Hypothesis on the origin of the epiteth of Torino. - Roberto - page 1

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 Hathor - Ator -Thor - Nut e Hathor - Api - Taurinorum

The origin of the foundation of the town of Torino is tied up to a myth.

A myth is a story that always comes from an historical fact, an important man or an event.

Such facts were handed on by oral tradition and sometimes the stories were written by historians or by the ones who knew writing.

Historical tales were often put into rhyme by poets. Ancient poets used to connect historical human facts with spirituality concerning vicissitudes. Ancient conceptions didn't separe with clear borders people's events (I would say laical) from religious or metaphysical facts. Religion,astrology,science and knowledge were part of culture and of human chronicles.

These reports were always in connection with causes and motivations that involved the trascendent world. As a matter of fact Gods were not concepts or abstract and incomprehensibles characters (as it happens at present time in monotheist conception). The same Gods represented the emotional men's world and the archetype too.

This is the reason for Gods were considered as interactive entities with human world.

All ancient writers and historians have transmitted us Fetonte's myth (greek version) or Osiri's (egyptian one), also called Giove(the just. From this mythical history, similar by the way to the stories about the Kings of Rome, we get knowledge of the foundation of Torino, on highly civil bases, as egyptian settlement. Stories say that italian inhabitants(in the pre Etruscan period) were tyrannized by not better defined Giants and that Osiri defied them and founded the town on the bases of a much more advanced civilisation. It's not so clear, in the different authors, if Fetonte was the Greek name of Osiri or if he was his brother. This doubt remains because the same Osiri was also called.

Iside and Osiride under the Sky (Nut goddess).

It's neither clear in the same writers, Polibio (greek historian) is the most famous among them, the name of the ancient pre-roman Torino. Boccaccio and Tesauro too say that was given to the river(Po) the name of Eridano because Eridano (perhaps one of Fetonte's sons) falled in the river during a cart race(bighe. Both say that the town got probably the name from the river(Eridania. But their is only a probable supposition, not a sure statement, because more ancient historians mention Torino as: "the town of Taurini" or "Urbe of Taurini". (es.: Tito Livio)

So,not having a written historical certitude,we may make logical suppositions starting from what we know.

If(I use conditional tence because we don't have contemporary documents to the facts we are talking about)the foundation of the civil town came from an egyptian colonisation and knowing that in Roman Age(ante Christ) the most diffused religion was the Isidea one(of egyptian root) we can state that there has been a strong cultural egyptian component besides The Etrusca and Greek one (mediterranean civilisations).

We can argue with a small margin of error that the egyptian culture was prevalent.

Phetonte's myth (Fetonte).
Fetonte

The logical deduction takes us to think that the name of the town too could be somehow linked to the prevalent religion.

And in the Egyptian Gods there is one that particularly has an assonant epithet with the modern name, and ancient too. This goddess was Athor, represented with a hyerogliph of cow or bull.

Probably this goddess was called, in the old times, simply Ator.

This is because the not pictorial hyerogliph of the letter. A was represented by a circle surmounted by two small bars(horns) and symbolized just the animal or, to say it better, the symbolic archetypal strength of the cow or bull.

AAA

- Assonance between Ator and the modern name Toro (bull) - Roberto - page 2

Hyerogliph of goddess Hathor, the Cow of the Sky that represents the sky too.
Mucca Celeste

So the town could have been dedicated to Goddess Hathor (goddess Mother, Goddess of Love, Goddess of Providence). The Holy Cow represents the Sky under which the Sun (Ra) and the Stars light up the Earth (Geb) and stands on the four legs representing the four cardinal points...

We also know that Torino didn't only have an egyptian print, at least culturally, but was in contact and in relationship with Gallic and Celtic.

(Strangely) We find also in these cultures a very similar Goddess to the egyptian one Hathor and this is Thor. It was a very important God, in the northern culture, similar to the Greek God Zeus, or the Roman one Giove. We want to underline that in Piemontese dialect the word Tor means exactly Bull.

