Eighty years of lawsuits before the tribunal of the gods over his father's throne
The Contendings, preserved in the Chester Beatty I papyrus.
Myth · Egyptian
Horus
Egyptian mythology — falcon sky god and patron of kingship
The falcon god of the sky and the living king. Born to Isis after his father's murder, he spends eighty years contesting his uncle's claim to the throne before the tribunal of the gods, losing an eye in the struggle and winning in the end. Every pharaoh ruled as his earthly embodiment, and the eye he lost and regained became Egypt's commonest protective amulet.
How to spot them
- ▸A falcon, or a falcon-headed man, often wearing the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt
- ▸His right eye is the sun and his left the moon
- ▸Depicted as a naked child with a sidelock, finger to his lips, seated on his mother's lap
- ▸Quiz clue: 'wedjat', 'Edfu', 'the four sons of ...', 'the living king on earth'
Stories & episodes
Lost an eye in the fight with his uncle; Thoth restored it, making it the great protective amulet
The wedjat or 'sound eye'; its fractions were used for measuring grain.
Raised in secret in the papyrus marshes, and healed of a scorpion sting by Thoth
The child form Harpokrates, shown on cippi used as healing stelae.
Every pharaoh ruled as his living incarnation, and took a name written in a palace facade topped by a falcon
The serekh, the oldest of the royal titles.
His temple at Edfu is the best preserved in Egypt, and stages his victory as a ritual drama
The Triumph of Horus texts, performed annually.
Four sons of his guard the canopic jars holding the embalmed organs
Imsety, Hapy, Duamutef and Qebehsenuef.
Fused with the sun god as a falcon of the two horizons
Ra-Horakhty, 'Ra-Horus of the Two Horizons'.
Quick-fire facts
- •His name in Egyptian is Heru or Hor, usually taken to mean 'the distant one' or 'the one on high'
- •The main forms are Horus the Elder (Haroeris), Horus son of Isis (Harsiese) and Horus the Child (Harpokrates)
- •The wedjat or Eye of Horus was the standard protective amulet and gives the pharmacists' Rx symbol its folk etymology
- •His cult temples are at Edfu (Behdet), Kom Ombo and Hierakonpolis
- •The four sons of Horus — Imsety, Hapy, Duamutef, Qebehsenuef — have human, baboon, jackal and falcon heads
- •The Greeks identified him with Apollo; Harpokrates became the Graeco-Roman god of silence
- •Ra-Horakhty fuses him with the sun god; the Great Sphinx was worshipped as Horemakhet, 'Horus in the Horizon'
- •The Contendings of Horus and Set is a bawdy, comic New Kingdom retelling of the succession dispute
Drill it — 9 cards
1 / 9new card
Sources
- Richard H. Wilkinson — The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
- Geraldine Pinch — Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt