Horus the Elder

About Horus the Elder

Horus the Elder (Egyptian Hor-Wer, Greek Haroeris) is the oldest form of the falcon-god Horus, a great sky-god who is the brother of Osiris and Set rather than the son of Isis, and whose two eyes are the sun and the moon. He must be carefully distinguished from Horus son of Isis (Harsiese), the child conceived by Isis from the dead Osiris and reared to avenge his father; the two are distinct forms of Horus, belonging to different generations and different mythological roles. Horus the Elder is the primordial celestial falcon, lord of the sky, whose body is the heavens and whose eyes are the great luminaries.

The Egyptians recognized many forms of Horus, a fact that has caused much confusion in the modern study of the religion, and Horus the Elder is the most ancient of them. As a sky-god whose name may mean 'the distant one' or 'the one on high,' Horus was originally a cosmic falcon soaring above the world, his outspread wings the sky, his eyes the sun and moon, his speckled breast the stars. This celestial Horus is older than the Osirian mythology, a primordial god of the heavens worshipped from the predynastic period, and he was incorporated into the Heliopolitan family as a brother of the children of Geb and Nut, standing alongside Osiris and Set in the elder generation.

The distinction between the elder and younger Horus is set out clearly in the ancient sources. Plutarch, in his account of the Osiris myth (De Iside et Osiride, §12), explicitly identifies an elder Horus, Haroeris, distinct from the Horus born of Isis, and notes that the Egyptians distinguished the two. The Papyrus Jumilhac and other texts preserve genealogies that separate the forms of Horus, and the Egyptian theologians were aware that 'Horus' named several distinct gods who had come to share an identity. Modern scholarship, following the work of Dimitri Meeks and others, has clarified this multiplicity, and the distinction between Hor-Wer the brother and Harsiese the son is now a standard point of Egyptological precision.

Horus the Elder's principal mythological role is as the opponent of Set. In some traditions the contest for the throne is not between Set and the young son of Osiris but between Set and Horus the Elder, two brothers struggling for supremacy, and the conflict in which Set tears out the eye of Horus and Horus injures Set belongs in part to this elder-brother rivalry. The temple of Edfu, the great cult-center of Horus, preserves in its Ptolemaic inscriptions the longest sustained narratives of Horus the Elder, including the dramatic Triumph of Horus over Set, in which the falcon-god defeats his enemy and is confirmed as the legitimate lord of the Two Lands. Worshipped from the predynastic period as the falcon lord of the sky and embodied in the living king from the First Dynasty, Horus the Elder is among the oldest and most enduring of all Egyptian gods, his cult continuing into the latest periods at the great temple of Edfu, where his fullest mythology and his triumph over Set are recorded in unmatched detail.

The Story

The story of Horus the Elder begins before the Osirian mythology, with a primordial sky-god worshipped in Egypt from the earliest times. This Horus was a great celestial falcon, soaring above the world with outspread wings that were the sky itself. His right eye was the sun and his left eye the moon, and as he flew across the heavens his eyes opened and closed with the rising and setting of the great luminaries. His speckled breast was the starry sky. This cosmic Horus, lord of the heavens, is the oldest form of the god, a falcon of the sky whose body was the visible cosmos and whose name, perhaps meaning 'the one on high' or 'the distant one,' marked his celestial nature.

This primordial sky-falcon was bound up with kingship from the dawn of Egyptian history. The earliest kings of Egypt took a Horus-name, written in the serekh, a rectangular frame surmounted by the falcon, proclaiming the king as the earthly embodiment of the sky-god. This identification of the king with Horus is older than the Osirian mythology of the avenging son, and it derives from the primordial celestial Horus, the falcon lord of the sky whose power the king embodied. From the First Dynasty onward, the living king was Horus, and this Horus was, in origin, the elder sky-god.

As the Heliopolitan theology developed, Horus the Elder was incorporated into the divine family as a brother of the children of Geb and Nut. In this genealogy he stands alongside Osiris and Set in the elder generation, one of the brothers rather than the son of the next. Plutarch records that in the Egyptian reckoning an elder Horus, Haroeris, was born of Geb and Nut, distinct from the Horus later born of Isis, and that he was sometimes said to have been born on one of the five epagomenal days alongside his siblings. As a brother of Osiris and Set, Horus the Elder belongs to the generation of the great divine drama, not to the generation that resolves it.

