Egyptian religious poetry

INTRODUCTION BH

There are many causes of confusion in the religion of Egypt, but one of the main causes is the fact that there were two deities named Horus. The principal, perhaps the original, Horus was Horus the Elder (Her-wer, the Aroeris of the Greeks). He was an entirely independent god, having no real connection with any other deity. The gradual conquest of Egypt by the dynastic Kings was ended by Menes (Narmer), who took the Delta ; but until the Roman occupation the country was always divided into two parts, Upper and Lower Egypt. It was, however, united under one head and acknowledged one Pharaoh. The dynastic conquest became legendary as a series of battles between two gods, Horus of the North and Setekh of the South. There now entered another cause of confusion; the totem of the victors was a falcon, so also was the god Horus. Setekh, though actually the conquering power, became in the end the enemy defeated by the royal totem.

The other Horus was Horus the Child (Har-pa-khred, the Harpocrates of the Greeks). He was the child of Isis and Osiris, and his proper function was the purely passive one of emphasizing the motherhood of Isis, and in certain cases to be invoked in a curse, when Osiris is called upon to be “after” the person accursed, Isis to be “after’’ his wife, and Harpocrates to be “after” his children. By the xviiith dynasty the legend of Osiris had become inextricably mixed with the saga of Horus and Setekh. Horus the Elder was then regarded as Horus the Child grown to man’s estate, and his battles with Setekh were to “avenge his father”, whom Setekh had murdered. The Pharaoh was identified with his ancestral totem, and thus he was both Horus the falcon and Osiris the Occupier of the Throne. The youthful Horus was, in the later religion, identified with the newly risen, i.e. the newly-born, sun ; and as Horus and the Pharaoh were one and the same, the King became not only the