Set (deity)

Names and etymology

The original meaning and vocalization of Set's name cannot be determined with complete certainty.^[6] In the earliest attestations from the Predynastic period to the Second Dynasty, his name was written exclusively with the logogram of the Set animal, registered in the Gardiner sign list as E20, E21, and E21A.^[6][7] In the Pyramid Texts of Unas at the end of the Fifth Dynasty, the name appears solely as the couchant Set animal.^[8] During the Second Dynasty under Seth-Peribsen, the first complementary phonogram appeared, writing the final consonant shin or khet.^[6] By the Middle Kingdom, spellings such as Setesh (stš), Setekh (stḫ), and Sutekh (swtḫ) became widespread, supplemented in the New Kingdom by Suti (swtj) and Seti (stj).^[6] Egyptologists reconstruct the early pronunciation as *sūtiẖ [ˈsuw.tixʲ] or *Sūtaḫ.^[6][9][10] The Late Egyptian spelling stš reflects the palatalization of ẖ, while spellings such as swtj indicate the weakening and ultimate loss of the final consonant.^[8][11] In Coptic dialects, this phonological evolution produced Sahidic Sēt (ⲥⲏⲧ) and Bohairic forms retaining consonant hardness, providing the basis for the Greek transliterations Sēth (Σήθ) and Sēt (Σήτ), as well as Babylonian cuneiform šutaḫ.^{[6][8][9][12]}

Classical authors and later scribes proposed various interpretations of the theonym. Plutarch recorded in De Iside et Osiride that the name signified an oppressive and constraining force, as well as an overturning or leaping back.^[13] Egyptologist Hermann Kees noted that Egyptian priests engaged in wordplay connecting the god's name with verbs such as tekhtek (to disorder or entangle) and teshtesh (to crush or dismember), illustrated in Coffin Texts spell 213 by the phrase tash ni semaout Setesh, meaning 'I have cut to pieces the companions of Set'.^[14] Other proposed translations based on similar roots include 'he who brings the khamsin', 'he who turns away', and 'he who separates'.^[6][15] Scribes utilized the Set animal as a determinative for approximately twenty-five lexical items denoting undesirable, violent, or turbulent phenomena.^[16] These included terms for illness (ih), sorrow and affliction (inedj), cruelty and sickness (mer), crisis (peryt), rage and disaster (neshni), suffering (neqem), disturbance and social turmoil (khenen), storm clouds (qeri), roaring (keha), and thundering or bellowing (nehneh).^[16][17] This group of terms represented deviations from ma'at, the Egyptian concept of cosmic and social order.^[17]

Iconography and the Set animal

In ancient Egyptian art, Set is conventionally depicted as an enigmatic creature known to Egyptologists as the Set animal, or as a human figure bearing the head of this beast.^[7][18][19] The creature has a slender canine body, a downward-curving muzzle or snout, erect ears with squared-off tips, and a stiff, vertically raised tail that forks or terminates in a tuft shaped like an inverted arrowhead.^[7][18] Kurt Sethe suggested that the stiff tail represented an arrow embedded in the animal's rump as a form of symbolic stigmatization, though this view remains debated.^[7][20] In early Dynasty 0 representations, such as the ceremonial macehead of Scorpion II from the Naqada III phase, the animal appears stocky with short legs, a long skull, and an upright tail.^[21][22][23] By the Middle Kingdom, the animal's depiction became taller and more gracile, while from the late Old Kingdom onward, its neck was sometimes rendered with distinct rings.^[7][22] Possible earlier representations have been identified on pottery and objects from Naqada I (c. 3790–3500 BCE) and Naqada II, such as the Two Dogs Palette from Hierakonpolis and carvings at Gebel Tjauti, though these identifications remain tentative.^{[21][22][24][25]}

Zoological hypotheses

The biological identity of the Set animal has been debated since the foundation of Egyptology. Early scholars, including Jean-Francois Champollion, Ippolito Rosellini, and Karl Richard Lepsius, concluded that the beast was an imaginary creature fabricated by the ancient Egyptians.^[19] Later Egyptologists such as Ludwig Borchardt, Günther Roeder, and Herman te Velde maintained that it was a purely fabulous beast, citing a hunting scene from a Middle Kingdom tomb at Beni Hassan in which the Set animal, named Sha, is depicted in the desert alongside other composite monsters, including a winged falcon-headed canine and a snake-headed canine.^[19][20] Conversely, numerous scholars have attempted to connect the figure to living or extinct fauna. Hypothesized species include the Nubian wild ass (Equus asinus africanus), prized for its desert habitat and loud braying; the African wild dog (Lycaon pictus), known for pack hunting and tearing open prey; the aardvark (Orycteropus afer); the okapi (Okapia johnstoni); the saluki; the fennec fox; the hyena; the jackal; the desert oryx; the elephant shrew; the bush pig; and the giraffe.^[7][18][20] Some early Egyptologists proposed that the Set animal was a stylised giraffe, matching its large flat-topped 'horns' to a giraffe's ossicones, though the Egyptians used distinct depictions for the giraffe and the Set animal..^[18] Another hypothesis draws parallels with the Mormyrus kannume, a Nile elephantfish with a downturned snout venerated in the Oxyrhynchite nome, or the mysterious canid referred to in regional Egyptian folklore as the salawa.^[26]

