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Pottery vessel, 14cm high.

The applied decoration possibly shows Hathor’s cow horns enclosing the sun’s disc.

The item is believed to date to the Second Intermediate Period (1650-1550 BC).

Hathor vases probably contained wine or milk drunk at Hathor festivals. Hathor was a goddess of drunkenness but the milk aspect is supported by the fact that temple estates kept cows for holy milk. For more information and references see Pudleiner 2001.

Such vases seem to have been used from the Middle Kingdom to contain wine or milk. Festivals of Hathor seemed to have contained an element of drunkenness but on many temple estates cows were kept to produce holy milk.

Bibliography

Pudleiner, R., 2001. Hathor on the Thoth Hill = Hathor sur le Mont Thoth Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts. Abteilung Kairo,  57, 239-245.

W1284a another Hathor vessel in the collection

Information on Hathor 

 

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