Lotus and papyrus

A bowl whose base is adorned with a lotus flower and the body with a procession of cows, possibly symbols of the goddess Hathor, through a setting of lotus flowers. Egypt, 775-653 BC. Currently in the Brooklyn Museum...

I explained why Hathor was represented as a cow in my article about "Cow and calf ivory".

In short, it is because of how the water level of the Nile is linked to the reproduction cycle of the wild Eurasian Auroch cattle, the ancestors of the domesticated cattle...

This is the annual river Nile flow chart.

The water level starts to rise in May/Jun, just after the wild Eurasian cattle (aurochs) start calving (Apr/May)...

The Nile water level rises through the summer, until it reaches its peak in Jul/Aug, when the flood starts. And aurochs start mating...

Normally, Hator and her cows are depicted emerging from the papyrus flowers thickets...

This is because Hathor has an alter ego, Mehet-Weret, another "Cow goddess", whose name means "Great Flood"...The rising of the water level of the river Nile which culminates in the Great Flood, starts in May/Jun...Which is just after the papyrus plant flower season peaks... 

Hence, Hathor/Great Flood, emerging from the papyrus thickets...

So why are cows on the Brooklyn Museum bowl depicted walking through lotus flowers? Well, first these are not lotus flowers. They are water lilies, wrongly called Blue Lotus, even though they don't belong to the lotus family...

These beautiful blue flowers, native to the Nile marshlands, were believed to be "magic flowers", and were worshiped by the Egyptians...

Blue water lily flowering season is from July until September. When the Nile water level reaches its peak. During the annual Nile flood...When Hathor, who was also Mehet-Weret (The great flood) finally arrives...

Hence papyrus (the beginning of the Nile flood) and lotus (the peak of the Nile flood), the sacred flowers of Egypt...The most depicted plants in Egyptian art. 

This is why the Egyptian god Hapi, who was the god of the annual flooding of the Nile in ancient Egyptian religion, was associated with papyrus and lotus flowers, and is often depicted as twins, tying papyrus and lotus flowers together

This is interpreted as "unity between Lower Egypt, whose symbol was papyrus flower, and Upper Egypt, whose symbol was lotus flower"...But really this is Nile, which rises between flowering of papyrus and flowering of lotus, which is what connects and unites Egypt...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...