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In Egyptian
mythology, Set (also spelt Sutekh,
Setesh, Seteh) is an ancient god,
who was originally the god of the
desert, one of the two main biomes
that constitutes Egypt, the other
being the small fertile area either
side of the Nile. Due to developments
in the Egyptian language over the
3,000 years that Set was worshipped,
by the Greek period, the t in Set
was pronounced so indistinguishably
from th that the Greeks spelt it
this way, as Seth.
Desert God
As the god of the desert, Set was
associated with sandstorms, and
desert caravans.
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Due to the extreme hostility of the desert
environment, Set was viewed as immensely
powerful, and was regarded consequently
as the chief god. One of the more common
epithets was that he was great of strength,
and in one of the Pyramid Texts it states
that the king's strength is that of Set.
As chief god, he was patron of Lower Egypt,
where he was worshipped, most notably at
Ombos. The alternate form of his name, spelt
Setesh (stš), and later Sutekh (swt?),
designates this supremecy, the extra sh
and kh signifying majesty. The exact translation
of Set is unknown for certain, but is usually
considered to be either (one who) dazzles
or pillar of stablity, one connected to
the desert, and the other more to the institution
of monarchy.
Set formed part of the Ennead of Heliopolis, as a son of
the earth (Geb) and sky (Nuit), husband to the fertile land
around the Nile (Nephthys), and brother to death (Ausare/Osiris),
and life (Isis). Since he represented the desert, he was generally
considered infertile, and so, since the early Egyptians had
very little in the way of taboos regarding sexuality, Set
was usually identified as being homosexual; indeed, he later
gained a same-sex partner in the form of the Libyan god Ash.
It was said that Set's favourite food was lettuce, as Egyptian
lettuce is long, firm, and releases a milky substance when
rubbed, an innuendo clearly referring to the phallus.
The word for desert, in Egyptian was dshrt, which is very
similar to the word for red, dshr (in fact, it has the appearance
of a feminine form of the word for red). Consequently, Set
became associated with things that were red, including people
with ginger hair, which is not an attribute that Egyptians
generally had, and so he became considered to also be a god
of foreigners.
Set's attributes as desert god lead to him also being associated
with gazelles, and donkeys, both creatures living on the desert
edge. Since sandstorms were said to be under his control as
lord of the desert, and were the main form of storm in the
dry climate of Egypt, during the Ramesside Period (i.e., Dynasties
19 and 20), Set was identified as various Canaanite storm
deities, including Resheph.
The Set animal
In art, Set was mostly depicted as a mysterious and unknown
creature, referred to by Egyptologists as the Set animal or
Typhonic beast, with a curved snout, square ears, forked tail,
and canine body, or sometimes as a human with only the head
of the Set animal. It has no complete resemblence to any known
creature, although it does resemble a composite of an aardvark,
and a jackal, both of which are desert creatures, and the
main species of aardvark present in ancient Egypt additionally
had a reddish appearance (due to thin fur, which shows the
skin beneath it). The earliest known representation of Set
comes from a tomb dating to the Naqqada I phase of the Predynastic
Period (circa 4000 BC–3500 BC), and the Set-animal is
even found on a mace-head of the Scorpion King, a Protodynastic
ruler.
A new theory has it that the head of
the Set animal is a representation of
the Mormyrus kannamae (Nile Mormyrid),
which resides in the waters near Kom Ombo,
one of the sites of a temple of Set, with
the two square fins being what are normally
interpreted as ears. However, it may be
that part or all of the Set animal was
based on the Salawa, a similarly mysterious
canine creature, with forked tail and
square ears, one member of which was claimed
to have been found and killed in 1996
by the local population of a region of
Upper Egypt. It may even be the case that
Set was originally neither of these, but
later became associated with one or both
of them due to their similar appearance.
Contestings of Horus and Set
After Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt, were unified, through the
conquest of the lower half by the Upper, a representation
of this conflict arose in mythology. Horus, who was the chief
god of Upper Egypt, was depicted as having fought long and
hard against Set in the struggle for the crown. It was said
that in the struggle, Set's testicles were ripped off, explaining
his infertility, as the desert, and one of Horus' eyes was
partly gouged out, explaining why the moon was not as bright
as the sun, since Horus, in this early form, was said to have
the sun and the moon as his eyes. Ultimately, like the nations,
the two gods were reconciled.
