American Research Center in Egypt / Barnard College Lecture

Dr. Solange Ashby

Sacred Dancers: Nubian Women as Priestesses of Hathor

6.00pm Thursday January 30, 2020.

223 Milbank Hall (Ella Weed Room), Barnard College. 

Nubian women appear as dancers for the goddess Hathor in Egyptian tomb and temple paintings, where they are often depicted in multi-colored leather skirts, wearing 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 southern Egypt. Similar tattoos appear on priestesses of Hathor who were also queens of the Egyptian king Mentuhotep II (2061-2010 BCE). In the nomadic C-Group culture of Lower Nubia, ritual and worship were not organized around a sacred text, nor were they carried out in a temple. Rather, many important rites of passage and worship were based in communal performance of dance and music. In such rituals the power of music and movement were harnessed to transport the worshipper into an ecstatic encounter with the Divine. Worshippers engaged in nocturnal rituals for the goddess Hathor sought this type of ecstatic encounter.

Ancient Egyptian texts preserve the name of this sacred dance (ksks) and document the ritual processions of Nubians into Egypt as they accompanied the return of the goddess Hathor, who was believed to reside in Nubia and return annually to Egypt. This paper will trace the enduring presence of this sacred dance through its performance in Egypt, Nubia, and Meroe, and discuss its possible survival among groups living in Ethiopia today.