’s oldest temple in Upper Egypt, dates to at least to the Fourth Dynasty.[124] After the end of the Old Kingdom it surpassed her Memphite temples in importance.[125] Many kings made additions to the temple complex through Egyptian history. The last version of the temple was built in the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods and is today one of the best-preserved Egyptian temples from that time.[126]
As the rulers of the Old Kingdom made an effort to develop towns in Upper and Middle Egypt, several cult centers of Hathor were founded across the region, at sites such as Cusae, Akhmim, and Naga ed-Der.[127] In the First Intermediate Period (c. 2181–2055 BC) her cult statue from Dendera was periodically carried to the Theban necropolis. During the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, Mentuhotep II established a permanent cult center for her in the necropolis at Deir el-Bahari.[128] The nearby village of Deir el-Medina, home to the tomb workers of the necropolis during the New Kingdom, also contained temples of Hathor. One continued to function and was periodically rebuilt as late as the Ptolemaic Period, centuries after the village was abandoned.[129]
In the Old Kingdom, most priests of Hathor, including the highest ranks, were women. Many of these women were members of the royal family.[130] In the course of the Middle Kingdom, women were increasingly excluded from the highest priestly positions, at the same time that queens were becoming more closely tied to Hathor’s cult. Thus, non-royal women disappeared from the high ranks of Hathor’s priesthood,[131] although women continued to serve as musicians and singers in temple cults across Egypt.[132]
The most frequent temple rite for any deity was the daily offering ritual, in which the cult image, or statue, of a deity would be clothed and given food.[133] The daily ritual was largely the same in every Egyptian temple,[133] although the goods given as offerings could vary according to which deity received them.[134] Wine and beer were common offerings in all temples, but especially in rituals in Hathor’s honor,[135] and she and the goddesses related to her often received sistra and menat necklaces.[134] In Late and Ptolemaic times, they were also offered a pair of mirrors, representing the sun and the moon.[136]
Festivals[edit]
Many of Hathor’s annual festivals were celebrated with drinking and dancing that served a ritual purpose. Revelers at these festivals may have aimed to reach a state of religious ecstasy, which was otherwise rare or nonexistent in ancient Egyptian religion. Graves-Brown suggests that celebrants in Hathor’s festivals aimed to reach an altered state of consciousness to allow them interact with the divine realm.[137] An example is the Festival of Drunkenness, commemorating the return of the Eye of Ra, which was celebrated on the twentieth day of the month of Thout at temples to Hathor and to other Eye goddesses. It was celebrated as early as the Middle Kingdom, but it is best known from Ptolemaic and Roman times.[137] The dancing, eating and drinking that took place during the Festival of Drunkenness represented the opposite of the sorrow, hunger, and thirst that the Egyptians associated with death. Whereas the rampages of the Eye of Ra brought death to humans, the Festival of Drunkenness celebrated life, abundance, and joy.[138]
In a local Theban festival known as the Beautiful Festival of the Valley, which began to be celebrated in the Middle Kingdom, the cult image of Amun from the Temple of Karnak visited the temples in the Theban Necropolis while members of the community went to the tombs of their deceased relatives to drink, eat, and celebrate.[139] Hathor was not involved in this festival until the early New Kingdom,[140] after which Amun’s overnight stay in the temples at Deir el-Bahari came to be seen as his sexual union with her.[141]
Several temples in Ptolemaic times, including that of Dendera, observed the Egyptian new year with a series of ceremonies in which images of the temple deity were supposed to be revitalized by contact with the sun god. On the days leading up to the new year, Dendera’s statue of Hathor was taken to the wabet, a specialized room in the temple, and placed under a ceiling decorated with images of the sky and sun. On the first day of the new year, the first day of the month of Thoth, the Hathor image was carried up to the roof to be bathed in genuine sunlight.[142]
The best-documented festival focused on Hathor is another Ptolemaic celebration, the Festival of the Beautiful Reunion. It took place over fourteen days in the month of Epiphi.[143][144] Hathor’s cult image from Dendera was carried by boat to several temple sites to visit the gods of those temples. The endpoint of the journey was the Temple of Horus at Edfu, where the Hathor statue from Dendera met that of Horus of Edfu and the two were placed together.[145] On one day of the festival, these images were carried out to a shrine where primordial deities such as the sun god and the Ennead were said to be buried. The texts say the divine couple performed offering rites for these entombed gods.[146] Many Egyptologists regard this festival as a ritual marriage between Horus and Hathor, although Martin Stadler challenges this view, arguing that it instead represented the rejuvenation of the buried creator gods.[147] C. J. Bleeker thought the Beautiful Reunion was another celebration of the return of the Distant Goddess, citing allusions in the temple’s festival texts to the myth of the solar eye.[148] Barbara Richter argues that the festival represented all three things at once. She points out that the birth of Horus and Hathor’s son Ihy was celebrated at Dendera nine months after the Festival of the Beautiful Reunion, implying that Hathor’s visit to Horus represented Ihy’s conception.[149]
The third month of the Egyptian calendar, Hathor or Athyr, was named for the goddess. Festivities in her honor took place throughout the month, although they are not recorded in the texts from Dendera.[150]
Worship outside Egypt[edit]
Remains of the Hathor shrine in the Timna Valley
Egyptian kings as early as the Old Kingdom donated goods to the temple of Baalat Gebal in Byblos, using the syncretism of Baalat with Hathor to cement their close trading relationship with Byblos.[151] A temple to Hathor as Lady of Byblos was built during the reign of Thutmose III, although it may simply have been a shrine within the temple of Baalat.[152] After the breakdown of the New Kingdom, Hathor’s prominence in Byblos diminished along with Egypt’s trade links to the city. A few artifacts from the early first millennium BC suggest that the Egyptians began equating Baalat with Isis at that time.[153] A myth about Isis’s presence in Byblos, related by the Greek author Plutarch in his work On Isis and Osiris in the 2nd century AD, suggests that by his time Isis had entirely supplanted Hathor in the city.[154]
A pendant found in a Mycenaean tomb at Pylos, from the 16th century BC, bears Hathor’s face. Its presence in the tomb suggests the Mycenaeans may have known that the Egyptians connected Hathor with the afterlife.[155]
Egyptians in the Sinai built a few temples in the region. The largest was a complex dedicated primarily to Hathor as patroness of mining at Serabit el-Khadim, on the west side of the peninsula.[156] It was occupied from the middle of the Middle Kingdom to near the end of the New.[157] The Timna Valley, on the fringes of the Egyptian empire on the east side of the peninsula, was the site of seasonal mining expeditions during the New Kingdom. It included a shrine to Hathor that was probably deserted during the off-season. The local Midianites, whom the Egyptians used as part of the mining workforce, may have given offerings to Hathor as their overseers did. After the Egyptians abandoned the site in the Twentieth Dynasty, however, the Midianites converted the shrine to a tent shrine devoted to their own deities.[158]
In contrast, the Nubians in the south fully incorporated Hathor into their religion. During the New Kingdom, when most of Nubia was under Egyptian control, pharaohs dedicated several temples in Nubia to Hathor, such as those at Faras and Mirgissa.[79] Amenhotep III and Ramesses II both built temples in Nubia that celebrated their respective queens as manifestations of female deities, including Hathor: Amenhotep’s wife Tiye at Sedeinga[159] and Ramesses’s wife Nefertari at the Small Temple of Abu Simbel.[160] The independent Kingdom of Kush, which emerged in Nubia after the collapse of the New Kingdom, based its beliefs about Kushite kings on the royal ideology of Egypt. Therefore, Hathor, Isis, Mut, and Nut were all seen as the mythological mother of each Kushite king and equated with his female relatives, such as the kandake, the Kushite queen or queen mother, who had prominent roles in Kushite religion.[161] At Jebel Barkal, a site sacred to Amun, the Kushite king Taharqa built a pair of temples, one dedicated to Hathor and one to Mut as consorts of Amun, replacing New Kingdom Egyptian temples that may have been dedicated to these same goddesses.[162] But Isis was the most prominent of the Egyptian goddesses worshipped in Nubia, and her status there increased over time. Thus, in the Meroitic period of Nubian history (c. 300 BC – AD 400), Hathor appeared in temples mainly as a companion to Isis.[163]
