Hala

Hala was a Babylonian goddess of healing and protective magic. Probably later syncretized with the Akkadian goddess Gula.

 

Hammurabi

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Hammurabi (c. 1810 – c. 1750 BC) was the sixth king of the First Babylonian dynasty of the Amorite tribe, reigning from c. 1792 BC to c. 1750 BC. Hammurabi’s most famous achievement was the issuing of the Code of Hammurabi. He claimed he received the laws from Shamash, the Babylonian god of the sun and justice. Many people in Babylon believed that Hammurabi was a god within his lifetime. After his death, Hammurabi was honored as a great conqueror who spread civilization and forced all peoples to obey  Marduk, the national god of the Babylonians.

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Harepashur

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Hittite magician at the court of Emperor Tudhaliya. (See Hittites)

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Harima

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The old oracle of Sinai lived in a cave deep in the desert mountains. The oracles of her bloodline kept the secret of an ancient prophecy, which revealed the fate of the mystical object of the gods. She initiated Nanshaya as an oracle and her successor. (See Sinai)

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Harkhuf

Egyptian ambassador of Amenhotep III. in Babylon, future husband of Princess Nebetah. (See Nebetah)

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Hathor

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Hathor was one of the most popular and powerful goddesses of ancient Egypt. She was the goddess of love, beauty, music, dancing, fertility, and pleasure. She protected the women, but men also worshipped her. Both priests and priestesses served her in her temples. Dendera was the center of her worship, and her veneration began possibly in the Predynastic Era.

She was the daughter of Ra and one of the goddesses who bore the title of ‘The Eye of Ra’ in the role of defending Ra from Apep. As she was Horus’s nurse in mythology, the goddess was associated with the mother of the pharaoh and Horus’s consort, also with the pharaoh’s wife. (See Eye of Ra)

Hathor was the patron of cosmetics in her role as goddess of beauty. Besides the health benefits the ancient Egyptian makeup meant for the people, wearing it was a form of worship to Hathor. The Egyptians ground malachite, mixed it with animal fat and used eye makeup. Although the mixture was decorative, it had a protective function in fighting eye infections at the same time. Its benefits were attributed to Hathor. The people commonly offered her mirrors or cosmetic palettes in her temples.

Hathor’s sacred stones were turquoise, malachite, gold and copper. As “The Mistress of Turquoise” and the “Lady of Malachite”, she protected the miners, and from the earliest times in ancient Egyptian history, she became the goddess of the Sinai Peninsula (where the famous turquoise and copper mines were).

She took the form of a woman, goose, cat, lion, malachite, and sycamore fig, to name but a few. However, Hathor’s most famous manifestation is as a cow, and even when she appears as a woman, she has either the ears of a cow or a pair of elegant horns which embrace the sun disk.

 

Hattusa

 

The capital of the Hittite Empire was Hattusa, situated close to the modern-day city of Boğazkale in Turkey. The town was initially founded by the Hatti (an aboriginal tribe of Anatolia) by King Hattusilis I. around 2500 BC. The Hatti culture may have provided the basis for that of the Hittites. 

The Hittites were an ambitious warrior empire that came into conflict with most of the significant bronze age powers at the time, including the Egyptian Empire, Middle Assyrian Empire, and the kingdom of Mitanni, reaching their peak around the mid-14th century BC.

At its peak, the city had a population of 40,000 and 50,000. It covered an area of 444 acres, comprising an inner and outer precinct, surrounded by a course of walls that were built during the reign of King Suppiluliuma I between 1344 and 1322 BC.

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Heb Festival

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The Heb festival was a renewal celebration after the first 30 years of each pharaoh’s reign and periodically afterwards.

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Hedjuti

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Hedjuti was a royal teacher - son of Heqarneneh, and grandson of Heqareshu (Tomb TT226). His father and grandfather were both tutors of Amenhotep III.

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Henuttaneb

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Henuttaneb was the youngest daughter of pharaoh Amenhotep III. and his Great Royal Wife Tiye (18th dynasty). Among many other siblings, she was a sister of Akhenaten.

Henuttaneb’s name means ‘Lady of All Lands,’ which was also often used as a title for other queens. She was likely the fourth daughter of her parents (after Sitamun, Iset and Nebetah).

We can see her image on a colossal statue from Medinet Habu. The seven-meter-high sculpture shows Amenhotep III. and Tiye seated side by side with their three daughters standing in front of the throne. Henuttaneb, the largest and best preserved is in the center, Nebetah is on the right, and another princess, whose name is unreadable, is on the left. Another image of Henuttaneb is in the temple at Soleb and also on a carnelian plaque (standing with Iset before their parents). 

 

Hermopolis

(See Khemenu)

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Hermopolis was a major city in antiquity, located near the boundary between Lower and Upper Egypt. Its remains are located near the modern town of El-Ashmunein in Mallawi, Minya Governorate, Egypt.

The city’s ancient name was Khemenu (Ḫmnw), which means ‘Eight-Town’, after the group of eight primordial deities whose cult was situated there. But mainly Thoth, the god of magic, healing, and wisdom and the patron of scribes, was worshipped here in the form of the ibis and baboon. The city’s name in Greek was ‘The City of Hermes’ since the Greeks identified Hermes with Thoth.

