Osirian
Set
stẖHow it changed
The most revised god in the pantheon, and the strongest evidence that this was never a fixed system. For most of Egyptian history Set stands in the solar barque and kills Apophis each night, protecting creation. Second Dynasty kings took his name. Only after Egypt's occupation by foreign powers whose gods were identified with him does he harden into a figure of evil.
Cult centre
Ombos, Avaris
Best attested
Predynastic onward; vilified from the Third Intermediate Period
Family
Son of Geb and Nut; brother of Osiris and Isis.
Epithets
- “Great of strength”
- “Lord of the red land”
How to recognise the figure
The Set animal: a canine figure with a curved snout and square-tipped ears, matching no living species.
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. 1500 BCE onward, in royal tombs
The twelve hours of the night
The sun does not set. It dies, travels through the underworld, unites with Osiris at midnight, and is reborn.
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
Others in this group