Popular worship[edit]
Ptolemaic plaque of a woman giving birth assisted by two figures of Hathor, fourth to first century BC
In addition to formal and public rituals at temples, Egyptians privately worshipped deities for personal reasons, including at their homes. Birth was hazardous for both mother and child in ancient Egypt, yet children were much desired. Thus fertility and safe childbirth are among the most prominent concerns in popular religion, and fertility deities such as Hathor and Taweret were commonly worshipped in household shrines. Egyptian women squatted on bricks while giving birth, and the only known surviving birth brick from ancient Egypt is decorated with an image of a woman holding her child flanked by images of Hathor.[164] In Roman times, terracotta figurines, sometimes found in a domestic context, depicted a woman with an elaborate headdress exposing her genitals, as Hathor did to cheer up Ra.[165] The meaning of these figurines is not known,[166] but they are often thought to represent Hathor or Isis combined with Aphrodite making a gesture that represented fertility or protection against evil.[165]
Hathor was one of a handful of deities, including Amun, Ptah, and Thoth, who were commonly prayed to for help with personal problems.[167] Many Egyptians left offerings at temples or small shrines dedicated to the gods they prayed to. Most offerings to Hathor were used for their symbolism, not for their intrinsic value. Cloths painted with images of Hathor were common, as were plaques and figurines depicting her animal forms. Different types of offerings may have symbolized different goals on the part of the donor, but their meaning is usually unknown. Images of Hathor alluded to her mythical roles, like depictions of the maternal cow in the marsh.[168] Offerings of sistra may have been meant to appease the goddess’s dangerous aspects and bring out her positive ones,[169] while phalli represented a prayer for fertility, as shown by an inscription found on one example.[170]
Some Egyptians also left written prayers to Hathor, inscribed on stelae or written as graffiti.[167] Prayers to some deities, such as Amun, show that they were thought to punish wrongdoers and heal people who repented for their misbehavior. In contrast, prayers to Hathor mention only the benefits she could grant, such as abundant food during life and a well-provisioned burial after death.[171]
Funerary practices[edit]
Hathor welcoming Seti I into the afterlife, 13th century BC
As an afterlife deity, Hathor appeared frequently in funerary texts and art. In the early New Kingdom, for instance, she was one of the three deities most commonly found in royal tomb decoration, the others being Osiris and Anubis.[172] In that period she often appeared as the goddess welcoming the dead into the afterlife.[173] Other images referred to her more obliquely. Reliefs in Old Kingdom tombs show men and women performing a ritual called “shaking the papyrus”. The significance of this rite is not known, but inscriptions sometimes say it was performed “for Hathor”, and shaking papyrus stalks produces a rustling sound that may have been likened to the rattling of a sistrum.[174] Other Hathoric imagery in tombs included the cow emerging from the mountain of the necropolis[85] and the seated figure of the goddess presiding over a garden in the afterlife.[90] Images of Nut were often painted or incised inside coffins, indicating the coffin was her womb, from which the occupant would be reborn in the afterlife. In the Third Intermediate Period, Hathor began to be placed on the floor of the coffin, with Nut on the interior of the lid.[88]
Tomb art from the Eighteenth Dynasty often shows people drinking, dancing, and playing music, as well as holding menat necklaces and sistra—all imagery that alluded to Hathor. These images may represent private feasts that were celebrated in front of tombs to commemorate the people buried there, or they may show gatherings at temple festivals such as the Beautiful Festival of the Valley.[175] Festivals were thought to allow contact between the human and divine realms, and by extension, between the living and the dead. Thus, texts from tombs often expressed a wish that the deceased would be able to participate in festivals, primarily those dedicated to Osiris.[176] Tombs’ festival imagery, however, may refer to festivals involving Hathor, such as the Festival of Drunkenness, or to the private feasts, which were also closely connected with her. Drinking and dancing at these feasts may have been meant to intoxicate the celebrants, as at the Festival of Drunkenness, allowing them to commune with the spirits of the deceased.[175]
Hathor was said to supply offerings to deceased people as early as the Old Kingdom, and spells to enable both men and women to join her retinue in the afterlife appeared as early as the Coffin Texts.[94] Some burial goods that portray deceased women as goddesses may depict these women as followers of Hathor, although whether the imagery refers to Hathor or Isis is not known. The link between Hathor and deceased women was maintained into the Roman Period, the last stage of ancient Egyptian religion before its extinction.[177]
See also[edit]
Citations[edit]
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Further reading[edit]
- Allam, Schafik (1963). Beiträge zum Hathorkult (bis zum Ende des mittleren Reiches) (in German). Verlag Bruno Hessling. OCLC 557461557.
- Derchain, Philippe (1972). Hathor Quadrifrons (in French). Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut in het Nabije Oosten. OCLC 917056815.
- Hornung, Erik (1997). Der ägyptische Mythos von der Himmelskuh, 2nd ed (PDF) (in German). Vandehoeck & Ruprecht. ISBN 978-3525537374.
- Posener, Georges (1986). “La légende de la tresse d’Hathor”. In Lesko, Leonard H. (ed.). Egyptological Studies in Honour of Richard A. Parker (in French). Brown. pp. 111–117. ISBN 978-0874513219.
- Vandier, Jacques (1964–1966). “Iousâas et (Hathor)-Nébet-Hétépet”. Revue d’Égyptologie (in French). 16–18.
External links[edit]
- Media related to Hathor at Wikimedia Commons
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- Animal goddesses
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![]() ![]() Detail: Lyre inlay which depicts some rather fanciful scenes and characters. Note the bearded bullmen in the top panel. Notes: 1. Verification: Every sign and its definition has been verified through the ePSD, the ETCSL, the CDLI, the Sumerian Lexicon, and other resources (see the Links page for the meanings of these abbreviations). My criteria for using a sign definition was it had to appear at least twice in the ePSD, ETCSL, or the SL (and in the proper context). These are well-attested, commonly accepted definitions that are correct for the period when the tablet was written. 2. Sign recognition: The scribe uses a “compressed” writing style (the signs are simplified to make them easier to write and some of them are shortened to save space on the line). Therefore many of the signs look different than the classic cuneiform script. Every sign on this tablet has been matched with multiple examples from other known tablets. I do not point out all of the compressed signs on this tablet because there are 44 occurrences. Basically, if a sign doesn’t look like the ePSD font, then it’s compressed, and it can be found on the CDLI’s Ur III and Old Babylonian tablets. Click here to see some examples of the compressed signs. Select the “Tablet #36 Sign List” tab on the upper left to see all of the signs on the tablet. 3. Strings: For the sake of word separation, not all the word strings are connected. 4. Pronunciation: Š is pronounced “sh,” as in shepherd. Ĝ is pronounced “ng,” as in sing. The “H” sound in Sumerian (“ḫ”) is pronounced as in the word, “loch.” The numerical subscript of a sign (for example, ĝe26) is a modern convention used to delineate the different meanings of the sign. It is not pronounced when the word is said aloud. For first time readers: Written Sumerian doesn’t have a direct word-for-word correlation with verbal speech. For instance, where we would write, “I went to the store to buy some bread,” in Sumerian it would probably be written as “store go bread buy.” The reader is often left to infer such things as articles (a, an, the), verb tense (go, going, has gone), and personal pronouns (I, you, they go. . . ). All of this would depend on the context of the surrounding sentences. These details would be supplied by the reader when the sentence is read aloud. In a way, Sumerian writing “just hits the high spots,” so it can sound somewhat telegraphic. Note, too, that written Sumerian has a “backwards” way of expressing things, in terms of word formation (bull fatted) and syntax (bull to food send). This artificial construction applied only to written Sumerian, in an attempt to make it more readable. When the sentence was read aloud, it was converted to the natural patterns of verbal speech. The first time through, to get a feel for the actual writing on this tablet, you may want to skip the notes, which are rather voluminous, especially at the beginning. Clicked on the underscored line number to magnify the drawing of the line. Transliteration of Tablet #36 in the Library of