Bat - Hathor emblem from a sistrum MET DP311613 (cropped)

Bat is a

cow Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult ma ...

goddess in

Egyptian mythology Egyptian mythology is the collection of myths from ancient Egypt, which describe the actions of the Egyptian gods as a means of understanding the world around them. The beliefs that these myths express are an important part of ancient Egyp ...

who was depicted as a human face with cow ears and horns or as a woman. Evidence of the worship of Bat exists from the earliest records of the religious practices in ancient Egypt. By the time of the Middle Kingdom, after the unification of Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt, her identity and attributes were subsumed within that of the goddess

Hathor Hathor ( egy, ḥwt-ḥr, lit=House of Horus, grc, Ἁθώρ , cop, ϩⲁⲑⲱⲣ, Meroitic: ) 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 sk ...

,Wilkinson, Richard H. ''The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt'', p.172 Thames & Hudson. 2003. a similar goddess worshiped in another nome. The imagery of Bat persisted throughout the history of ancient Egypt on the sistrum, a sacred instrument that remained associated with religious practices.

Worship

The worship of Bat dates to earliest times in ancient Egypt and may have its origins in Late Paleolithic cattle herding cultures. Bat was the chief goddess of Seshesh, otherwise known as Hu or Diospolis Parva, the 7th nome of

Upper Egypt Upper Egypt ( ar, صعيد مصر ', shortened to , , locally: ; ) is the southern portion of Egypt and is composed of the lands on both sides of the Nile that extend upriver from Lower Egypt in the north to Nubia in the south. In ancient E ...

Name

The epithet, Bat, may be linked to the word '' ba'' with the feminine suffix 't'. A person's ''ba'' roughly equates to one's personality or emanation and often is translated as 'soul'.

Depictions in ancient Egyptian culture

Although it was rare for Bat to be clearly depicted in painting or sculpture, some notable artifacts (such as the upper portions of the

Narmer Palette The Narmer Palette, also known as the Great Hierakonpolis Palette or the Palette of Narmer, is a significant Egyptian archeological find, dating from about the 31st century BC, belonging, at least nominally, to the category of cosmetic palettes. ...

) include depictions of the goddess in bovine form. In other instances she was pictured as a celestial

bovine Bovines (subfamily Bovinae) comprise a diverse group of 10 genera of medium to large-sized ungulates, including cattle, bison, African buffalo, water buffalos, and the four-horned and spiral-horned antelopes. The evolutionary relationship betwe ...

creature surrounded by stars, or as a woman. More commonly, Bat was depicted on amulets, with a human face, but with bovine features, such as the ears of a cow and the inward-curving horns of the type of cattle first herded by the Egyptians. Bat became strongly associated with the sistrum and the center of her cult was known as the "Mansion of the Sistrum".Hart, George. ''The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses'', p. 47 2nd Edition Routledge. 2005. The sistrum is an

ankh Progressive ankylosis protein homolog (ANK ilosis H omolog) is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''ANKH'' gene. This gene encodes a multipass transmembrane protein that is expressed in joints and other tissues and controls pyrophosphat ...

-shaped musical instrument,Wilkinson, Richard. H. ''Reading Egyptian Art''p. 213 Thames and Hudson 1992. which was one of the most frequently used sacred instruments in ancient Egyptian temples. Some instruments would include depictions of Bat, with her head and neck as the handle and base and with its rattles placed between her horns. The imagery is repeated on each side of the instrument, having two faces, as mentioned in the

Pyramid Texts The Pyramid Texts are the oldest ancient Egyptian funerary texts, dating to the late Old Kingdom. They are the earliest known corpus of ancient Egyptian religious texts. Written in Old Egyptian, the pyramid texts were carved onto the subterrane ...

:. :I am Praise; I am Majesty; I am Bat with Her Two Faces; I am the One Who Is Saved, and I have saved myself from all things evil.R. O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Oxford 1969, p. 181, Utterance 506

Relation to Hathor

The imagery of Bat as a divine cow was remarkably similar to that of

, a parallel goddess from another nome. In two dimensional images, both goddesses often are depicted straight on, facing the onlooker and not in profile in accordance with the characteristic Egyptian convention. The significant difference in their depictions is that the horns of Bat curve inward and those of Hathor curve outward slightly. It is possible that this could be based in the different breeds of cattle herded at different times.

's cult center was in the 6th Nome of

, adjacent to the 7th nome where Bat was the cow goddess, which may indicate that once they were the same goddess in

Predynastic Egypt Prehistoric Egypt and Predynastic Egypt span the period from the earliest human settlement to the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period around 3100 BC, starting with the first Pharaoh, Narmer for some Egyptologists, Hor-Aha for others, with ...

. By the Middle Kingdom, the cult of

had again absorbed that of Bat in a manner similar to other mergers in the

Egyptian pantheon Ancient Egyptian deities are the gods and goddesses worshipped in ancient Egypt. The beliefs and rituals surrounding these gods formed the core of ancient Egyptian religion, which emerged sometime in prehistory. Deities represented natural f ...

References

External links