The Great Set-Up (original) (raw)

I’ve been reading Rick Riordan’s newest book, The Red Pyramid, which does for Egyptian mythology what his Percy Jackson series did for the Greek. The main villain (at least so far; I haven’t finished the book, and I know Riordan isn’t above a twist ending) is Set, who was basically the evil god of the Egyptian pantheon. His being evil seems to have been a later development, however. He was always associated with chaos and the desert, but he was also the main god worshipped in Lower Egypt. (Lower Egypt, by the way, was actually north of Upper Egypt, due to the fact that the Nile flows northward.) When the cult of Osiris and Horus became more prominent, Set was demonized, and presented as the murderer of Osiris. On the other hand, even later Egyptian mythology had him protecting Ra on his nightly journey through the underworld, so he wasn’t viewed as all bad.

Set was regarded as a son of Geb and Nut, who were respectively the earth god and sky goddess.

Back in the early days, Ra was the undisputed king, but he had learned that a child of Geb and Nut could end up being greater than him. He therefore forbade Nut from giving birth on any day of the year, but she got around this by gambling with the Moon and ending up with enough extra light to create five new days. This myth reflects the expansion of the Egyptian year from 360 to 365 days. She had one child on each of these five days, and those offspring were Osiris, Iris, Set, Nephthys, and Horus. Yes, Horus was also the son of Isis and Osiris, and I believe the myths are divided as to whether these two gods with the same name were the same individual. It was the younger Horus who eventually took Ra’s place as king, but he had to battle with Set for the position.

In the battle between them, Set gouged out Horus’ left eye, and Horus castrated Set. Those gods sure do fight dirty!

The chaotic god came to be associated with infertility, although some myths give him children. I guess he must have fathered them before the fight with Horus, but you can never be quite sure with gods. Nephthys was regarded as his consort, but he was said to have taken other wives, and possibly male lovers as well. Set’s bisexuality is represented in a story that involved his actually seducing Horus.

Set is associated with a creature known simply as the Set animal, which was portrayed as looking much like a jackal, but with a stiff forked tail and square or triangular ears.

The god himself was often depicted with the head of a donkey. His sacred color was red, which was connected with chaos and the desert.

Set’s name is also sometimes rendered as “Seth,” which is what the Greeks called him. That makes me wonder if there’s any connection to the Biblical Seth, third son of Adam and Eve.

101 Myths of the Bible (which I’ve returned to the library, so I can’t look up the specific reference) noted the connection between the mythologies, with the first couple having a son who kills his brother. The murderer, however, isn’t Seth but Cain, so the names must have been mixed up if this was actually adapted from Egyptian lore. Then again, the lists in Genesis of the descendants of Cain and those of Seth have a lot of overlap, making it conceivable that they were originally regarded as the same person. Until we find some more concrete evidence, I suppose it’s all a matter of speculation.

This entry was posted in Egyptian, Mythology and tagged adam and eve, bible, cain and abel, calendar, chaos, desert, geb, genesis, horus, isis, nephthys, nile, nut, osiris, percy jackson, ra, rick riordan, set, set animal, seth, the red pyramid, underworld. Bookmark the permalink.