The central conflict in which Horus the Elder is involved is the struggle with Set. In one stratum of the mythology, the rivalry for supremacy is between two brothers, Horus the Elder and Set, rather than between the young Horus and his uncle. This elder conflict is the setting of the famous mutual injury: Set tears out or wounds the eye of Horus, the eye that is the moon, while Horus damages Set, in some accounts wounding his testicles or his strength. The injury to the eye of Horus and its subsequent healing, by which the wounded eye is restored, became one of the central images of Egyptian religion, the wedjat or 'sound eye,' a symbol of healing, wholeness, and protection. The waxing and waning of the moon was explained as the injury and healing of the eye of Horus.

The greatest narratives of Horus the Elder are preserved at his principal cult-center, the temple of Edfu in Upper Egypt, called Behdet by the Egyptians. Here, in the Ptolemaic inscriptions of the temple, Horus appears as the Behdetite, the great falcon of Edfu, and the longest sustained Horus narratives are recorded. The dramatic text known as the Triumph of Horus over Set, performed as a ritual drama at Edfu, recounts the final defeat of Set, depicted as a hippopotamus, whom Horus harpoons in a series of episodes, and the confirmation of Horus as the legitimate lord of the Two Lands. In these temple texts Horus the Elder is the victorious champion of order against the chaos embodied by Set, and his triumph reenacts and guarantees the rule of the legitimate king.

The multiplicity of Horus-forms requires careful navigation. The Egyptians worshipped many Horuses, Horus the Elder (Hor-Wer), Horus son of Isis (Harsiese), Horus of the Horizon (Harmachis), Horus the Child (Harpocrates), Horus the Behdetite of Edfu, and others, and these forms could be distinguished or merged according to context. Horus the Elder is the primordial sky-falcon, the brother of Osiris and Set, the cosmic god whose eyes are the sun and moon. He is not the avenging son of Osiris, though the two forms of Horus came to share much, including the conflict with Set and the role of legitimate king. The Egyptian theologians were aware of the distinction, and the sources, especially Plutarch and the Edfu texts, preserve the separation of the elder sky-god from the younger avenger.

Throughout his long history, from the predynastic celestial falcon to the victorious Behdetite of the Ptolemaic temple, Horus the Elder remained the great sky-god of Egypt, the falcon lord of the heavens whose eyes are the luminaries and whose triumph over Set guarantees the order of the cosmos and the legitimacy of the king. His worship at Edfu continued into the latest periods of Egyptian religion, and the temple there, one of the best-preserved in Egypt, stands as the monument of the elder Horus and the repository of his fullest mythology.

Symbolism

Horus the Elder symbolizes the sky and the celestial order, the heavens conceived as a great falcon soaring above the world. As the primordial sky-god whose outspread wings are the sky, whose eyes are the sun and moon, and whose speckled breast is the stars, Horus the Elder embodies the visible cosmos of the heavens, the ordered realm of the luminaries and the stars that the Egyptians saw arching above them.

The falcon form symbolizes the height, power, and far-seeing vision of the sky-god. The falcon soars higher than other birds and sees from a great distance, and these qualities made it the natural emblem of a celestial deity whose domain is the heights and whose eyes are the great luminaries. The falcon's association with kingship, the king as the earthly Horus, extends this symbolism: the king, like the falcon, is exalted, far-seeing, and supreme, the embodiment of the sky-god's power on earth.

The eyes of Horus the Elder, the sun and the moon, symbolize the great luminaries and the cosmic order they govern. The right eye as the sun and the left eye as the moon make the sky-god the lord of day and night, the one whose eyes are the sources of light in the heavens. The opening and closing of these eyes with the rising and setting of the luminaries makes the alternation of day and night, and of the lunar phases, an expression of the god's own nature, the cosmos animated by the celestial falcon.

The injured and healed eye of Horus, the wedjat, is among the most powerful symbols in all of Egyptian religion. The eye torn out by Set and restored to wholeness symbolizes healing, restoration, and the triumph of wholeness over injury. The waxing of the moon was the healing of the eye, and the wedjat became the supreme protective amulet, the 'sound eye' that embodied health, completeness, and protection against harm. Through the elder conflict with Set, Horus the Elder is the source of this central symbol of healing and wholeness.

The conflict with Set symbolizes the struggle of order against chaos and of legitimacy against usurpation. Set, the god of disorder, the desert, and violence, is the opponent whom Horus the Elder must defeat, and their struggle dramatizes the contest between the forces of order and the forces of chaos that the Egyptians saw as fundamental to the cosmos. Horus the Elder's triumph symbolizes the victory of order, and his confirmation as lord of the Two Lands symbolizes the establishment of legitimate rule against the threat of usurpation.