In 2005, Africanist Pierre de Maret argued that the aardvark served as the primary zoological model for the Set animal.^[27][28] The aardvark is a nocturnal, solitary, burrowing mammal of the African savanna that feeds on termites and wild cucumbers.^[27] When alarmed, it digs rapidly, makes sudden leaping movements, and emits a low grunting cry resembling a hyena's howl.^[27] No aardvark skeletal remains have yet been recovered from Egyptian archaeological sites, but predynastic Egyptians may have known the animal, which probably appears on vases of the Naqada II and III periods and disappeared from Egypt after that time as climate change turned its savanna habitat into desert; today it is found only in sub-Saharan Africa, including southern Sudan.^[22] De Maret noted that in Central and West African cultures, including the Bambara, Tabwa, Nyanga, and Chokwe, the aardvark is a liminal symbol associated with the boundary between the village and the bush, the living and the dead, and the regulation of cosmic order and fertility.^[29] One of the oldest wooden statues from Central Africa, dated to the eighth century and found in a riverbed in Angola, represents the aardvark.^[29] During the New Kingdom, Set was depicted on the astronomical ceiling of the tomb of Seti I with features closely matching the aardvark, possibly drawn from live animals imported from Nubian territories.^[22]

Anthropomorphic and alternative forms

Set was also rendered as an anthropomorphic deity. Secure depictions of Set as a man with the head of the Set animal date from the Second Dynasty on stone vessels of Peribsen and relief fragments of Djoser.^[7][20] In these portrayals, he appears as a slender human figure in a loincloth and divine beard, wearing a tripartite wig and holding the Was-sceptre in one hand and the ankh or shen-ring in the other.^[7][20][30] On relief carvings from the Twelfth Dynasty onward, such as a statue of Senusret I from Lisht and reliefs at Jabal al-Silsila, Set is shown wearing the Double Crown (Pschent) alongside Horus.^[30] During the New Kingdom, Set was portrayed on the walls of royal tombs (such as KV17 of Seti I) and at Medinet Habu as a man with the head of a donkey.^[31] In the Book of the Faiyum, he appears with the head of a flamingo.^[32] In the Roman-period temple of Kellis in the Dakhla Oasis, an exceptional relief shows Set with the head of a bull crowned with bovine and ram horns, sporting outspread scarab wings.^[31]

Beyond the composite Set animal, Egyptian texts and reliefs associated Set with animals perceived as destructive, fierce, or untamed.^[7][20] These included the donkey, the hippopotamus, the wild boar, the crocodile, the desert oryx, the venomous snake, and the softshell turtle.^[7][20][33] In later texts he was even associated with swarms of migratory locusts.^[20] The wild pig and the donkey were regarded as unclean animals under Osirian theology; a myth recorded that Set transformed into a black pig to spit into the eyes of Horus, causing lunar darkness.^[34] In the Late and Ptolemaic periods, when execration rituals multiplied, the Set animal was increasingly replaced by a bound donkey with a knife driven into its back (Gardiner signs E7D and E7F).^[7][20][35]

The Was-sceptre and regalia

The Was-sceptre (wꜣs), a long staff with a forked base and an animal head at its summit, had a specific mythological and cultic connection with Set.^[36] Scribes and modern scholars such as Alan Gardiner identified the head of the sceptre as a stylized depiction of the Set animal, though greyhounds and crested birds have also been suggested.^[36] Gerald Avery Wainwright pointed out that the nineteenth Upper Egyptian nome, sacred to Set, had two Was-sceptres as its emblem, termed the Uabu.^[36] In the northwest chamber of the temple of Set at Ombos, Flinders Petrie and James Quibell discovered in 1895 fragments of an enormous blue-glazed faience Was-sceptre dedicated by Amenhotep II.^[37] Reconstructed at 2.10 metres in height and weighing 60 kilograms, the artefact is preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, representing either a royal ex-voto or the actual cult image worshipped by priests.^[37][38] In mythological texts, the Was-sceptre and its undulating variant, the Djam-sceptre, were linked to cosmic support and atmospheric force.^[36] In the Marriage Stela of Ramesses II, Set is described as upholding the sky, whereas the Bremner-Rhind Papyrus accuses him of allowing the heavens to collapse.^[36] In the Contendings of Horus and Set, Set threatens to slay his fellow deities with his Djam-sceptre, said to weigh 4,500 nemes.^[36]

