The Golden Calf
A Guest Post by David Rohl
“Come, O Golden One, who consumes praise. Because the food of her desire is dancing. She who shines on the festival at the time of lighting (torches), who is happy with night-time dancing. Come! The procession is in the place of inebriation, that hall of traveling through the marshes.” — From the Egyptian “Hymn to Hathor, the Golden One.”
The above hymn provides us with striking evidence that the Golden Calf, mentioned in Exodus 32, was essentially a representation of the cow-goddess, Hathor. As Rabbi Michael Bar-Ron explained to me, the difference between ‘calf’ (Hebrew egel) and ‘heifer’ (eglah) is the single letter vowel H (ה), which would not have been present in the original text, which did not employ vowel markers. In other words, both male and female would have been written with the exact same letters – עגל = ʿgl. We are therefore obliged to consider the possibility that the Golden Calf itself was a heifer. That, I think we can do with some certainty, once we look a little deeper into the celebratory rituals surrounding the goddess Hathor.
This hymn, from the temple of Medamud, relates to an annual celebration called the ‘Festival of Drunkenness’, which was held throughout the Nile Valley in late summer. The revelry involved night-time dancing by torchlight and fornication (‘traveling through the marshes’ being an Egyptian metaphor for sexual activity), all brought on by alcohol — precisely what we see in the Golden Calf incident. The Festival of Drunkenness is, in fact, an orgy dedicated to the birth-goddess, Hathor, who was also the goddess of love and sexual intercourse.
This festival consisted of wild revelry, culminating in the loud beating of drums to awaken the revelers from their drunken stupor at dawn, followed by a procession of the cow-goddess Hathor’s golden statue. What is also interesting for us is that the festival seems to have been introduced for the first time during the 13th Dynasty — the time of the Sojourn and Exodus according to the New Chronology!
So, were the Egyptianized Hebrews actually celebrating this very festival of Hathor, which required the crafting of a golden heifer—representing Hathor—as the focus of the ritual? Remember that Hathor was also the goddess of Sinai. This becomes highly likely when you look at the timing of the Golden Calf incident.
The Israelites leave Goshen on the morning of the fourteenth day of Abib (Nisan in the later Jewish religious calendar). In 1446 BC—the Exodus year—that date corresponds to April 22nd. The end of the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, marking the crossing of the Yam Suph then falls on April 29th. Exodus 19:1-2 tells us that the Israelites arrive at Horeb on the first day of the third month (Sivan) after leaving Egypt—in other words forty-five days from April 22nd. So that takes us to June 8th in our Gregorian calendar (which I am using here for all absolute dates). Moses meets Jethro and then goes up the holy mountain on several occasions over seven days, and receives the Ten Commandments during the last ascent on the seventh day (cf. Ex 24:12-16).
The tablets are received on the eighth day of Sivan (= June 14th in 1446 BC). This event is celebrated in the Jewish feast of Shavuot (Christian Pentecost). Talmudic tradition states that it was exactly fifty days from Pesach (Passover) down to Shavuot (‘weeks’ = 7 weeks + 1 day) … and Pentecost means ‘fifty days’. Accordingly, Shavuot always falls on a Sunday (counting from the first day after the Pesach Shabbat, which is equivalent to Pentecost Sunday).
From the eighth day of Sivan, Moses remains up the mountain for forty days. Upon his return, on the morning of the fortieth day of his absence from the camp, Moses is confronted by the aftermath of the Golden Calf debauchery and smashes the tablets. In Gregorian Calendar terms that puts the start of the Golden Calf celebrations on the night of July 22nd (remembering that days in the Hebrew calendar start at sunset).
The Festival of Drunkenness was celebrated in the Nile Valley on the 20th day after the start of the annual inundation, marked in this case by the heliacal rising of Sirius as observed from the er-Raha Plain in Sinai. According to computer retro calculation of astronomical events, the 1446 BC heliacal rising took place on July 4th at 05:39. Twenty days later takes us to July 22nd (remembering that the festival starts at sunset at the end of 19th day). Remarkably, the Egyptian date for the Festival of Drunkenness, involving a Golden Heifer, took place on exactly the same day as the biblical date for the night of the Golden Calf revelry.
This convinces me that the mixed multitude of Hebrews and Israelites were celebrating a Hathor festival of the Golden One or, as the Bible puts it, the ‘Golden Calf’. The inscriptions at Serabit el-Khadim confirm that the pre-Exodus Semites working the mines were worshipers of Hathor in her Canaanite form of Baalat—the Lady. It therefore seems highly plausible that some of those Semites might have strayed back towards Baalat worship, once their leader was not around to make the rebellious congregation adhere to the singular focus of Moses’ absolute monotheism.
David Rohl is a world-renown Egyptologist and the author of numerous books including Exodus: Myth or History?, and Pharaohs And Kings. This article was extracted from his 2021 book Legendary Kings: Volume One, Part One. It was adapted from material found on pages 176-183, and was used by permission of the author.
Related Books
Legendary Kings, David Rohl (e-book)
Exodus: Myth or History? David Rohl (e-book)
A Test of Time David Rohl (earlier version of above)
Redating the Exodus & Conquest, John Bimson — FREE
Researches in Sinai, W.M. Flinders Petrie — FREE
Biblical Archaeology, David E. Graves
The Ancient Near East, James B. Pritchard (ed.)
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How do you wrap your head around the idea that a few million people who personally witnessed the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea, not to mention the Shekinah Glory, nevertheless returned to worshiping an inanimate object?