Seth, also called Setekh, Setesh, or Set, ancient Egyptian god, patron of the eleventh name, or province, of Upper Egypt.
His name is generally translated as “instigator of confusion” and “destroyer” and was associated with disorder, foreign lands and people and the color red. The Egyptian god Seth is also known as the god of chaos. According to the popular Egyptian mythology, he would certainly seem to have created a lot of chaos. Scholars believe that the cult of Seth was one of the oldest in Egypt. Some pharaohs honored him and used his name as part of them during certain periods.
Seth was one of the oldest gods in the ancient Egyptian pantheon, and it is believed that he was worshipped since the pre-dynastic period. The oldest representation of Seth can be found in a carved ivory comb from the Amratian period (4000 to 3500 BC). At first, the Egyptians saw Seth as a beneficial god. They believed that he lived in the kingdom of the blessed dead. Seth was a god that the Egyptians prayed to help their dead family members.
After a while, the priests of Horus came into conflict with Seth’s followers. Scholars believe that the followers of Horus subjugated Seth. Then Seth’s role in the Pantheon changed. He became the polar opposite of Horus. The Egyptians saw Seth as the god of darkness and chaos. He was also the lord of the desert. Seth became the god of the impure and an opponent of various gods. The opposing priests destroyed most of Seth’s statues.
He was the epitome of drought. As lord of the desert and drought, Seth opposed everything that gave life. The Egyptians also saw him as a storm and a god of war. They also associated Seth with the planet Mercury. The Egyptians associated the color red with set. They would vilify redskinned people and sometimes kill redskinned animals.
The pharaohs respected Seth and his power. Seth was one of the Two Lords (Horus was the other) who gave the king power and authority. Some pharaohs, like Seti I, were named by Seth. Other pharaohs used the animal Seth as part of their emblem. Two important festivals were associated with Seth. One of them was one of the five intercalary days, the days before the beginning of the New Year. These were the days when the five Osirian gods (Osiris, Horus, Seth, Isis and Nephthys) were born. The Egyptians honored each of them on their birthday.
The other festival involved a ritual recreation. Either the pharaoh or a priest was going to throw a hippopotamus model. Then the people cut and ate a cake shaped like a hippopotamus. This festival represented the defeat of Seth’s Horus.
Its symbols were the griffin, the hippopotamus, the crocodile and the turtle, but it was mainly associated with the snake.
The god Seth had the common powers of any common god, however, Seth was the god of chaos, darkness, desert and drought, and therefore had power over all of it.
Other stories also place Anat and Astarte as consorts
His successor, Khasekhemwy, gave both Horus and Seth the same prominence in his title, reflecting the mythical resolve of the two gods.
During the reign of the Hyksos invaders (BC 1630-1521), Seth was worshipped in his capital, Avaris, in the northeast delta of the Nile River, and identified with the Canaanite storm god Baal.
During the New Kingdom (1539 BC – 1075 BC), Seth was considered as a martial god who could sow discord among the enemies of Egypt.
The Pharaohs of Ramesside (1292- c. 1075 BC), originating from the northeast delta, classified him among the great gods of Egypt, used his name in their personal names (Seti I and Seti II, Setnakht), and promoted the image of Seth as the protector of Re in the bow of his bark, killing Re’s enemy, Apopis.
Seth also joined Amun, Re and Ptah as the fourth major gods of the cosmos.
In the myths, Seth was the brother of Osiris.
There too his character was problematic, as it was represented as coming from the womb of his mother, Nut, who was an unfaithful husband to his consort and his sister, Nephthys, and who murdered Osiris, who was tricked into a chest, which was then closed and thrown into the river to be taken to the sea.
After the murder of Osiris, Horus was miraculously conceived by Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris. Horus fought with Seth, who tried to expel him from his father’s throne.
This struggle forms the theme of Ramesside’s text. The contender of Horus and Seth, which borders on satire, and the later, much darker version recorded by Plutarch, in which Seth is the incarnation of the Greek demon Typhon.
After the closure of the New Kingdom, Egypt lost its empire and then its independence, and as the cult of Osiris grew in importance, Seth was gradually expelled from the Egyptian pantheon. In the 1st millennium BEFORE CHRIST his name and image were erased from many monuments.
He was now identified as a god of the eastern invaders of Egypt, including the Persians. They could no longer reconcile Seth with Horus, the Egyptians equated the former with evil and the demon Apopis, or the Greek Typhon.