Mythological cycles

Set is associated with two major myths.^[39] In the Heliopolitan myth he appears with Ra, whose great-grandson he is..^[39] Shu and Tefnut produced Geb and Nut, the goddess of the sky..^[39] Set was the son of Geb and Nut and the brother of Osiris, Isis and Nephthys.^[3] In Plutarch's version of the myth, the four siblings formed two couples: Osiris and Isis, and Set and Nephthys..^[40] In early theological arrangements, Set served as the legitimate lord of the Red Land (deserts and frontier borders), acting as the complementary cosmic counterpart to Horus, the lord of the Black Land (the fertile Nile Valley).^[1][41] Set represented dry heat, sandstorms, cosmic dynamism, and martial fury, whereas Osiris represented moisture, cyclical renewal, and vegetation.^[3][42] Over the course of the dynastic era, the expansion of the Osirian mortuary cult and successive foreign conquests shifted theological focus toward Set's disruptive acts, recasting him from a cosmic force into the prime adversary of divine order.^[4][5][35]

Birth and transgression

In Egyptian religious literature, Set was frequently designated by the epithet 'Son of Nut', but his entry into existence was characterized as an act of cosmic disruption.^[43] According to Plutarch, Set was born on the third of the five epagomenal days, not at term or by the usual way but by bursting through his mother's flank, which he tore open with a great blow.. The third epagomenal day was considered highly unlucky throughout Egypt, and individuals avoided conducting state or private business on that date.^[44] This tradition of abnormal birth possesses ancient roots: Pyramid Texts spell 222 in the pyramid of Unas compares the deceased king's ascension to Set, describing the god as one whom the pregnant mother vomited forth.^[43][45] Because of his premature and violent birth, Egyptian women regarded Set with superstitious dread as a supernatural agent of miscarriage and abortion.^[46] The Coffin Texts record that Isis feared Set would harm her unborn child, Horus, while in her womb, prompting her to appeal to Ra-Atum and Thoth for magical protection.^[46] In Egyptian medical and magical papyri, such as a Late Period papyrus preserved in Turin, the word hai functions both as 'man' and 'to cause abortion', while appearing as an epithet of Set.^[47] The text has Set declare that he is a man of a million cubits whose name is 'day of misfortune', and that on the day of birth or conception there is no birth and trees bear no fruit..

The murder and dismemberment of Osiris

The foundational crime in Osirian mythology was Set's murder of his brother Osiris, the reigning sovereign of Egypt.^[48][49] Although the ancient Egyptians did not usually narrate harmful mythological episodes at length, the Pyramid Texts already state that Set killed Osiris, with wordplay linking the act and its place: Osiris is laid down (ndj) at Nedyt and thrown on his side (gs) at Gehesti..^[49] Coffin Texts spell 227 states that Osiris was drowned in the Nile after being bound with fetters, indicating that drowning and physical assault were complementary traditions of the event.^[50] The fullest narrative appears in Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride, where Set, motivated by envy over Osiris's successful reign and civilizing laws, formed a conspiracy with seventy-two accomplices and Queen Aso of Ethiopia.^[51] Set secretly obtained the exact bodily dimensions of Osiris and commissioned a magnificently decorated chest.^[51] During a feast, Set promised in jest to give the chest to whoever lay down in it and filled it exactly.. When Osiris lay down within it, the conspirators slammed the lid shut, sealed it with nails and molten lead, and cast it into the Tanitic branch of the Nile, where it drifted across the Mediterranean Sea to Byblos.

After a protracted search, Isis recovered the chest from Byblos and concealed it in the papyrus marshes of Chemnis near Buto.^[40] While hunting wild game by moonlight, Set discovered the hidden casket, flew into a rage, and hacked Osiris's corpse into pieces, scattering the fragments throughout the nomes of Egypt.^[40][52] Classical and late Egyptian texts report varying numbers of body fragments: Plutarch records fourteen pieces, while other sources cite sixteen, eighteen, or forty-two parts, corresponding to the total number of Egyptian administrative nomes.^[40][53] Aided by Nephthys and Anubis, Isis located all the severed members with the exception of the phallus, which had been devoured by Nile fish, identified as the oxyrhynchus, lepidotus, or phagrus.^[40] Isis fashioned a replacement phallus out of wood, gold, or clay, reassembled the corpse, and performed the first rites of mummification with Anubis, restoring Osiris to life long enough to posthumously conceive her son and heir, Horus.^[40][48] Osiris subsequently departed to the underworld to reign as king and judge of the dead.^[54][55]