The Behdetite falcon of Edfu, the winged sun-disk, symbolizes the protective and victorious power of the sky-god. At Edfu, Horus the Elder is depicted as the winged disk that hovers over temple doorways and royal images, the falcon-sun spreading its protective wings over the king and the sacred space. This image of the winged disk became among the most widespread protective symbols of Egyptian religion, the soaring falcon-sun of Horus guarding all beneath it.

The primordial and cosmic character of Horus the Elder symbolizes the antiquity and the all-encompassing nature of the sky-god. Older than the Osirian mythology, the celestial falcon whose body is the heavens, Horus the Elder symbolizes the sky itself as a divine presence, the great cosmic order of the luminaries and stars that arches over the world and that the king, as the earthly Horus, embodies and maintains.

Cultural Context

Horus the Elder is among the oldest gods of Egypt, a primordial sky-falcon whose worship reaches back into the predynastic period, before the formation of the unified Egyptian state. As a celestial deity whose body was the heavens and whose eyes were the sun and moon, he belonged to the most ancient stratum of Egyptian religion, and his cult was established at several centers in both Upper and Lower Egypt from the earliest times. To understand Horus the Elder is to reach back to the foundations of Egyptian religion, before the great mythologies of Osiris and the solar cult had taken their classic forms.

The connection of Horus to kingship is one of the defining features of Egyptian civilization and is rooted in the elder sky-god. From the First Dynasty, the kings of Egypt took a Horus-name, written in the serekh surmounted by the falcon, proclaiming the king as the earthly embodiment of the sky-god. This identification, the oldest element of the royal titulary, derives from the primordial celestial Horus, and it made the institution of kingship inseparable from the falcon-god. The living king was Horus on earth, and this Horus was, in origin, the elder sky-falcon, lord of the heavens, whose power the king embodied in the maintenance of cosmic and political order.

The incorporation of Horus the Elder into the Heliopolitan family as a brother of Osiris and Set reflects the way Egyptian theology organized its ancient gods into the genealogical framework of the Ennead. The primordial sky-god, older than the Osirian mythology, was given a place among the children of Geb and Nut, standing in the elder generation alongside Osiris and Set. This placement created the potential for confusion with the younger Horus, the son of Isis, but the Egyptian theologians maintained the distinction, recognizing that 'Horus' named several distinct gods who had come to share an identity. The awareness of this multiplicity is attested in the sources and is a key point of Egyptological understanding.

The distinction between Horus the Elder (Hor-Wer, Haroeris) and Horus son of Isis (Harsiese) is set out in the ancient sources and is essential to the accurate understanding of the Horus mythology. Plutarch explicitly distinguishes the elder Horus from the Horus born of Isis, and the Egyptian genealogical texts, including the Papyrus Jumilhac, separate the forms of Horus. Modern scholarship, drawing on the work of Dimitri Meeks and others, has clarified the multiplicity of Horus-forms, and the careful separation of the elder sky-god from the younger avenger is now standard. The conflation of the two in much popular and older scholarly writing has obscured the distinct character and history of Horus the Elder.

The principal cult-center of Horus, and the great repository of his mythology, is the temple of Edfu in Upper Egypt, the ancient Behdet. The surviving Ptolemaic temple at Edfu is one of the best-preserved in Egypt, and its inscriptions contain the longest sustained Horus narratives, including the dramatic Triumph of Horus over Set, performed as a ritual drama, and the cosmogonic and foundation texts of the temple. At Edfu, Horus the Elder is the Behdetite, the great falcon and winged sun-disk, the victorious champion of order whose triumph over Set guarantees the rule of the legitimate king. The Edfu texts, studied in the great publication of the temple by Chassinat and others, are the indispensable source for the fullest mythology of Horus the Elder.

Cross-Tradition Parallels

Horus the Elder raises a question with genuine cross-tradition depth: what does it mean when the sky is a living being, specifically a bird, whose eye is both the moon and the record of its own wounding? The wedjat — the healed eye — is where this question is sharpest, because the tradition insists that lunar phases are the record of a wound that keeps reopening and closing.

Norse — Odin's Sacrificed Eye and the Well of Wisdom (Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda, Gylfaginning, c. 1220 CE; Völuspá 28, c. 1000 CE)

Odin surrendered one eye to Mimir's well for wisdom and went one-eyed through the worlds. Both traditions give a supreme sky-god a compromised eye with cosmic consequence, but the mechanism is inverted. Horus the Elder loses his eye to Set's violence — torn from him in combat, stolen against his will. Odin's eye is surrendered deliberately, traded as the price of knowledge. The injury to Horus's eye records cosmic disorder, the damage that Set inflicts and the gods must repair. Odin's missing eye records cosmic wisdom, the price chosen and paid gladly. Egyptian loss is imposed; Norse loss is elected.

