Set- Egyptian GodDeity"Lord of the Desert"

The Outsider God

Set announced his nature at birth. Rather than waiting for his proper time, he tore himself from his mother Nut's side, entering the world through a wound on the third epagomenal day. Plutarch records the moment as an act of aggression that foreshadowed everything to come.

His sacred animal was as strange as its god: squared-off ears and a long curved snout that belonged to no living creature. Egyptologists call it the sha, but no species has ever been matched to it.

His marriage to his sister Nephthys was barren. In Plutarch's account, she bore Anubis through a union with Osiris, having disguised herself as Isis to seduce him. One more betrayal feeding Set's rage.

The Murder of Osiris

Set's brother Osiris ruled Egypt as king, and Set seethed with envy. He recruited seventy-two conspirators, had craftsmen build a chest to the exact measurements of Osiris's body, and offered it as a prize at a banquet. Guest after guest tried and failed to fit inside. When Osiris lay down, fitting perfectly, Set's men slammed the lid shut, sealed it with molten lead, and hurled the chest into the Nile.

Isis searched the world and recovered the body, but Set found it in the Delta marshes and tore it into fourteen pieces. He scattered them across Egypt. Not even Isis could make her husband whole without the intervention of Thoth and Anubis.

The Contendings

The conflict between Set and Horus for the throne lasted eighty years. Set gouged out Horus's left eye; the moon went dark. Horus castrated Set. They raced in boats of stone: Horus disguised a wooden boat with plaster while Set's genuine stone vessel sank. They submerged as hippopotami in the Nile; Isis struck with a copper harpoon but wavered between her brother and her son, so enraging Horus that he cut off her head and fled into the desert.

In one episode Set attempted to dominate Horus through sexual assault, but Isis helped Horus turn the humiliation back on Set through a stratagem involving lettuce. When Set boasted before the tribunal, Thoth called forth the evidence, and it answered from Set's own belly. The tribunal wavered until Osiris sent a threatening letter from the underworld. The throne went to Horus. Set received the storms and the desert.

Defender of Ra

Each night, as Ra's solar barque descended into the Duat, the chaos serpent Apophis attacked to swallow the sun and end creation. Set stood at the prow with an iron harpoon. In the Amduat's seventh hour, the darkest point of the night journey, Set confronts the serpent while other gods bind its coils with chains. The Book of Gates shows Apophis stretched across the barque's path, requiring Set's spear to clear the way for dawn.

Temples across Egypt performed nightly rituals to aid this combat. Priests recited the Book of Overthrowing Apophis while wax effigies of the serpent were burned and spat upon. The murderer of Osiris was the only being savage enough to hold back the dark.

Horus and Set Together

The sema-tawy, carved on thrones and temple walls across Egypt, shows Horus and Set tying the heraldic plants of Upper and Lower Egypt around a central windpipe. Their opposed strength holds the kingdom together. Remove either god, and the binding comes undone.

The Pyramid Texts place Set in the same company. He carries the dead king skyward on his back. He holds up the ladder to heaven alongside Horus. His strength lifts the pharaoh among the imperishable stars.

Lord of the Red Land

Set was lord of the deshret, the Red Land: the barren desert surrounding the fertile Nile Valley. His color was red, the color of desert sand and of blood. Red-haired animals were associated with him, and in certain rituals red oxen were sacrificed as surrogates for the god himself. His cult center at Nubt in Upper Egypt, from which he drew the epithet Nubty, was among the oldest in the country. Predynastic artifacts from the site suggest Set worship predating the unification of Egypt.

The Storm God Among Nations

The Hyksos rulers of the Second Intermediate Period honored Set as their primary deity at Avaris, where he was worshipped with rites drawn from both Egyptian and Levantine traditions. The 400-Year Stela commemorated four centuries of Set worship at the site. His cult image blended the Set animal with the iconography of Baal, the Canaanite storm god.

After the Hyksos expulsion, the Eighteenth Dynasty absorbed his cult rather than destroying it. Egyptian texts paired Set with the foreign warrior goddesses Anat and Astarte as his consorts. Pharaohs bore his name: Seti I and Seti II of the Nineteenth Dynasty were his namesakes, and Ramesses II invoked Set's strength before the Battle of Kadesh.

The Demonization of Set

As foreign invasions eroded native rule, Set was vilified. The Assyrian and Persian conquests accelerated the shift: invaders from Set's own foreign horizon overran the country, and the god who had governed foreign lands became a symbol of humiliation. The Greeks identified him with Typhon, the being who battled Zeus. His name was erased from monuments and his temples abandoned.

At Edfu, the Ptolemaic temple of Horus, priests staged his defeat as an annual spectacle, harpooning hippopotami in celebration. By the Ptolemaic period, Set had become a demon.