Horus the Elder- Egyptian GodDeity"Lord of the Sky"

The Falcon Over Everything

Horus the Elder, Heru-Ur, is not the son of Isis and Osiris but something older: a cosmic sky god whose worship stretches back to Egypt's predynastic period. His falcon form soared across the heavens. His right eye was the sun, his left the moon. When clouds covered the moon or eclipses darkened the sun, the Egyptians understood these as injuries to the great falcon's eyes. The waxing and waning of the moon was the periodic wounding and healing of the left eye, a cycle that gave rise to the wedjat, the Eye of Horus.

The falcon standard appears on the Narmer Palette at the dawn of the historical period. At Nekhen, the predynastic capital, the falcon god was already sovereign. From the First Dynasty onward, every pharaoh bore a Horus name as the first of the royal titulary, enclosed in a serekh topped by the falcon.

Before the Osirian Myth

In the Heliopolitan tradition, Horus the Elder was born to Geb and Nut during the five epagomenal days, a sibling of Osiris and Set, not their son. Before the Osirian cycle made the divine child Set's opponent, an older tradition told of a primordial struggle between Horus the Elder and Set. During their battle, Set tore out one of the great falcon's eyes. Thoth healed and restored it, and this restored eye became the wedjat, the "whole eye." The Egyptians placed it on amulets and the prows of ships.

Over time, the elder and younger Horus blurred together. The avenger of Osiris absorbed the sky god's attributes, and by the New Kingdom the two were often treated as one. The great falcon who predated the myth came to live inside it.