The Contendings of Horus and Set

The struggle between Horus and Set for the succession to the throne of Egypt is detailed in the Ramesside narrative The Contendings of Horus and Set, preserved on the Chester Beatty Papyrus I, as well as in the inscriptions of the temple of Horus at Edfu and the Shabaka Stone.^{[56][57][58][59]} The dispute was brought before the divine tribunal of the Ennead at Heliopolis, presided over by Ra or Atum, with Thoth serving as secretary.^[56][57] The trial dragged on for eighty years because Ra favored Set for his seniority, physical strength, and role in defending the solar bark, arguing that the youth Horus was inexperienced.^[57][60][61] Neith, consulted by letter via Thoth, advised that the crown be awarded to Horus, proposing that Set be compensated with the Canaanite goddesses Anat and Astarte as wives and granted twice his former property. Ra initially refused the proposal, and the tribunal relocated to the Central Island, instructing the ferryman Nemty not to transport any woman resembling Isis.^[57] Isis disguised herself as an old crone, bribed Nemty with a gold ring, and crossed over.^[57] She transformed into a beautiful young maiden and presented a legal dilemma to Set: a herdsman's widow had her flock stolen by an outsider after her husband's death, leaving her young son destitute.^[57] Set indignantly proclaimed that the inheritance belonged to the son and the outsider should be driven out, thereby condemning his own usurpation of Osiris's office.^[57][62]

The dispute involved dangerous physical contests.^[60] In one episode, Horus and Set transformed themselves into hippopotami and plunged into the river to see who could remain submerged beneath the water for three months.^[60][63] Fearing for her son, Isis hurled a copper harpoon into the water; the weapon struck Horus first, causing him to cry out in pain.^[63][64] She threw the weapon again, this time at Set..^[63] Moved by his cries, Isis released him.^[63] Horus emerged from the water in a fury, severed his mother's head, and fled into the desert.^[63][64] Thoth replaced Isis's head with that of a cow, providing the mythic origin for her horned headdress.^[65] In the desert, Set surprised the sleeping Horus, gouged out both of his eyes, and buried them on a mountain, where they transformed into lotus blossoms.^[63] Hathor healed Horus's blindness by washing his empty sockets with gazelle milk.^[63] In a subsequent challenge, the rivals raced in boats constructed of stone.^[60][66] Horus constructed a vessel of cedar wood plastered over with gypsum to resemble stone, whereas Set hollowed out a boat from a mountain of solid rock, which sank instantly.^[66][67]

Sexual conflict and the birth of Thoth

A central episode of the mythological dispute involves sexual violation, reflecting Set's uncontrolled sexual appetite.^[63][68] Set invited Horus to his residence and attempted to sodomize him in order to establish dominance and disqualify him from kingship.^[63][68] In Egyptian theological concepts, receiving semen was seen as an act of subordination.^[63][68] This motif appears in a Pyramid Texts fragment dated to the Fifth Dynasty and found in the antechamber of Pepi I's pyramid, which describes Horus and Set sodomizing each other.. Similarly, the Middle Kingdom Kahun Papyrus preserves a dialogue in which Set praises the beauty of Horus's buttocks, prompting Horus to consult Isis, who instructs him to place his fingers between his thighs to thwart the assault.^[69] In the Chester Beatty Papyrus, Horus catches Set's ejaculate in his hands; he shows them to Isis, who cuts off his contaminated hands and throws them into the river, replacing them with new hands.^[70][71] A variant in the Coffin Texts relates that the purified hands were retrieved from the Nile by the crocodile god Sobek.^[71]

Isis then obtained Horus's semen in a vessel and visited Set's garden.^[70] Learning from the gardener that Set consumed only lettuce, Isis coated the leaves with Horus's seed, which Set unknowingly ate.^[70] When Set later appeared before the Ennead and boasted that he had mastered Horus, Thoth summoned the semen of both gods.^[72] Set's semen answered from the river, which invalidated his claim..^[73][74] When Horus's semen was called, it answered from inside Set..^[70][73][74] Rejecting Thoth's suggestion to emerge from the ear, the divine fluid burst forth from Set's forehead in the form of a radiant golden solar or lunar disk.^[70] Set reached out to seize the disk, but Thoth snatched it and placed it upon his own head as a crown.^[70] In older traditions, Thoth was himself born from this encounter, being designated the 'Son of the Two Rivals' or the 'Son of the Two Lords who issued from the forehead'.^[70][75] In 1962, Philippe Derchain demonstrated that this myth explained the origin of the moon and its association with Thoth, whose lunar headdress represented the redeemed Eye of Horus emerging from the head of Set.^[76][77][78]

The role of lettuce in the myth stems from its connection with male fertility and the ithyphallic deity Min of Coptos.^[79][80] Egyptian lettuce (Lactuca sativa) produces an erect stalk reaching up to 1.5 metres in height and exudes a milky white sap (lactucarium) that ancient Egyptians equated with seminal fluid.^[79][80] At Mendes in the Delta, the sacred lettuce planted in the temple garden was termed menehep, a compound derived from nehep (to ejaculate or fertilize), which also denoted the severed phallus of Osiris venerated in the city.^[81] In a Ptolemaic papyrus in the Louvre, Set attempts to destroy the sacred lettuce bed of Mendes to prevent the conception of Horus.^[82] On relief inscriptions at Edfu and Dendera, the king offers lettuce to Min to ensure masculine vigor while reciting the tale of the impregnation of Set.^[79][80]

