Bat
Egyptian · deity · old kingdom · deity
Bat is on the Narmer Palette and then she is gone. The frontal cow-faces at the top of that object — the founding image of the unified Egyptian state — are generally read as hers, which makes her one of the earliest identifiable gods in the country; and within a millennium Hathor, who does the same job with the same animal in the next district over, has taken her cult, her face and her instrument. The one surviving difference is the horns. Bat's turn in; Hathor's turn out.
Domains
- cattle
Relations
- counterpart of: Hathor
Sources
- Reference treatments of Bat, of her emblem and of her absorption into Hathor.