Gerzeh palette ('Hathor', Cow-head palette)

Gerzeh palette (‘Hathor’, Cow-head palette). © Alain Guilleux.
Cairo Mus. 34173
Gerzeh tomb 59 (S.D. 47-77)
Naqada IIc-d1

As you can see below, it’s interesting how a similar shape is interpreted either as the horns of a cow, the arms of a woman, snakes (actually serpopards) or dogs.

Francesco Raffaele’s website provides more information on this item.

Petrie, The Labyrinth, Gerzeh and Mazguneh pl. VI,7 (also see the related notebook and tomb-card published on CD-rom)
Vandier, Manuel I, 443-444, fig. 297
Petrie, Ceremonial Slate Palettes pl.B5
Arkell, JEA 41, 1955, 125-126 (cf. Quibell-Green, Hierakonpolis II, pl. 59, nr.5 on porphiry vessel fragment)
Arkell, JEA 44, 1958, 5-11 (Hathor bowl) (cf. S. Yeivin, in: JNES 27, 1968/ 37-50, pl. IA, fig. 3 on a sherd from Tel Erani)
Murray, JEA 42, 1956, 86ff., pl. VI,2
Weill, Ire Dynastie II p. 225 (drawing p. 224)
Asselberghs, Chaos en Beheersing … fig. 118
Kaiser, M.D.A.I.K. 46, 1990 p. 296 (cf. seal impression from Abydos U-210, Hartung: MDAIK 54, 1998, 200f., nr.22).
S. Hendrickx, Bovines in Egyptian Predynastic and Early Dynastic Iconography, in: F. Hassan (ed.), Drought, Food and Culture…, 2002, 275-318.
– Updated bibliographical reference:
“Er ist ein Liebling der Frauen” (P. Kaplony) Ägypten und Levante 13, 2003, 107-126 (esp. 119f.).

And specifically:

For the “Hathor/Bat” motif on other objects see the references in the image below and above all: S. Hendrickx, op. cit. 2002, p. 310, Appendix H.
It has been recently found incised on a P-ware bowl sherd (more correctly an ostracon, for the incised on both its faces seem to have been scratched after the jar was broken) from Hierakonpolis loc. HK 29A in a context which is hard to precisely date, but probably late Naqada II or early Naqada III (cf. Hendrickx, Friedman, in: GM 196, 2003, 95ff., and fig. 2; S. Hendrickx, R. Friedman, Chaos and order: A predynastic “Ostracon” from HK29A, in: Nekhen News 15, 2003, 8-9; photo of one side of the ostrakon: Web-Link).
Also see the potmark in B. Adams, Predynastic Egypt, 1988, 50, fig. 30 i (from Naqada) for a similar bovine-motif.