An ancient Egyptian sky-god in the shape of a man with a hawk's head; also depicted as the child of Isis, when he is often called Harpocrates. He is associated with the divinity of the Pharaoh, who is the living Horus ruling Egypt.
Horus is an ancient god of the Ancient Egyptian religion, whose cult survived so long that he evolved dramatically over time and gained many names. The most well known name is the Greek Horus, representing the Egyptian Heru/Har, which is the basic element in most of the other names of Horus. Horus was so important that the Eye of Horus became an important Egyptian symbol of power. He only had one eye because after Osiris was murdered by his brother Set, Horus fought with Set for the throne of Egypt. In this battle Horus lost one of his eyes and later this became a sign of protection in Egypt.
Origin of name
Horus is recorded in Egyptian hieroglyphs as ḥr.w and is reconstructed to have been pronounced *Ḥāru, meaning "Falcon". The original name also survives in later Egyptian names such as Har-Si-Ese literally "Horus, son of Isis".
Mythology
Sky God
Horus is the god of the sky, and the son of Osiris.
Since he was god of the sky, Horus became depicted as a falcon, or as a falcon-headed man, leading to Horus' name, (in Egyptian, Heru), which meant The distant one. Horus was also sometimes known as Nekheny (meaning falcon), although it has been proposed that Nekheny may have been another falcon-god, worshipped at Nekhen (city of the hawk), that became identified as Horus very early on.
As Horus was the son of Osiris, and god of the sky, he became closely associated with the Pharaoh of Upper Egypt (where Horus was worshipped), and became their patron.
It was said that after the world was created, Horus landed on a perch, known as the djeba, which literally translates as finger, in order to rest, which consequently became considered sacred. On some occasions, Horus was referred to as lord of the djeba (i.e.
Sun God
Since Horus was said to be the sky, it was natural that he was rapidly considered to also contain the sun and moon. Later, the reason that the moon was not as bright as the sun was explained by a tale, known as the contestings of Horus and Set, originating as a metaphor for the conquest of Lower Egypt by Upper Egypt in about 3000BC. In this tale, it was said that Set, the patron of Lower Egypt, and Horus, the patron of Upper Egypt, had battled for Egypt brutally, with neither side victorious, until eventually the gods sided with Horus.
As Horus was the ultimate victor he became known as Harsiesis, Heru-ur or Har-Wer (ḥr.w wr 'Horus the Great'), but more usually translated as Horus the Elder. It was also said that during a new-moon, Horus had become blinded and was titled Mekhenty-er-irty (mḫnty r ỉr.ty 'He who has no eyes'), while when the moon became visible again, he was re-titled Khenty-irty (ḫnty r ỉr.ty 'He who has eyes'). While blind, it was considered that Horus was quite dangerous, sometimes attacking his friends after mistaking them for enemies.
Ultimately, as another sun god, Horus became identified with Ra as Ra-Herakhty, literally Ra, who is Horus of the two horizons. And, even worse, it made Ra into Horus, who was the son of Ra, i.e. Consequently Ra and Horus never completely merged into a single falcon-headed sun god. Likewise, as Ra-Herakhty, in an allusion to the Ogdoad creation myth, Horus was occasionally shown in art as a naked boy, with a finger in his mouth, sitting on a lotus with his mother. In the form of a youth, Horus was referred to as Neferhor.
In an attempt to resolve the conflict, Ra-Herakhty was occasionally said to be married to Iusaaset, which was technically his own shadow, having previously been Atum's shadow, before Atum was identified as Ra, in the form Atum-Ra, and thus of Ra-Herakhty when Ra was also identified as a form of Horus.
Conqueror of Set
By the Nineteenth dynasty, the previous brief enmity between Set and Horus, in which Horus had ripped off one of Set's testicles, was revitalised as a separate tale. According to Papyrus Chester-Beatty I, Set was considered to have been homosexual and is depicted as trying to prove his dominance by seducing Horus and then having intercourse with him. However, Horus places his hand between his thighs and catches Set's semen, then subsequently threw it in the river, so that he may not be said to have been inseminated by Set. Horus then deliberately spreads his own semen on some lettuce, which was Set's favourite food (the Egyptians thought that lettuce was phallic). The gods first listen to Set's claim of dominance over Horus, and call his semen forth, but it answers from the river, invalidating his claim. In consequence, Horus is declared the ruler of Egypt.
