ATHOR, ii!thor, ATHYR, Wth1r, or HA THOR, hii!thor (Egyptian Hat-hoc). An Egyp tian goddess. The original seat of her cult seems to have been Denderah in Upper Egypt. where the ruins of her famous temple are still to be seen, but at a very early period her worship spread over the whole of Egypt. Iler primitive fetish was, apparently, a buffalo's skull raised on a pole, and from this was developed the sacred Athor column, which plays an important part in Egyptian architecture, bearing, as capi tal, a female head with the ears of a cow. The same head forms the central ornament of the sistrum, or rattle for temple music, which ap pears among the insignia of this goddess. in later times Athor was regarded as the goddess of music and the dance, of joy and love. By the Greeks, she was identified with Aphrodite (Venus). Earlier, however, she was conceived as a eosinical divinity, typifying the sky, and the traditional explanation of her name as mean ing 'the house of horns' (i.e. of the sun) is
a result of this conception. The world is fre quently represented in the form of her sacred animal, the cow, bearing between her horns the sun-god or his disk. In Egyptian mythological texts, Athor is sometimes called the mother of the sun, which is daily born from the sky. As the nocturnal sky, she became the goddess of the dead, and, under the latest dynasties, de ceased women were supposed to become Athor, just as deceased men became Osiris. The repre sentations of Athor vary greatly. Usually she is depicted in the form of a WOOING with a cove's head. The third month of the Egyptian year (Athor) was named for this goddess. For illustration, see EGYPT.