Ancient Egypt, a land of pharaohs, pyramids, and profound mythology, holds within its depths the captivating figure of Horus, the falcon-headed god of kingship. Understanding the significance of falcons in ancient Egypt requires delving into the multifaceted role of Horus, from his divine origins to his enduring symbolism.
Horus offering life to the pharaoh, Ramesses II. Painted limestone. c. 1275 BCE, 19th dynasty.
Who is Horus?
Horus was a super important deity in dynastic Egypt who was usually represented as a falcon or a man with a falcon head. Since ancient Egypt covered such a large geographic area and had a history that spanned thousands of years, there were tons of different variants of Horus.
Over the course of history, Horus’ role has transitioned from that of a venerated religious figure to a modern-day commercialized symbol of ancient Egypt. His role has changed throughout time and across various cultures.
Horus the Elder
As you would expect, Horus the Elder predates Horus the Younger, and the myths surrounding his origin featured deities from the dawn of creation. According to the Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom, the sky goddess Nut gives birth to five children: Osiris, Seth, Isis, Nephthys, and Horus the Elder. At his birth, Horus the Elder is born as a falcon and, of his own accord, soars into the sky, beyond the horizon. Thus, he gained the title of Lord of the Sky and was usually represented as a celestial falcon with his wings spread across the horizon, with his right eye as the sun and his left eye as the moon.
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Egyptologists think that one of the earliest representations of Horus is a tiny falcon figurine found in Tell el-Farkha, dating from the Early Dynastic Period. It was discovered during the early 2000s among other animal figures, all of which were made from hippopotamus tusk. Well, since Horus was so widely worshipped across Egypt, whenever we see any representation of a falcon, we kinda just assume it’s Horus.
In later renditions of the myth, Horus the Elder also fights his brother Seth, the god of storms and chaos. Because the two represent opposing forces, the solar Horus against the turbulent Seth, the two were engaged in constant conflict.
“I am Horus the Great Falcon who is on the battlement of the Mansion of Him-whose-name-is-hidden. My flight has reached the horizon, having overpassed the gods of the sky, thus promoting my position more than that of the Primeval Ones… so that my place is far from Seth, the enemy of my father Osiris. I have passed the eternal roads to the dawn, going up in my flight… I am Horus more distant of place than people and gods; I am Horus son of Osiris.”
Horus the Younger
Horus the Younger is the son of Isis and Osiris. This is important, because at this point, Horus had become not only a symbol of the power of kings, but he legitimized the whole idea of divine kingship. It’s way easier to justify being on the throne when you can say that you got the job from your divine ancestors and have their protection.
Because the order of succession is hereditary and the gods ruled Egypt before humans did, this also means that the pharaohs were descended from the gods, or in some cases, the reincarnation of Horus himself.
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The Contendings of Horus and Seth
The drama you just heard is based on a story called “The Contendings of Horus and Seth.” Egyptologists have found bits and pieces of this story from all sorts of places and times.
Here is a summary of the story:
- Seth kills Osiris.
- Isis hides baby Horus in a patch of papyrus on a marsh next to the Nile Delta.
- Horus and Seth engage in many battles to avenge Osiris and determine the rightful ruler of Egypt.
- Horus wins the throne of Egypt.
Upon becoming king after Set's defeat, Horus gives offerings to his deceased father Osiris, thus reviving and sustaining him in the afterlife.
Egyptologists have often tried to connect the conflict between the two gods with political events early in Egypt's history or prehistory. The cases in which the combatants divide the kingdom, and the frequent association of the paired Horus and Set with the union of Upper and Lower Egypt, suggest that the two deities represent some kind of division within the country.
The myth also brought up some underlying worries with hereditary kingship, like “What do you do when the successor to the throne has no experience?” and “What if the stronger candidate is also the one who assassinated the king to begin with?” or even, “Should the line of kingship be hereditary at all?”
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The first pharaoh that was connected with Horus the Child was Pepi II, who was depicted as a baby Horus in the lap of his mother. Horus the Child was an extremely popular image for the pharaohs, since the child represents overcoming great danger and obstacles.
