When a jealous Seth slew the beloved Osiris and dropped his body into the Nile, the wife of Osiris, goddess Isis, moved all forces of nature to rescue the body of her husband. Isis prepared for the ceremonial burial of Osiris, but his murderer, his brother Seth, stole the body away and hacked it into pieces. Isis searched all of Egypt, gathering together his pieces and, with the god, Anubis, bound him together to make him whole. With the resurrected god Osiris, Isis conceived a son, Horus.
Osiris, then descended into the Netherworld to reign over the kingdom of the afterlife. Isis took her newborn son, Horus and escaped to the papyrus marshes, jealously guarding her son from the vengeful god, Seth. Goddess of love, goddess of protection, goddess of nurturing, Isis, succeeded, raising her son in secret. She raised her son, Horus, to ascend to his rightful throne, take his place over Seth.
Horus, the god, emerged from the marshes. Horus sought his father, Osiris' heritage. Horus presented his claim to the gods. The sun god, presiding over the court, secretly favored Seth and caused the court to procrastinate. The judges retired to an island to deliberate. Other gods came to chide their inaction, to coax their judgment. It is said that the goddess, Hathor, went to the sun god and offered him a blissful joining. But, the negotiations drug on, until the god Osiris sent a letter from the netherworld, to the disagreeable gods. The message is simple: The fearsome and terrifying messengers that brought the message, would drive all of the gods into the land of the dead. It was decided. The verdict, in favor of Horus.
The quarrel did not end there. Seth and Horus had an epic battle,
power against power, god to god. And, in
this battle, Horus lost an eye and Seth, his testicles. The eye of Horus
was found and restored by the god Thoth. Horus presented the healed eye to
his father, Osiris. This eye, represented the restoration of royal power.
Seth, ultimately, recovered his testicles. And, though these gods, at
times, did battle, they would, as well, aid each other.
Pharaohs were seen to be the living Horus. Many of the pharaohs, as did the all ancient Egyptians, still held Seth in fearful reverence. Often, a pharaoh preparing for war, would invoke the spirit of Seth, the god of the unyielding, fierce desert, in order to overpower his enemies. But, always, when pharaoh died, he became Osiris.
Horus
is represented as a man, or as a hawk or falcon-headed man, often wearing
the Pharaoh's crown or with a sun disc on his head. The god, would likely
carry a was scepter and an ankh, the symbol for eternal life. The predator
bird, the falcon is a symbol of the god, Horus. Since, Horus lost and
regained his eye, the eye itself is a potent symbol, called the eye of
Horus. The eye, or wadjet eye as it is called is worn or displayed as a
powerful amulet of protection. The
retrieved eye is seen as the moon, the other, as the sun, thus Horus has
influence over these powerful forces of nature. Seth's
testicles, weren't revered, but were commonly referred to in crude oaths.
By the balls of Seth! they might say. And, thereafter, the opposing,
balancing forces of the two gods lived for all time, with Horus, the god
of the pharaoh and the fertile lands; Seth, the god of the desert lands
and foreign peoples.
Horus and Set were originally expressions of the primal duality, the two aspects of Heaven, the day-sky and night-sky. As the Egyptian mythology was elaborated towards its final chaotic state, their symbolism drifted away from these absolute poles into the middle ground, first becoming solar, and finally taking on a variety of solar/martial and zodiacal characteristics. Yet their final form can still be expressed in a concise symbology, that of the astrological signs of Aries and Scorpio. Taken whole, their symbolism is that of the primal duality manifesting in its male aspects.
It is worth noting that in the beginning of Egyptian dynastic history Seth was a member of the venerated gods of Egypt. It is Seth that stands in the bow of the boat of Ra and slays the enemies of Ra as the ship traverses the sky on it's daily journey. It seems that in very early times the followers of the god Seth may have been conquered by the followers of the god Horus whom went on to unite upper and lower Egypt. If that is true then Seths fall from power has historical and political beginnings. It also must be considered that the roots of these stories may lie in the fact that Seth was a deity of the night and darkness. Therefore, these battles may represent day verses night or dark verses light as well as the ideas of good verses evil. Set was one of the earliest Egyptian deities, a god of the night identified with the northern stars. In the earliest ages of Egypt this Prince of Darkness was well regarded. If we look at these stories with that in mind we find ideas like; "an aging king fighting the powers of darkness that are conspiring against him". In some texts he is hailed as a source of strength, and in early paintings he is portrayed as bearer of a harpoon at the prow of the boat of Ra, warding off the serpent Apep. Yet the warlike and resolute nature of Set seems to have been regarded with ambivalence in Egyptian theology, and the portrayal of this Neter went through many changes over a period of nearly three thousand years. Pictures of a god bearing two heads, that of Set and his daylight brother Horus the Elder, may be compared to the oriental Yin/Yang symbol as a representation of the union of polarities. In time, the conflict between these two abstract principles came to be emphasized rather than their primal union. This concept can easily be equated with the sun setting and being overpowered by the darkness of night. We can also assume that this battle rages through the night only to find that the sun is once again victorious with the sunrise. By midday, the enemy is all but defeated but the victory slips away as the forces of darkness join the battle as the day grows older towards sunset. And so the battle goes; not only day to day but season to season as the Sun moves through the equinoxes and solstices (the Zodiac yearly). As Set was a god of the desert and probably symbolized the destructive heat of the afternoon sun, and thus was thought to be infertile. The hieroglyph for Set was used in words such as 'turmoil', 'confusion', 'illness', 'storm' and 'rage'. Strange events such as eclipses and thunderstorms were all attributed to him (again all manifestations of darkness).
Set's battle with Horus the Elder grew from being a statement of the duality of day and night into an expression of the political conflict among the polytheistic priesthoods for control of the Egyptian theocracy. This was rewritten as a battle between Good and Evil after Egypt expelled the Hyskos in the 18th Dynasty. Some say the Hyskos were Asiatic invaders, and others say they were an indigenous minority that seized control of the nation. This tribe ruled Egypt for a time and happened to favor the Set cult, seeing a resemblance to a storm-god of their own pantheon.
The Set cult never recovered from this identification with the Hyskos. Images of Set were destroyed or defaced. By the time Greek historians visited Egypt, wild asses, pigs, and other beasts identified with the Set cult were driven off cliffs, hacked into pieces or otherwise slaughtered at annual celebrations in a spirit akin to the driving out of the Biblical scapegoat. The report of these historians is often thought to be a valid account of a a timeless and immutable theocracy, but just looking at the frequency with which the ruling capital moved to different cities (each being a cult-center) is enough to dispel this idea. One controversial Egyptologist has suggested that the worship of Set might have predated the concept of paternity. Later cults incorporating a father god would reject this fatherless son. This introduces another bizarre factor in the transformation of the Night/Day battle between brothers into an inheritance dispute between Set and Horus the Younger. Any book on Egyptian myth you pick up contains the gory details of this cosmic lawsuit. I have always been intrigued, though, that while all books affirm that Set tore Osiris to pieces, everybody knows about Osiris, and it is quite hard to collect the pieces of the puzzle that is Set. Egyptologists have never agreed what the animal used to symbolize Set actually is. Since the sages of ancient Egypt did not use an unrecognizable creature to represent any other major deity, we may guess that this is intentional, and points to an esoteric meaning.
This mythology of the two heroes has appeared in nearly every human culture (Cain/ Abel, Romulus/Remus, Jacob/Esau myths). The examples above are merely a few of the more familiar past expressions but know that behind them all is the eternal tension between light and darkness.