Bodily mutilations and reconciliation

During their violent struggles, the combatants inflicted reciprocal physical mutilations.^[83] Set tore out one or both of Horus's eyes, while Horus injured or severed Set's testicles.^[83] Pyramid Texts § 1463 describes a time before this conflict, when 'the eye of Horus had not yet become yellow' and 'the testicles of Set were not yet impotent'.. In Egyptian theology, the two injuries form a paired symbolic duality: the Eye of Horus (the Wedjat) represented the moon, light, life, and the restoration of cosmic wholeness, whereas Set's testicles symbolized unruly sexual potency, storms, and social upheaval.^[83][84][85] The loss of Set's testicles signified a loss of virility and strength.^[84] Conversely, the damaged and restored Eye of Horus represented the waning and waxing of the moon, the solar cycle, and the re-establishment of ma'at.^[83][85][86] In the final settlement, both deities were restored to wholeness: Horus received his healed eye from Thoth or Hathor, and Set's virility was symbolically reintegrated.^[87]

The resolution of the conflict concluded with the legal vindication of Horus before the gods, while Set was assigned a distinct function.^[58][88] In the Memphite theology preserved on the Shabaka Stone, Geb originally divided the two lands, awarding Upper Egypt to Set and Lower Egypt to Horus, but subsequently amended his judgment, awarding the entirety of Egypt to Horus.^[5] Set was consoled by being elevated to the sky by Ra to serve as his thunderer and protector, crying out in the tempest to frighten cosmic enemies.^[88] This resolution produced the theological concept of the reconciled Two Lords, symbolized in the composite deity Heruifi or Antjui, depicted as a two-headed man with the heads of a falcon and the Set animal.^{[5][58][89][90]} The ritual binding of lotus and papyrus around the hieroglyph for windpipe and lungs (the Sema-Tawy rite) represented the eternal balance between Horian order and Sethian power unified within the person of the reigning pharaonic monarch.^[5][85][91]

Protector of Ra and spearing of Apep

The primary positive role assigned to Set in Egyptian theological literature was his nightly defense of the sun god Ra aboard the solar barque.^[1][3] Every night, as the solar ship Mesektet traversed the twelve hours of the underworld (the Duat), it was assaulted by Apep (Apophis), the colossal serpent of chaos and darkness.^[1][3] Set stood at the prow of the barque armed with a copper or flint spear, directly confronting and striking down the monster.^[1][3] In Coffin Texts spell 160, when the serpent on the mountain of Bakhu turns its eye against Ra and halts the solar boat, Set rises against it, tells it to close its eye, and declares that he is the one whose magic is great.. The Amduat and the Book of Gates designate Set as a central agent in repelling the underworld serpent and clearing the way for sunrise.^[1][3][89] Even during the Late Period, when Set had been widely demonized across the Nile Valley, this protective role survived in peripheral temples: on a relief in the temple of Hibis in the Kharga Oasis, Set is shown standing with outspread wings, bearing the head of a falcon and spearing Apep.^[1][92][93] In the Book of Apophis, however, Ra reprimands Set when his thunderous bellowing causes panic among the gods, resulting in his eventual expulsion from the barque.^[94][95]

Consorts, offspring, and foreign syncretism

Set had numerous consorts in Egyptian mythology. His primary sibling wife within the Ennead was Nephthys, though their union was traditionally described as childless and sterile, mirroring the barrenness of the desert.^[1][96][97] Plutarch recorded that Nephthys was infertile with Set but secretly conceived Anubis with Osiris, who believed he was uniting with Isis; fearing Set, she abandoned her son and entrusted him to Isis, who raised him as her own..^[54][96][97] Other traditions, however, recorded Set as the direct father of Anubis.^[97][98] According to Plutarch, the pregnant hippopotamus goddess Tawaret was Set's concubine, but she left him when Horus set out to capture him in order to take the throne.^[99] In older traditions, Set's wife was Neith, goddess of hunting and war..^[3] In the Papyrus Jumilhac, Set attempts to assault Isis by transforming into a bull, but she escapes by shifting into a bitch with a knife on her tail; his semen falls upon the desert soil, causing bitter wild watermelons to sprout.^[100]

During the New Kingdom and the Second Intermediate Period, Set was equated with Levantine and Near Eastern storm and war deities.^[101][102] In the Delta, he was identified with the Canaanite weather and fertility god Baal, worshipped as Seth-Baal, and with the Hittite and Hurrian storm god Teshub.^[101][102] Commensurate with this syncretism, Set was given two martial Levantine goddesses, Anat and Astarte, as divine wives.^[1] From his union with these foreign goddesses, the crocodile demon Maga was said to have been born.^[103][104] In the Astarte Papyrus, dating from the reign of Amenhotep II, Set defends the Egyptian pantheon by battling against Yam, the West Semitic god of the sea, who demanded tribute from the gods.^[102] Set was also linked with the Libyan desert god Ash, who was depicted with the head of the Set animal on seal impressions from the Second Dynasty onward.^{[24][105][106]}