The Eye of Horus
One of the most important symbols of protection in ancient Egypt was the Eye of Horus. In “The Contendings of Horus and Seth,” Seth punishes Horus for chopping off his mom’s head by pulling out both of Horus’ eyes. Luckily for Horus, the goddess Hathor helps him to restore his eyes.
The Eye of Horus looks like a stylized human eye with a long curve and short teardrop coming from its bottom, and it tries to combine features from human eyes and the facial features of a falcon. If you look at coffins from the Old Kingdom, you might be able to see pairs of wadjets painted on them.
After the battles between Horus and Seth, Horus uses his newly restored eyes to revive his father, Osiris, who, as you remember was assassinated. So, the ancient Egyptians also believed the wadjet had healing properties. For example, wadjet eyes were often placed over the incision wounds on mummies to make sure that the dead body would heal and be “whole.” The ancient Egyptians even prescribed medicine based on the proportions of the wadjet!
The structure of the wadjet is deeply rooted in fractions. In some versions of “The Contendings of Horus and Seth”, Seth only tears out Horus’ left eye- which, if you remember from Horus the Elder, is also the moon- and rips it into six pieces, with each piece representing a fraction of the Eye of Horus: one half, one fourth, one eighth, one sixteenth, one thirty-second, and one sixty-fourth.
The fractions of the Eye of Horus were associated with different senses:
- 1/2 - Smell
- 1/4 - Sight
- 1/8 - Thought
- 1/16 - Hearing
- 1/32 - Taste
- 1/64 - Touch
If you add up all of the fractions from the Eye of Horus and multiply that by thirty, you get 29.53125 days. This is an incredibly accurate approximation of the number of days in a lunar month, off by only fifty-seven seconds!
EYE OF HORUS - ANCIENT EGYPT SYMBOLS ANALYSIS #history #symbols
Adaptations of Horus in Other Cultures
Ancient Egyptians typically portrayed this version of Horus with his finger to his mouth as a symbol of childhood. However, the Greeks assumed that this symbolized silence so Harpocrates was, in the Greek poet Ovid’s words, “the god who holds his finger to his lips for silence sake.”
They also associated Harpocrates with Hercules because they saw depictions of Horus the Child overpowering snakes, lions, antelopes, and crocodiles, which reminded them of how Hercules apparently strangled two snakes that attacked him as a child.
The Greek historian, Herodotus, actually referred to Horus as Horus-Apollo in his writings because he wanted his Greek audience to know that Horus was the Egyptian version of Apollo, the Greek god of the sun, similar to how Horus was initially god of the sun. Once again, we have a foreign country taking Horus and fitting him into their own culture. Equating the two and suggesting Horus is the Egyptian translation for Apollo really shows the Greeks’ ethnocentrism.
Over time, these little adjustments to Horus as he is passed between cultures really build up. Jumping forward a little bit to when Christianity began to gain popularity… The Cult of Isis was widely spread in both Greece and Rome, and it was considered the biggest threat to the new religion. During this time, Horus was often depicted in the form of Horus the Child with his mother Isis.
There certainly are clear similarities between the images of Isis and Horus and the images of Mary and Jesus. I mean, the way the child rests on the mother’s arm is mostly the same in both the ancient Egyptian statues and the Madonna and Child paintings, and I think that is pretty strong evidence for this theory. In both images, the child is typically sitting on the lap of the mother with his back against one of her arms, and in a lot of renderings, the mother has her other hand to her chest. However, this is just our speculation.
Although a lot of Christians would consider the idea heretical, some scholars have gone as far as to argue that Christianity was developed entirely from Egyptian mythology. For instance, Horus’ father, Osiris, was absent, similar to that of Jesus, and he had a stepfather Geb who can be compared to Joseph. Horus was born because his mother resurrected his father’s penis to conceive the child. And since Horus represents the living pharaoh and Osiris, the dead pharaoh, one can almost equate Horus and Osiris into one being who was resurrected, like Jesus.
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