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Nathor
Nile Goddess Statue
Ancient Goddess of the Nile Valley |
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Size:
7.25 inches high (18.42cm)
Material: Resin based material on polished wooden base
Weight (lbs): 1 lb
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Goddess
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$36.00
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Nathor:
Ancient Goddess of the Nile Valley
This Goddess replica is a composite of several images found scattered from Libya
to Egypt. Dated in the pre-dynastic period, they also appear on cave wall
paintings from Paleolithic Algeria. The culture that produced Her was a
sophisticated group of people who settled into small villages and gradually
domesticated cattle.
Her identity is a combination of the Ancient Bird and Serpent Goddess of
Regeneration and the Cow Horned Queen of Heaven represented by a category of
votive figurines called "Great Woman with Upraised Arms." The upraised
arms are a magical gesture of the evocation and appearance of the Deity. This
gesture is associated with the ancient female mystery rite of "drawing down
the Moon" and encountered also in the Egyptian hieroglyph for the Ka
(symbol of the soul).
This Goddess survived into the historical Egyptian pantheon in a variety of
forms and names. As Great Mother, of all the Gods, She was called Nut, Nuit or
Nathor. Both Nut/Nathor
and the Goddess Hathor were given the epithet "Cow of Heaven". Stories
and images of Nut
giving birth to Hathor, who bears upraised arms or
stylized horns, strengthen the Nut/Nathor/Hathor
connection. The primary link appears to be the lunar identity, which went from a
shared function to the primary attribute of Hathor. The association of the Moon
with women's menstrual cycles in which the "horns of the uterus" are
symbolized by sacred cow horns is one of the oldest religious symbolic
connections in human history. Though we cannot know for certain what name the
Pre-dynastic Egyptians called this image, we have chosen to use the ancient name
Nathor to designate Her based on these associations.
This image was found as a votive funerary offering and in Her form as the
Bird/Serpent Goddess of Regeneration may represent a spiritual guide for the
deceased. Such Goddesses took the spirits of the newly dead into the Cloudy
Realms to await new bodies for them to be reborn into this World.
The inside lids of later Egyptian sarcophagi were often decorated by paintings
of Nuit with arms uplifted. It was through Her body that the soul of the
deceased traveled in the Boat of the Ages.
As Hathor was also "the Opener of the Gateway of Dreams," this
function of spirit guide was not restricted to the dead, and such figurines
could have been given as a protection to people asleep or ill, or to newborn and
very young children.
Such practices find a familiar modern echo in the feminine-appearing Guardian
Angels with uplifted wings placed in nurseries and sickrooms even today.
more
Nile Goddess here
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