Hathor grain pendants

A group of gold and electrum pendants, found in Levant and dated to the Middle-Late Bronze Age, depicting "female form reduced to head with Hathor wig and body, with breasts navel and pubic triangle". Pic from "Western Asiatic Treen Goddesses"...

According to the paper author: "A branch grows from the pubic triangle...The branch is not easily distinguished, it may represent the tree as a whole, an offshoot or a frond"...

I would propose that the "branch" growing out of the vulva is not a branch at all, but a stylised depiction of grain...And that this would make this "female figure" a symbolic depiction of "Mother of grain"...

The paper author then says that "These Syrian-Palestinian pendants have been associated with an Old Assyrian silver pudendum dedicated to Ishtar...In this light, these...pendants should be seen as signifying the sexual aspect of a local goddess, whose symbol was the tree..."

I would say that these pendants should be seen as depicting a local goddess of (grain) fertility (grain growing out of her womb), who was a mixture of Hathor and Ishtar/Inanna...Hathor, because of the headdress and because she is directly linked to the grain fertility through flood. I talked about this in my post "Cow and calf ivory"...Inanna because declares herself to be the Mother of Grain:

"...Before my lord, Dumuzi,

I poured out plants from my womb.

I poured out plants before him.

I poured out grain before him,

I poured out grain before my womb..."

You should check the article "Inanna and dove" as well as the articles linked from this article, which all talk about Inanna and her link to grain...

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...