Author Description

Following the studies by Jean Yoyotte in the 1980s, updating the documentation on Mefkat, a city in the western Delta was necessary, including a new edition of the block Cairo Egyptian Museum JE 45936 (Ritual of Mefky). The text on this fragment of a naos provides an accurate picture of the local geography and clarifies different aspects of the specific theology of Mefkat. The form of Hathor that was worshipped in Mefkat, associated with Osiris and Harsomtus in a triad of Osirian inspiration, had a strong bovine connotation. Described as the ba of Isis, the Shining One or the Golden One, Hathor of Mefkat was a cow, a form of Isis whose head, cut off by her son Horus, was replaced by a cow's head, in the same way as in the tale of "The Contendings of Horus and Seth". This etiological myth is also found, with minor changes, in other sanctuaries of Hathor of Mefkat, identifiable in northern Upper Egypt and the Eastern delta. This monograph is a revised version of a doctoral thesis defended at the University of Lille in 2009. It presents a new translation of and commentary on the Ritual of Mefky, and then analyzes the toponym Mefkat, its origin and location, as well as the different facets of the local religion.