Hermopolis was a place of great resort and luxury as a border town, ranking second only to Thebes. South of the city was the palace of Hermopolis, where the Theban people paid their tolls for passing their boats on the river through the city.

On the opposite bank of the Nile, we find the caves of Beni Hasan, which were the common cemeteries of the Hermopolitans. There is a labyrinth of underground streets and catacombs connected with cults sacred to Thoth on the west bank of the Nile in the necropolis at Tunah al-Jabal.

 

Hiku-Ptah

 

Hiku-Ptah, (Hut-Ka-Ptah), which means ‘Mansion of the Soul of Ptah’, was one of the names of Memphis (derived from Greek). According to Manetho (a historian in the 3rd century BC), Menes, the first king of Egypt, built the city after the unification of Egypt. (See Memphis)

Ptah was a fertility god during the early Predynastic Period, but by the time of the first dynasties, his importance rose to the position of ‘Lord of Truth’ and ‘Creator of the World’. He was considered the protector god of the Memphis area, and when the Egyptians built the city in his honor, he became the town’s patron deity.

Because of its size, the city also came to be known by various other names, which were the names of neighborhoods or districts that enjoyed considerable prominence at one time or another. (See Men–Nefer)

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Hittites

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The Hittites lived in the ancient region of modern-day Anatolia in Turkey before 1700 BCE. Their culture developed from the indigenous Hatti (and possibly the Hurrian) people. The Hittites expanded their territories into an empire that rivalled and threatened ancient Egypt, and Hattusa became their capital. The Hittite empire covered Anatolia, the northern Levant, and Upper Mesopotamia.

The historians divided their control over the region into two periods: The Old Kingdom (1700-1500 BCE) and the New Kingdom, also known as the Hittite Empire (1400-1200 BCE).

The New Kingdom of the Hittites (1400-1200 BCE), also known as the Hittite Empire, was contemporary with Amenhotep III., more precisely, King Tudhaliya II.

Thuthmosis IV., the father of Amenhotep III., conquered a significant part of the southern region of the Hittite Empire. The Hittite king could not regain the territory because Amenhotep III was a diplomatically powerful Pharaoh, just like the Egyptian army and economy. Egypt had a stable relationship through treaties and ties via marriages with all the neighboring counties of the Hittites. After the death of Amenhotep III., they attacked and managed to reoccupy their lands as far south as Quadesh.

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Horus

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In ancient Egyptian religion, Horus (Hor, Har, Her, or Heru) was a god in the form of a falcon. The Egyptians believed his right eye was the sun (for power), and his left eye was the moon (for healing). Evidence shows that their falcon cult was widespread in Egypt from the late predynastic times.

The Egyptian pharaohs had numerous official names, and the most important of them was his Horus name, which acknowledged him as Horus. The number of their names grew from three (early predynastic times) to five during Egyptian history. The archaeologists discovered these Horus names on monuments and tombs, inscribed inside the so-called serekh (a rectangular frame).

The pharaoh was typically depicted with Horus behind his head as a falcon, which protectively embraced the king’s head with its wings. Horus Sometimes, a winged sun disk represented Horus, too.

We learned from the accounts we found that Horus and the god Seth were perpetual antagonists from the 1st dynasty (c. 2925–2775 BCE) and onwards. The two gods were reunited in peace only by the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. 

In ancient Egyptian mythology, Horus was the son of Osiris (the god of the afterlife becoming prominent about 2350 BC.) and Isis. Horus became Seth’s (Osiris’s brother) enemy because Seth murdered Osiris and challenged Horus’s heritage (the royal throne of Egypt). Horus eventually won the battle against Seth, thus avenging his father and assuming the rule. However, in the fight, Horus’s left eye (the moon) was damaged - for the people, this was a mythical explanation of the moon’s phases. The god Thoth healed him, and Horus’s restored eye (the wedjat eye) became a powerful amulet. 

Horus name – (See Horus)

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Humer

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A servant in the court of Kadashman Enlil I.

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Hurrian

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The Hurrians (Hurri or Khurri) were a population that prospered across the Near East between the 4th and 1st millennium BC. The name of their language was also Hurrian. Hurrians formed the principal cultural element of the Bronze Age Mitanni kingdom and blended with the culture of the neighboring, and then conquering, Hittites (today Anatolia). The Hurrians had been assimilated into surrounding cultures in the Near East By the late Bronze Age, but many of their gods and myths would live on in later cultures.

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Huy

(See Amenhotep son of Hapu)

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Huya

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Huya, the favorite of the Lord of the Two Lands, the overseer of the royal quarters of the Great King’s Wife Tiye, treasurer and steward in the house of the King’s Chief Wife, Tiye.

He was the ‘Superintendent of the Royal Harem’, ‘Superintendent of the Treasury’ and ‘Superintendent of the House’. All his other titles are associated with Queen Tiye, the mother of Akhenaten. His tomb is in Amarna - A1.