The worship of the goddess Hathor was widely diffused both in Upper and Lower Egypt. The most renowned seats of the cultus were Aphroditopolis, near Memphis; Edfu and Dendera, in Upper Egypt. She is called in the inscriptions "the lady of the dance and revel," and is represented on the monuments with fetters and a tambourine in her hands. From this and from her Grecian name we may conclude that she was the Egyptian goddess of love, of the enchaining passion; but though we find in her form hints of a more individual and lively fancy, the natural power of maternity in general is by far the most prominent conception. She is represented with the horns of a cow--her sacred animal--on her head, and between them the moon's disk; or entirely as a cow. In the rock-temple at Abusimbel, which the wife of Ramses II. dedicated to Hathor, she is represented as a cow in a boat, over which water-plants meet in arches. To this cow the king and queen offer flowers and fruits.[58] In the temple at Edfu, a structure of the Ptolemies, 360 local forms of Hathor are said to have been enumerated and among these seven were especially prominent. It was the beneficent, creative, and life-giving powers of nature which the Egyptians worshipped in these divinities--water, light, the clear heaven, the sun, the powers of reproduction and birth. But the phenomena and the powers presented by nature were not in every case beneficent. Night swallowed up day, and death swallowed up life. Beside the waters and the black fruitful soil of Egypt lay the boundless yellow desert, from which storms blew the sand into the green valley. In the hot months, the sun blazed with a devouring and scorching heat, the flowers withered; and the powers of nature failed in the winter. Thus in the life of nature there was a strife between malignant and beneficent powers, a strife in which nevertheless the beneficent powers always gained the upper hand. Out of night arose a new day; out of the death of nature in winter blossomed forth new increase, fruitfulness, and life. Through this conception of a strife raging between the healing and destructive powers of nature, by regarding nature as moving in a circular course from life to death, and death to life, the Egyptians succeeded in making a great advance in their religious ideas. They personified this strife in certain divine forms. The beneficent power, the divinity of life was allowed to succumb, and then to rise from apparent death into a new life. Only for a moment could the evil powers vanquish the good; the eternal victory remained with the gods of beneficence.