Chapter 3 Egypt

The great culture of ancient Egypt flourished between 5500 BCE and 30 BCE. In ancient Egyptian mythology both male and females were considered Priests. Though there was a sexual distinction, hieroglyphs record the religious hierarchy as all Priests. Within the Egyptian mythological texts Goddesses such as Isis, the Mother of Egypt and wife of Osiris considered the first Pharaoh of Egypt; Hathor the Sky Deity who helped the deceased humans enter the Duat (afterlife) held great importance. Hathor along with her Hathoric dancer Priestesses represented “music, dance, joy, love, sexuality and maternal care.”¹

Tomb paintings show the Pharaohs being suckled from the breasts of Isis drinking in the supreme power of Divinity. Thus, the Priestess’s role (as the Goddess) in ancient Egypt was not just a servant to her Divinity, but was thought to be the embodiment of the Goddess on earth. Her position within the temple hierarchy was vital. These two primeval Goddesses Isis and Hathor were all powerful and can boast Cleopatra as a devoted Priestess to both.

The Goddess Isis’ Priestesses would have served her as caretakers of the temple and by playing music and singing hymns in her honor. These Egyptian Priestesses would have also taken part in rituals to ensure fertility and the well-being of the land. Many of these rituals would also honor the deceased nobility and other influential personages. Throughout the day the Egyptian Priestesses as singers, musicians, and dancers performed many different rituals at the temple and in the temple complex.

In Atlantis, priestesses of the Goddess were gathering in circles of twelve to anchor the energy of peace and harmony. They were called the Sisterhood of the Rose. They later reemerged in ancient Egypt as priestesses of Isis, with rose being a sacred symbol of the Goddess Isis.²

Isis, the Goddess of Life and Magick, was the Goddess of l0,000 names and her Priestesses were among the most numerous and ancient. Egyptian mythology tells the tale of the Goddess Isis using her Magick to resurrect her beloved husband Osiris after he was killed by his brother Set. She also helped her son Horus win his battle against his uncle Set. She was clever and all powerful.

During the (Greek) Ptolemaic dynasty the Priestesses of Isis worked to spread the cult beyond Egypt and Greece into the Roman empire and turn it into one of the largest spiritual cults. Thus, of the many mysteries and religious cults in Rome, the one devoted to the Egyptian Goddess Isis was by far the most popular. It was said that it was the Goddess Isis herself who chose her Priestesses and that they were “experts in astrology, interpretation of dreams and conjuring of spirits.³

Isis’ Priestesses practiced abstinence and worshipped their Goddess throughout the day with prayer and ritual lifting the veil to reveal the Goddess to her followers. Why was the Goddess Isis and her Priestesses not only popular, but enduring? Though I cannot prove that what I have been told is true, there were functioning temples to honor Isis all the way up to World War II.

Could it have been her connection to the Virgin Mary? Isis, the Supreme mother of the universe so often portrayed just like the Madonna with child. Isis with Horus and Mary with Jesus. Is it religious coincidence that the same divinity was transformed by hierarchy to the new religious and cultural mandate? Art through the ages beautifully illustrates Isis and Mary as eternal Mothers cradling their newborn deities. Isis tenderly holds her son Horus who she protects from Set, his evil uncle. While Mary holds her son Jesus who she guards from King Herod. The ultimate maternal Goddesses. Images of Isis, Queen of the Heavens with stars surrounding her head like a glowing halo mimics similar images of Mary. Thus, to be a Priestess of Isis was to traverse the centuries carefully to survive and they did!

Priestesses still exist and practice within Temples and Covens today. One organization that has an international membership is The Fellowship of Isis (FOI), headquartered at Huntington (Clonegal) Castle in Ireland. The FOI is a peaceful society with members worldwide from all cultures, races and religions. The Priestesses of the FOI honor the Divine Feminine in all of Her forms and the good in all faiths. The FOI was founded on the Vernal Equinox of 1976 by Olivia Robertson and her brother Lawrence Durdin-Robertson and his wife Pamela. Since there are a growing number of people re-discovering the Goddess, the FOI has temples and devotees throughout the world. Anyone can join, as members or to enroll in the priesthood. Priestesses of Isis feel a close communion with the Goddess. For further information contact: http://fellowshipofisis.com/

Hathor, Goddess of Love and her Sacred Dancers

What is the allure for a dancer to embrace the sacred within? Is it just simply a moment in time or an experience that influences our destiny? Do the Muses push us toward our path? I believe we are all dancers in our hearts. Our bodies feel rhythms to which most of us will move our heads, others tap their feet while some of us release our inhibitions and let our bodies move in rhythmic expression. Dance movement gives us a creative connection to our inner spirit. It is liberating to our souls and healing to our mind and body. As Isadora Duncan observed, “the dancer’s body is simply the luminous manifestation of the soul.”

The beginnings of civilization and the evolution of communication into ritual to honor the seasons, animals, and elements brought us the earliest expression of sacred movement. Thus, such animated movement and spontaneous dance became a necessary element in ancient rituals for Temple Priestesses who honored the highest entities, Goddess and God.

