Horus is one of the most significant Egyptian deities, being worshiped in various forms
from Late Prehistoric Egypt, until the period of Roman incursions and the Ptolemaic kingdom.
Considered the god of the sky, war and hunting, was most often represented in the form of
a falcon or a falcon-headed man wearing a half-white, half-red crown, symbolizing his
rule over all of Egypt.
Horus is the son of the gods Isis and Osiris, and the rival of Seth, the murderer of his
father, according to the Myth of Osiris.
Plutarch relates the birth of Horus as a result of the perseverance of the goddess Isis to
revive her husband.
She gathered all the parts of Osiris' dismembered body, except for his penis, which had been
eaten by a stingray, and using magic, brought her husband back to life and made him a golden
phallus with which they conceived Horus.
As the god of the sky, the legend says that Horus's right eye was the sun, and his left,
the moon.
Later, the reason why the moon is not as bright as the sun was explained by a legend called
“The Battle of Horus and Seth”, in which, the protector of Upper Egypt, Seth, and that
of Lower Egypt, Horus, fought diligently for Egypt.
And as neither succeeded in overthrowing the other, the other gods declared Horus the winner
in this dispute.
In this fight Seth lost one of his testicles.
A myth that explains the infertility of the desert he represented, that is the desert
of Upper Egypt.
In this battle Horus lost his left eye, later replaced by the moon god, Khonsu, who gave
him a new one.
“The eye of Horus” is an ancient Egyptian symbol of divine protection and power, frequently
used in funeral rituals, but also by sailors from all over the world, who drew the symbol
on their ships to bless the voyage.
In Egyptian, this symbol is called "wedjat", and was originally the eye of a solar deity
called Wadjet, representing the all-seeing eye, but with its association with Horus,
it becomes a symbol of pharaoh's protection in the afterlife.
In Egyptian mythology there is an eternal conflict between Horus and Seth.
Egyptologists have often tried to correlate the conflict between the two gods with political
events in Egyptian history and prehistory.
The separation of the country in Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt, each under the protection
of one of the two gods, suggests an internal conflict that would have led to this division.
Egyptian tradition, supported by archaeological evidence, indicates the unification of Egypt
as a result of the conquest of Lower Egypt by a kingdom in Upper Egypt, whose rulers
were called "the descendants of Horus."
However, the conflict between the two gods cannot be correlated only with the division
of Egypt in two, both deities having numerous cultural centers in both regions.
Before Upper Egypt had a single ruler, it was ruled by two main cities, Nekhen in the
south and Nagada in the north.
The rulers of the city of Nekhen, where Horus was the protective god, are considered the
unifiers of lower Egypt, including also the city of Nagada, which was under the protection
of Seth, making possible a new theory of conflict between the two.
Later, at the end of the Second Dynasty, the Pharaoh Seth-Peribsen used the animal associated
with Seth to sign his name, instead of the hieroglyph that symbolized Horus, the falcon.
His successor, Khasekhemwy, used the symbols of both gods instead, claiming that during
the Second Dynasty, the reconciliation of the two deities took place, as did the two
gods in certain variations of the myth.
This was the story of Horus based on mythological legends and also on historical facts.
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