Taurinorum comes from Hathor(Ator) or from Thor? .

The assonances are very similar, as similar is the myth of Osiri with his bride Iside, sons of goddess Nut(or Hathor). I remember you that Goddess Nut has a hyerogliph a little bit different from Hathor; in fact Hathor seems to come from the religious tradition of southern Egypt, while Nut is the hyerogliph in the tradition of northern Egypt. But such differences are much more aestetich than substantial, in fact they both represent the same Goddess. Besides I have here-forward related a passage of the egyptian myth about the fight between Gods (Horo and Seth) in which Hathor appears repairing the eyes of Horo hit by Seth.

Complex hyerogliph of Goddess Nut - Hathor.
 

So we have an ancient Torino with deep religious roots intrinsic to different but substantially similar cultures.

When after Costantino with the new age the Cristianity came, many temples were rebaptized but the cult of Iside didn't lose its veneration that developed itself toward the new feminine figure: the christian cult of Mary,Christ's mother.

The christian Virgin-Mother will in fact re-unite all the big fundamental values of the ancient Goddess: the Motherhod, the Love, the Providence and all the holy feminine values. But Torino will still keep the remember and the epithet of Osiri alive, already called Giove, by Romans, and nowaday called Giovanni (patron saint of the town) in italian idiom.

  - Mythological passage about the fight between Seth and Horo - Roberto - page 3. 

Passage of the mythical story about the fight between Seth and Horo(Horus), from the text:" The passion of Iside and Osiride" by Jean Houston published by Piemme.

In"....she threw the arrow in the uproarious waters where the two were fighting. The weapon sank in the body of an hippopotamus and a voice was heard: "Come, mother Iside! Rid me from the arrow! I'm Horo!"  When Iside understood what she had done, her heart was loaded of regret and her breast full of love: "Come back, arrow! "she shouted" Go away from my son!" With tears in her eyes she threw again the arrow in the waters and once again the copper point of the arrow entered the flesh. A blood stain came up to the surface and this time Seth cried: "Sister Iside, what did you do? It's me, your brother Seth, who knew you in the womb. Free me from the arrow!" Again her heart was filled up of love and pain: "Come back arrow! Go away from my brother!" Hearing the mother's words, Horo became furious. Why were she freeing Seth, right now that he was finally hit and fought? Why should she save the one who had killed her husband and usurped her son's throne? What right had she to change her mind?His rage was enormous. Jumping like a panther he came out of the water and chased off after the mother who was running away like a terrified gazelle. Iside heard the son's steps after her,and she was captured at the end.Then Horo rose the knife and with a careful strike cut off the nice head from the neck. heaven Gods' hearts leapt. "Who is that poor woman with no head? "shouted Ra "She is Iside" answered Seth "Horo stroke the mother" "Then punish him" said the God. When Horo understood what he had done, that his rage had betried himself and that he had stroken Iside to death,threw away the bloody weapon and fled to the mountains willing never to come back. In the while Thoth,who had seen the terrible tragedy runned to the headless Goddess and pronouncing magic words coming from his power, swiftly put on the shoulders a cow's head. When the Goddess looked at herself in the water, said: "I've been remade in the likeness of a mother. Seth followed Horo along the winding paths to the mountains and having found him, at the end, sleeping under a date-tree,he threw himself on him.Too late Horo woke up:Seth took his eyes off and threw them away. These,rolling down the mountain's side, finally stopped.In that place two lotus flowers bloomed and spred their light on the whole earth. Having left the Hawk-God alone and blind wandering in the desert, Seth came back to Ra and lying said: "I haven't been able to find him". But Hathor, guided by the light coming from the lotus-flowers, found Horus crying on the ridge.Then she started to sing and her melodies consoled the wounded God. A gazelle too, actracted by the songs, came nearby. Hathor milked her and dropped the milk in the empty eye-sockets of the Hawk-God: first in the right eye,then in the left one and ordered:"Open your eyes".