Congress Cuneiform Collection by: Jerald Jack Starr ![]() The enigmatic mahX (AL, al, mah2, mah, etc.) Obverse: # = damaged but readable sign x = damaged unreadable sign […] = missing signs ! = miswritten sign {…} = prefix or suffix (ES) = Emesal dialect [Unknown number of lines missing] ![]() o1. za-e? […] You … o2. [na-aĝ2 (ES, nam)] [x …] Fate … o3. lu2-maḫX ḫi-li-a gu4! me [x …] Lu-mah abundant bull be MahX = AL = mah2 = mah: A pun, used throughout the text as “great” (also see: o7, o8, o11, r7, r10, r11, r14). This one sign (mahX) is the lock, and the key, to understanding this tablet. An explanation follows, and additional information can be found in Appendix A at the end of this page. ![]() AL is one of the reasons why this tablet was so difficult to translate. Tablet #36 could be subtitled “What about AL?” The scribe uses the sign a lot, it shows up in the most unexpected places, and none of the definitions of AL make a bit of sense within the context of the sentences (and AL isn’t being used as a Compound Verb Nominal Element, in case you were wondering). The sign is used persistently and intrusively throughout the text, as if the scribe was deliberately over-using the sign for some unknown reason. Which seems rather odd, because this ubiquitous sign is completely bewildering in every sentence where it appears. It slowly began to dawn on me: perhaps it was more than a coincidence that every time I started to understand the meaning of the text, this annoying sign would pop up again, only to create more confusion. Although at first I didn’t have the faintest idea about the contents of the tablet, I began to suspect that the mysterious sign was somehow the key to unlocking a secret translation. To make a long story short, it took me a long, long time to figure it out. Then one day, finally, it occurred to me. I realized that AL is really mah2, a pun for mah: ![]() One of the meanings of AL is mah2, an adjective for a dairy cow. I had briefly considered it as a possible translation for the sign, but I immediately discarded it because it was bound to be completely nonsensical in any sentence where it appeared. However, the important thing about the sign is that it’s pronounced like mah: ![]() On this tablet, the sign mah2 (cow) is written to mean mah (great, supreme, large, majestic, etc.). Because the numerical subscripts of a sign are “silent,” mah and mah2 are pronounced the same. Throughout the text, in all eight sentences where it appears, the sign mah2, “cow,” is used exactly as if it were the sign mah, meaning “great.” The consistent use of the sign in this particular way requires a new designation for the sign. It is called: ![]() The “X” in mahX stands for an unknown subscript number. As a subscript number, it is unpronounced when the word is said aloud. MahX, mah, and mah2 are pronounced exactly the same. This at first might not seem like a big deal. It may be clever enough as wordplay, but it seemed that the scribe went through an awful lot of trouble only to bring forth this one little pun. There is, however, a method to his madness. This sign is used to obscure the meaning of the text, to make it difficult to read the tablet, because of the volatile contents of the story. As will later be shown, this sign (pun) is also used as a hint to the secret context of the tablet. When I decoded mahX, the confusion in the sentences disappeared. At least now the sentences were no longer so nonsensical. At least now they could be translated… which leads to the crux of the problem: Even after this big breakthrough, I had not yet translated a single complete sentence, or even half of one. Various words and phrases hinted at many possible meanings for the story, but I still couldn’t read the tablet. The reason why I was having so much difficulty was the “missing context” of the story. In Sumerian, context is everything – because all of the signs have multiple meanings. I therefore needed to know the context (subject) of the writing, in order to eliminate the many alternative definitions of the signs, so I could concentrate only on the meanings that might actually make some sense within the framework of the story. For instance, if I knew a story was about animals, with the sign UR, which means “person, pride, unity, fish, dog, servant, man, etc.”, I could ignore all of the definitions except for “dog.” By contrast, all of the definitions could apply if I didn’t know the context of the story. So I therefore needed to know what I was “reading to.” Without a known context it is difficult to read even a simple Sumerian sentence. Not even another Sumerian could easily read it. Trying to read Tablet #36 without knowing the context was something of a Catch-22. I needed to know the context of the writing in order to read the signs, but I had to read the signs in order to know the context (!) It is very difficult to read a tablet with an unknown context (and Tablet #36 has two unknown contexts; more on that later). The missing context(s) of the story is one of the reasons why the tablet seems so iincomprehensible. The context of a story is usually given in the first few opening lines of the text. Unfortunately, the opening lines of the story are missing due to damage on the tablet, so it seemed that the context would never be known. Fortunately, as luck (or Fate) would have it, the tablet broke off at just the right place. Here, in the first two signs of the first readable fragment of a line, is a hint to the “hidden context” of the story. The two signs are lu2-mahX. As per the pun meaning of mahX, the signs can be translated as “man-great.” On this tablet, lu-mah (big man, great man) is synonymous with the sign lugal (big man, great man) meaning “lord or king.” This is the secret hidden context of the story: lu-mah = “man-great” = lugal = king. ![]() gal-lu2 Lugal isthe Sumerian sign for “king.” It is two signs joined together. It’s written as gal-lu2, but it’s pronounced “lu-gal” (man-great). It is one of the oldest and most recognizable of the Sumerian signs. Unlike most of the other signs, which have multiple meanings, this sign means little else besides its usual definition of “king, lord, master.” The scribe doesn’t use this symbol because it’s too unmistakable, too unambiguous. If the sign lugal was on this tablet, then everyone would know what it’s written about. ![]() lu2 mah Lu-mah, literally “man-great,” like the above lugal. Mah and gal both mean “great.” ![]() lu2 mah2 (mahX) Lu-mah2, as it appears on Tablet #36. It literally means “man dairy cow,” which is nonsensical, but it’s pronounced the same as the above lu-mah (man-great). This pun is a hint to the secret “hidden context” of the story: lu2-mahX = “man-great” = lugal = king. Lu-mah is the name of the Great Fatted Bull. This is not just clever wordplay. Mah2 is introduced early in the story and it is used many times throughout the text, in a manner for which it was never intended, creating confusion in every sentence where it appears. If mah2/manX is just a pun, why bother? Why not use it once, and then use a simple, easily recognizable sign like gal (or mah!) for all other occurrences of the word “great”? The fact is, no self respecting writer would create so much havoc in his own composition just to pound on one single pun eight different times. Which begs the question: why does the scribe deliberately use a sign that’s nonsensical in every sentence where it appears? What is his purpose? To put it simply, mahX is used to obscure the “king” context of the story, and without a known context, it is difficult, if not impossible, to read the other signs on the tablet. Here’s how lu2-mahX works: “Lu2 = man. Okay, that was easy enough; so far, so good. Then, AL = al; a hoe? a fence? Surely it’s not mah2, a cow??” Mah2 actually means “a mature, milk producing cow,” which is the opposite of a bull in all regards. Mah2 can refer to any female animal that has given birth and is therefore capable of producing milk. So even if mah2 is initially considered as a possible translation for the sign, it would be immediately discarded as nonsensical (man dairy cow?) and so the pun would be lost, and along with it, the hint to the secret context of the tablet. That’s the beauty and the genius of this sign. Even if the reader guesses the correct pronunciation of the sign, he doesn’t believe it because it’s the wrong definition. When a Sumerian tried to read this tablet and encountered mah2 (cow), he would do exactly what I did the first time, he would toss the ridiculous cow right out the window, and in so doing, lose the king context. After trying unsuccessfully to read the tablet without understanding mahX and the hidden king concept, a Sumerian would give up and call the tablet “nonsense.” This is precisely what the scribe wanted him to do. Modern Sumerologists did the same thing, and likewise gave up trying to read the tablet. Only someone who was truly obsessed (like I was) would persevere and keep trying to understand this enigmatic tablet. As described in Aventures in Cuneiform Writing, when I finally got past mah2 (cow) and I realized that it is actually mahX (great), then the secret king was revealed. After that, I started making real progress in the translation because now I knew the context. So, in a way, mahX is both the lock and the key to this tablet. It obscures