Hello and welcome back to the History of Egypt podcast, a mini episode, Hathor Festivities.

This is part three of 12 in our 12-month examination of the Egyptian religious year, its festivals and its rituals.

You will find parts 1 and 2 titled New Year's Festivities and Opet Festivities, respectively.

Today's episode contains references to sexual material,

specifically the attributes of male sexual potency that accompanied a particular god of fertility.

You can skip this section if you wish with no loss of the narrative.

Now then, on with the show.

The third month of the Egyptian year took place around early October in our calendar.

This month was called Hathor, although in different periods it could also be called Athir, which is just a variation on Hathor.

As you can guess, this month was theoretically dedicated to the goddess Hathor, the lady of Biblos, the mistress of fertility,

and occasionally the destroyer of mankind. Hathor, one of my personal favorites, Hathor, probably

ancient Egypt's equivalent of Beyoncé. Surprisingly, the month of Hathor doesn't actually feature

any major festivals to Hathor.

It has festivals to Isis, who in the New Kingdom and later sort of replaced Hathor

as one of the major fertility and motherhood goddesses.

But the month of Hathor is weirdly light on celebrations of the goddess herself.

In fact, the month of Hathor is pretty light on major

festivals altogether. Why is this? Well, Hathor had already had her great festival for the year,

the festival of drunkenness at New Year, which was a ritual celebration and remembrance of the

time when the goddess, in her guise as Sarkmit the powerful

one, nearly drove mankind to extinction and destruction. For some reason, the month actually called

Hothor was shunted back to third place, but the goddess herself was still riding high on the

...