Historical evolution of the cult

The worship of Set extends from the Predynastic era through the end of the Roman period, undergoing profound transformations in prestige and theological evaluation.^[4][24][93] Objects depicting the Set animal, including figurines carved from breccia, rock crystal, and ivory, have been unearthed in tombs of the First Dynasty at Naqada, Hierakonpolis, and Abydos.^[107] From the start of the First Dynasty, queens bore the title 'She who carries Horus, she who carries Set' (renmet-heru-renmet-setech), reflecting the belief that the reigning king embodied both Set and Horus; at the start of the Third Dynasty it merged into the title 'She who sees Horus and Set' (maat-heru-setech), which queens bore into the New Kingdom..^[85][107] Under King Qa'a at the close of the First Dynasty, the priesthood title Hem-Setech ('Servant of Set') is first attested, expanding in the early Old Kingdom to Hem-netjer Setech ('God's Servant of Set').^[107][108] In the middle of the Second Dynasty, King Sekhemib changed his Horus name to the Seth name Seth-Peribsen, placing the couchant Set animal atop his royal serekh instead of the traditional Horus falcon.^[108][109] His successor, Khasekhemwy, placed both the Horus falcon and the Set animal atop his serekh, adopting the epithet Nebui-hetep-imef, 'the Two Lords are at peace in him', commemorating political and religious reconciliation.^[24][109]

Old and Middle Kingdoms

During the Old Kingdom, Set was worshipped as a legitimate patron of royalty alongside Horus.^{[5][109][110]} Relieffragments from the funerary temple of Sahure (Fifth Dynasty) show Set of Ombos bestowing life and power upon the monarch.^[111] However, according to Eugene Cruz-Uribe, Alexandra von Lieven and Ian Robert Taylor, the rise of the Osirian cult from the start of the Sixth Dynasty, followed by severe droughts and famine toward its end for which Set was blamed, contributed to a decline in Set's popularity.^[5][58] In the Middle Kingdom, the mythological dispute between Horus and Set was extensively codified, with Set cast as the aggressor.^[57][112] Literary and medical papyri from the Twelfth and Thirteenth Dynasties frequently invoked Set as a source of physical affliction and turbulence.^[112] In the Kahun Gynaecological Papyrus, specific illnesses of women are attributed to Set's influence, while the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor (Papyrus St. Petersburg 1115) attributes the destructive squall that wrecked the vessel to the god's power.^[112] The Ramesseum Papyrus VII preserves protective spells aimed at averting Set's volatile rage.^[112]

Hyksos rule and the Ramesside era

During the Second Intermediate Period (c. 1650–1550 BCE), the foreign Hyksos rulers of the Fifteenth Dynasty made Avaris (Tell el-Dab'a) in the northeastern Delta their capital and adopted Set as their supreme dynastic god.^[113] The Hyksos identified Set with their West Semitic storm god Baal-Hadad.^[101][102] According to the New Kingdom literary text The Quarrel of Apophis and Seqenenre (Papyrus Sallier I), the Hyksos king Apophis worshipped Set to the exclusion of all other deities, constructing a temple beside his palace where he performed daily sacrifices.^[113][114] Jan Assmann argued that this exclusive veneration of a single deity appeared deeply foreign to traditional Egyptian polytheism, causing Egyptians to associate Set's singular worship with alien impiety.^[115][116] Following the expulsion of the Hyksos by Ahmose I around 1522 BCE, royal propaganda denounced the foreign rulers, yet the cult of Set persisted at Avaris, and the local military garrison integrated into Set's priesthood.^[117]

Under the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties, Set experienced an extensive royal revival.^{[118][119][120]} The Ramesside family hailed from the military aristocracy of Avaris and maintained familial ties to the priesthood of Set.^[117][118] Ramesses I, Seti I ('He of Set'), Seti II, and Sethnakht ('Set is Victorious') adopted the god's name within their royal titulary.^{[118][119][120]} Set was elevated to one of the four principal state gods alongside Amun, Ra, and Ptah.^[119] Pi-Ramesses, near Avaris, was the new capital of Ramesses II.^[121] A hymn to the city in Papyrus Anastasi II and IV places the temple of Set in its south.. At Pi-Ramesses, the king erected the 'Year 400 Stela' (discovered by Auguste Mariette at Tanis in 1863), which commemorated the 400th anniversary of the founding of Set's cult in the Delta and depicted Ramesses II offering wine to Set, who was shown with Semitic facial features, a conical headdress with bull horns, and Asiatic dress.^{[118][122][123]} During the Battle of Kadesh against the Hittites, royal inscriptions lauded Ramesses II as charging into combat 'like Set, great of strength' and 'like Baal on the battlefield'.^[119][124] In Karnak relief carvings, Set acts as a martial instructor, teaching Thutmose III and Ramesses II how to handle the composite bow and chariot weaponry.^[91]

