Bat is a cow goddess in

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

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 Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

. By the time of the Middle Kingdom, after the unification of

Lower Egypt Lower Egypt ( ') is the northernmost region of Egypt, which consists of the fertile Nile Delta between Upper Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea, from El Aiyat, south of modern-day Cairo, and Dahshur. Historically, the Nile River split into sev ...

and

Upper Egypt Upper Egypt ( ', shortened to , , locally: ) is the southern portion of Egypt and is composed of the Nile River valley south of the delta and the 30th parallel North. It thus consists of the entire Nile River valley from Cairo south to Lake N ...

, her identity and attributes were subsumed within that of the goddess

Hathor Hathor (, , , Meroitic language, Meroitic: ') was a major ancient Egyptian deities, goddess in ancient Egyptian religion who played a wide variety of roles. As a sky deity, she was the mother or consort of the sky god Horus and the sun god R ...

,Wilkinson, Richard H. ''The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt'', p.172 Thames & Hudson. 2003. a similar goddess worshipped 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 The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic ( years ago) ( ), also called the Old Stone Age (), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehist ...

cattle herding cultures. Bat was the chief goddess of Seshesh, otherwise known as Hu or Diospolis Parva, the 7th nome of

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) include depictions of the goddess in bovine form. In other instances she was pictured as a celestial bovine creature surrounded by stars, or as a woman. More commonly, Bat was depicted on

amulet An amulet, also known as a good luck charm or phylactery, is an object believed to confer protection upon its possessor. The word "amulet" comes from the Latin word , which Pliny's ''Natural History'' describes as "an object that protects a perso ...

s, 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 Cults are social groups which have unusual, and often extreme, religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals. Extreme devotion to a particular person, object, or goal is another characteristic often ascribed to cults. The term ...

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-shaped

musical instrument A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make Music, musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person ...

,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:. :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. 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 God (male deity), 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 prehistoric Egypt, prehist ...

References

External links