the true meaning of the text (the lock), but once it’s understood it reveals the hidden context of the story (the key), which makes it possible to read the other signs on the tablet. The repeated use of mahX is like the tumblers of the lock. A key doesn’t work until all of the tumblers are in place. When one single word fits in all eight sentences, then and only then, the tablet finally opens up and it’s true meaning is revealed. The scribe encoded the tablet this way because he is ridiculing great lords and kings. This was a dangerous thing to do. Sumerian kings were worshiped as living gods, so they didn’t like it when they were ridiculed, not in the least bit. Look at what happens to the shepherd brother when he mocks Lu-mah for wanting to be worshiped as a god. The scribe knew that he could be flogged or even executed for writing this story, so he didn’t want anyone to read this tablet and then report him to the authorities (see The Scribe on this website). On the one hand, he didn’t want anyone to read the tablet, but on the other hand, he did. He had written this really great story, so of course he wanted someone to read it. That is why he doesn’t make the tablet completely unreadable. To make it unreadable would be easy enough to do because Sumerian writing is barely readable to begin with. He could simply substitute a bunch of signs for other signs, and only he would know their intended meaning, or he could easily make up his own signs. Instead, he writes the story in a way that makes it incomprehensible to a casual reader, but he provides all of the necessary clues for a diligent reader to eventually decode the tablet. With “Lu-mah,” the scribe: 1) gives the bull a name, 2) names him for his character, 3) obscures his identity, and 4) gives a hint to the tablet’s true context. In addition, it’s a wry comment on the fat bull’s waistline (mah also means “to be or make large”). It has to be the greatest name ever given to a fictional character. The pronunciation of the Sumerian “ḫ” not withstanding, in this particular translation the Anglicized pronunciation of Lu-mah is the preferred form. “Maḫ” is pronounced the way it’s spelled in English (it rhymes with “ah”). In this way, one isn’t required to pronounce the word with a Sumerian accent. In the translation, I added the word “lord” because it’s implied in “Lu-mah.” For notes on hi-li, see line o4. An experienced Sumerologist might have already noticed that the sign for bull (gu4) is “miswritten” here at the beginning of the tablet where the reader would be looking for the context of the story. The bull is the second hidden context of this tablet. For notes on gu4, see line o6. The scribe uses numerous other ways to obscure the meaning of the text, all of which are explained below, and a summary is given in Appendix A at the end of this page. ![]() o4. ba ḫi-li nam-a-a ḫe2 kaš4/de6 nam-[…] Allotment abundant fatherhood may (he/it) messenger/bring Because of the missing portion of this line, it’s impossible to tell if the Great Fatted Bull is the “gift of fatherhood” (as a son) or if the gift is bestowed upon him (as the father). I believe the line announces the birth of Lu-mah, the son, because he seems to grow up and develop into manhood during the course of events, and because the story seems to cover his entire lifespan until his retirement (“out to pasture”). The line is written simply as “May (he/it)” but it is tranlated as “May the fatted bull…”. This is justified by the fact that he is called a bull in the previous sentence and he’s called “great fatted” in the next, and by the necessity of having to introduce the two contexts (bull and king) early in the story. I did this to compensate for the fact that the scribe deliberately obscured both of the contexts, and to compensate for the missing opening lines of the tablet. Otherwise the beginning of the story would be confusing for the reader. Hi-li can mean “beautiful” or “sexy” or “luxuriant” (abundant). Clearly, in this story, the Great Fatted Bull isn’t being called beautiful or sexy, he is being called abundant (repeatedly). ![]() o5. gal-niga {in}-kal gal-niga-a lu2-ḫuĝ-ga2 dib2 […] Great-fatted treasured. Great-fatted-to man-hired (worker) send The unusual syntax of this sentence illustrates why this tablet was such a difficult translation. Gal-niga, “great fatted,” is an adjective, so it should always be attached to a noun (e.g., great fatted bull, great fatted sheep, etc.). Gal-niga occurs twice in this sentence, but it isn’t attached to anything. It just hovers there. Since it occurs at the beginning of both sentences where the subject/noun of the sentences should be, it is used as if it were a proper noun, and not as an adjective. Gal Niga is meant to be the mock “lordly address” for the Great Fatted Bull. Some readers may object to my translating it as “Great Fatso” because fatso is a modern term. I translated it this way for several reasons. First of all, “fatso” is a noun (for instance, a woman isn’t called a “great beautiful” (adjective), she is called a “great beauty” (noun)). Second, and more importantly, I am willing to bet that gal-niga was indeed the word for fatso in the Sumerian language, which was deeply rooted in agriculture and animal husbandry. So if the Sumerians wanted to call someone a “big fatso,” they would call him gal-niga, like an enormous fatted bull that lumbers in the pasture. “Great Fatso” also conveys the obvious sarcastic tone of the scribe (you can hear it in his voice). I would suggest that anyone who thinks niga should be limited to “fatted” (Lord Fatted, or The Great Fatted) for some purely pedantic reason, is simply being too literal. I believe that within the context of the sentences, “fatso” (Lord Fatso, The Great Fatso) is exactly the way the scribe would say it if he were reading this tablet to a modern American audience. This tablet was never meant to be read, it was meant only to be recited by the scribe, so it should be spoken in the language of the listener. There are different words for fatso in different languages, but they mean the same thing. If dib2 is dab5 (the same sign, but with different meanings and pronunciations) the line could be interpreted as “the workmen sieze,” suggesting conscript labor. Because of the missing portion of the line it’s impossible to know which of the meanings apply. For additional notes on dib2/dab5, see line r5. ![]() o6. gu3 gu4!-še3 de6 ba ša3-gal gu4!-še3 nin [ĝu10#?] dib2 Voice (bellow) bull-to bring allotment food/fodder, bull-to lady [my] send Ba = allotment/rations; see line o9 below. A missing mark on a sign could mean everything – or it could mean nothing. It can actually change the definition of the sign, or maybe it’s just a scribal error, a “typo.” Like in English, if you don’t cross the “t” in the word “take,” it becomes the word “lake.” Here, and in lines o3 and r7, the sign for bull (gu4) is shown without the vertical stroke. It is written correctly at the end of line o8. As written, the sign could be interpreted as 2(eše3) or the Old Babylonian version of bi. The sign 2(eše3) is two units of measure and it’s meaningless in the context of the sentences. The Old Babylonian version of bi is a sign that’s been stripped of most of its identifying structure, as part of the process of simplifying the signs. It didn’t appear until very late in the Old Babylonian period (or as I call it, Severe Babylonian) when lots of other signs were simplified almost beyond recognition, which is not the case on this tablet. I doubt that it’s a scribal error. I believe it’s a deliberate effort to obscure the meaning of the text. I call the sign “the half hidden bull” because it looks like a bull hiding in the writing of the text, with just his horns showing, as a hint to the context of the tablet: ![]() ![]() ![]() In any case, gu4 fits perfectfly within the context of the sentences. In this sentence especially (voice + bull + repetitive processing = the bellowing of a bull, SL page 89), the meaning of the sign is clear. The sign occurs twice in the sentence, in an obvious bull context, so it would be a natural place to obscure the appearance of the sign. It’s interesting to note that the one place where the sign is written correctly (line o8) is where it is written the smallest. It’s a tiny little sign, written in its compressed form, that is placed in a crowded margin on the side of the tablet. It is therefore inconspicuous and difficult to read. It cannot be seen when looking at the front or the back of the tablet, and it can only be read when the tablet is being held edgewise. See line o8 below for instructions on how to find the sign on the original tablet. Bull? What bull? Gu4 (bull) is one half of the context of the story, and yet it’s miswritten four times out of five. Which seems rather odd. Of the 362 complicated signs on the tablet, this very simple sign is the only one that is consistently “misspelled.” It’s unlikely that the scribe, who is clearly an accomplished writer, would make such a stupid mistake (even an amateur writer like me wouldn’t make such a rookie mistake). I am certain that the scribe did it intentionally, in a devious effort to obscure the meaning of the text. He clearly did it to make the tablet difficult to read, and in this regard it worked exactly as planned: Early in the translation I saw that