Our ancestors knew how to communicate their joys, sorrows and spiritual desires through movement. Their bodies became the best instrument with which to express their desires, needs, and prayers. Movement evolved into a language of dance for communication with the forces of nature, joining the ancients to the mysterious and awesome powers of Deity. As ritual, stylized dance became part of every religious and social occasion such as birth, death, marriage, war, victory, harvest and hunting.

Not only was dance an integral part of ritual celebration, but it also developed into one of the primary Magickal tools for healing, exorcism, obtaining fertility, protection, forgiveness, etc. In time, dance came to be the province of religious specialists–Priestess, Priest and Shaman alike.

One after the other, ancient Priestesses left their temple cloisters to dance in ritual processions moving to freely choreographed aerobic and stylized phrases while banging tambourines, cills, rattles, flutes and sistrums. The dancers’ ritual energy conjured up an atmosphere of joyous festivity and magnificent pageantry. These sacrosanct visuals must have transfixed pilgrims and spellbound onlookers alike. How resplendent were these Priestesses in their flowing gossamer tunics and ornately be-ribboned hair styles? Each in blessed service to their Goddess.

Sacred, mystical or Magickal dancing are the embodiment of a powerful and focused inner spiritual motivation. To many sacred temple Priestess dancers such movements would have transported them into an inspirational meditation of motion. Sacred Ritual Dance was and still is the integration of the spirit to the mind which expresses the meditative voice within. Through dance many of the ancient Priestesses and now her modern counterparts channel the Divinity of their chosen Goddess.

Priestess dancers created a form of ritual whenever it was performed and experienced. Our ancient roots lay in the celebration of life’s splendid harmony, the panorama of the seasons, the mysteries of the moon cycles, the sadness of death and the eternal joy of rebirth. The Priestesses were mesmerized within the hypnotizing trance of spiraling dance.

The great Egyptian Goddess Hathor with her Magnificent Temple in Dendera Egypt housed many Priestesses. Though they were called upon at times for their Oracle advice they were mostly known as Sacred Processional Dancers, acrobatic dancers, musicians, singers, and actors. The definition of religious worship for these Hathoric Priestess dancers was to incorporate music and dance in extravagant pageantry as acts of praise to Hathor. One musical instrument, called a sistrum, which is a rattle-like instrument, was very important in the worship of Hathor. Many statues and hieroglyphs of Hathor that archeologists have discovered show her holding a sistrum. And today many modern Priestess dancers (such as myself) dance within our ritual processions ringing the sensuous vibrations of our sistrums in her honor.

Hathor’s Temple at Dendera is one of the best-preserved temples in Egypt and is a marvelous complex with intricately decorated rooms and corridors, fronted columns, crypts, chapel rooms, a birthing room and a sanctuary. Because of the archeological evidence we can clearly piece together the lives of these Dancing Priestesses whose memory still enchants.

Even within Hathor’s Temple there is a structure devoted to the honor of the great Goddess Isis.

The Temple of the Goddess Isis is situated behind the main temple near the sacred pool. It is small and not as decorative…⁴

Today, at every Full Moon, as they have for thousands of years, Goddess cultures still gather to celebrate the passage of another Moon cycle with ritual processions and spiraling dances that move to the rhythms of the Earth and Heavens.

It was in 9000-year-old cave paintings found in India, that dance was first depicted. Perhaps that is the oldest proof of the existence of dance. Dancing can be traced back to the 3^rd millennia BCE, when dance became an integral part of the Egyptians religious ceremonies and rituals. Musical instruments were used by Egyptian Priests/Priestesses as dancers mimicked important events – “stories of gods and cosmic patterns of moving stars”.⁵

The Egyptian Goddess Hathor among her many titles is known as the mistress of music and dance. Images of her musicians and Priestess dancers playing tambourines, harps, lyres, and sistrums all in Hathor’s honor appear on numerous temple reliefs and tomb paintings. The rattle-like sistrum, so essential to Hathor’s worship, has erotic implications that by extension referred to the creation of new life.

Many of Hathor’s annual festivals were ritually celebrated with drinking and processional dancing by her Hathoric Priestess dancers.

Revelers at these festivals may have aimed to reach a state of religious ecstasy, which was otherwise rare or nonexistent in ancient Egyptian religion. Graves-Brown suggests that celebrants in Hathor’s festivals aimed to reach an altered state of consciousness to allow them interact with the divine realm.⁶

Hathor’s Priestesses were also thought to be Prophetesses and were known as a “Prophet of Hathor.”⁷ And they were also known as Oracles.

Hathor’s priestesses wore patterned red dresses, long red scarves, and beaded menat necklaces.⁸

Within the Priestess cults of the Goddess Hathor there was also the ritual of weaving and the presentation of red cloth. There is an inscription at the Temple of Dendera which refers to women of the Priestess class that translates to: “She who unites with the Red Cloth”.⁹

Thus, dance was a necessary part of religious ritual life in the ancient world. During the Sed-Festival and Opet Festival in Egypt processions of both female and male dancers chanted and played musical instruments.