Vedic Hindu — Surya and the Solar Eye (Rigveda 1.115; 7.63, c. 1000 BCE)

In the Rigveda, Surya the sun-god is described as the eye of Mitra and Varuna, the eye of the cosmic order itself, the all-seeing luminous organ of the divine supervisors of the world. The sun as cosmic eye — the organ through which the divine order watches the world — is a structural parallel to the eye of Horus as the sun and moon. In both traditions the great luminary is also the eye of a divine being; in both the eye has both visual and cosmic-order functions. But the Vedic solar eye is constant and unwavering — it is the eye that ensures ṛta (cosmic order) by seeing everything without exception. The eye of Horus the Elder is vulnerable to injury and requires periodic restoration. The Vedic solar eye guarantees order through perfect vigilance; the Horusian eye experiences the same vulnerability that order experiences against the forces of chaos.

Japanese — Amaterasu Withdraws into the Cave (Kojiki, compiled 712 CE, Book I)

When Susanoo's destructive behavior in the heavens becomes intolerable, Amaterasu the sun-goddess withdraws into a cave (Ama-no-Iwato), plunging heaven and earth into darkness. The withdrawal of the solar divinity's light parallels the injury to the eye of Horus: in both cases, a cosmic event disrupts the continuity of solar or luminous order, and the other gods must take action to restore it. But the mechanisms differ fundamentally. Horus's eye is damaged in combat — it is a wound inflicted by an antagonist. Amaterasu withdraws by choice in response to her own distress — her absence is a self-protective retreat, not an injury suffered. The Egyptian tradition frames solar disruption as an attack from outside that damages the god; the Japanese tradition frames it as an internal emotional response that the god chooses. One cosmic darkness is violence; the other is grief.

Mesoamerican — Hunahpu and the Severed Head as Moon (Popol Vuh, compiled c. 1550 CE from older K'iche' Maya tradition)

In the Popol Vuh, the hero twin Hunahpu has his head severed by the Lords of Death in the underworld and temporarily replaced by a gourd; after the twins' triumph, they become the sun and moon. Both traditions explain the moon's light as the trace of an injury inflicted on a divine being during a struggle with underworld forces. The divergence is in resolution: the wedjat eye is restored and becomes a symbol of healing that the lunar cycle re-enacts permanently. Xbalanque's apotheosis as the moon is final. Egyptian tradition makes the healing cyclical; Mesoamerican tradition resolves it once and completely.

Modern Influence

Horus the Elder, as the primordial sky-falcon and the source of the royal Horus-identification, has been central to the modern understanding of Egyptian kingship and of the antiquity of the Egyptian pantheon. The recognition that the king was Horus from the First Dynasty, embodied in the serekh and the falcon, is a foundational point in the study of Egyptian civilization, and the role of the elder sky-god in this identification has been a major topic in the scholarship on the origins of pharaonic kingship, including Henri Frankfort's classic Kingship and the Gods (1948).

The distinction between Horus the Elder and Horus son of Isis has been an important point in the modern clarification of the Egyptian pantheon. The multiplicity of Horus-forms, long a source of confusion, has been disentangled by modern scholarship, and the careful separation of the elder sky-god from the younger avenger is now a standard feature of accurate accounts of Egyptian religion. The work of Dimitri Meeks and others on the forms of Horus has shaped the modern scholarly understanding, and the disambiguation of the Horus-forms is a recurring theme in the literature aimed at presenting the complexity of Egyptian theology precisely.

The eye of Horus, the wedjat, derived from the conflict between Horus and Set, has become among the most recognizable and widely reproduced of all Egyptian symbols. The 'sound eye,' emblem of healing, wholeness, and protection, appears on amulets, jewelry, and decorative objects in the ancient world and has been adopted in modern times as a popular symbol of protection and of Egypt itself. The wedjat is among the most common Egyptian motifs in modern design, esoteric traditions, and popular culture, carrying the legacy of the elder Horus's injured and healed eye into the present.