gu4 was written correctly in line o8 so I knew that a bull was at least mentioned on the tablet, but I didn’t believe it was the subject of the story because the bull is never mentioned again. It’s as though I caught a brief glimpse of a bull and then he disappeared. Even after I began to suspect that the bull may actually be a character in the story (because of the many references to grain that I was seeing), I still resisted the idea because nowhere else on the tablet is the sign for bull clearly written. I thought that maybe the other four signs might possibly be gu4 (miswritten, the bull “hidden” in the writing of the text) but I couldn’t be sure. So I ended up wasting a lot of time trying decipher the bull context of the story, which should have been rather obvious – if the signs were written correctly. I swear, it was just like playing a Sumerian version of the game, “Where’s Waldo?” I’ve gone on about this at some length to demonstrate the kind of challenges that must be overcome to translate this tablet. Gu4, pronounced “gud,” is one of the simplest of the Sumerian signs. It remained virtually unchanged for 2,000 years, since its earliest pictograph form (it looks like a bull’s head). Then it gets compressed, then miswritten. It’s supposed to be one of the “easy” signs. Tablet #36 is the only known tablet in the world that has two simultaneous contexts (bull and king) and both of the contexts are deliberately disguised! Tablet #36 has to be one of the most challenging tablets ever written, but notice how the scribe doesn’t attempt to make the tablet completely unreadable. That would be too easy. Instead, he provides the necessary clues to solve both of the mysteries that he created. The clue to the hidden king context is the repeated use of the sign mahX. The clue to the hidden bull context is that the simple sign for bull is written correctly only once (and very inconspicuously). It really is rather clever. In my opinion, this scribe is clearly the best writer in all of Sumerian literature. ![]() o7. na-aĝ2 (ES, nam) -ḫi-li -ĝu10 eš3-maḫX ĝa2-ĝa2-ĝa2 an Fate- abundant- my shrine-majestic accumulate (3x) heaven In the translation, I added the words “Lu-mah declares.” On this tablet, dialogue is not introduced with phrases like “he said” or “she said.” Nor did the Sumerian language have any helpful devices that separated the spoken word from the rest of the story (such as commas, quotation marks, and capital letters). The resultant effect can be very disconcerting: you’re reading along, and before you know it, someone is talking. So I therefore added to the text several introductions to the spoken word (e.g., line r11: “His mother says”) which is sometimes necessary when translating Sumerian. I did not enclose these additions in brackets, for example, [His mother says], to delineate my words from those of the author, which is the proper form, because it is too intrusive and it interferes with the narrative flow. ![]() The sign mu/ĝu10, “he/my,” is written with only two pairs of reverse cunei instead of the usual three. I was able to find several other examples on the CDLI where the sign is written in this way. The horizontal stroke of the sign is very short (to save space) and any attempt to crowd all three pairs of reverse cunei onto such a short sign would make it almost illegible. Eš3-mahX (shrine-great) may be a reference to the Majestic Shrine in the city of Nippur, or it may be just a generic term for a “great shrine.” Perhaps a shrine is actually being built by the workers mentioned in line o5. The main reason “Majestic Shrine” is capitalized in the translation is to convey some of the obvious hyperbole of the sentence. The name “Majestic Shrine” was chosen rather than “Magnificent Shrine” (its usual title) because Lu-mah is more “majestic” than he is “magnificent.” ĝa2-ĝa2-ĝa2 = ĝar-ĝar-ĝar = “to accumulate.” A (non-numeric) Sumerian sign is seldom written three times in a row. It happens, but it’s relatively rare. It happens three different times on this tablet. Here it is used as deliberate exaggeration (hyperbole). The scribe could have written the sign once, or even twice, and it would have meant the same thing (to accumulate). Instead, he writes it three times – this from someone who otherwise uses a great economy of language. The strings of three signs in-a-row, and the fact that it seems like half of the other signs are “doubled up” (usually to indicate plural) is another reason why this tablet is such a difficult translation. The writing looks wild on the page. Visually, it looks out of control; it looks like “gibberish.” Like the next line: ![]() o8. iri niĝin2 kar niĝin2 gur4-gur4-a kur9-kur9 Village make the rounds marketplace wander feel big/important(2x)-in enter (plural) gana2-5 zal {in}-kur9 maḫX-šu-gu4 si Field-5 pass, enters. Great-hand-bull fill The above sentence has an unusual syntax and there is quite a lot of information packed into a single line of text. This is the one place on the tablet where gu4 (bull) is written correctly. Note how small it is, and notice how inconspicuous it is on the orignal tablet (it’s on the second line just under the damaged area on the right edge). Can’t find it? Here it is. Plural: On this tablet, plural is denoted by writing a sign twice, sometimes the noun, sometimes the verb (the usual form). Writing the verb twice makes the noun plural. For instance, “marketplace. . . enter enter” makes the noun (marketplace) plural. In the next sentence, the noun is pluralized; “wife wife” means “many wives.” However, just because a sign is written twice doesn’t automatically make it plural. Sometimes it’s just the way a word is spelled; for instance, ga-ga means “cream.” Sometimes it’s used for emphasis, an example of which can also be found in this sentence: gur4 by itself means “to feel important,” written twice it means “to feel very important.” There’s also a “reduplication class” of words, where writing a sign twice can actually change its meaning. In line o16, du8-du8 (duḫ-duḫ) means “grain mash,” but in line r15, du8-du8 (reduplication class) means “to amass,” whereas in line o14 du8 by itself means “to yoke.” It’s enough to make your head spin. There’s the possibility that Lu-mah’s village may actually be a larger city because iri = village/town/city, suggesting that he is bullying a much smaller village. Village(s): should be translated as plural because kur9 (enter) is written twice, meaning plural. And if village(s) is plural, then marketplace(s) should also be plural. They are, however, translated as singular in the English rendition because too many esses in the sentences made them sound too sibilant. Number five: see note for line o17. Again, the same sign three times in-a-row (niĝin2 and gur4 are the same sign, LAGAB) here used for multiple meanings (rounds, wander) and for emphasis (feel big (twice)). Two of the three same signs have different meanings (wander, feel big) even though they are written side-by-side and visually they are exactly alike. Four of the first six characters on this line are the same sign (followed by another sign, kur9, doubled!). The scribe does something similar in line r15. Here, and in lines o11, r10, and r11, mahX (AL) is written in a compressed form. This is described in greater detail in line o11. Despite the wild appearance of the writing on the tablet, this is a writer who has a complete command of the language, a very difficult language at that. The tablet may look like it’s gibberish, like it’s a “tale told by an idiot,” but it’s written by a genius. Sometimes it seems like he is just showing off. ![]() o9. gana2 ba e-ne-eĝ3 (ES, inim) ne ḫenburX tuku dam-dam-da ni2-{da}-pap Field allotment decree this henbur to take wife (plural)-with self-virile Here, and in o4 and o6, ba (allotment) is translated as “gift.” It is written in its Emesal form, aĝ2-ba (lemma=niĝ2-ba, label=gift) in r7. “Allotment” is more meaningful in the Sumerian context, given the practice of allotting food rations and parcels of land, etc; but it sounds very awkward in the English translation (“an abundant allotment”), and it requires explanatory comment. “Gift” has a similar context in English, it scans better, it ties in with line r7 (“Here’s a gift… “), and it doesn’t require additional commentary. This translation is meant to have a “stand alone” quality, with a minimum amount of explication, so that the story can be appreciated on its own merit with the least interruption to the narrative flow. In the translation, I sometimes use contractions; e.g., “I’ll take. . .” , for “I will take. . .”. This is a modern convention, the Sumerians didn’t use contractions. On a similar note, I often use italics in the translation. Needless to say, the Sumerians didn’t use italics. These signs were complicated enough to begin with. If they also had to be italicized, the Sumerian scribes would suffer a collective nervous breakdown. ![]() in ![]() henbur2 (grain) The scribe uses the IN cluster of reverse cunei for the sign henbur2. It should have the še (grain) cluster, but then again, the scribe uses eight different versions of še in signs like zid, li, gal-niga, kur9, etc. As written, henbur2 looks a lot like IN, but with only one vertical stroke. Of course it could be three scribal errors, but it seems unlikely that the scribe would mistakenly write IN this way in the exact three places where henbur2 fits perfectly into the context of the sentences. Henbur is one of the numerous themes of the story. This is yet another way that the scribe obscures the meaning of the text, yet another clever way that he fakes the reader out of position. I call the sign henburX. Like mahX, it is a “trick sign.” See Sumerian Trick Signs. ![]() o10. [a2#]-ĝu10 ama da-ni2 da-ri [labor]-my mother with-self support ![]() o11. […x]-a da bi iri maḫX inim- lu2-ne mu du3 {in!