| Horus | |
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Other Names |
Horus, Heru, Har, Her, or Hor |
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First Appearance |
Egyptian Myth |
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Created by |
Egyptian Myth |
Origin[]
Horus is one of the most significant ancient Egyptian deities who served many functions, most notably as the god of kingship, healing, protection, the sun, and the sky. He was worshiped from at least the late prehistoric Egypt until the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Roman Egypt.
Different forms of Horus are recorded in history, and these are treated as distinct gods by Egyptologists. These various forms may be different manifestations of the same multi-layered deity in which certain attributes or syncretic relationships are emphasized, not necessarily in opposition but complementary to one another, consistent with how the Ancient Egyptians viewed the multiple facets of reality. He was most often depicted as a falcon, most likely a lanner falcon or peregrine falcon, or as a man with a falcon head.
The earliest recorded form of Horus is the tutelary deity of Nekhen in Upper Egypt, who is the first known national god, specifically related to the ruling pharaoh who in time came to be regarded as a manifestation of Horus in life and Osiris in death. The most commonly encountered family relationship describes Horus as the son of Isis and Osiris, and he plays a key role in the Osiris myth as Osiris's heir and the rival to Set, the murderer and brother of Osiris. In another tradition, Hathor is regarded as his mother and sometimes as his wife.
In one tale, Horus is born to the goddess Isis after she retrieved all the dismembered body parts of her murdered husband Osiris, except his penis, which was thrown into the Nile and eaten by a catfish/Medjed, or sometimes depicted as instead by a crab, and according to Plutarch's account used her magic powers to resurrect Osiris and fashion a phallus to conceive her son (older Egyptian accounts have the penis of Osiris surviving).
After becoming pregnant with Horus, Isis fled to the Nile Delta marshlands to hide from her brother Set, who jealously killed Osiris and who she knew would want to kill their son. There Isis bore a divine son, Horus. As birth, death and rebirth are recurrent themes in Egyptian lore and cosmology, it is not particularly strange that Horus also is the brother of Osiris and Isis, by Nut and Geb, together with Nephthys and Set.
Public Domain Literary Appearances[]
All appearances of Horus published before Jan. 1, 1929 are public domain in the US.
Some notable appearances are listed below:
- The Contendings of Horus and Seth
- Pyramid Texts
- Legends of the Gods (1912)
- A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. 1-2 (1883)
- Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt by Lewis Spence (1915)
- The Gods of the Egyptians; or, Studies in Egyptian Mythology (1904)