The temple of Edfu, the great cult-center of Horus the Elder, has been important for the modern study of Egyptian religion as one of the best-preserved temples in Egypt and the repository of the fullest Horus mythology. Its complete and well-preserved inscriptions, including the Triumph of Horus over Set, have made it a key site for understanding Egyptian temple ritual, cosmogony, and the cult of Horus, and the great publication of the temple has been a foundational resource for Egyptology. The dramatic text of the Triumph of Horus has even been reconstructed and performed in modern times, bringing the ritual drama of the elder Horus to new audiences.

The winged sun-disk of the Behdetite, the form of Horus the Elder as the protective falcon-sun spreading its wings over the king and the temple, became among the most widespread protective symbols of Egyptian religion and has had a long afterlife in the symbolism of later cultures. The motif of the winged disk spread across the ancient Near East and has been adopted in various modern contexts, carrying the protective power of the soaring falcon-sun of Horus into wider use. Through the wedjat eye, the winged disk, the falcon of kingship, and the temple of Edfu, the elder Horus remains among the most influential and recognizable of all Egyptian gods, the great sky-falcon whose image and symbols continue to evoke the religion of ancient Egypt.

Primary Sources

The Pyramid Texts (Old Kingdom, Dynasties 5–6, c. 2350–2180 BCE; hieroglyphic ed. Kurt Sethe, 1908–22; trans. R.O. Faulkner, Oxford University Press, 1969; James P. Allen, Society of Biblical Literature, 2005) are the earliest literary source for Horus the Elder in his cosmic and royal dimensions. Utterances identifying the ascending dead king with the celestial Horus, the falcon-god of the sky whose eyes are the luminaries, recur throughout the corpus. Utterance 600 (Faulkner 1969, pp. 246–247) is the principal cosmogonic utterance, placing Atum and the divine descent in their Heliopolitan framework; the king's identity with Horus in the ascension context is pervasive from Utterance 1 onward. The so-called Cannibal Hymn, Utterances 273–274, identifies the king with the celestial powers including Horus the Elder among the sky-gods. The Pyramid Texts are the primary documentary source establishing the identification of the living king with Horus as a feature of Egyptian royal ideology from the earliest attested period.

The Edfu temple inscriptions (Ptolemaic, c. 237–57 BCE; hieroglyphic edition Émile Chassinat, Le Temple d'Edfou, 14 vols, IFAO, 1892–1934; with revisions by S. Cauville and D. Devauchelle for vols I–II, 1984–90) are the principal source for the fullest mythology of Horus the Elder. At Edfu, Horus is worshipped as Hor-Wer the Behdetite, the great falcon and winged sun-disk, and the temple walls bear the most extensive sustained Horus narratives that survive. The dramatic text of the Triumph of Horus over Set (treated in A.M. Blackman and H.W. Fairman, 'The Myth of Horus at Edfu: II. C. The Triumph of Horus over His Enemies: A Sacred Drama,' Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 28–30, 1942–44) describes the ritual drama in which Horus, in the form of a winged disk, defeats Set in a series of episodes and is confirmed as legitimate lord of the Two Lands. This publication remains the standard analytical treatment of the dramatic text.

Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride section 12 (Moralia V; Loeb, trans. F.C. Babbitt, 1936; ed. J. Gwyn Griffiths, UWP, 1970) explicitly distinguishes Haroeris, Horus the Elder, from the Horus born of Isis, establishing the separation of the two forms as a point clearly recognized in the ancient sources. Plutarch identifies the elder Horus as one of the children of Geb and Nut, born on one of the epagomenal days, distinct from the younger avenging Horus. His account, though Hellenized, preserves the essential distinction that the Egyptian theologians maintained.

The serekh of the First Dynasty kings (c. 3100–2890 BCE; documented in the royal monuments of the early dynastic period, especially those from Abydos and Saqqara), surmounted by the falcon of Horus, is the earliest monumental evidence for the identification of the living king with the sky-falcon. Stela of Djet (Louvre E 11007, Musée du Louvre, Paris, from Abydos) preserves the falcon surmounting the royal name in the serekh in one of the earliest attested examples. The falcon atop the serekh is the living embodiment of Horus the Elder, the celestial sky-god whose power the king embodies, and this identification precedes and underlies the later Osirian mythology of the avenging son.

The Papyrus Jumilhac (Ptolemaic–Roman period; Louvre E 17110; ed. and trans. J. Vandier, Le Papyrus Jumilhac, CNRS, Paris, 1961) preserves detailed genealogical material distinguishing the forms of Horus and is a primary Egyptian source for the awareness of the multiplicity of Horus-identities. It treats regional variants of the Horus mythology and provides evidence that the distinction between Hor-Wer and Harsiese was maintained as a theological point in the late temple tradition.

