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.
Horus and Set both claim the throne of Egypt and take the case to a tribunal of gods presided over by Ra. It runs for eighty years. The court keeps finding for Horus on the merits and Ra keeps refusing to confirm it, on the grounds that Horus is too young and Set is stronger. They write to the goddess Neith for a ruling; she finds for Horus and suggests compensating Set with two foreign goddesses; the court ignores her.
Isis disguises herself as a young widow and tricks Set into stating a legal principle that condemns him out of his own mouth. Set demands she be excluded. The tribunal moves to an island and the ferryman is ordered not to carry her; she bribes him with a gold ring. There is a contest in boats of stone, which Set takes literally and Horus does not. There is an episode in which Ra is so insulted that he lies down and sulks, and is coaxed back only when Hathor exposes herself to him and makes him laugh.
There is also an extended sexual assault by Set on Horus and a retaliation involving semen and a lettuce, which the papyrus narrates in detail and which most retellings quietly drop. Eventually Osiris writes from the underworld and points out, sharply, that he is the one who made barley and emmer and that the gods all depend on him. The court finds for Horus. Set is given to Ra to live in the sky as thunder.
Where it comes from
Papyrus Chester Beatty I
About this sourcec. 1160 BCE. A single manuscript, written in Late Egyptian, and the fullest surviving narrative treatment of any Egyptian myth.
What is late, foreign or single-source
This is a late, literary and frequently satirical text. Using it as evidence for what Egyptians believed a thousand years earlier is the mistake nearly every popular retelling makes. The gods in it are petty, indecisive and ridiculous, and that is a deliberate authorial choice rather than a window onto ordinary belief.
What the story was for
Legitimacy, argued as a court case. Egypt had no clean rule for what happened when a succession was disputed, and this is a story about a claim that is correct in law losing repeatedly to a claim that is stronger in fact, until the dead father's economic argument settles it. It is also, plainly, meant to be funny.
Other myths