Editing Hathor (section)

===Relationship with royalty===

During the Early Dynastic Period, [[Neith]] was the preeminent goddess at the royal court,{{sfn|Lesko|1999|pp=48–49}} while in the Fourth Dynasty, Hathor became the goddess most closely linked with the king.{{sfn|Hollis|2009|p=2}} [[Sneferu]], the founder of the Fourth Dynasty, may have built a temple to her, and [[Neferhetepes]], a daughter of [[Djedefra]], was the first recorded [[priestess of Hathor]].{{sfn|Gillam|1995|p=215}} Old Kingdom rulers donated resources only to temples dedicated to particular kings or to deities closely connected with kingship. Hathor was one of the few deities to receive such donations.{{sfn|Goedicke|1978|pp=118–123}} Late Old Kingdom rulers especially promoted the cult of Hathor in the provinces, as a way of binding those regions to the royal court. She may have absorbed the traits of contemporary provincial goddesses.{{sfn|Morris|2011|pp=75–76}}

Many female royals, though not reigning queens, held positions in the cult during the Old Kingdom.{{sfn|Gillam|1995|pp=222–226, 231}} [[Mentuhotep&nbsp;II]], who became the first pharaoh of the Middle Kingdom despite having no relation to the Old Kingdom rulers, sought to legitimize his rule by portraying himself as Hathor's son. The first images of the Hathor-cow suckling the king date to his reign, and several priestesses of Hathor were depicted as though they were his wives, although he may not have actually married them.{{sfn|Gillam|1995|p=231}}{{sfn|Graves-Brown|2010|pp=135–136}} In the course of the Middle Kingdom, queens were increasingly seen as directly embodying the goddess, just as the king embodied Ra.{{sfn|Gillam|1995|p=234}} The emphasis on the queen as Hathor continued through the New Kingdom. Queens were portrayed with the headdress of Hathor beginning in the late Eighteenth Dynasty. An image of the [[sed festival]] of [[Amenhotep&nbsp;III]], meant to celebrate and renew his rule, shows the king together with Hathor and his queen [[Tiye]], which could mean that the king symbolically married the goddess in the course of the festival.{{sfn|Graves-Brown|2010|pp=132–133}}

[[Hatshepsut]], a woman who ruled as a pharaoh in the early New Kingdom, emphasized her relationship to Hathor in a different way.{{sfn|Lesko|1999|pp=105–107}} She used [[ancient Egyptian royal titulary|names and titles]] that linked her to a variety of goddesses, including Hathor, so as to legitimize her rule in what was normally a male position.{{sfn|Robins|1999|pp=107–112}} She built several temples to Hathor and placed her own [[Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut|mortuary temple]], which incorporated a chapel dedicated to the goddess, at [[Deir el-Bahari]], which had been a cult site of Hathor since the Middle Kingdom.{{sfn|Lesko|1999|pp=105–107}}

The preeminence of Amun during the New Kingdom gave greater visibility to his consort Mut, and in the course of the period, Isis began appearing in roles that traditionally belonged to Hathor alone, such as that of the goddess in the solar barque. Despite the growing prominence of these deities, Hathor remained important, particularly in relation to fertility, sexuality, and queenship, throughout the New Kingdom.{{sfn|Lesko|1999|pp=119–120, 178–179}}

After the New Kingdom, Isis increasingly overshadowed Hathor and other goddesses as she took on their characteristics.{{sfn|Lesko|1999|p=129}} In the [[Ptolemaic period]] (305–30 BC), when [[Greeks]] governed Egypt and [[Ancient Greek religion|their religion]] developed a complex relationship with that of Egypt, the [[Ptolemaic dynasty]] adopted and modified the Egyptian ideology of kingship. Beginning with [[Arsinoe&nbsp;II]], wife of [[Ptolemy&nbsp;II]], the Ptolemies closely linked their queens with Isis and with several Greek goddesses, particularly their own goddess of love and sexuality, [[Aphrodite]].{{sfn|Selden|1998|pp=312, 339}} Nevertheless, when the Greeks referred to Egyptian gods by the names of their own gods (a practice called ''[[interpretatio graeca]]''), they sometimes called Hathor Aphrodite.{{sfn|Wilkinson|2003|p=141}} Traits of Isis, Hathor, and Aphrodite were all combined to justify the treatment of Ptolemaic queens as goddesses. Thus, the poet [[Callimachus]] alluded to the myth of Hathor's lost lock of hair in the ''[[Aetia (Callimachus)|Aetia]]'' when praising [[Berenice&nbsp;II]] for sacrificing her own hair to Aphrodite,{{sfn|Selden|1998|pp=346–348}} and iconographic traits that Isis and Hathor shared, such as the bovine horns and vulture headdress, appeared on images portraying Ptolemaic queens as Aphrodite.{{sfn|Cheshire|2007|pp=157–163}}