Hatmehit, A Compendium of the Ancient Gods

She was the consort of Banebdjedet at Mendes, and she was unique among the great goddesses of Egypt in that her sacred creature was a fish — for the fish was generally a creature of taboo to Egyptian religion, eaten by the common people but rejected from the offering-tables of the gods. Yet at Mendes the fish was holy, and Hatmehit's emblem was the schilbe, a Nile fish whose silver body she wore upon her head as a crown.

Her name meant 'First of the Fishes' or 'Foremost of the Fishes,' and she was understood to be the patroness of the Mendesian branch of the Nile, where the fish were many and the fishermen prosperous. With Banebdjedet she was mother of Harpocrates, and with him she completed the Mendesian triad. She was an ancient goddess and a quite local one; her cult does not seem to have spread far beyond the Delta, but in her own city she was venerated with the same dignity as any of the great mothers.

Curator’s note

What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay

Hatmehit (Egyptian Ḥꜣt-mḥyt) is attested from the Old Kingdom but most fully in Late Period and Ptolemaic temple texts of Mendes. The fish-emblem on her head has been variously identified, most often with the schilbe (Schilbe mystus) or the lepidotus. The general Egyptian taboo against fish on the offering-table — discussed by Plutarch in De Iside et Osiride — makes the Mendesian cult of a fish-goddess theologically remarkable, and the local theologians of Mendes were obliged to develop elaborate rationales for the survival of the cult. The triad of Banebdjedet, Hatmehit, and Harpocrates is depicted on a number of Late Period bronzes, several of which preserve dedicatory inscriptions naming all three. Her cult appears to have declined sharply after the closure of the great Mendesian temple in the early Roman period.

Kin in the sources

Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.

Consort ofBanebdjedetShe was the consort of Banebdjedet at Mendes
Parent ofHarpocratesWith Banebdjedet she was mother of Harpocrates, and with him she completed the Mendesian triad

When the sources speak

Dated witnesses for The Cities and the Sacred Animals. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline

c. 4000–3100 BCE: Predynastic regional symbols, burials, standards, and animal cults provide the deep background to later divine iconography.
c. 3100–2686 BCE: Early Dynastic kingship joins royal ideology to local cult centers and establishes many durable divine emblems.
c. 2686–2181 BCE: Old Kingdom pyramid complexes and the Pyramid Texts preserve the earliest large religious corpus.
c. 2181–1650 BCE: First Intermediate and Middle Kingdom traditions broaden mortuary access; Coffin Texts develop older royal materials.
c. 1550–1070 BCE: New Kingdom temple wealth, royal hymns, underworld books, and the Book of Going Forth by Day greatly expand the record.
c. 1353–1336 BCE: Akhenaten’s Aten program reorganizes royal cult but does not permanently erase the older divine plurality.
c. 1070–664 BCE: Third Intermediate Period priestly and regional powers reshape cult administration and divine kingship.
664–332 BCE: Late Period archaism, animal cults, and temple scholarship preserve and reinterpret older forms.