Episode 405: Horus
/We’ve been circling around Horus like a HAWK during this series, but now it’s finally time to dive right into it. We talk about the origins of this boy bird king, how he grew up, and how he managed to finally become the head god in charge!
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of colonization, genitals, sex, childbirth, insects, and eye injury.
Housekeeping
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
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- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
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About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
[theme]
AMANDA: Welcome to the Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends and folklore. Every week, we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia. And Amanda, I feel like we're really ramping up here on Denial Isn't Just A River In Egypt, it's also what we've been doing by keeping an Egyptian mythology series from you on Spirits Podcast.
AMANDA: By Spirits Podcast.
JULIA: By Spirits Podcast. But we've talked a lot about some of the big names. We've talked about Osiris, we've talked about Ra, we talked about Isis, we talked about Set. But now, we have to talk about one of the most important ancient Egyptian deities, one of the, quote-unquote, "next generation of gods," I would say. The falcon-headed god, Horus.
AMANDA: Now, I know you said falcon-headed, but I am now just picturing a Captain Jean-Luc Picard-headed man-bird, because The Next Generation is also my favorite Star Trek series.
JULIA: I mean, it is arguably the best one in my personal opinion.
AMANDA: Engagement in the comments, baby. Let's go.
JULIA: Tell me which one you like best, Star Trek nerds.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Horus is a really interesting character in ancient Egyptian mythology. He is the pharaoh of the gods, the king. He's very closely associated with the rulers of Egypt, who were supposed to be these earthly embodiments of the god himself. And early on he was seen as this god of war and the sky, but his importance really rose and rose as time went on. But first, before we kind of get into the historical and also mythological origins of Horus, let's talk about the ways that we would be able to best spot our boy.
AMANDA: I mean, I assume he's the one who's a man with a bird's head.
JULIA: Amanda, you would be right, but much like many, many of the other Egyptian gods, he has many forms. Usually, we have like that kind of trio, right? There's the animal-headed, the animal form, and the human form. Now, Horus, in his avian bird form, which is arguably his original form, experienced something of a transformation over time in terms of hieroglyphics and art. So, originally, the falcon that represented him in hieroglyphics was leaning forward in this sort of, like, lateral position in very early hieroglyphics. But as time goes on, you can kind of see it becomes more and more upright, which actually coincides with the prominence and importance of Horus in ancient Egyptian religion.
AMANDA: Now, if that's not a sort of, like, metaphorical tie in that a dissertation student was like, "Oh, wait, this is perfect." I don't know what is.
JULIA: Yeah. It's— it's a real like, "I've been studying this for so long, and early on, it's more lateral, but it's more upright later on. What could this mean?"
AMANDA: Bird stands up.
JULIA: Hmm.
AMANDA: Bird is more important.
JULIA: Bird is more important as it stands up. You've heard it here first on Spirits Podcast.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So the falcon is his most recognizable form, but there is also a really cool form that I have to mention, where he takes the appearance of a falcon-headed crocodile, which is the coolest shit I have ever pictured in my brain.
AMANDA: That's incredible. I— I would— it's like a— a tension of like, "Am I the lunch, or am I the diner?" Like, amazing.
JULIA: Imagine you are chilling at the beaches of the Nile, the— the shores of the Nile, and then all of a sudden, you see like, "Oh, there's— there's a bird in the water, but it's very submerged. That's odd." And then it crawls out, and it's a crocodile body.
AMANDA: Yeah. Or you see, like, the tail of a crocodile, like, peeking out from the rushes, and you kind of crane your neck to take a look before getting a safe distance away. And then the head's a bird.
JULIA: Huh!
AMANDA: Aaah!
JULIA: Really— really just honing in on your hatred of animal hybrids, right?
AMANDA: I think I'm learning that the— the one-to-one hybrid not so bad. Centaurs were okay with the Egyptian gods, where it's like one animal with a different animal's head. I'm— I'm cool with that. So I'm gonna start getting into, like, 3, 4, 5, 6 mashups that—
JULIA: Ah.
AMANDA: —it's feeling a lot like a lump of Play-Doh that drops off the kitchen counter, and then you pick it up, and it's covered in, like, every piece of hair, dirt, and Cheerios that, like, has ever graced your kitchen floor.
JULIA: Oh, no.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Yeah, Amanda. I was a '90s child. I had Silly Putty.
AMANDA: Yep.
