Editing Set (deity) (section)

==Conflict of Horus and Set==
[[File:Horus and Set tying.svg|thumb|Horus (left) and Set binding together [[Upper Egypt|upper]] and [[lower Egypt]]]]
An important element of Set's mythology was his conflict with his brother or nephew, [[Horus]], for the throne of Egypt. The contest between them is often violent but is also described as a legal judgment before the [[Ennead]], an assembled group of Egyptian deities, to decide who should [[royal succession|inherit]] the kingship. The judge in this trial may be Geb, who, as the father of Osiris and Set, held the throne before they did, or it may be the creator gods Ra or Atum, the originators of kingship.<ref>{{harvnb|Griffiths|1960|pp=58–59}}</ref> Other deities also take important roles: Thoth frequently acts as a conciliator in the dispute<ref>{{harvnb|Griffiths|1960|p=82}}</ref> or as an assistant to the divine judge, and in "Contendings", Isis uses her cunning and magical power to aid her son.<ref>{{harvnb|Assmann|2001|pp=135, 139–140}}</ref>

The rivalry of Horus and Set is portrayed in two contrasting ways. Both perspectives appear as early as the ''[[Pyramid Texts]]'', the earliest source of the myth. In some spells from these texts, Horus is the son of Osiris and nephew of Set, and the murder of Osiris is the major impetus for the conflict. The other tradition depicts Horus and Set as brothers.<ref>{{harvnb|Griffiths|1960|pp=12–16}}</ref> This incongruity persists in many of the subsequent sources, where the two gods may be called brothers or uncle and nephew at different points in the same text.<ref name="Assmann 134">{{harvnb|Assmann|2001|pp=134–135}}</ref>

The divine struggle involves many episodes. "Contendings" describes the two gods appealing to various other deities to arbitrate the dispute and competing in different types of contests, such as racing in boats or fighting each other in the form of hippopotami, to determine a victor. In this account, Horus repeatedly defeats Set and is supported by most of the other deities.<ref>{{harvnb|Lichtheim|2006b|pp=214–223}}</ref> Yet the dispute drags on for eighty years, largely because the judge, the creator god, favors Set.<ref>{{harvnb|Hart|2005|p=73}}</ref> In late ritual texts, the conflict is characterized as a great battle involving the two deities' assembled followers.<ref>{{harvnb|Pinch|2004|p=83}}</ref> The strife in the divine realm extends beyond the two combatants. At one point Isis attempts to harpoon Set as he is locked in combat with her son, but she strikes Horus instead, who then cuts off her head in a fit of rage.<ref>{{harvnb|Lichtheim|2006b|pp=218–219}}</ref> Thoth replaces Isis's head with that of a cow; the story gives a [[origin myth|mythical origin]] for the cow-horn headdress that Isis commonly wears.{{sfn|Griffiths|2001|pp=188–190}}

In a key episode in the conflict, Set sexually abuses Horus. Set's violation is partly meant to degrade his rival, but it also involves homosexual desire, in keeping with one of Set's major characteristics, his forceful, potent, and indiscriminate sexuality.<ref>{{harvnb|te&nbsp;Velde|1967|pp=55–56, 65}}</ref> In the earliest account of this episode, in a fragmentary Middle Kingdom papyrus, the sexual encounter begins when Set asks to have sex with Horus, who agrees on the condition that Set will give Horus some of his strength.<ref>{{harvnb|Griffiths|1960|p=42}}</ref> The encounter puts Horus in danger, because in Egyptian tradition semen is a potent and dangerous substance, akin to poison. According to some texts, Set's semen enters Horus's body and makes him ill, but in "Contendings", Horus thwarts Set by catching Set's semen in his hands. Isis retaliates by putting Horus's semen on lettuce-leaves that Set eats. Set's defeat becomes apparent when this semen appears on his forehead as a golden disk. He has been impregnated with his rival's seed and as a result "gives birth" to the disk. In "Contendings", Thoth takes the disk and places it on his own head; in earlier accounts, it is Thoth who is produced by this anomalous birth.<ref>{{harvnb|te&nbsp;Velde|1967|pp=38–39, 43–44}}</ref>

Another important episode concerns mutilations that the combatants inflict upon each other: Horus injures or steals Set's testicles and Set damages or tears out one, or occasionally both, of Horus's eyes. Sometimes the eye is torn into pieces.<ref name="Pinch 82">{{harvnb|Pinch|2004|pp=82–83, 91}}</ref> Set's mutilation signifies a loss of virility and strength.<ref>{{harvnb|te&nbsp;Velde|1967|pp=42–43}}</ref> The removal of Horus's eye is even more important, for this stolen [[eye of Horus]] represents a wide variety of concepts in Egyptian religion. One of Horus's major roles is as a sky deity, and for this reason his right eye was said to be the sun and his left eye the moon. The theft or destruction of the eye of Horus is therefore equated with the darkening of the moon in the course of its cycle of phases, or during [[lunar eclipse|eclipses]]. Horus may take back his lost Eye, or other deities, including Isis, Thoth, and Hathor, may retrieve or heal it for him.<ref name="Pinch 82"/> Egyptologist Herman te&nbsp;Velde argues that the tradition about the lost testicles is a late variation on Set's loss of semen to Horus, and that the moon-like disk that emerges from Set's head after his impregnation is the Eye of Horus. If so, the episodes of mutilation and sexual abuse would form a single story, in which Set assaults Horus and loses semen to him, Horus retaliates and impregnates Set, and Set comes into possession of Horus's eye, when it appears on Set's head. Because Thoth is a moon deity in addition to his other functions, it would make sense, according to te&nbsp;Velde, for [[Thoth]] to emerge in the form of the Eye and step in to mediate between the feuding deities.<ref>{{harvnb|te&nbsp;Velde|1967|pp=43–46, 58}}</ref>

In any case, the restoration of the eye of Horus to wholeness represents the return of the moon to full brightness,{{sfn|Kaper|2001|pp=480–482}} the return of the kingship to Horus,<ref>{{harvnb|Griffiths|1960|p=29}}</ref> and many other aspects of ''[[maat|ma'at]]''.<ref>{{harvnb|Pinch|2004|p=131}}</ref> Sometimes the restoration of Horus's eye is accompanied by the restoration of Set's testicles, so that both gods are made whole near the conclusion of their feud.<ref>{{harvnb|te&nbsp;Velde|1967|pp=56–57}}</ref>