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Antiquity believed that man's fate was determined at birth by a goddess or goddesses. These goddesses, the Parcae of the Romans, the Moirai of the Greeks, the Hathors of the Egyptians all have something to do with spinning or weaving a thread.1
The goddesses of Egypt who correspond to the Moirai of the Greeks are the Hathors. The Hathors appear as seven or more beautiful young girls foretelling the future of the newborn infant. They are represented attending the infant as midwives. Whenever a child is born the seven Hathors appear and proclaim the fate that has been allotted to the infant by its god. Death is called 'that which has been fated' (das Verhängte) in an official document.2 Some of them attend the young mother to protect her with their incantations; others receive the newborn baby and pass it from one to the other.3 The sun god Ra sends the goddesses Isis, Nephtys, Mashkonouit and Hiqit to act as midwives to Rouditdit, a mother pregnant with triplets. The first two goddesses are well known; the latter two may require introduction.
Maspero says Mashkonouit is the goddess Mashkonou, 'c'est à dire du berceau et en cette qualité elle assiste à l'accouchement: elle réunit en elle Shait et Raninit, c'est à dire la déesse qui règle la destinée et celle qui allaite l'enfant et lui donne son nom par suite sa personnalité'.
Hiqit is the frog-headed goddess called 'l'un des premiers berceaux d'Abydos'. The goddesses arrive and Isis gives the child its name of Ousirhaf (the one whose double is powerful). The goddesses wash the infant, cut its umbilical cord and put it on a bed. Similar proceedings follow with the other two infants of the triplets.4