JULIA: The worst toy ever. So we have this incredibly cool falcon-headed crocodile combo. We have his falcon form. Of course, we have the falcon-headed human form. And then he— when he is fully anthropomorphic, when he is fully a human person, he usually appears as an adult man, but sometimes, and honestly more frequently, in later developments of his role in religion, he was as a child.
AMANDA: Really?
JULIA: Yes. So as we discussed in the Set episode, he really came into prominence in mythology while he was still, like, a young adult or a child. And so this child form of Horus was seen as incredibly important, not only as the future king, but also in his role as the son of Isis.
AMANDA: That makes sense. Reminding you of his, yeah, his origins, his place, and the fact that even though he grows and dies, like all the gods, this is sort of depicting him in his most recognizable form.
JULIA: Exactly. So regardless of what form he is seen in, he is usually depicted as the king, and so therefore he is almost always seen wearing the double crown, which was the symbol of his rule over all of Egypt.
AMANDA: In what way is it double? Is it like a layer cake?
JULIA: There's like two parts of it and, like, two cones going up, basically, is how it looks. Yeah.
AMANDA: Oh, nice.
JULIA: So with this in mind, Amanda, I really want to talk about Horus' origins. And we— we've gotten into his mythological origins, and we will do that again. But first, let's talk about his historical origins.
AMANDA: Hell yeah.
JULIA: So despite his very popular child form and the fact that in the Egyptian canon, he's part of, like, basically, the fourth generation of gods. Horus is, actually, historically one of the earliest of the Egyptian deities. So he is first mentioned by name at the beginning of the Dynastic Period. So we will talk a lot about, like, the different dynasties and stuff like that. Like, we'll say, like, the 28th dynasty of— of Egypt.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: This is the very, very beginning of the Dynastic Period he is first named.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: There were, at this point, other falcon deities that existed before these written examples of Horus, but over time, they sort of syncretized with the god that we would know Horus to become.
AMANDA: At first, I was surprised that he would be, like, the fourth generation of gods, but named very early. But I think it— it makes a sort of sense that you, like, establish the lineage that almost, like, leads up to and pays off in Horus.
JULIA: Right. And especially when you are thinking about, like, he rose into prominence during the Dynastic Period, you have to have that dynastic line.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: The reason, like, why is this person the heir? Oh, well, they are the embodiment of Horus, who is the son of Osiris, who is the son of Geb, who is the son of Ra.
AMANDA: Yeah. We didn't start— you know, we didn't start with the spin-off series about the Targaryens. We started with Daenerys and then worked backwards. I get it. I get it.
JULIA: Exactly. It's more— it's more rewarding in that way.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So interestingly, in Egyptian documents from the 18th Dynasty, which refer to the pre-dynastic kings, kind of talking about the history of Egypt, pre the Dynastic Period. They refer to these pre-dynastic rulers as being followers of Horus.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Though this also might just be, like, a political and religious decision in that writing, in order to center a god that was important to the people writing at the time.
AMANDA: That's fair.
JULIA: But safe to say is there were other avian gods that would become Horus as we know him. They came from all different parts of Egypt. From Upper Egypt, there was Dedun who was basically a very early avian god in early Egyptian history. And then there was the god Montu, who became popular closer to the rise of the— as we know him now, Horus.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So it's basically like— it is a little complicated. It's one of those situations where it's most likely that each of these gods, Horus included, began as local gods in different parts of Egypt. And then it wasn't until later that Horus became more popular, and his worship kind of subsumed the worship of these local gods that held similar roles to what he would become.
AMANDA: We see it all the time.
JULIA: Exactly. We— we see that all the time similarly across the world when it comes to codifying both religion and mythology as a way of colonizing, and conquering, and creating like a cohesive culture.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But now that we've done the historical origins of Horus, let's talk about those mythological origins, which we've— we've told this story many times at this point on Denial Isn't Just A River In Egypt. It's what we've been doing by keeping an Egyptian mythology series from you on Spirits Podcast, by Spirits Podcast.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But we're going to do it this time from Horus' perspective, and we'll actually pick up the story where Horus, actually, kind of comes in.
AMANDA: This is, like, the end of the murder mystery, where you see scenes from the beginning of the murder mystery. I'm talking about Knives Out, and then you get to see the new context in which it all happens. And, like, you had all the pieces, but you didn't have the perspective.
JULIA: Yes, it is exactly like that. I really love that. I also— just an aside, I watched a terrible Netflix horror movie recently. It's called Tarot. It should have been called Horoscope because they decided, like, horoscope and tarot should be intrinsically, like, combined in this plot.
