White calf

I will like to try to "decode" this image, based on what I have discovered about the link between wild cattle and sycamore fig annual lifecycles and their link to the great annual flood of the Nile. The mural is of the Ramesside era, Deir el-Medina, tomb of Irynfer...

First the official interpretation:

As I have explained in detail in my post "Holy Cow" Hathor, the Holy Cow, is the deified Nile flood...

The reason why she is depicted as a cow, is because the monsoon which feeds the flood starts during the calving period of wild auroch cattle...which spans April - May...Which is marked in zodiacs with the symbol of Taurus...

Taurus, the calving season, marks the beginning of summer, which spans May, June, July. At the end of July, beginning of August, the wild auroch cattle mating season starts, which is marked by vicious bull fights...

So our bull calf marking the beginning of the summer becomes bull marking the end of the summer. Summer being season marked by a bull...

The flood which is kickstarted by the April-May (Taurus) monsoon peaks in the season marked by Leo, Autumn (August, September, October). Lion, which kills the bull, the end of summer and beginning of autumn. This happens at the end of July beginning of August...In Leo...

So what is the link between sycamore and the flood? Why is the bull calf standing between sycamore trees? Because of this: "Sycamore has three main harvests: May, June, August/September"...

Ancient Egyptian flood season, called Akhet - the inundation, lasted from June to September...Actually it started in May, when the monsoon that feeds the flood reached its peak in East Africa. It just takes some time for the flood water to reach Egypt...

So sycamore bears fruit during the flood season which is the source of all life in the Nile Valley...No wonder Hathor (the flood) was depicted as the sycamore tree full of fruit. Her legs being the trunk and all the fruit bearing branches growing out of her...

And the reason why she is always depicted carrying jug of water and platter of bread is kind of self explanatory. It was the flood that made land fertile and able to produce grain for bread. And it was the flood that fed the wells which produced water...

But why red sun rising. This is a very very interesting question. The flood season coincides with the summer, the hottest season completely dominated by the sun. So Ancient Egyptians could be forgiven for believing that it was the sun which somehow miraculously produced the flood...

Now the flood waters are reddish brownish in colour because of all the sediment, and can sometimes be blood read, leading to the image of the river of blood...

So I really think that the red sun represents the flood too, more precisely, sun filling nile with red flood water...And not any sun. Blood red sun of the sandstorm season...

"When the night came again it was black night, for the stars could not pierce the dust to get down. . . . In the morning the dust hung like fog, and the sun was as red as ripe new blood."

John Steinbeck, "The Grapes of Wrath" (1939)

This is a headline from one of the English newspapers:

Red sun spotted in sky over UK as Storm Ophelia whips up dust from Sahara

All over England, the sky looked as if it was in the middle of a sandstorm. The sky was a deep brown and orange, and the sun turned red – or disappeared behind the swirls of sand in the sky.

If it resembled something you'd expect to see in the Sahara Desert, that's because it was. The sand and dust had been carried over from southern Europe and Africa by recent bizarre weather, and as it swirled around it turned the sky dark.

Now in Egypt, the sandstorms are caused by "khamsin", a dry, hot, sandy local wind which can be triggered by extratropical cyclones that move eastwards along the southern parts of the Mediterranean or along the North African coast from February to June.

In Egypt, the khamsin usually arrives in April but occasionally can occur between March and May. A 19th century account says that in Egypt "people calculate the period of khamsin ... to commence on the day immediately following the Coptic festival of Easter Sunday, and to terminate on the Day of Pentecost (or Whitsunday); an interval of forty-nine days." 

This period roughly coincides with the Jewish Counting of the Omer, which also lasts for an interval of 49 days, between the springtime feasts of Passover and Shavuot, the Jewish origins of Easter and Pentecost.

Khamsin winds carry great quantities of sand and dust from the deserts and can cause the whole sky to turn orange red. 

As I explained in my post Menat, the khamsin season is the exact period when rain season starts in Ethiopian highlands. We see increase in rainfall starting from March, and then the arrival of the full blown monsoon starting from April/May/June, depending on the season...

And it is this monsoon which feeds the red nile flood, which brings life to Egypt during the summer, between wild cattle calving and mating seasons, which is actually the wild cattle lactating season, and between the beginning and the end of the sycamore fruit bearing season...

Hathor was closely associated with Hesat, another ancient Egyptian goddess in the form of a cow. Hesat was usually shown as a pure white cow carrying a tray of food on her head as her udders flow with milk...

Well that is as good a depiction of the effect of the monsoon and the resulting flood on Egypt which happens during the lactating season of the wild cattle, as I could imagine...

Hesat was in turn connected with Mnevis, the living bull god worshipped at Heliopolis, and the mothers of Mnevis bulls were buried in a cemetery dedicated to Hesat...

As I said, it is the calving season of the wild cattle (and Hathor was specifically said to be a wild cow), that marks the beginning of the monsoon which feeds the life bringing great flood...

This is also one of the reasons why Hathor carries the sun disc between her horns. Because Taurus (Bull in Latin), more correctly Vacca (Cow in Latin) marks the beginning of Summer. Taurus (Vacca) literally brings summer, season dominated by sun, between his (her) horns...