Significance

Horus the Elder is significant first as one of the oldest gods of Egypt and the primordial form of the falcon-god, a celestial deity whose worship reaches back into the predynastic period. As the sky-god whose body is the heavens and whose eyes are the sun and moon, he belongs to the most ancient stratum of Egyptian religion, and he embodies the sky itself as a divine presence, the great cosmic order of the luminaries and stars that arches over the world.

Horus the Elder is significant for his role in the foundation of Egyptian kingship. The identification of the living king with Horus, attested from the First Dynasty in the serekh and the falcon, is the oldest element of the royal titulary, and it derives from the primordial celestial Horus. This made the institution of kingship inseparable from the sky-god, the king ruling as Horus on earth and embodying the falcon-god's power in the maintenance of cosmic and political order. To understand Egyptian kingship is to understand the elder Horus from whom the royal identification descends.

The god is significant as the source of the eye of Horus, the wedjat, one of the central symbols of Egyptian religion. The eye torn out by Set in the elder conflict and restored to wholeness became the supreme emblem of healing, completeness, and protection, the 'sound eye' that explained the phases of the moon and served as the most common protective amulet. Through his conflict with Set, Horus the Elder is the origin of this enduring symbol of wholeness and protection.

Horus the Elder is significant for the clarity he brings to the understanding of the Horus mythology. The careful distinction between the elder sky-god, brother of Osiris and Set, and the younger avenger, son of Isis, is essential to the accurate understanding of Egyptian religion, and it illustrates the Egyptian capacity to recognize multiple distinct gods sharing a single name and identity. The multiplicity of Horus-forms, with the elder Horus at its head, is a key example of the complexity and flexibility of Egyptian theology.

Finally, Horus the Elder is significant as the great god of Edfu and the champion of order against chaos. At his principal cult-center, the best-preserved temple in Egypt, his fullest mythology is recorded, and the dramatic Triumph of Horus over Set presents him as the victorious defender of cosmic order whose defeat of Set guarantees the rule of the legitimate king. The continuation of his worship into the latest periods of Egyptian religion, and the survival of his temple and its inscriptions, make Horus the Elder among the most enduring and best-documented of all Egyptian gods, the primordial sky-falcon whose triumph over chaos sustained the order of the cosmos and the legitimacy of the throne.

Connections

Horus the Elder must be understood in relation to the other forms of Horus, above all Horus son of Isis, the younger avenger conceived by Isis from the dead Osiris, from whom the elder sky-god must be carefully distinguished. The two forms belong to different generations and different mythological roles, and the distinction between them is fundamental to the accurate understanding of the Horus mythology.

The principal conflict of Horus the Elder connects him to Set, his brother and opponent, with whom he struggles for supremacy and who tears out his eye in the mutual injury. This elder conflict is related to, but distinct from, the contest of the younger Horus and Set told in the Contendings of Horus and Seth, and the two struggles together form the great Egyptian mythology of the contest between order and chaos.

Horus the Elder's place in the divine family connects him to Osiris, his brother in the elder generation of the children of Geb and Nut, and to the genealogical framework of the Ennead and the Cosmogony of Heliopolis, into which the primordial sky-god was incorporated as a brother of Osiris and Set.

The solar associations of Horus the Elder connect him to the sun-god Ra through the syncretic form Ra-Horakhty and the winged sun-disk of the Behdetite, and his eye as the sun and moon connects him to the celestial mythology of the luminaries. His appearance in the Cannibal Hymn and other Pyramid Texts connects him to the ascension theology of the early royal afterlife, in which the king is identified with the sky-god.

The eye of Horus, derived from his conflict with Set, connects Horus the Elder to the wedjat, the central Egyptian symbol of healing and protection, and to the wider mythology of the lunar phases as the injury and healing of the eye. This symbol links the elder Horus to the protective amulet tradition and to the iconography of wholeness.

Finally, Horus the Elder connects to his principal cult-center, the temple of Edfu, the ancient Behdet, where his fullest mythology is preserved and where the dramatic Triumph of Horus over Set was performed. His worship at Edfu, and his sacred marriage with Hathor of Dendera, connect him to the temple cult of Upper Egypt and to the great festivals that celebrated the union and the triumph of the gods. The god's solar associations also connect him to the daily journey of the sun across the sky between the eastern and western mountains, the falcon of the heavens whose eyes are the luminaries presiding over the visible cosmos that the sun traverses each day.

Further Reading