And she does, like, readings for her friends that ends up being like, "Oh, you know, you're going to come into a lot of money, but then you're going to— to fall and, like, you know, you should be aware of enclosed spaces, or it feels like the walls are, like, closing in on you." And then, like, all those things come to pass, but in, like, ironic twist death kind of ways.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And that's how I feel when we tell the story, because every time someone would be, like, close to dying, they would just reiterate the reading that she did for them, but in, like, spooky echo.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: Yeah, that's what I'm doing here on this podcast. This is my life now.
AMANDA: Okay. Cool. Spooky echo.
JULIA: All right. So, as we know, Osiris was dead, Isis was able to bring him back to life after she and her sister Nephthys were able to locate all of Osiris' scattered body parts and reassemble him.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: However, in some versions of the story, it was said that Osiris' penis was missing, having been eaten by a fish.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: Because Set threw it into the Nile.
AMANDA: Right.
JULIA: Despite the fact that he was technically incomplete, Isis was able to bring Osiris back, but he cannot stay because he's died, and also his body is incomplete, so he has to return back to the Underworld and reign there as the Lord of the Dead. Before he leaves however, Isis was said to have transformed herself into kite form. Now, this is— like there's two different versions of the story. There's the one where Osiris is complete, nothing happens to his penis, and they just have sex before he goes down to the Underworld. This is the story where he does not have his penis, and so Isis turns into a kite, as we saw before. She used that form to find all of Osiris' scattered parts. And then she flies around his body, drawing his seed to her, and impregnating herself with the baby that would be Horus. And I was like— you know, in the Set episode, we were like, "Wow, this, like, weird semen magic, kind of coming from left field. We don't know where this is coming from." Here's another example of it.
AMANDA: We— we knew where it came from, Julia.
JULIA: Oh, we did?
AMANDA: From the— from the penis.
JULIA: Oh, yeah, it came from— from the balls.
AMANDA: From the balls, yep.
JULIA: So Osiris departs for the Underworld and Isis knowing that her child is going to be a target because he will be a threat to Set's claim to the throne.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: She goes into hiding in the Delta region of Egypt in order to protect not only herself, but her unborn child.
AMANDA: Unfortunately, an absolute classic.
JULIA: So Isis is having a difficult pregnancy. Her pregnancy with Horus is not an easy one, especially because she has to be on the run for all of it. Tough to do, especially when pregnant. And after an exceptionally long labor, she gives birth to Horus all alone in the swamps of the Nile Delta.
AMANDA: We already knew she was a badass, but damn.
JULIA: Damn. Again, still alone, she has to hide herself and the baby Horus from Set and his followers, because he is sending out these, like, evil spirits and— and, quote-unquote, "demons" and stuff like that to try to find them. At this point, she is, like, hiding in the thickets of the swamp during the day and then going out for food at night. And it's like a whole, like, kind of very scary. I imagine it very A Quiet Place style hiding out and trying to forage and whatnot.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Now, luckily, as we mentioned in the Isis episode, she is able to be guarded by the seven scorpions that were given to her by the goddess of poisonous creatures, Selket.
AMANDA: Not necessarily who I would choose to support me through the first weeks and months of being a parent, but again, better than nothing.
JULIA: Again, Amanda, remember, it takes a village, and sometimes the village is seven scorpions.
AMANDA: You gotta do what you gotta do with what you got.
JULIA: So Selket actually ends up finding Isis out in the Delta swamps and swears to protect her. And she was actually the one herself, who, while the scorpions would go out with Isis, Selket would stay behind with the baby Horus and make sure that he was safe.
AMANDA: Cute.
JULIA: And in some versions of the story later on, they are joined by the goddess Neith, who you might remember, is the goddess of the primeval waters, and was also the inventor of birth. So I think that's a probably pretty good person to have with you in your early motherhood.
AMANDA: Yeah. Ideally during that, you know, protracted, dangerous labor earlier, but, like, I'll take her whenever she can arrive.
JULIA: Exactly. So together, these three goddesses are the ones that raise and nurture Horus. They educate him basically while in exile from the other gods until he is grown, old enough to challenge Set for the crown to become the king of the gods. And as we know from the Set episode, that goes down, basically.
AMANDA: Being raised by a trio of women that are various gods and a bunch of scorpion cousins, sounds like a very good upraising for a king.
JULIA: Imagine you're just out and your mom says, "All right, go play with your cousins." And your cousins are seven giant scorpions.
AMANDA: I feel like that kid would be prepared for the world. I don't know about you.
