THE SLAYING OF MEN BY HATHOR: Its relationship to the Golden Calf Story in Exodus 32
By the Ancient Egyptian priests edited by Lewis Spense in his book Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends p. 166-168 the brackets are from A. Austin
In the following myth of Ra and Hathor the latter is plainly identified with the lunar deity:
“Long ago there dwelt on earth Ra, the sun-god, the creator of men and things, and ruler over the gods. For a time men gave to him the reverence due to his exalted position, but at length he began to grow old, and they mocked him, saying, ‘behold his bones are like silver, his limbs are like gold, his hair is like unto real lapis-lazuli”. Now Ra was very wroth when he heard their blasphemy, so he called together his followers, the gods and goddesses of his train, Shu and Tefnut, geb and Nut, and Hathor, the eye of Ra.
The gods assembled secretly, so that the race of mankind might know nothing of their meeting. And when they were all gathered about the throne of Ra, he said to Nun (Water), the oldest of the Gods:
‘O Nun, thou first-born of the Gods, whose son I’am , I pray thee give me thy counsel. The men whom I have created have conceived evil against me, even those men who have issued forth from mine eye. They have murmured in their hearts, saying ‘Behold ! the king has become old, his bones are like silver, his limbs like gold, his hair like real Lapis-lazuli (azure-blue)’. Tell me what shall be done unto them? For this have I sought thy counsel. I will not destroy them till thou hast spoken”.
Then answered Nun:
“ O thou great God, who art greater than he who made thee, thou son who art mightier than his father, do thou but turn thine eye upon them who blaspheme thee, and they shall perish from off the earth”.
Ra turned his eye upon the blasphemers, according to the counsel of Nun. But the men fled from the eye of Ra, and hid them in deserts and rocky places. Then did all the gods and goddesses give counsel to Ra that he should send his eye down among men to smite them sorely. And the eye of Ra descended in the form of the goddess Hathor, and smote the men in the desert and slew them. Then Hathor returned to the court of Ra, and when the King had given her welcome she said, “I have been mighty among mankind. It is well pleasing to my heart”.
All night Sekhmet [ same personage as Hathor. Beer is made by people of On, who mixed the mandrake, a plant having magical powers because it had human shape Pliny the Elder reports in his Natural History that Mandrakes were used as an anesthetic and sleeping agent], waded in the blood of those who had been slain, and on the morrow Ra feared that Hathor would slay the remnant of the human race, wherefore he said unto his attendants, “fetch to me swift messengers who can outstrip the wind”. When the messengers appeared the majesty of Ra bade them bring a great number of mandrakes from Elephantine, These Ra gave to Sekhmet, bidding her to pound them, and when this was done he mixed the mandrakes with some of the blood of those whom Hathor had slain. [In Exodus 32 story Moses reverses The slaying of Men story in part and pounds the Golden calf into powered and makes the people who worship it drink it then are slain]. Meanwhile servant-maids were busy preparing beer from barley, and into this Ra poured the mixture. Thus were seven thousands jars of beer were made.
In the morning Ra bade his attendants carry the beer to the place where Hathor would seek to slay the remnant of mankind, and there pour it out. For the sun-god said within himself, “I will deliver mankind out of her hands”.
And it came to pass that a dawn Hathor reached the place where the beer lay, flooding the fields four spans deep. She was pleased with her beautiful reflection, which smiled at her from the floods; and so deeply did she drink of the beer that she became drunken, and was no more able to destroy men.
Henceforward festivals were celebrated with high revelry in commemoration of this event. [Therefore I see the festival of eating drinking and indulge in revelry to the Golden calf Exodus 32:1-9 as a celebration of Hathor being stopped from killing all mankind. However, Moses labels them stiff-necks analogous to the silver bones and limbs of gold and kills them].
There is no doubt that in this myth the beer represents the annual rise of the Nile, and if further evidence be required than that contained in the story, it lies in the fact that the Intoxication festivals of Hathor fall in the moth of Thoth, the first month of the inundation.
The vengeance of Ra is doubtless the plagues [no coincidence The Golden Calf brought Plague from God Exodus 32:35] and starvation which accompany the dry season immediately preceding the rise of the river. The eye of Ra-that is Hathor-must be either the sun or the moon; but Ra himself is the sun-god, therefore Hathor is most probably the moon. It must be borne in mind, of course, that the Egyptians believed the moon willfully to prevent the inundation, and thus were likely to regard her as the source of disasters arising from the drought. It is evident, too, that the eye of Ra wrought havoc among men during the night-“Day dawned, after this goddess had been slaughtering men as she went upstream”.
Notes: Please read the next related essay: “Typesetting of the Golden Calf statue to Caesars’s Statue”
It should be note that scholars have already made the comparison of the biblical plague in which Egyptian water is turned to blood (Exodus 7:14-25 precedes by the composition of Hathor slaying of men dyes a lake of beer blood red see Did Moses Exist By D.M Murdock p.209. Maybe when we get to Exodus 32 the myth is just recycled.
The front part of Moses original name was Thut-mose or Ra-mose, just for your info.
At other times Israel and Samaria made the Calf-Idol out of silver & Gold see Hosea 8:4 and Hosea 10:5 just like they deck the Christmas tree from gold & silver see Jeremiah 10:1-10.
At certain points in time until the end of the middle Kingdom silver was considered more valuable than gold and their supply was in low in supply locally until the Egyptian conquest in Asia during the Eighteenth dynasty when Moses comes on the scene (Ancient Egyptian material and Industries By A Lucas p.247-249.
The classical Greeks paid for Egyptian grain with silver from their mines ( Black Spark White Fire By R. Poe p.128.
