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The wild bull was a symbol of virility, strength, and authority.
Sites in the Fayum and the Western Desert provide evidence for the domestication of cattle, sheep, and goats from as early as 4800 BC. Hundreds of petroglyphs of the Naqada I-II era (c.3800-3500 BC) feature the hunting and herding of horned animals, and faunal remains from Hierakonpolis reveal that the meat of wild game was a popular addition to the diet of the elite. The cattle most commonly appearing in rock-art have long, lyre-shaped, forward-pointing horns suggesting they were bred from animals such as the wild aurochs.
Throughout Egyptian history, long-horned cattle appeared in formalised agricultural scenes in tombs and on funerary papyri, but the depictions of the herds which symbolised the wealth of a nobleman’s estate suggest that short-horned cattle became more common from the Fifth Dynasty, possibly the result of interbreeding with introductions from Syria–Palestine.
Short-horns and hornless or polled cattle predominate in domestic herds from the Hyksos Period, and hornless, hump-backed zebu were introduced during the New Kingdom. However, in all periods long-horned beasts were apparently preferred for divine offerings, although this might be a false impression as images of funerary and temple rituals often repeated traditional themes and forms.
The wild bull
Early scenes of the hunt indicate that wild cattle were the most prestigious of game animals. The wild bull was a symbol of virility, strength and authority, becoming associated with the victorious king.
On the Hunters Palette, a double-headed bull may represent the duality of the Egyptian kingship, and on the Narmer Palette the king is shown as a bull trampling his enemy while breaking down the wall of a fortified settlement with his horns. Several New Kingdom kings adopted bull-related epithets within their royal titulary. In Year 2 of his reign, Amenhotep III, who claimed to be both ‘Strong Bull’ and ‘Sharp of Horns’, issued a series of scarabs commemorating a hunt in which he killed 96 wild bulls, symbolic of royal power.
Bat
At the top of the Narmer Palette, the king’s serekh is protected by the head of the cow deity Bat (‘Female Spirit’).
The cow-eared human face surmounted by long, inward curving horns appears on the standard erected over shrines depicted on Predynastic pottery, often accompanied by female ‘dancers’ whose arms are raised in imitation of Bat’s horns.
The same standard represents the Seventh Upper Egyptian or Sistrum Nome, and the Bat emblem often topped the handle of the sacred rattle.
The highly stylised horns flanking a shrine housing the uraeus serpent or Eye of Ra prove that there was an early link between cattle and the solar cult. Another manifestation of Ra’s Eye was the ancient bovine goddess Mehet-Weret (‘Great Flood’), who represented the celestial waters traversed by Ra every day. The funerary bed from Tutankhamun’s tomb represents Mehet-Weret as a cow with tall, lyriform horns supporting the sun’s disc.
Hathor
Bat’s attributes and imagery were subsumed into the nature of the goddess Hathor, and her emblem became a common form of decoration for the column capitals in Hathor’s temples.
In her nurturing role, Hathor was envisaged as a cow with the sun’s disc resting between her lyre-shaped horns, and at Deir el-Bahri the Hathor cow is shown wearing a Bat-amulet around her neck. Spell 148 in the Book of the Dead invokes the celestial herd of traditionally long-horned cattle, comprising seven cows known as ‘the Seven Hathors’, accompanied by the Great Bull of the West, representing the sky. The Seven Hathors were viewed as deities of fate, who were present at auspicious births: at Dendera they took the role of fairy godmothers at the birth of Hathor’s son Harsomtus.
Horns hieroglyph
The horns hieroglyph wp represented the concept of ‘to open’, as in the name of the ancient jackal-god Wepwawet (‘the Opener of Ways’), who guided the deceased on the paths of the netherworld. His standard may be shown preceding the king into battle, as on the ivory label of the First Dynasty King Den from the royal cemetery of Abydos. The horns glyph was also used in words associated with opening or separation. Childbirth was described as ‘opening the womb’, while the Opening of the Mouth revivification ritual performed on the dead body may derive from the midwife’s stimulation of a child’s first breath. In the Litany of Ra, inscribed in the burial chamber of Thutmose III (KV34), one of the manifestations of the sun-god is portrayed as a cow-headed spirit named as the one ‘who causes to breathe’. The term wepet renpet, ‘the Opening of the Year’, refers to the beginning or first day of the Egyptian New Year, and, in the sense of ‘divide’ or ‘distinguish between’, wp suggests judgement or decision too.
Horned headdress
The wp hieroglyph was most obviously used for ‘horns’, and by association, ‘brow’ or ‘forehead’, but it also signified the top of the head and what was worn on it, such as a wig or headdress. From New Kingdom times, the Apis bull, worshipped from as early as the First Dynasty as the earthly incarnation of Ptah of Memphis, was shown wearing the sun-disc with a uraeus serpent between his horns.
The same insignia is worn by the Mnevis bull, the manifestation of Ra of Heliopolis. This solar significance was acknowledged by Akhenaten, who decreed that the bulls of Ra should be buried at Amarna, though no Mnevis burial has been found there. The horned disc, one of the most ancient of divine crowns, was worn by several goddesses, significantly Hathor and Isis.
Horns of different shapes, in combination with emblems such as feathers and serpents, decorated the many different crowns and diadems worn by kings and deities. From the Middle Kingdom, Amun of Thebes, who was usually represented anthropomorphically, was syncretised with Ra to create the supreme solar and royal deity Amun-Ra, whose sacred animal was another horned beast, the ram. The horns of goats, sheep, and other wild animals will be discussed in the next issue.
Images: Hilary Wilson, unless otherwise stated
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