This myth, along with others, could be seen as an explaination of how the two kingdoms of Egypt (Upper and Lower) came to be united. Horus was seen as the God of Upper Egypt, and Set as the God of Lower Egypt. In this myth, the respective Upper and Lower deities have a fight, through which Horus is the victor. However, some of Horus (representing Upper Egypt) enters into Set (Lower Egypt) thus explaining why Upper Egypt is dominant over the Lower Egyptians.
Brother of Isis
When Ra assimilated Atum into Atum-Ra, Horus became considered part of what had been the Ennead. However, Horus did not fit in so easily, since if he was identified as the son of Hathor and Atum-Ra, in the Ennead, he would then be the brother of the primordial air and moisture, and the uncle of the sky and earth, between which there was initially nothing, which was not very consistent with him being the sun.
Since Horus had become more and more identified with the sun, since his identification as Ra, his identification as also the moon suffered, so it was possible for the rise of other moon gods, without complicating the system of belief too much.
Mystery Religion
Since Horus, as the son of Osiris, was only in existence after Osiris's death, and because Horus, in his earlier guise, was the husband of Isis, the difference between Horus and Osiris blurred, and so, after a few centuries, it came to be said that Horus was the resurrected form of Osiris. Likewise, as the form of Horus before his death and resurrection, Osiris, who had already become considered a form of creator when belief about Osiris assimilated that about Ptah-Seker, also became considered to be the only creator, since Horus had gained these aspects of Ra.
Eventually, in the Hellenic period, Horus was, in some locations, identified completely as Osiris, and became his own Father, since this concept was not so disturbing to Greek philosophy as it had been to that of ancient Egypt. In this form, Horus was sometimes known as Heru-sema-tawy (ḥr.w smȝ tȝ.wy 'Horus, Uniter of Two Lands'), since Horus ruled over the land of the dead, and that of the living. Since the tale became one of Horus' own death and rebirth, which happened partly due to his own actions, he became a life-death-rebirth deity.
In the time of Christ the term "son of god" had come to mean the bearer of this title was the father god himself as well as his own son incarnated on earth. Horus was Osiris the father who incarnated as Horus the son. This particularly happened amongst the groups who thought of Horus as his own father, and so Horus, in the form of the son, amongst these groups often became known as Ihy (alternately: Ihi, Ehi, Ahi, Ihu), meaning "sistrum player", which allowed the confusion between the father and son to be side-stepped.
The combination of this, now rather esoteric mythology, with the philosophy of Plato, which was becoming popular on the mediterranean shores, lead to the tale becoming the bases of a mystery religion.
Horus and Jesus
Some information in this article or section has not been verified and may not be reliable.Please check for any inaccuracies, and modify and cite sources as needed.
A few scholars and critics theorize further that certain elements of the story of Jesus were embellishments, copied from legends surrounding Horus through an abrupt form of syncretism. Indeed, some even claim that the historical figure of Jesus was copied from Horus wholesale, and retroactively made into a Jewish teacher; these assert that Horus was the basis for the elements assigned to the M Gospel (the bits in Matthew which are not in the Q Gospel or Mark) and the L Gospel (comprising the bits in Luke which are not in the Q gospel or Mark), especially the infancy narratives.
Neith's nativity
The nativity sequence itself stands out for comparison with the nativity of Ra, whose mother became thought of as Neith, who had become the personification of the primal waters of the Ogdoad.
Later, the tale evolved so that the god Kneph was present, who represented the breath of life, which brought new life to things. As a creator, Kneph became identified as the more dominant creator deity Amun, and when Amun became Amun-Ra, so Kneph gained Hathor as a wife.
Many of the features look similar to the nativity of Jesus at first glance, such as the continued virginity, lack of father, annunciation by a celestial figure, birth of god, and so forth, but others do not.
Meanwhile, Kneph was said by Plutarch to have been understood by the Egyptians in the same way as the Greeks understood pneuma, meaning spirit, and so it was that Neith became pregnant by the actions of the holy spirit, like Mary does in the Christian story. Nethertheless, the tale was essentially about Neith rather than the queens of pharaohs, until that is, Amenhotep III applied it to his wife and the birth of his son, whom was consequently identified as Horus, as after the amalgamation of the gods Ra and Horus, the tale became one of Horus too. The significance of Amenhotep making the identification is both that it became a tale of the birth of Akhenaten, who left such an impression that, as the gods evolved further, the tale became remembered as being one of the birth from a human mother of a human son, who was nevertheless divine.
User Comments Add a comment…