JULIA: Yeah, no, my childhood would have been way more fun if I was out there playing with seven giant scorpions.
AMANDA: Yeah, but you had a bunch of Italian cousins with names like, you know, Giorno. No, that's a po— that's a sauce, Amanda. That's a sauce. You know what I mean.
JULIA: Famously, all my cousins are named Giorno or Boyardee.
AMANDA: I didn't want to say the real incredibly Italian names, but like my cousins, you know, Colm and Telemordo, and Jamison.
JULIA: Damn. Damn, dude. Called out.
AMANDA: Trying to— try to spread it around, you know?
JULIA: So before we get more into Horus and his role among the gods and a few of his stories, I want to talk about something that tends to be a little confusing about Horus when you are studying ancient Egyptian mythology. And that is the problem of Horus the elder and Horus the younger.
AMANDA: Hmm. Okay.
JULIA: Because if mythology isn't confusing enough at times, there are two gods that share the name Horus in Egyptian mythology. Mostly, this can be blamed on the fact that there are older and regional stories that overlap as Horus becomes more widely worshiped across Egypt. But as a result, this sort of has to be rectified or explained in the codified Egyptian mythology.
AMANDA: I think if anybody can hold in their heads the increasingly fantastical, like, multi-leveled timelines and, you know, dualities of modern comic book movies, we can grasp this. I— I believe in us.
JULIA: Okay, okay. So as such, Amanda, we get these two different Horuses, neither of which and both of which are the true Horus, right?
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So Horus the elder is, according to the mythology, one of the oldest gods. He is the oldest brother of Osiris and Isis and Nephthys—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: —and set. And he—
AMANDA: Got it.
JULIA: —is the son of Geb and Nut. And he was born shortly after the world was created.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Now, while Osiris was given the responsibility of governing the Earth, as we know, Horus the elder was given the sky and the sun. And in some versions of the story, he is depicted as a creator god, not the creator God, but a creator god, and also a benevolent protector. And is seen in art as a falcon perched on the sun barge as it crosses the heavens.
AMANDA: That definitely makes sense as the older version that combines a lot of the things that lots of pre dynastic people were probably like, "Those things are very important, and so we need a god to worship."
JULIA: And that makes sense as to why he is part of the third generation of the gods alongside Osiris and Isis and Set and Nephthys.
AMANDA: And so does that make the baby Horus born among the reeds, Horus the younger?
JULIA: Yes. So Horus the younger is the god that we've been talking about for the most part. So by the Ptolemaic dynasty, Horus the elder kind of simply disappears from religious records. He is completely subsumed by Horus the younger.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And this latter art usually shows him as a child, as we mentioned before, a young boy with a finger to his lips as if shushing, as a reference to when he had to hide in the swamps and marshes while being searched and sought for by Set.
AMANDA: Yeah, that's very scary.
JULIA: Yeah, it's a little spooky. It's a little spooky, a little horror movie kind of creepy child, but it's—
AMANDA: Creepy child going shush? Oh, my.
JULIA: Yes. So Horus the younger, for these kind of much later dynasties, represented, quote, "a promise by the gods to take care of the suffering of humanity." Since he himself, like, knew suffering as a child, he wouldn't allow others to suffer similar fates. So, again, this latter version of Horus the younger is very much this benevolent ruler, this king who is keeping an eye out on all of humanity all of the time, and is making himself available to those when they need help.
AMANDA: Love it.
JULIA: Kind of beautiful. I love that. This is also important to note. This depiction of young Horus, the child of Isis, was very popular with the Romans when they colonized Egypt.
AMANDA: Oh, Julia. Do they— do they love when they're sort of like a mythological founding boy, or perhaps a brother Set that has something to do with, like, maybe animal of prey, like, maybe not a falcon, but I don't know, like a wolf or something? Are they really into that?
JULIA: They do really like that, but at this point, when Rome took over Egypt, the, like, mystery cult of Isis was a really, like, popular cult to join.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And so not only are they, you know, doing their own worshiping of their own gods, they're also kind of folding the Egyptian gods into their own religious and mythological practices. And this actually has a direct influence on the development of Christianity in Rome, and that's why the image of Horus the younger and the goddess Isis so closely resemble art of baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary.
AMANDA: Also giving me Moses vibes of, you know, hiding among the reeds and being raised by folks who find him.
JULIA: Precisely, Amanda. I think you're— you're right on the money there. And I just really love seeing these threads of history kind of vibrating across all of time, you know what I mean?
AMANDA: Totally.