By the Ancient Egyptian priests edited by Lewis Spense in his book Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends p. 166-168 the brackets are from A. Austin
In the following myth of Ra and Hathor the latter is plainly identified with the lunar deity:
“Long ago there dwelt on earth Ra, the sun-god, the creator of men and things, and ruler over the gods. For a time men gave to him the reverence due to his exalted position, but at length he began to grow old, and they mocked him, saying, ‘behold his bones are like silver, his limbs are like gold, his hair is like unto real lapis-lazuli”. Now Ra was very wroth when he heard their blasphemy, so he called together his followers, the gods and goddesses of his train, Shu and Tefnut, geb and Nut, and Hathor, the eye of Ra.
The gods assembled secretly, so that the race of mankind might know nothing of their meeting. And when they were all gathered about the throne of Ra, he said to Nun (Water), the oldest of the Gods:
‘O Nun, thou first-born of the Gods, whose son I’am , I pray thee give me thy counsel. The men whom I have created have conceived evil against me, even those men who have issued forth from mine eye. They have murmured in their hearts, saying ‘Behold ! the king has become old, his bones are like silver, his limbs like gold, his hair like real Lapis-lazuli (azure-blue)’. Tell me what shall be done unto them? For this have I sought thy counsel. I will not destroy them till thou hast spoken”.
Then answered Nun:
“ O thou great God, who art greater than he who made thee, thou son who art mightier than his father, do thou but turn thine eye upon them who blaspheme thee, and they shall perish from off the earth”.
Ra turned his eye upon the blasphemers, according to the counsel of Nun. But the men fled from the eye of Ra, and hid them in deserts and rocky places. Then did all the gods and goddesses give counsel to Ra that he should send his eye down among men to smite them sorely. And the eye of Ra descended in the form of the goddess Hathor, and smote the men in the desert and slew them. Then Hathor returned to the court of Ra, and when the King had given her welcome she said, “I have been mighty among mankind. It is well pleasing to my heart”.
All night Sekhmet [ same personage as Hathor. Beer is made by people of On, who mixed the mandrake, a plant having magical powers because it had human shape Pliny the Elder reports in his Natural History that Mandrakes were used as an anesthetic and sleeping agent], waded in the blood of those who had been slain, and on the morrow Ra feared that Hathor would slay the remnant of the human race, wherefore he said unto his attendants, “fetch to me swift messengers who can outstrip the wind”. When the messengers appeared the majesty of Ra bade them bring a great number of mandrakes from Elephantine, These Ra gave to Sekhmet, bidding her to pound them, and when this was done he mixed the mandrakes with some of the blood of those whom Hathor had slain. [In Exodus 32 story Moses reverses The slaying of Men story in part and pounds the Golden calf into powered and makes the people who worship it drink it then are slain]. Meanwhile servant-maids were busy preparing beer from barley, and into this Ra poured the mixture. Thus were seven thousands jars of beer were made.
In the morning Ra bade his attendants carry the beer to the place where Hathor would seek to slay the remnant of mankind, and there pour it out. For the sun-god said within himself, “I will deliver mankind out of her hands”.
And it came to pass that a dawn Hathor reached the place where the beer lay, flooding the fields four spans deep. She was pleased with her beautiful reflection, which smiled at her from the floods; and so deeply did she drink of the beer that she became drunken, and was no more able to destroy men.
Henceforward festivals were celebrated with high revelry in commemoration of this event. [Therefore I see the festival of eating drinking and indulge in revelry to the Golden calf Exodus 32:1-9 as a celebration of Hathor being stopped from killing all mankind. However, Moses labels them stiff-necks analogous to the silver bones and limbs of gold and kills them].
There is no doubt that in this myth the beer represents the annual rise of the Nile, and if further evidence be required than that contained in the story, it lies in the fact that the Intoxication festivals of Hathor fall in the moth of Thoth, the first month of the inundation.
The vengeance of Ra is doubtless the plagues [no coincidence The Golden Calf brought Plague from God Exodus 32:35] and starvation which accompany the dry season immediately preceding the rise of the river. The eye of Ra-that is Hathor-must be either the sun or the moon; but Ra himself is the sun-god, therefore Hathor is most probably the moon. It must be borne in mind, of course, that the Egyptians believed the moon willfully to prevent the inundation, and thus were likely to regard her as the source of disasters arising from the drought. It is evident, too, that the eye of Ra wrought havoc among men during the night-“Day dawned, after this goddess had been slaughtering men as she went upstream”.
Notes: Please read the next related essay: “Typesetting of the Golden Calf statue to Caesars’s Statue”
It should be note that scholars have already made the comparison of the biblical plague in which Egyptian water is turned to blood (Exodus 7:14-25 precedes by the composition of Hathor slaying of men dyes a lake of beer blood red see Did Moses Exist By D.M Murdock p.209. Maybe when we get to Exodus 32 the myth is just recycled.
The front part of Moses original name was Thut-mose or Ra-mose, just for your info.
At other times Israel and Samaria made the Calf-Idol out of silver & Gold see Hosea 8:4 and Hosea 10:5 just like they deck the Christmas tree from gold & silver see Jeremiah 10:1-10.
At certain points in time until the end of the middle Kingdom silver was considered more valuable than gold and their supply was in low in supply locally until the Egyptian conquest in Asia during the Eighteenth dynasty when Moses comes on the scene (Ancient Egyptian material and Industries By A Lucas p.247-249.
The classical Greeks paid for Egyptian grain with silver from their mines ( Black Spark White Fire By R. Poe p.128.