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Bat is acow goddess inEgyptian mythology 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 inancient Egypt. By the time of theMiddle Kingdom, after the unification ofLower Egypt andUpper Egypt, her identity and attributes were subsumed within that of the goddessHathor,[1] a similar goddess worshipped in anothernome. The imagery of Bat persisted throughout the history of ancient Egypt on thesistrum, a sacred instrument that remained associated with religious practices.
The worship of Bat dates to earliest times in ancient Egypt and may have its origins in LatePaleolithic cattle herding cultures. Bat was the chief goddess ofSeshesh, otherwise known as Hu or Diospolis Parva, the 7thnome ofUpper Egypt.
The epithet, Bat, may be linked to the wordba with the feminine suffix 't'.[2] A person'sba roughly equates to one's personality or emanation and often is translated as 'soul'.
Although it was rare for Bat to be clearly depicted in painting or sculpture, some notable artifacts (such as the upper portions of theNarmer Palette) include depictions of the goddess in bovine form. In other instances she was pictured as a celestialbovine creature surrounded by stars, or as a woman. More commonly, Bat was depicted onamulets, 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 thesistrum and the center of hercult was known as the "Mansion of theSistrum".[3] The sistrum is anankh-shapedmusical instrument,[4] 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 thePyramid Texts:.
The imagery of Bat as a divine cow was remarkably similar to that ofHathor, 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.
Hathor's cult center was in the 6thNome ofUpper Egypt, adjacent to the 7th nome where Bat was the cow goddess, which may indicate that once they were the same goddess inPredynastic Egypt. By theMiddle Kingdom, the cult ofHathor had again absorbed that of Bat in a manner similar to other mergers in theEgyptian pantheon.