JULIA: And I would— I would love to trace some more of those threads, Amanda, but first, I think we're gonna need a quick refill.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
[theme]
AMANDA: Hello, folks. It's Amanda. And welcome to the refill. First and foremost, I would love to thank our supporters on Patreon, the people who keep this podcast rolling. Did you know that we pay our guests? We pay every guest who's ever been on spirits, and we are only able to do that because we make money on the show via your support on Patreon. It's something we're really proud to do, and something that your support enables us to do. So thank you, supporting producers, Uhleeseeuh,
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JULIA: Amanda, we are back. And the nice part about a lot of mythology is, if you Google a god's name and then a cocktail, someone has usually made something that is in reference to that god as a cocktail at some point.
AMANDA: And we've been inspired by many of them in our journey of a 400 plus episodes.
JULIA: So this is a Horus Cocktail that I found out there, that was designed by someone named Roddy Oliveira, but it is a white rum-based drink with some kind of citrusy notes of yuzu syrup and orange bitters, and then a dash of rose water. And it feels to me very, like, bright, somewhat floral. There's a sort of regalness that I really like about the way that this cocktail is designed. It feels like a cocktail that you would serve to a pharaoh.
AMANDA: Regal, indeed. I love your play on it, and I love the original drink.
JULIA: So, Amanda, as we get back into it, I think for context, we have to start with something that I teased in the Set episode about one of the most important aspects of Horus, which is the Eye of Horus.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So as we know it ties to the conflicts between Horus and Set, in which Horus has his eye gouged out by Set. Now, in some versions of the story, Set steals the eye, sometimes he tramples it, sometimes he eats it. There is one version of the story told in the Book of the Dead where Set transforms into a black boar and gouges out the eye with his tusk.
AMANDA: Metal.
JULIA: Pretty fucking metal. I like that part. There's even a version of the story where Set tears out both of Horus' eyes and then buries them. And then the next day, two lotuses have grown from where they were planted.
AMANDA: Oh, damn. Okay. That— actually, that is a very cool origin story for lotus flowers. Wow.
JULIA: I— I also really like that.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: But kind of regardless of what Set does with the eye, or how he takes it out, or what have you, Horus ends up taking the eye back by force, and the eye is restored by one of the other gods. Now, I mentioned in the Set episode that it was Isis, but there are other gods that are involved, depending on what tale is being told. Thoth is often said to be one of the gods who reassembles the Eye of Horus after it is torn to pieces by Set. In the story of the lotuses as I just mentioned, the goddess Hathor, who is sometimes merged with Isis, uses gazelle's milk to anoint Horus eyes and heal them. Whereas, another Hathor story, it is not gazelle's milk, but rather the milk of the starry Milky Way.
AMANDA: Aw.
JULIA: And then another version of the buried eyed story, Isis actually waters where the eyes have been buried, and instead of growing lotus flowers, instead it grows the first grapevines.
AMANDA: Very helpful. Thank you, unintentionally sacrificed eyes.
JULIA: There you go. Sometimes that's what we need, you know? Sometimes it's what we need.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So regardless of who restores Horus' eyes or eye, it is usually referred to as the filling of the eye.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Which is the kind of direct translation. It's the same word you would use to, like, fill up a— a glass of water or something like that.
AMANDA: Oh, that's, like, very biological.
JULIA: Yes. And— and it's really interesting because it's describing the event in which the eye is filled with milk, or is filled by different healing herbs, or minerals. And the mythology and the stories kind of poetically compare the filling of the eye to the waxing of the moon.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Which makes a lot of sense when you remember that not only is Thoth the god of the moon, as well as the healing sciences, but also know that Horus, later on, would have his two eyes represent both the moon and the sun.
AMANDA: There you go. It's perfect symmetry.
JULIA: But basically, once Horus' eye is healed in the story, it becomes known as the Eye of Horus, which is also known as the Wadjet, which means whole completed or uninjured.
AMANDA: A very good protective talisman.
JULIA: Exactly. So in this form, it represents healing and protection, and it plays an important role in the offerings of the afterlife.
AMANDA: Hell yeah.
JULIA: The story goes like this. So after becoming king, after Set's defeat, Horus gives offerings to his father Osiris as thanks for his support. Because again, remember, there is a version of the story in which they battle for 80 years, and then the other gods are like, "We should just ask Osiris who should be king." And Osiris says, "Obviously, my son."
AMANDA: "You could've asked me, but obviously, my son."
JULIA: "Not my murderer. Obviously, my son."
AMANDA: "The other one, please."