Demonization and proscription

Following the collapse of the New Kingdom, Set underwent progressive demonization throughout the Third Intermediate and Late Periods.^[4][93][125] Herman te Velde documented that as Egypt suffered successive military invasions and foreign occupations by the Kushites, Assyrians, Persians, and Greeks, Set was increasingly identified with foreign oppressors.^{[35][93][125]} The sack of Thebes by Ashurbanipal's Assyrian forces in 663 BCE inflicted deep cultural trauma, reinforcing the theological association between Set, military invasion, and cosmic disruption.^[35] Under the Twenty-Second Dynasty, during the reigns of Osorkon II and Shoshenq III (ninth to eighth centuries BCE), systematic campaigns were initiated to erase the name and image of Set from temple walls, stelae, and statuary.^[4][34] In many inscriptions, the Set animal hieroglyph was chipped away, rewritten with signs for Geb or Thoth, or replaced with representations of Sobek or the ram-headed Amun.^[4] In royal mortuary temples, such as Abydos, Seti I had already substituted the Osiris hieroglyph for the Set animal within his own cartouche.^[4]

By the Saite Period (Twenty-Sixth Dynasty) and the Persian period, Set had become transformed into an absolute cosmic villain and the personification of evil.^[35][90][93] He was mythologically conflated with his former adversary Apep, and texts such as the Book of Overthrowing Set (dating to the Thirtieth Dynasty) presented him as an outcast fiend banished to Asia by Ra.^[35][126] Greek observers identified Set with Typhon, the serpentine monster who challenged Zeus, and classified Egyptian rituals against Set as demonstrations of hostility against chaotic forces.^{[93][127][128]} In Hellenistic and Roman magical papyri, Set-Typhon was invoked as a destructive power commanding celestial tempests, the underworld, and demonic forces, associated with the Greek Magical Papyri of the fourth century CE.^[93][129] Tacitus and later classical authors recorded accusations of onolatry (donkey worship) against Egyptian and Jewish populations, associating Set, Typhon, and Yahweh through their shared symbol of the donkey.^[127]

Principal cult centres

Set was worshipped in major temple complexes across Egypt, typically situated along the borders of the fertile valley, at the entrances to desert trade routes, or in oasis settlements.^[3][130] At least sixteen distinct cult localities are documented in dynastic texts, eleven of which have been identified archaeologically.^[3][94]

Ombos (Nubt)

The primary cult centre of Set from prehistoric times was Nubt, known in Greek as Ombos and in Arabic as Naqada, located on the west bank of the Nile approximately forty kilometres north of Luxor.^[3][111] The name Nubt signified 'City of Gold', reflecting its position at the terminus of caravan tracks leading to the gold mines of the Eastern Desert and the Red Sea.^[3][111] The epithet 'Seth of Ombos' (Nubety) is attested on Second Dynasty porphyry vessels, naos blocks of Djoser, and mortuary reliefs of Sahure.^[3][111] The temple was restored by Ramesses II and endowed extensively by Ramesses III, as recorded in Papyrus Harris I, which details donations of captive slaves, herds of cattle, agricultural land, and daily food offerings to the domain of 'Sutekh, Lord of Ombos'.^[131]

Sepermeru and the Oxyrhynchite nome

In Middle Egypt, the nineteenth Upper Egyptian nome, Uabu ('the Two Sceptres'), was entirely dedicated to Set, with its principal cult city at Sepermeru (Sepet-Meru, 'that which reaches the canals') along the Bahr Yussef canal connecting the Nile to the Faiyum.^[132][133] During the Ramesside period, Sepermeru was a major administrative metropolis, known by the epithet 'Gateway to the Desert'.^{[132][133][134]} The city contained a monumental temple enclosure named the 'House of Set, Lord of Sepermeru', which incorporated a secondary shrine called 'The House of Seth, Powerful-Is-His-Mighty-Arm'.^[133][134] Alongside it, Ramesses II erected an independent, land-owning sanctuary dedicated to Nephthys, named the 'House of Nephthys of Ramesses-Meriamun'.^[133][134] The Wilbour Papyrus (compiled under Ramesses V) documents that the temples of Set and Nephthys operated under separate administrative structures, each possessing distinct land endowments, herds, and colleges of prophets.^[133][135] In Papyrus Bologna 1094, a priest named Pra'em-hab, prophet of the House of Set in the town of Punodjem ('The Sweet Place'), lodged a formal complaint regarding excessive taxation, protesting that he was unfairly saddled with administrative and financial duties for his own temple, as well as the temple transport ship and the House of Nephthys.^[136] Another Set sanctuary existed at the nearby town of Pi-Wayna, and a further double foundation for Set and Nephthys was located at Su (Suu) at the entrance to the Faiyum.^{[3][134][137]}