}-kur9 . . . village. Huge word- dispute he all enters ![]() It seems there is a progression of AL (mahX) from the archaic version with a curved line to the final compressed version. The fourth sign from the left, which seems to be a semi-compressed version of mahX, could be interpreted as u5, and the final fully compressed version looks a lot like ra/rah2. However, I believe they are all mahX because the word “great” fits seemlessly into all of the sentences where they appear. On the other hand, none of the definitions of ra/rah2 fit into any of the sentences. AL doesn’t have a compressed form, so the scribe simply made up his own version. It is just another one of his tricks to conceal the meaning of the text. ![]() Another reason I don’t think the sign is ra occurs in line r11. A = “to,” ra =”to,” and še3 = “to.” That’s three “to”s in a row. Ra is obviously being used for another purpose. ![]() o12. […] [?] ĝen gir10 en [?] go anger lord The damaged sign designated “[?]” at the beginning of the readable portion of the line may be nimin, “envy,” the sign NE (anger/burning/ashes) inside the sign for “heart.” ![]() o13. [en#?] [x-x]-A NA UR NIĜIN2/{ĜEŠ}- AŠTE2 DA NA [Lord] [x-x]-to man pride/servant? surround/wood prefix- AŠTE2 with man Multiple meanings for AŠTE2: chair/throne, trough, reed-bed, etc. Although there are many intriguing possibilities for this line, I translated it simply as: “[Lord (?)] [x-x] [something, something]” to indicate the damage on the tablet and to convey the feel of a fight or argument, without speculating on its contents, which cannot be known for certain because of the missing portion of the line. ![]() o14. niga-[en#] iri-ni! gi ĝe26 na šu-ku6 da-{ba-an}-du8 Fatted-lord village-his return. I man thief/bandit with-yoke ![]() o15. mu bad3 geme2-geme2 šu-šeš-na-a gid2-a He fortress slave woman (plural) hand-(brother-man)-in drag-into Šu. . . a, “hand. . . in”: This is a Sumerian convention that means the subject wriiten between the two signs is “in hand,” meaning “held” or “carried,” or in this case, “captive.” Šeš by itself means “brother.” Šeš-na means “brother-man,” meaning a male relative. It is translated as “kinsmen” (plural) because it’s assumed the father is also present since in the next line it seems that Lu-mah is speaking in the presence of the father. It’s possible that everyone in this story is Lu-mah’s own family members. There is a father, a mother, a brother (the shepherd brother), and the sisters. It’s possible that Lu-mah attacked his own “kingdom” (i.e., Grain Field #5) and took all of his family as prisoners. This would be very symbolic. However, although idea of the sisters as “wives” is somewhat funny (in an ironic sort of way), it is also kind of weird. Anyway, you can make up your own mind about this interpretation. ![]() geme2 = a female servant or slave What’s different about the way the scribe writes this sign is that he uses only two reverse cunei instead of the usual three. Surprising, the only place that he uses all three reverse cunei is in line r6, where the sign is not only compressed but actually squashed in the crowded lettering of the line (above right). As written, the sign could be interpreted as gu (cord). Although gu is usually written with two vertical lines on the left, it is sometimes written with only one. However, gu is meaningless in the context of the sentence, but geme2 fits in all five instances in the three sentences where it appears and it’s one of the 17 minor themes of the story. The signs are disguised to help obscure the meaning of the story. Geme2 is written correctly only where it’s written the smallest, just like gu4 in line o8, as a hint to its true meaning. If the signs for slave women were clearly written on the tablet, then everyone would be interested in reading their story (any story about slave women is bound to be interesting) but the scribe doesn’t want anyone to be interested in reading this tablet. The sign is written the same way in the stories of The Princess Wife and The Great Fatted Jackass, and for the same reason: to obscure the meaning of the texts. I call the sign gemeX. ![]() o16. gana2 ab-ba duḫ-duḫ ĝe26 dug4-{e} mu te-en-te-en = (ten-ten) Field father mash I order he trample ![]() o17. ĝe26 5-lug ĝeš bal- dim2 ĝe26-a gur11-gur11 ba I 5-pasture sell- make. Me-to grain heap (plural) give The ePSD shows one instance (without citation) where gur11 (GA) is used as an alternative sign for guru7 (grain heap). I didn’t use ga for sheep’s milk, or ga-ga (garX) for cream, because the bull has not heretofore expressed any interest in milk. He is, however, interested in grain, and the grain heaps will be added to the “mountain of grain” mentioned in line r12. ![]() i = 5 The first sign on the left is i, likewise for the second sign. It is a commonly used sign, but it’s not a number, it’s a word, one that has no meaning that fits into the context of the three sentences where it appears. That’s because the scribe uses it to represent the number five. 5(aš), which is written horizontally (unlike the vertical diš format, uses a 3-2 combination, as seen in the third sign. On Tablet #36, the scribe uses a 2-2-1 combination to represent the number 5. In a line of text, the sign would naturally be interpeted as i, which is meaningless in the context of the sentence, causing some confusion, which helps to obscure the context of the tablet. On the other hand, the “five” interpretation of the sign fits in all three sentences where it appears: field 5, pasture 5, and 5 big bowls. ![]() o18. [x]-da-am3 su-ba (ES, sipad) šeš [x]-like shepherd brother su-ba = su8-ba. A pun like lu2-mahX, and also the name of the hero. One other example attested, A Praise Poem for Shulgi X (ETCSL). Even if there was no other example, it would still be su-ba, “shepherd”. I believe that Lu-mah and Su-ba are the names of the protagonists, even though they are not so-named anywhere else in the text. It’s more than a coincidence that these are the only places on the tablet where the scribe puns at the sign level. ![]() ![]() Su8-ba: This is the lesser known Emesal form of sipad, “shepherd.” It is one of the “stacked” Sumerian signs. The lines of a tablet usually had to be drawn wider than normal in order to accommodate it. To try to write this sign within the narrow lines of Tablet #36 would make it illegible. The scribe, who uses every square millimeter of this tablet, wouldn’t draw an entire line wider just to fit a single word. Nor would he want to call attention to this very distinctive sign. ![]() ![]() Su-ba is just a comman man, who is a shepherd in disguise, and the shepherd is the disguise of a king. He is named for his role in the story, and yet his identity is concealed. It has to be the second greatest name ever given to a fictional character. Reverse: ———————————————————————————————————- ![]() Cylinder seal impression. Note the “bull/man” on the left. This character is often ascribed to be Enkidu, the companion of Gilgamesh, the Sumerian warrior-king seen on the right. I have my doubts, as Enkidu was a man who was raised by animals, but not a hybrid bull/man. See another image of Gilgamesh and Enkidu with Enkidu portrayed as a regular man. ![]() r1. [ki#] ak- kiri3- lu2- su-ub teš2 nu-zu dab5 mu lu2 nu- kal-la# [Ground] do nose man rub, all not-wisdom seize. He man not- strong Ki. . . su-ub: to prostrate oneself: Sumerian Lexicon, page 141. The first part of the sentence seems to be missing a negation (nu): “I will not bow. . . “ Perhaps it was on the damaged part of the tablet at the beginning of the line, or maybe it was explained in the damaged portion of the previous line (o18). teš2 = pride/all. I originally had this phrase translated as “seize pride, not wisdom,” but I now believe that “seize all (everything), not wisdom” better fits the context of Lu-mah’s overwhelming greed. ![]() r2. ki-ma an zi-ir lu2-da [gu3#] ir-ir Earth heaven feel troubled man-with [voice/cry out] plunder The usual format of zi-ir is Zi … ir, where the subject that “feels troubled” is written between the two signs. Zi-ir by itself means affliction or grief. Given the similarites of the definitions, I chose “feel troubled” because it is a verb. Gu3 =”voice/cry out,” interpreted as “bellow,” which is the usual form of gu3 when it is used in the context of a bull. The bull context of the story has already been established. This line, “… man bellows for plunder,” highlights Lu-mah’s dual nature of man and bull, just like line o8, “… to fill his great bull hands.” ![]() r3. ti ze2-ed (ES, tud2) murgu2 ze2-ed (ES, tud2) ud-da-am3 {ba}-zig3 en gir10 Rib beat back/shoulders beat. Storm-like arose lord anger Ti is interpreted as “rib,” without the uzu “body” prefix. It occurs without this prefix in all 16 examples on the ETCSL. ![]() r4. šaḫ2 ka-a gu7 gu7 šaḫ2 zi2 utul2 5 Pig