JULIA: So this is the first offering made to the dead.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: And it becomes clear that in the story, these offerings help to revive and sustain someone in the afterlife.
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: Now, this becomes the mythic explanation as to why ancient Egyptian funerary customs require offerings for the dead. And one of the biggest offerings that Horus gives to Osiris is his eye, which Osiris consumes and is then replenished by.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: So, again, this really solidifies, for the Egyptians, both the eyes restorative powers, its ability to protect against evil, and also the importance of offerings for the dead. So as you can imagine, the Eye of Horus is incredibly important as a symbol in ancient Egyptian culture, religion, and mythology.
AMANDA: Right on. Now, I understand why.
JULIA: Now you get it. Now we know why we're giving things to the dead, and also why that eye is everywhere.
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: So we've talked a lot about young Horus, but we haven't really talked about his function once he becomes king of the gods in the greater mythology and the greater religion of ancient Egypt.
AMANDA: That's true. He's not just, like, waiting around all day to, like, become featured in another story. He's presumably got, you know, duties and stuff.
JULIA: Exactly. So there's a lot of different parts that make up Horus, and a lot of them harken back to his early days as a sky and war god, and then his later representation and association with the leadership of Egypt. So it is important to note that Horus was sometimes referred to as the distant one, in reference to his role as a sky god, or lord of the sky and his falcon form. Again, this is harkening back to those very early depictions of Horus.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So he was pictured in this form as a celestial falcon, where his right eye, as I mentioned before, represented the sun and his left eye, the moon.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: This is such a cool image. I can't wait to describe it for you. So you have the sun as one eye, the moon is another eye, the speckled feathers of his breast in his falcon form represented the stars.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: And his wings were the sky. And when he flapped his wings, that's how the winds were formed.
AMANDA: Hmm, beautiful.
JULIA: This is also probably the earliest form of Horus historically, as one of those avian and sky gods. And it was later tied to that celestial sky god aspect that he was also seen as a sun god. Not the sun god, but one of the gods that was associated with the sun. Makes sense.
AMANDA: Love it.
JULIA: He was also referred to, I love this bit, as the God of the East, or Horus of the two horizons.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So, basically, while he was a sun god, he was specifically associated with both the rising and the setting of the sun, the more prominently the Eastern sunrise.
AMANDA: So beautiful.
JULIA: Isn't that just gorgeous imagery? I— I fucking love when we, like, give people epithets or names that sort of describe the moment of nature, you know? Like, so the idea of being the Horus of the two horizons, where the sun meets the horizons in both sides of the— the Earth is so fucking beautiful and so fucking cool.
AMANDA: It's also so poetic in translation. And I imagine that's even more so in the original.
JULIA: I— I would think so. I would think so. So the Eye of Horus, obviously very important, was said to watch over the people of the world, day and night. Again, sun and moon. But also could be called upon in times of trouble or doubt. So in his form of the falcon, he could fly far and wide across Egypt, collecting vital information, and sharing it with the other gods, especially with Ra. And as I mentioned earlier, as the king of the gods, he was intrinsically tied to the rulers of Egypt.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So some of the earliest symbols adopted by rulers of Egypt, even in the pre-Dynastic Period, were the falcon.
AMANDA: I mean, yeah. It's a very cool bird. Can fly really far and kill stuff, and also associated with an important figure.
JULIA: Exactly. So by taking Horus as their god, a ruler was kind of setting himself up for success, right? As I mentioned before, like he is supposed to be the earthly embodiment of Horus, and therefore, is the divine heir of Isis and Osiris under the protection of the goddess Isis, right? So, because the king of Egypt was charged with protecting his people, it meant that all citizens of Egypt were under the protection of Horus himself.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: Big deal. Big deal to like claim that.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And Horus was also said to be the unifier of lands. He was the maintainer of order, and as such, the kings had to maintain that order as well, the Maat, as we've talked about so many times in these episodes.
AMANDA: And honestly, Julia, that's pretty much what I want from a ruler, maintain order and help my life to thrive.
JULIA: Exactly. We will talk about his role as the unifier of lands at the end of this episode, because I think it is really interesting and beautiful. But something we don't often talk about on these episodes is what the actual worship of the gods looked like. But because there's a lot of documentation on both the temples and the worship of Horus, I'm going to mention some of my favorite little facts about it.
AMANDA: Hell yeah.
