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Role: God of chaos, evil, the desert, war,
violence, conflict, and sandstorms (all bad things!)
Appearance: Form of a man, with the head of an
unidentified donkey-like animal. He was sometimes seen as a
pig or a hippo.
Sacred animal: the mythical "Set animal" (see
below)
Relations with other gods: Nut
(mother); Geb (father); Osiris
(brother), Isis and Nephthys
(sisters)
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One of the recurring themes in ancient Egyptian
culture is duality-- everything appearing in
opposite pairs. Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt,
papyrus and lotus, cobra and vulture, Isis and
Nephthys. Look at a typical mummy like this one and
you'll notice how the images are symmetrically
paired on the left and right. And it wasn't just on
mummies, either. Spend some time looking at
Egyptian art and architechture and you'll see how
this "two-ness" was everywhere!
Such was the case with the constant battle of
good vs. evil, as represented by Horus
and Set. According to Egyptian mythology, jealous
Set murdered his brother Osiris in order to seize
the throne. Osiris's son Horus avenged his father's
death by battling Set in a bloody war that lasted
for a very long time. The fight was only finally
settled by a panel of gods: They ruled that Set
must be punished so it became his job to travel
with Re in his sun boat as it
sailed across the sky, standing ready to protect
the sun from the Apophis serpent (a giant evil
snake that threatened to disrupt the daily journey
of the sun).
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