DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9059#0182
168 THE MONUMENTS OF UPPER EGYPT.
Hathor thus becomes the star which determines
and governs the periodical return of the year, *
which announces the rising of the river; she
is the star whose appearance at the eastern
horizon at the same moment as the rising sun
foretells the renewal of nature. Hathor then,
like the Aphrodite of the Greeks, is something
more than the goddess of beauty; the Hathor of
the Egyptians is the type of that universal har-
mony which is necessary to the well-being and
to the life of the world; what they desired to
personify in her was the ideal of all that is
beautiful.
Perhaps if the temple of Denderah were of
Pharaonic origin, and consequently free from all
Grecian influence, the inscriptions would cany
us no farther. But from the arrangements of
certain pictures, invariably placed opposite each
entrance door, and where the king himself is rep-
resented as offering to the Divinity a statuette
of truth,f Hathor is evidently intended to per-
* The Egyptian year commenced on the 21st July, the
day when Sothis and the Sun appear simultaneously in
the morning horizon.
t Truth is represented by a little statue of a female seat-
ed in a basket, her head crowned with a waving feather.
The king holds the basket in his outstretched hand, and
presents it to the goddess who stands before him.
Hathor thus becomes the star which determines
and governs the periodical return of the year, *
which announces the rising of the river; she
is the star whose appearance at the eastern
horizon at the same moment as the rising sun
foretells the renewal of nature. Hathor then,
like the Aphrodite of the Greeks, is something
more than the goddess of beauty; the Hathor of
the Egyptians is the type of that universal har-
mony which is necessary to the well-being and
to the life of the world; what they desired to
personify in her was the ideal of all that is
beautiful.
Perhaps if the temple of Denderah were of
Pharaonic origin, and consequently free from all
Grecian influence, the inscriptions would cany
us no farther. But from the arrangements of
certain pictures, invariably placed opposite each
entrance door, and where the king himself is rep-
resented as offering to the Divinity a statuette
of truth,f Hathor is evidently intended to per-
* The Egyptian year commenced on the 21st July, the
day when Sothis and the Sun appear simultaneously in
the morning horizon.
t Truth is represented by a little statue of a female seat-
ed in a basket, her head crowned with a waving feather.
The king holds the basket in his outstretched hand, and
presents it to the goddess who stands before him.