JULIA: So all the priests of Horus were men, and they would claim protection from their, quote-unquote, "mother" Isis. Makes sense.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: The temples to Horus were built as a supposed reflection of what the afterlife in the Field of Reeds looked like.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: So this idea that Horus, as a god, had a mansion, had a home in the Field of Reeds as a place that he would rest when the evening would come, right? Now, there was almost always a reflecting pool in these temples that was supposed to represent the Lake of Flowers, which is where the souls of the justified dead were supposedly allowed to cross with a divine ferryman.
AMANDA: Wow.
JULIA: We love a divine ferryman in mythology.
AMANDA: Always, always.
JULIA: The temple was also supposed to be a mirror of that afterlife palace that Horus resided in, so the courtyards of the temples represented his garden as well.
AMANDA: This gives me a lot of appreciation for one of my favorite places ever, The Temple of Dendur in Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they have recreated and talk about in the documentation, reflecting pools, the sky, and some reeds for you to sort of appreciate the building in situ.
JULIA: Exactly. And extremely important, because in the case of temples to Horus, they were a representation of what people would find in the afterlife. So it was something that would look familiar to them when they passed on.
AMANDA: Oh, hell— Julia, I'm looking it up now. Temple of Dendur was a temple to Horus.
JULIA: Amazing. Look at that. So if you're in New York City and you go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, you can experience this temple to Horus and see what the ancient Egyptians thought the palace of Horus would look like in the afterlife.
AMANDA: It is from 15 BCE, honor the goddess Isis, and beside her, Pedesi and Pihor.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Deified sons of a local Nubian ruler.
JULIA: Tere you go. Look at that. Beautiful.
AMANDA: Love it.
JULIA: If you were a ancient Egyptian, there was a couple of reasons that you would go to the Temple of Horus, not only to worship, but to do a bunch of other stuff. Like, you would go to the temple for advice. You would go there for the interpretation of omens, the protection from evil. You'd go there for medical assistance. And then my favorite part is you would go there for marriage counseling, if you're having trouble with your marriage.
AMANDA: Okay. I'm glad there's somewhere people could go. That's great.
JULIA: Exactly. I love that for them. It's awesome.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: I'm gonna leave us off, Amanda, with two little Horus ver Set stories to end us off—
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: —for this episode, because, like I mentioned in the Set episode, there were many, many conflicts between the two that they got into. They— we're talking 80 years of conflict between the two of them, right? So one of the ones that I love that we didn't mention in the Set episode is one where— this was another competition between the two to determine who was going to be king. And as we know, like a lot of times, it would be, like, one would triumph over the other, but then the other would, like, throw a little hissy fit, and then they would be like, "Oh, I guess it's a draw again. Gotta do another one."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So in this story, in this competition, the two agree to a boat race.
AMANDA: All right.
JULIA: Kind of classic, kind of fun. But a boat race, Amanda, that's too simple for the gods, right?
AMANDA: Do they go, like, twice as fast? Do they boat race in the sky?
JULIA: No, boat racing in the sky, not twice as fast. They agree that they are each going to sail a ship that is made of stone.
AMANDA: Ah, okay. Okay. That's— that's upping the difficulty level. Yeah.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah. So they— they each go— they're like, "All right, we got to go carve our— our stone boats, and then we'll meet back here, and we'll sail them." Right? So they go, they prepare their ships, and the race starts. Now, Set's ship immediately sinks, because even though they are gods, they still can't make stone float.
AMANDA: Okay. Great.
JULIA: But he looks up from his place in the water, and he sees that Horus is managing to sail his ship just fine.
AMANDA: How does he do it?
JULIA: Well, he— he investigates. He's like, "What the fuck is up with this?" Because it's Set, obviously.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: And he finds that Horus didn't actually make his ship out of stone. It's rather a wooden ship that was painted to look like stone.
AMANDA: Okay. Now, I don't think that maintains at all, Julia, that is unordered.
JULIA: Well, kind of fun, though.
AMANDA: Kind of fun.
JULIA: Kind of fun and exciting.
AMANDA: Kind of fun, kind of quirky.
JULIA: However, Set does not find it fun and exciting. He is enraged. He transforms into a hippo, and he sinks Horus' boat, which makes the competition a draw.
AMANDA: Okay, great.
JULIA: It's just a good one, right? You know?
AMANDA: That is really— that's a very— yeah, not even cartoonish, but just like— that's like a resolution to the story with great imagery.
JULIA: Yes. And that's— that's what we want, right? That's all we want in life.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: And then the— the final story that I want to tell, Amanda, is a little different than the one that I had mentioned in the Set episode, about how the kingship of Horus was eventually settled as to who would become king, right? As you remember in the— the Set episode, we talked about they competed for 80 years, and then eventually they were like, "Oh, we should just ask Osiris, since he was the past king, and we can still talk to him, right?"
