Column with Hathor-emblem capital and names of Nectanebo I on the shaft | Late Period | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Description
The piece is the broken-off upper part of a Hathor column. The Hathor face and the sistrum sound box are four-sided and the sistrum carries an abacus. The shaft is inscribed on all sides with the name of Nectanebo I alternating between
1) sA-Ra nb-xaw Nxt-nb.f ///
2) Nb-tAwj nb-jrt.xt Nxt-nb.f/ //
3) NTr-nfr xpr-kA-Ra ///
4) Njswt-bjtj nb-tAwj xpr-kA-Ra ///
Like the Hathor-head columns in the Hathor sanctuary of Hatshepsut, the monolithic, black granite column of Apries in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo, or a column from the Iseum, the Hathor capital in the MMA does not sit on top of a papyriform capital but emerges directly from the round shaft.

Judging from similar examples, the capitals (head plus sound-box plus abacus) may have presented 1/3 of the total column height. The MMA column would therefore have been around 3 x 62 cm = 186 cm high, just enough to let a person pass under the architrave. The column was quite elaborately treated: it retains extensive traces of paint, and the goddess’s eyes were originally inlaid.

Temple buildings of Nectanebo I have been located at least at 10 Delta sites and it is therefore impossible to connect the column with any one, but one would naturally think of Bubastis. The small size seems to suggest that the piece did not belong to the chief part of temple architecture but could only have been attached to a very small structure such as a small roof sanctuary or wabet.

General
So-called Hathor columns seem to have their origin in Early Dynastic emblems or fetish-like poles with Hathor-masks. The Hathor head on a handle represents the basic form of sistra played in Hathor rituals. Used as a sistrum, a sound box is attached to the top of the head. From the Eighteenth Dynasty on, this musical instrument is translated into stone and used as a column in temples for female deities creating a kind of “petrified sound barrier” around the deity. The expression “sistrum-columns” would therefore be more appropriate.

The motive offers abundant options for variations (columns and pillars, one- or more-sided, combinations with papyriform capitals, some small, some gigantic), mainly used for the mammisi temples (birth-houses) and roof kiosks of the Late Period. The most dramatic, still standing example is the pronaos of the Dendera temple with its eighteen 17 m high sistrum columns.

Dieter Arnold, 2016