mouth-in food. Fodder pig cut tureen/large bowl 5 ka-a šu du3 eš2-la2-a mouth-in hand to drive in, choke-in/on Gu7 = food/fodder. When the signs for “mouth” and “food” are used together, it means “to eat” (even though gu7 by itself can also mean “to eat, consume”). See also r5 and r10. Eš2-la2 (verb) = constrict/throttle/suffocate = choke. Eš2-la2 (noun) minus the ĝeš “wood” prefix = bucket. I didn’t use this interpretation because Lu-mah is using his hands to eat, not buckets. ![]() r5. da-ĝu10 lu ka/gu3 aĝ2-(ES, niĝ2)-gu7-gu7 šu-da-ni? dab5-ba Side (flank)-my to make abundant mouth/bellow food (plural) hand-with-his grasp Niĝ2-gu7, “thing-to eat,” is another Sumerian way of saying “food.” There are multiple interpretations for this line, all of which yield translations that are essentially the same. Ka is translated as gu3 “to cry out” (“My flanks… “, he cries out) which is interpreted as “bellow” in the bull context of the story, as explained in line r2. If ka is used as “mouth,” it applies to the food, meaning “to eat,” like in sentences r4 and r10. Dab5-ba can be translated as “collected” (“that his hands collected”) referring back to o8: “to fill his great bull hands.” Dab5-ba could also be dib2-ba “passing” (“with his hands passing the food to his mouth”). This confirms my own personal theory that all Sumerian signs are “dibs and dabs.” They can mean one thing, or another, or their opposites: ![]() ![]() Naturally, the sign is used both ways on this tablet. It’s one of the “joys” of translating ancient Sumerian; but I digress. . . Lu, translated as “abundant,” is like ĝa2 (ĝar) in line o7 and du8 (reduplicated) in line r15, all of which mean “to accumulate” (to heap, amass, pile up, add, multiply, to make abundant, etc.). The scribe uses these verbs as a way of saying “to grow fat” to reinforce his theme that the Lu-mah’s fatness is a symbol of his greed (see line o7 in the Annotations). It also makes the tablet more difficult to read because the signs are being used in an unexpected manner. ![]() r6. ku10-ku10 mur10 šu-in!-ni2 ab na-ta geme2 zag-ni? er-er Darkness dressed hand-edge/ledge?-self window man-from slave woman side-his go (plural) ![]() r7. aĝ2-ba (ES, niĝ2-ba) gu4! eš gu3 maḫX# sig3 gin6 Gift bull anoint bellow great burning indigestion permanent To get some idea of the difficulty in translating this tablet, notice how the scribe writes GI and ZI the same way, except for a very minor difference. ![]() GI For GI, there is some separation between the two lower strokes and the upper cluster. ![]() ZI For ZI, the lower strokes and the upper cluster are merged together. It’s common for GI to be written this way, but never ZI, because it would be too easily mistaken for GI. The cluster of reverse cunei for zi is essentially the ŠE (grain) sign. Še (or niga, “fatted”) is often used in a compressed form, including the one shown in zi. As illustrated by a couple of administrative tablets from the CDLI, other scribes were careful not to use the compressed še cluster for zi so that it wouldn’t be confused for gi. This scribe, however, does it just to mess with your head. He also uses every variation for the še cluster form that he can think of. Click here for some examples. But he gives a hint to his intentions by writing the še cluster for zi in the exact same way that he writes the še cluster for niga in line r11 below. ![]() r8. kiri3 kiri3 na-la-ba-ni-[ur#] la2-la2-{e} en# Nose nose man-not-his-[servant] (enemy) throttle (plural) lord The line is translated as “. . . throttle each other” because the sign for “throttle” is written twice, indicating plural. As can be seen above, the two signs for “throttle” are written between the signs for “enemy” and “lord.” If it were only the enemy who was doing the throttling, it would be written in a subject-object-verb sequence: enemy lord throttle. The phrase “nose to nose” also suggests a reciprocal battle, like “toe to toe” and “man to man.” When I first started translating this tablet, I saw the sign la2 and thought, “Wouldn’t it be funny if someone was actually being throttled?” It’s such a cartoonish word, throttle. But I thought it unlikely that the sign was being used this way. I was sure that one of the many other definitions of la2 was the one being used because there aren’t any examples in Sumerian literature of someone being throttled. Until now. Note: As it turns out, I found two other stories where someone is being throttled. See The Princess Wife and The Great Fatted Jackass on this website. ![]() r9. e-ne-eĝ3 (ES, inim) gaba-ri ka-{ba}-ab ze2-eĝ3 ze2-eĝ3 (ES, šum2, twice) en Oath adversary mouth-opened give (plural) lord ![]() r10. še-gu7 ĝeš-ur3 ne maḫX!/u5? gu7-ka be6 Grain-fodder abandon (a claim) this great/all food-mouth (eating) to diminish When I originally translated this line, I supplied the personal pronouns (“Iwill abandon/ I will not eat”) which is standard procedure in translating Sumerian. But it seemed odd that the scribe, who is usually pretty good about keeping up with his personal pronouns, doesn’t include a single one in this sentence. It must be remembered that Lu-mah is being strangled when he says these words. In the above line, he manages to open his mouth to speak. Although “to open the mouth” is a Sumerian convention meaning “to say,” nowhere else in the story does anyone deem it necessary to open their mouth in order to speak, they just launch right into the spoken word. I therefore translated this line to suggest the strangulated cries of the bull as he is being throttled. ![]() r11. ama# nu-mu-nir-aš niga-en ĝa2 (ĝe26)-a maḫX še3- nu-mu [zu# nir#] ĝar Mother not-he-lordly-one fatted-lord. Me-to, great to not-he [know trust] place ![]() r12. dam a-ni ḫenburX kur geme2-ni geme2-tab ba Wife-his henbur mountain slave woman-his slave woman-companion(s) share r13. li ne ḫenbur2-ni gur10/tuku? Twig this (one) henburX-his reap/get Lines 12 and 13 are actually parts of the same line. The indentation of the second part means it is a continuation of the first. They are numbered separately for easy reference. tuku/gur10: I call it gur10 (KIN) because of the horizontal line at the top, which tuku does not have in line o9. The horizontal line is used on kiĝ2 (KIN) in line r16 (see below) but that one also includes the reverse cunei used to distinguish the sign. In any case, it doesn’t appreciably change the meaning of the text because tuku = get, gur10 = reap, so Lu-mah gets/reaps one single twig of his henbur grain. ![]() r14. ta (ES, a-na, interrogative) dili šag4 zu maḫX lugud2 What? one only. Stomach know great tight/reduced ![]() r15. munus!-kin sar ru-ru še iku-iku gana2 4 (diš). Prostitute garden offer(plural) grain field measurement (plural) field-four. mu lug-a du8-du8 He pasture-in amasses (grows fat, see line r5) See Munus-kin on this website. Three signs in-a-row (iku/gana2): denoting “acres” (plural), and designating Field #4. Iku, translated as “acre” = 3600 sq. meters, approximately 90% of an acre. ![]() The three iku/gana2 signs seem to lack bold vertical strokes on the right, the way it is written elsewhere in the drawing, but these lines can be seen on the original tablet. I added the word “again” to the phrase “he grows fat again.” In the above line, “stomach know great tight/reduced” is interpreted to mean “hunger,” in the same way that “mouth” and “food” together means “to eat.” But it also suggests a comical reduction in the bull’s waistline, to contrast with line r5 where he grows visibly fatter during the feast. By adding the word “again,” both bases are covered. ![]() Left: 4 (diš), which represents the number 4. Center: The sign ninda, which means “food.” It starts out as a pictograph of a bowl. Over time, it becomes more abstract and simplified until it eventually resembles the number four. Ninda is the same sign as ĝar, meaning “to place,” which is the way it is used at the end of r11 above. Right: 4 (diš), as written on this line. The scribe has been working the “5” angle throughout the story (Grain Field #5, Pasture #5, and five big bowls of mash. . . ). It has all been leading up to this: “Grain Field #4!” On a literary tablet which thus far has no numbers (the number 5 has previously been disguised as i), it would be logical to read this sign as a word, as ĝar or niĝ2. It is actually the number 4(diš). See a tablet that has niĝ2 and 4(diš) written side by side. The scribe puns with numbers for the same reason that he puns with words, to obscure the meaning of the text. ![]() r16. lu2 kiĝ2 du ak [lug] mu ĝen du7-lum [x] Man work go do. Pasture he walk complete-satisfied r17. mu usar e-ne-[eĝ3 (ES, inim)-[bal?] He neighbor woman converse ![]() r18. lu2 nu- kal-la munus nu-zid [x] Man not- strong woman not-virtuous In Sumerian literature, you never get to hear about a woman who is notvirtuous. The ETCSL shows 47 entries for munus zid: woman right (and true). There are zero entries for munus nu-zid, woman not-right (or true). [Rest of the tablet missing] ![]() Detail from the “Peace” side of the Standard of Ur. The king (left, drawn larger to signify his greater importance) drinks with his cronies while being attended by two servants. © 2008 All rights reserved. The copyright not withstanding, The Great Fatted Bull is freely available for personal and academic use. The copyright is mainly to insure that nobody