ferentiation of certain of the aspects of the sky-goddess Hathor, at
first as a brother "Eye". But as the _king_ Horus was the son of Osiris
(as the dead king), when the confusion of the attributes of Osiris and
Hathor--the actual father and the divine mother of Horus--made their
marriage inevitable, the maternal relationship of the goddess to her
"brother" was emphasized. But as the Great Mother, Hathor was the parent
of the universe, and the mother not only of Horus but also of his father
Osiris. This complicated rationalization made Hathor the sister, mother,
and grandmother of Horus, and was responsible for originating the belief
in the incestuous practices of the divine family. When the royal family
assumed the role of gods and goddesses they were bound by these
traditions (which had their origin purely in theological sophistry) and
were driven to indulge in actual incest, as we know from the records of
the Egyptian royal family and their imitators in other countries. But
incest became a royal and divine prerogative which was sternly forbidden
to mere mortals and regarded as a peculiarly detestable sin.]

The Serpent and the Lioness.

When the development of the story of the Destruction of Mankind
necessitated the finding of a human sacrifice and drove the Great Mother
to homicide, this side of her character was symbolized by identifying
her with a man-slaying lion and the venomous uraeus-serpent.

She had previously been represented by such beneficent food-providing
and life-sustaining creatures as the cow, the sow, and the gazelle
(antelope or deer): but when she developed into a malevolent creature
and became the destroyer of mankind it was appropriate that she should
assume the form of such man-destroyers as the lion and the cobra.

Once the reason for such identifications grew dim, the uraeus-form of the
Great Mother became her symbol in either of her aspects, good or bad,
although the legend of her poison-spitting, man-destroying powers
persisted.[447] The identification of the destroying-goddess with the
moon, "the Eye of the Sun-god," prepared the way for the rationalization
of her character as a uraeus-serpent spitting venom and the sun's Eye
spitting fire at the Sun-god's enemies. Such was the goddess of Buto in
Lower Egypt, whose uraeus-symbol was worn on the king's forehead, and was
misinterpreted by the Greeks as not merely a symbolic "eye," but an
actual median eye upon the king's or the god's for