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.
Ra sails up the Nile with his army, and rebellion breaks out. Horus of Behdet takes the form of a great winged sun disc and flies ahead of the barque, attacking the enemy so fiercely that they lose track of themselves and kill each other. He then works north through Egypt, town by town, defeating the followers of Set at each, with the text naming the places and the outcomes.
The account is written as a military dispatch with the geography of a real campaign, and it ends with the winged disc being installed above the doors of temples throughout Egypt, which is where it actually appears on almost every Egyptian doorway.
Where it comes from
The Triumph of Horus, temple of Edfu
Ptolemaic, first century BCE. Carved on the enclosure wall, accompanied by reliefs, and probably performed as a ritual drama.
What is late, foreign or single-source
Very late. This is a Ptolemaic composition promoting one temple's own god, written when Egypt was ruled by Greeks, and its ordering of Egypt's provinces reflects the politics of that period rather than anything ancient.
What the story was for
It explains a symbol. The winged disc over a doorway is the single most repeated protective device in Egyptian architecture, and this text is the charter for it. It also shows the late hardening of Set: here he is straightforwardly the enemy, with no trace of the god who spent two thousand years killing Apophis on the night barque.
Other myths