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It was also said, during these contendings
of Horus and
Set, that Set had sought to support
his claim to the throne by showing
Horus was
submissive to him, and consequently
seduced Horus,
with lines like How lovely your backside
is. They had interfemoral intercourse,
with Set taking the top role, but
Horus secretly
caught Set's semen, when he ejaculated,
and throws it in the river. Subsequently,
Horus masturbates,
and secretly places his resulting
semen onto lettuce, which Set then
unknowingly eats, as it was his favourite
food. |
To prove his dominance to the other gods,
Set explains to them that Horus
submitted to his advances, and calls forth
his semen as evidence, but it answers from
the river. Horus
then calls his own semen forth, which answers
from inside Set, making the gods feel that
Horus was the dominant
one, and therefore the rightful heir. In
later versions of this myth, it is Thoth's
magic that causes the semen to respond.
Saviour of Ra
As the Ogdoad system became more assimilated with the Ennead
one, as a result of creeping increase of the identification
of Atum as Ra, itself a result of the joining of Upper and
Lower Egypt, Set's position in this became considered. With
Horus as Ra's heir on Earth, Set, previously the chief god,
for Lower Egypt, required an appropriate role as well, and
so was identified as Ra's main hero, who fought Apep each
night, during Ra's journey (as sun god) across the underworld.
He was thus often depicted standing on the prow of Ra's night
barque spearing Apep in the form of a serpent, turtle, or
other dangerous water animals. Surprisingly, in some Late
Period representations, such as in the Persian Period temple
at Hibis in the Khargah Oasis, Set was represented in this
role with a falcon's head, taking on the guise of Horus, despite
the fact that Set was usually considered in quite a different
position with regard to heroism.
This assimilation also lead to Anubis being displaced, in
areas where he was worshipped, as ruler of the underworld,
with his situation being explained by his being the son of
Osiris. As Isis represented life, Anubis' mother was identified
instead as Nephthys, leading to an explanation in which Nephthys,
frustrated by Set's lack of sexual interest in her, disguised
herself as the more attractive Isis, but failed to gain Set's
attention, as Set was homosexual. Osiris, on the other hand,
thought she was Isis, and they had sex, resulting in Anubis'
birth. In some later texts, after Set lost the connection
to the desert, thus infertility, and thus his sexuality, Anubis
was identified as Set's son, as Set is Nephthys' husband.
God of Evil
Naturally, when, during the Second Intermediate Period the
mysterious foreign Hyksos gained the rulership of Egypt, and
ruled the Nile Delta, from Avaris, they chose Set, originally
Lower Egypt's chief god, as their patron, and so Set became
worshipped as the chief god once again. However, following
this invasion, Egyptian attitudes towards foreigners could
be best described as xenophobic, and eventually the Hyksos
were deposed. During this period, Set (previously a hero),
as the Hyksos' patron, came to embody all that the Egyptians
disliked about the foreign rulers, and so he gradually absorbed
the identities of all the previous evil gods, particularly
Apep.
When the Legend of Osiris and Isis grew up, Set was consequently
identified as the killer of Osiris in it, having hacked Osiris'
body into pieces, dispersing them, so that he could not be
resurrected. Interpreting the ears as fins, the head of the
Set-animal resembles the Oxyrhynchus fish, and so it was said
that as a final precaution, an Oxyrhynchus fish ate the part
that was Osiris' penis, the part which Set, as an homosexual,
liked most.
Now that he had become the embodiement of evil, Set was consequently
sometimes depicted as one of the creatures that the Egyptians
most feared, crocodiles, and hippopotamus, and by the time
of the New Kingdom, he was often associated with the villainous
gods of other rising empires. One such case was Baal, an identification
in which Set was described as being the consort of ‘Ashtart
or ‘Anat, wife of Baal. Set was also identified by the
Egyptians with the Hittite deity Teshub, who was a vicious
storm god, as was Set.
The Greeks later linked Set with Typhon because both were
evil forces, storm deities and sons of the Earth that attacked
the main gods.
| Some scholars hold that after Egypt's
conquest by the Persian ruler Cambyses
II, Set also became associated with
foreign oppressors, including the
Achaemenid Persians, Ptolemaic Greeks,
and Romans. Indeed, it was during
the Græco-Roman Period that
Set was particularly vilified, and
his defeat by Horus
widely celebrated. Nevertheless, throughout
this period, in some distant locations
he was still regarded as the heroic
chief deity; for example, there was
a temple dedicated to Set in the village
of Mut al-Kharab, in the Dakhlah Oasis. |
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