The elaborate rituals of Seth’s repeated defeat as an enemy largely replaced the earlier ritual destructions of Apopis.
Seth helped Ra the sun god
In some myths, Seth opposed Ra and fought him. This was not true in all myths. Some stories said that Seth helped Ra. In these stories, he was a warrior in Ra’s sun boat who defended the boat against Apophis, the serpent of chaos. Some stories say that Seth was put in the bow of the solar boat to fight Apophis.
Seth murders his brother Osiris…
Horus the Younger’s conflict with Seth depends on the former’s role as an avenger. Seth wanted the throne of the gods, which belonged to his brother, Osiris. This was before the birth of Horus, who, in this myth, was the son of Osiris and Isis. Seth murdered Osiris to win his throne.
The method of this murder varies according to the source of the story. Most Egyptian copies say that Seth drowned Osiris. The Greco-Roman copies are much more elaborate. They start with Seth building a sarcophagus that fits Osiris exactly. Then Seth tricked his brother into the sarcophagus. Then he sealed the coffin and threw it into the Nile. Isis recovered Osiris’ body, but Seth stopped her before she could bring her husband back to life. Seth then cut up Osiris’ body and spread the pieces all over Egypt.
Isis and Nephthys recovered all the pieces of Osiris’ body, but one that was eaten by a fish. Isis managed to bring Osiris back for a night during which she conceived Horus. She hid Horus from Seth as he grew into adulthood. Seth tried to kill Horus as a child, but the attempts failed. When Horus grew up, he fought Seth to avenge his father. The conflict lasted for decades. Finally, Seth became a hippopotamus and tried to destroy Horus’ ship. Horus attacked Seth, but the other gods prevented him from destroying his uncle. This is how Horus avenged the murder of Osiris and won the throne of the gods.
An Egyptian manuscript from the 20th Dynasty (1190-1077 BC) tells the much older story of the battle for control of the world between Horus, son of Osiris, and his uncle Set. The manuscript is the story of the legal battle before the gods over who is the rightful king of Egypt. Horus and Seth present their cases and then must prove their worth in a series of contests and battles that are won by Horus, who, in the end, is proclaimed king.
The disputes of Horus and Set are just one version of what happened after Horus was born and Osiris descended to the underworld. Other myths describe how Isis hid her son of Set in the swamps of the Nile Delta while Set was looking for the child to murder him. The folk tale of Isis and the Seven Scorpions unfolds during this time and shows Isis going out at night to the local towns to beg for food for herself and her son. There are other stories and legends about Horus’ youth and Isis’ care for him, and when he matured, he challenged his uncle for the throne.
In some versions of the story, Horus fights against Seth, defeats him and expels him from the land, while in other versions Seth dies. The Contenders of Horus and Set depict these battles as contests ordered by the gods. Most of the nine presiding gods (known as Aeneas) decided that Horus was the rightful king, but Ra, the sun god, was not convinced, and the decision had to be unanimous.
Ra believed that Horus was too young and had led too sheltered a life to rule effectively, while Seth had proved to be a capable, if uneven, monarch. Although Horus had won every competition against his uncle, Ra would not budge. This trial lasted over 80 years, while the people of Egypt suffered under the chaotic reign of Seth. Isis understood that she would have to intervene for the sake of the people and she transformed herself into a young woman and sat outside Seth’s palace. Where he would have to go through her.
She cried and cried until her cheeks became red and full of tears when Seth, walking, saw her and asked her what was wrong. She told him how a wicked man, her husband’s own brother, had killed him and taken his land and his flocks, and how she and her son had been driven from their inheritance, and furthermore how the wicked man now even sought the life of his son. Set was deeply moved by her story and became enraged. He swore that he himself would destroy the criminal and return the land to the poor woman and her son.
Isis then revealed herself and the presence of the listening gods. Ra was finally convinced that Horus should rule, and Seth was driven from the valley of the Nile into the desert lands. In another version of The Contenders of Horus and Seth, the gods cannot agree and consult the goddess Neith. Neith was very wise and often called upon to mediate disputes between the gods. She suggested that Horus should be given the rule of Egypt and that the desert regions and foreign lands should be given free reign.
Nephew/Son: Anubis, god of the dead and funerals.
Related Topics
Other Gods of Mythology in ALPHAPEDIA
Other Topics of Interest in ALPHAPEDIA
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