Hathor’s Priestesses who ritually danced (and even women who weren’t Priestesses) wore diaphanous flowing red robes and dresses, simple belted girdles, often made of beads or cowrie shells, allowing their bodies to move about freely. One can imagine such a spectacle. Sensuous dancing Priestesses moving in elaborate choreographed incense filled processions while musicians, also Priestesses, played rhythmic melodies on sistrums and drums creating an atmosphere of otherworldliness for all those who watched. The Priestesses would have seemed to the onlooker as being in a trance like state within the ritual moment. A text from the Temple of Edfu says of Hathor: “…the gods play the sistrum for her, the goddesses dance for her to dispel her bad temper.”¹⁰

The act of shaking a sistrum was also thought to protect the goddess and her subjects. This protection is made clear by scenes at the Temple of Hathor at Dendera that are captioned:

“I have taken the Seshseshet sistrum,

I grasp the sistrum and drive away the one who is hostile to Hathor, Mistress of Heaven

I dispel what is evil by means of the sistrum in my hand.”¹¹

Though it has not been proven definitively there were women of this era who wore very detailed tattoos. Archeologists have excavated various female mummies and this has sparked a controversary about whether these tattooed mummies were Priestesses of Hathor or not. The most famous of these tattooed mummies is Amunet, Priestess of the Goddess Hathor.

Amunet’s tattoos were located on her superior pubic region covering the lower part of her abdomen, on her mid frontal torso and directly inferior to her right breast. She also has tattoos superior to her elbow joint and on her left shoulder as well as on her thighs. Most of these tattoos are in the form of dashes, and dots and some form concentric circles on her abdomen.¹²

Many historians have dismissed these tattooed Priestesses as women of low status, prostitutes, royal concubines or dancing girls. However, they were found in Deir el-Bahari a royal and high-status burial site. Even before the discovery of these mummies, we still had clear evidence that Egyptians were tattooed from burial tomb paintings and artifacts. Perhaps the meaning behind these tattoo’s is something altogether different. Are they evidence that our ancestors had a more high-level awareness of healing with acupressure and neural pathways in a person’s body? Were the Priestesses administering a form of pain supervision? It is interesting to note that though male and female mummies are discovered in tombs, it was only females who were tattooed. The birth of children was vital to the success of all ancient civilizations, as it is today in our modern world. Is it possible that these tattoos on female bodies were meant to protect and assist women in this dangerous process? Are these examples of medical tattoos?

Previously tiny faience female figurines showing tattoo patterns on their thighs, wrists, abdomen, and upper body had been discovered in tombs and the tattoos on the newly discovered mummies were in many instances almost identical to the figurines.¹³

Suddenly it became obvious that the tiny figurines were actually depicting real tattoos and their meanings could be directly traced to the priestesses of Hathor.¹⁴

Some scholars believe that these figurines were fertility charms or amulets for the deceased to help guide them on their journey. Or did they represent Hathor herself as the Lady of the West who welcomes the deceased to the underworld? There are prejudices in the academic community when the role of the Priestess and her influence on society is discussed. But to myself and many other “herstorians” the role of the Priestess was not only meaningful but immensely formidable.

It is agreed though, that within the Temple walls Hathor’s Priestesses held an equal position to that of the male Priests. A rather unique concept during a time when women were considered inconsequential in many ways. Beyond being categorized as “Hathoric Dancers”, it is also plausible that they held medical knowledge that would have given them legitimate power in their own right.

Nubian women appear in Egyptian tomb and temple paintings as dancers for the goddess Hathor from the Middle Kingdom (2100-1900 BCE) through the Roman period (30 BCE-395 CE). These women performed wearing brightly colored leather skirts, cowrie shell belts, and displaying tattoos on their breasts, abdomens, and thighs. Recently, several tattooed, mummified female bodies have been excavated from the C-Group Nubian cemetery at Hierakonpolis, in Egypt. The dot and dash, lozenge-shaped tattoos found on those women are very similar to tattoos found on contemporaneous priestesses of Hathor buried at the royal funerary complex of the Middle Kingdom ruler, Mentuhotep II (2061-2010 BCE).¹⁵

Part of the initiation of a Priestess in Hator’s cult required a ritual known as “The Five Gifts of Hathor” in which the initiate would be asked to name five things that they were most grateful for while looking at the fingers of their left hand. It became a very important responsibility for a Priestess of Hathor to understand the importance of gratitude in their spiritual life. This ceremonial tradition was handed down orally and became a part of the daily life of each Priestess.

By naming the five things one was grateful for, and identifying them with the fingers of the left hand, one was constantly reminded of the good things in one’s life and this kept one from the ‘gateway sin’ of ingratitude from which, it was thought, all other sins followed. For the more affluent of Egypt, considering the Five Gifts would have been a way to keep from envying those more prosperous than oneself and a means by which one was reminded to be humble in the face of the gods.¹⁶