claims my work as their own, and to guarantee the free circulation of the story. Note: The professional looking fonts displayed on these pages are courtesy of the ePSD; the others are my own. ————————————————————————————————————————- Appendix A: Summary of the different ways the meaning of the text is obscured: 1) The mahX encoding of the tablet hides the main context of the story (lugal, king). Technical Note: Of 3,271 citations, the ePSD gives one instance where mah2 is used as an alternative sign for mah; and the instance is archaic (500 – 1,000 years before this tablet was written) so it hardly counts. It may even be a scribal error, ancient or modern. The fact that mah2 is used as an alternative sign for mah only once in 2,000 years is somewhat surprising. The Sumerian language was syllabic, based on syllables, rather than individual sounds (letters), like English. If a scribe didn’t know the sign for a particular word, he would “spell it out” using signs for the syllables that he already knew. In this way, signs with the same (or similar) pronunciations were often used interchangeably, so one would expect that mah was used more often as an alternative sign for mah2, and vice versa (the PSD shows 1,000 citations for mah2 (cow) and none where mah is used as an alternative sign.) The reason these two signs were not used interchangeably is because they were both well-known signs with two very different definitions (mah=great, supreme, majestic; mah2=cow) that were not easily confused for each other. The numbers, 3,270 to 1, indicate just how unlikely it is that the sign mah2 would be given the meaning of mah, “great.” To write mah2 for mah once could be a scribal error (a typo), but the sign is used consistently eight different times on this tablet. It was not done out of ignorance, by someone who didn’t know any better, because the scribe is clearly a master of the language and he would not make such a careless mistake. Nor is it just wordplay like Su-ba (shepherd) because the scribe does not alter the meanings of su and ba in the rest of the story as he does with mah(2), and he would not be so heavy-handed with one single pun. So, if it’s not a scribal error and it’s not wordplay, then it must be “encoding,” a deliberate attempt to obscure the meaning of the text. I would suggest that the one sign (mahX) is the main reason why this tablet couldn’t be translated by the experts, even though a modern Sumerologist can translate anything written in the Sumerian language. I would further suggest that this one sign would also make the tablet difficult to read even for another Sumerian, and for the exact same reason. Even if the sign is initially given the pronuniciation of mah, it would be assumed it’s the usual mah2 (cow) and not mah (great). Since “cow” doesn’t make any sense in any of the sentences, the pronunciation would be discarded, and along with it, the hint to the secret context of the tablet (i.e.; Lu-mah = man great = lugal = king). It’s a very clever bit of encoding that allows the scribe to obscure the context of the story, making it difficult to read the other signs on the tablet, even though they are written in “plain Sumerian.” 2) Both Lu-mah and Su-ba, the two main protagonists of the story, are written as puns at the sign level, concealing their identities. 3) The very simple sign for bull, one half of the context, is “miswritten” four times out of five. 4) The setting of the story, Field #5, is written three different ways: field 5, the usual form, with the number following after the noun; 5 pasture, with the number written first; and field 4 (4 diš,), written as a different number form so that it looks like the word ĝar. The number five is also distinctive, written to look like the word i, with a 2 2 1 combination, rather than the usual 3 2 combination. This is because the scribe puns with numbers for the same reason that he puns with words, to obscure the meaning of the text. As can be seen from the above four notes: the two contexts, the two main protagonists, and the setting of the story – all are disquised in some way. It’s difficult to read a story when you don’t know what it’s about, or who it’s about, or where it’s taking place. 5) In addition totheking being obscured, two other important words, “fate” and “shepherd,” are used in their in their lesser known Emesal forms, na-aĝ2 and su8-ba. The ePSD shows 532 instances for nam, the usual word for fate, and 20 for na-aĝ2. (The scribe only uses nam in it’s prefix form (i.e., as part of the word “fatherhood,” nam-a-a)). There are 2,415 cases of sipadfor shepherd, and only 25 for su8-ba. Although the Emesal words are readable enough, they are not immediately recognizable like the signs nam and sipad. So why doesn’t the scribe use the standard signs for nam, lugal, and sipad? Because once he uses the signs for fate, kings, and shepherds on a tablet, then people would be interested in reading it and they’d be able to figure out the true meaning of the story. The tablet would no longer be so “inconspicuous.” The same applies to modern times. I would suggest that had the scribe used these three signs, this tablet never would have been classified as “Administrative,” rather than “Literature,” and someone else would have translated it long before I ever saw it (translating it would have been easy enough to do since the context would be known). This tablet has been hiding in plain sight ever since it was written, all because the scribe did not use those three signs. 6) Another important sign, geme2 slave woman, is disguised by using only two reverse cunei instead of the usual three, so that it looks like gu “cord.” People would be interested in reading about slave women, but not cord. 7) Other signs are disguised to make them difficult to read. For example, the sign for henbur is written with the IN cluster of reverse cunei rather than the še (grain) cluster. The sign for GI is written to look (almost) like ZI, 8) Verbs that mean “to accumulate,” which the scribe uses as a way of saying “to grow fat,” symbolizing Lu-mah’s greed, are very intrusive and they make the tablet difficult to read because they are being used in an unexpected manner. 9) The double-line rulings do not separate major divisions in the story, They are merely used to make the tablet look like a nondescript administration record. That is why it was originally classified this way by the CDLI. 10) The frequent Emesal words are not necessary. They are thrown in simply to keep the reader off balance. 11) The writing often has an unusual syntax. It is not always structured in the usual “Subject Object Verb” sequence of formal writing. This wasn’t done to obscure the meaning of the text; it’s the result of the scribe’s effort to crowd as much information as possible into every line, but it nonetheless makes the tablet difficult to read. Another unusual aspect of this tablet is the fact that almost every sign is a word, not just part of a multi-sign word, or a syllable in a longer word, but a whole word by itself. 12) The strings of three signs in-a-row, and the doubling of many of the others, makes the writing look nonsensical. Some of this is inevitable in Sumerian, where a few signs represent many words, but this tablet seems to have it in excess. 13) There are very few clarifying “grammar particles” on this tablet. If the scribe wanted to make the tablet more readable, he could have easily done so by adding some identifying prefixes and suffixes. Any one of these factors, by itself, does not make the tablet unreadable; but all of them together make the tablet difficult (if not impossible) to read, even for another Sumerian, until mahX is decoded. Note on the translation: For the record, I did not use a lot of literary license when translating this tablet, even though it would have been perfectly justified, considering that it is such a “literary” story. I did the transliteration (the Sumerian sign converted to the Sumerian word) according to strict CDLI standards. For the translation, however, (the translation is the Sumerian word converted to the English word) I allowed myself a little bit of latitude. Most of the literary license that I used is quite obvious, e.g., “fatso,” the use of contractions (“here’s” for “here is”) and the use of italics. Any other minor examples of poetic license that I used are denoted on this page. My criterion was to give the words of the scribe their fullest meaning without adding my own meanings (early in the translation I realized that nothing I could add to this great story would be an improvement). Simply put, my sole concern when translating this tablet was, “How would the scribe say it?” If he was standing in front of a modern American audience, how would he tell the story to them? This story was never meant to read, it was only meant to be spoken, so it should be spoken in the vernacular, the everyday language of the listeners. That’s why the use of italics and contractions is warranted for this tablet. I hope the scholars will forgive me for using some poetic license when translating this tablet. It is a poetic story, it deserves a poetic translation. ![]() Nisaba za3- mi2 Nisaba was the goddess who invented writing. She was the patron deity of the scribes. The scribes often signed their compositions with the words, Nisaba zami: “Nisaba be praised!” |