Osirian
Horus
ḥrHow it changed
At least two originally separate gods running under one name: Horus the Elder, a sky god of the Predynastic period, and Horus the Child, son of Isis and Osiris. The Egyptians did not resolve the contradiction and had no need to; a living king was Horus and a dead king was Osiris.
Cult centre
Edfu, Hierakonpolis
Best attested
Predynastic onward, the longest-attested god in Egypt
Family
Son of Osiris and Isis, in the form that fights Set.
Epithets
- “He of the two horizons”
- “Lord of heaven”
How to recognise the figure
A falcon, or a falcon-headed man wearing the double crown.
Appears in
Alluded to from c. 2400 BCE; told as a connected narrative only c. 100 CE
The murder of Osiris
The one Egyptian myth everyone can name, and the one where the famous version is Greek.
c. 1160 BCE, Twentieth Dynasty
The Contendings of Horus and Set
Eighty years of divine litigation, with bribery, shapeshifting and open comedy at the gods' expense.
c. 1300 BCE, Nineteenth Dynasty
Isis and the secret name of Ra
A goddess poisons the sun god in order to blackmail him for his real name.
Inscribed c. 700 BCE, claiming a much older original
Creation by speech at Memphis
Ptah conceives the world in his heart and speaks it into existence, and the text arguing this is a piece of political propaganda.
c. 1550 BCE onward, Spell 125 of the Book of the Dead
The weighing of the heart
A heart on one pan, a feather on the other, and forty-two judges who each have to be addressed by name.
Ptolemaic, on the walls of the temple of Edfu
Horus of Edfu and the winged disc
A campaign narrative, carved on a temple wall, in which the sun god's son puts down a rebellion province by province.
Carries
Worshipped at
Others in this group