the Coffin Texts. In the relevant passage, Hathor is addressed as the “Lady of Byblos” while she is invoked as a protector of the passengers of the solar barque. This association finds parallels in instances of linking the same Egyptian goddess to various other distant areas, including Sinai, Punt, Wadi el-Hudi and Gebel el-Asr. It is possible that this phenomenon had an ideological dimension, as interpreting foreign goddess as Hathor made it possible to present payments made to local temples in areas such as Byblos and Punt, possibly made to acquire local goods, as a display of piety towards an Egyptian deity. In a text from the reign of Thutmose III, the official Minmose lists the temple of “Hathor, Lady of Byblos” among these belonging to Egyptian deities, and it is possible that the connection was reinforced by Egyptian involvement in local construction projects. No references to the connection between Baalat Gebal and Hathor postdate the New Kingdom, both due to less frequent contact with Byblos and due to the latter being partially replaced by Isis in Egyptian religion. These two Egyptian goddesses were also partially identified with each other, and there is evidence that Baalat Gebal might have been identified with Isis as well, including an inscription on a statue of Osorkon II found in Byblos, which mentions Isis, and to a reference to a connection between Isis and the city of Byblos in Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride. Marwan Kilani notes that the inhabitants of Byblos might have attempted to accommodate the changes occurring in the religion of Egypt by identifying their goddess with Isis. Depictions of Baalat Gebal from the Achaemenid period show similarity to images of “Hathor-Isis” from Egypt, which might indicate she was specifically identified with the syncretic form of these two goddesses. She was portrayed holding an Egyptian scepter and wearing a horned crown decorated with the sun disk. Greek authors seemingly regarded Baalat Gebal as analogous to Aphrodite. Philo of Byblos instead equates her with Dione. According to Alan I. Baumgarten, due to lack of evidence it is impossible to determine what factors guided this choice. Frank Moore Cross suggested that the identification of Baalat Gebal as Dione reflected the parallel between the names Zeus and Dione and El and Elat. This has been criticized by Baumgarten, who points out the name Elat was never used to refer to Baalat Gebal, and that