AMANDA: That's right. That's right.
JULIA: In this version of the tale, after 80 years of conflict and competitions and silly stuff like making boats out of stone, the other gods kind of got sick of all the fighting and the challenges and everything like that. And they sit the two down and they say, "Listen, you have to figure this out. We need a resolution here. It's been 80 years. We need our king. We need a leadership. This is ridiculous at this point." So Horus and Set, actually, after 80 years of competitions and everything like that, decide that what they're going to do is they're actually going to divide the realm between them.
AMANDA: Interesting.
JULIA: Horus is going to have the fertile lands of the Nile. Set is going to take the desert. Horus would take the Earth. Set would have the sky.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: They even divide the lands of Egypt, Amanda. You might have heard of the Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt in a lot of stories.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: They each take the land where they are most worshiped and divide the country in two.
AMANDA: I'm now remembering why the first lesson from, like, Egyptology class was to flip the map upside down because Upper Egypt is more southern than Lower Egypt, which is the Northern Delta.
JULIA: Correct. And people always forget that. I— yeah, I even forget that sometimes.
AMANDA: I don't know why that one image impressed itself on my brain so hard, and I— yet, I cannot remember what I have to do after this recording. But, you know, that's— that's what we got.
JULIA: Also, the Nile is the only river that runs south to north, so fun fact there.
AMANDA: True.
JULIA: They come to this agreement. They split things down kind of equally, and so they go to Geb, the earth god, Horus' grandpa, Set's dad.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And they say, "Hey, here's what we've come up with. What do you think? You're going to be the final judge as to whether or not this is an equitable separation," basically.
AMANDA: I'm pretty surprised and impressed.
JULIA: So Geb, at first, he's looking at this. He's like, "Yeah, this seems good. This seems like a good compromise." Et cetera, et cetera. But then later, he, like, pauses. He's like, "You know what? This isn't gonna work. Egypt shouldn't be divided like this."
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: "The king of the gods should not have a divided realm. Et cetera, et cetera. He gives sole control to Horus over all of the lands. However, the kind of peaceful outcome and— and Geb deciding after 80 years what's going to happen, it finally allows Horus and Set to reconcile.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Basically, like, what happens is, yes, Horus becomes the— the king of the gods. He becomes the king of Egypt. He is the ruler of all of these places, but he allows Set to remain in control of the desert lands of Egypt and also beyond. And order is restored to the lands of Egypt after many years of turmoil.
AMANDA: That's really interesting. I— I find it unusual, from my cultural context, to have a story of like, you know, putting aside a grudge or subsuming a desire for the greater good of the people, which, as I describe it, is a great lesson for a ruler. And I think would make me think even higher of Horus as a ruler. But I expected you to say, and so I freaked out, and, you know—
JULIA: Well, because he did in every other story that we told about him.
AMANDA: Yeah. Right on.
JULIA: But this is also really important, Amanda, because this story sort of serves to represent the different dualities that these two gods represent, right? We were talking about the fertile lands versus the desert lands. We're talking about the sky versus the Earth, the upper versus the lower.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: You know? And so this is a great representation of how these two gods, who are kind of in the forefront of a lot of Egyptian mythology, balance each other out. And if there's something that the Egyptians love, it is Maat, the balance and the order of everything. And as we talked about in the Set episode, Set wouldn't be worshiped if all Maat ever needed—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —was order. You need the balance of chaos in order to balance those scales out. Otherwise, it weighs one way or the other.
AMANDA: Right on. I think it's a beautiful lesson and something that I'm very glad that we got to revisit the story where all the beats were there, but truly, I see it from a new perspective, so thank you.
JULIA: Yes. And I— I like that we can kind of bring the conflict of what started with Set and Osiris, and then Set and Horus to a close here. And I'm sure we'll be making reference to the story in the future, because it really is the boulder of Egyptian mythology.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But I— I am really excited to talk about other— other characters, other forces in the— the world of Egyptian mythology.
AMANDA: Feels like we built the house and now we can decorate with all kinds of wallpaper, and furniture, and, like, I don't know, patio furniture.
JULIA: Exactly, exactly. Roll out that outdoor rug and set up a little wrought iron table and chairs.
AMANDA: I'm all for it, but, Julia, one thing I really do want to emphasize is next time you see a lotus flower and notice how much the bud looks like an eyeball, remember—
JULIA: Stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
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