Eternal Mother, Hathor

   On a starless, rainy night, eight hundred women stood their ground, defending the temple of Hathor against the anger of blood-hungry men.  Each man bore the talisman of Anubis, the god of death.  And every woman was marked with the ankh, the symbol for eternal life.
   The men wanted the women's sons for war and their daughters for love.  The men demanded the children be given into their care.  They claimed that they would provide for their young minds and show them worlds beyond their homeland.  The boys who could not soldier would serve, and the girls who could not bare would please the men with song and dance.  The men insisted that Hathor would be pleased to have her children embody the essence of her godly strengths.
   The women, unfooled, walked backward, chins high, forming a solid barrier to the temple's entrance.
   "You forget one thing," the women said.  "Hathor is also the goddess of motherhood.  And you will never make her children chattel to be abused, cattle to be saddled and stained, or shields in battle.  Her children are her own.  Protected."  
   The women never turned their backs to the men, and as one they shouted as fire rose from the trenches before them, "And you shall never have them!"