Horo opened them and looked the Love-Goddess in the face. His heart too opened itself. He had been healed by Hathor and with her he went to Heaven and entered the council chamber. Seth was already there, he was drinking wine and whispering his lies in Ra's ear. "Seth took my eyes off "said Horo"and Hathor healed me" "It's not true"answered Seth" I never approached him". Ra turned his back to them and said: "I'm tired of you two, always fighting each other, you are even worst than by Gods created men. The whole thing disgusts me, you made my hair become white, I got on in years". Then he got up slowly and with his face red of rage, retired himself in his rooms. "The war must end", the Gods said, "Obey to Ra's orders: go home,eat sweeties toghether, drink barley-beer, celebrate and leave the Gods of Heaven alone". Then Seth smiled, took Horo's hand and got him away from Hathor, saing to him: "Ra is right, come nephew, let's go to my house to celebrate". Horo followed Seth as the Gods had ordered.   

Antropomorfous hieroglyph of Goddess Hathor.
Hator
 

 

- Meaning of the hieroglyphs of Hathor and of the Holy - Cow - Roberto - pag. 4

Hathor

From the book: "Symbol's and Egyptian Goddess' Dictionary"by Manfred Lurker printed by Ubaldini Editore.

"Hathor. The name of the Goddess means "House of Horus" and her hieroglyph shows Horus'hawk inside a house. In more ancient ages,the Heaven's Goddess Hathor was considered as solar God's Horus mother, until Iside didn't take this role. Her bovine shape comes from the idea,very diffused in the Delta's district, that the heaven was a gigantic cow. A sculpture of the eighteenth dinasty,coming from Deir el Bahari, and now in the egyptian museum of Il Cairo, shows Hathor in shape of cow,protecting the Sovereign. Anyway the Goddess is mostly represented with human shape and bovine horns substaining the solar disk. According to an ancient myth,Hathor had risen to Heaven the solar child with her horns. Finally she was identified with the Sun, whose support she was, and expounded as the Solar-Eye. Since the Old Reign, the most important worship's center of Hathor was in Dendera and its importance grew considerably in Tolemaic period with the building of the big temple to her dedicated. Her ritual symbol is a round pillar surmounted by two bovine heads or, as in Dendera, by two feminine heads with bovine horns (see: bovine Heads). The Goddess was "the feminine soul with two faces". In Tebe she was venerated in shape of cow as a funerary divinity. In the Book of Deads the deceased wishes to be "in the servants of Hathor", who receives the sun at sunset and protects him from the powers of darkness. One of his most common attributes is the"sistrum", harness-bell instrument, because Hathor is Goddess of dance, music and love too.

***

Cow

" From the book: "Symbol's and Egyptian Goddess' Dictionary"by Manfred Lurker printed by Ubaldini Editore.

The Cow was the holy animal of the Goddesses Hathor and Iside. The cows consecrated to Hathor were called Zentei and in the Old-Ages the Kings of Dendera had the title of "shepherd of the cow Zentet". Hathor herself, Goddess of Heaven, was venerated in shape of cow. In the "Book of Deads" (chapter 148), seven cows and one bull were invoked so that they supplied to the food for the transfigured dead. The "Big Wild Cow" was considered as the mother of the Sovereign, who was often compared with a wild bull. In the myths about the divine birth of the Sovereign, the king is milked by the cow Hesat, also considered mother of the God of Deads Anubi and of the bull Api too. The Cow, both joined to the sky and to the lower world, is the symbol of the hope in a second life. The beds on which was put down the litter during funerals were in shape of cow. In the "misteric" rites of Osiride, the God's body was put down in a wooden case in shape of cow, so that the God could come again to life from the lap of the Celestial Cow.

Iside with the head of the Cow. (motherly symbol for Egyptians).
Iside
 

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