Oxyrhynchus (Per-Medjed)

The northern capital of the nineteenth nome was Per-Medjed, renamed Oxyrhynchus by the Greeks after the sacred oxyrhynchus fish (Lithognathus mormyrus).^[138][139] The fish, distinguished by a downturned snout, was regarded as sacred to Set or his consort Tawaret, though under Osirian tradition it was reviled for having swallowed the severed phallus of Osiris.^[138][140] In Roman times, Plutarch recorded a conflict between the people of Oxyrhynchus and their neighbours, the Cynopolites.. When the Cynopolites ate an oxyrhynchus fish, the Oxyrhynchites took dogs, sacrificed them and ate them; a war followed in which both peoples suffered heavily, until the Romans settled the dispute and punished them.. Up to the third century CE, the central temple of Tawaret-Athena at Oxyrhynchus maintained a cult statuette of Set-Typhon.^[141]

Avaris and Pi-Ramesses

In the eastern Nile Delta, the ancient city of Avaris (Tell el-Dab'a) and the adjacent Ramesside capital Pi-Ramesses (Qantir) served as the primary northern strongholds of the Set cult.^[118] Under the Hyksos, Set was identified with Baal, and Avaris became the centre of his cult..^[33][142] Following the city's recapture by the Theban Eighteenth Dynasty, Set's temple was maintained by military garrisons.^[117] A hymn to the city of Pi-Ramesses names four temples: Amun in the west, Set in the south, Astarte in the east, and Wadjet in the north.. Ramesses III continued royal patronage, as Papyrus Harris I records that he built a towering temple in stone and pine for Sutekh at Pi-Ramesses, staffing it with serfs, prisoners of war, and daily meat offerings.^[143]

The Western Desert oases

The veneration of Set maintained its strongest and most resilient persistence in the oases of the Western Desert, notably Kharga and Dakhla.^{[93][130][144]} In these isolated settlements, Set was revered as 'Lord of the Oasis' and retained his heroic, benevolent character as a protective desert and weather god long after being outlawed in the Nile Valley.^{[93][130][144]} At Mut el-Kharab (ancient Mothis), the capital of Dakhla Oasis, Set's temple precinct measured 240 by 180 metres, containing inscribed stone blocks of Thutmose III, Horemheb, Ramesses II, and Psamtik I.^[145] In the temple of Amun-Nakht at Ain Birbiyeh, a second-century CE relief still portrays Set, demonstrating his enduring local veneration.^[145] In the Hibis temple in Kharga Oasis, built under Psamtik II and decorated under Darius I and Ptolemy II, Set is prominently depicted spearing Apep.^[1][92][146] During the Roman imperial period, Emperor Vespasian financed the restoration of Set temples in Kellis, Deir el-Hagar, and Kharga.^[93] At Kellis, Set was honoured as a fertility and protective god with reliefs showing him with the head of a horned bull, while local texts celebrated Set-Typhon as a cosmic power before whom the earth, the stars, and the underworld trembled.^[31][93]

Ritual practices and execration

Throughout pharaonic history, the mythological condemnation and physical sacrifice of Set played a central role in mortuary and temple liturgy.^[55][147] In Osirian funerary doctrine, every deceased person was identified with Osiris, while physical death, disease, and social fracture were personified by Set.^[55] Funerary rituals functioned as magical judicial proceedings to apprehend, judge, and execute Set.^[55] The slaughter of a red bull before the mummy served as the concluding act of burial.^[147] Red was associated with the desert sands (Deshret), Set, and chaos; red animals, including red cattle and desert oryxes, were offered as sacrificial substitutes for the god.^{[147][148][149]} During the slaughter, a priestess representing Isis whispered into the severed ear of the bull: 'It is your own lips that have done this against you'.^[147] In Scene XXIII of the Opening of the Mouth ritual, performed to restore the deceased's sensory faculties, the sem-priest and slaughterer sacrificed a bull, a goat, and a Nile goose, proclaiming that the enemy had been slain and placed under the feet of the deceased.^[150]

In the daily temple ritual of the Late and Ptolemaic periods, priests combated Set through execration ceremonies.^[151] Treatises such as the Ritual of Overthrowing Set, the Ritual to Repel the Aggressor, and Papyrus Salt 825 prescribed the daily fabrication of red wax figurines representing Set in the form of a bound bull, donkey, crocodile, or hippopotamus, inscribed with his name in black ink.^[151][152] Priests spat upon the wax effigies, trampled them beneath their left feet, slashed them with copper blades, and melted them in bronze braziers.^[151] At Dendera, in the rooftop chapels dedicated to the resurrection of Osiris during the Khoiak festival, reliefs depict guardian deities, including Wadjet, Unut, and Anubis, ritually harpooning and incinerating figurines of Set.^[153] Over thirty execration epithets were inscribed to curse his memory, including 'the Malefactor', 'the Slanderer', 'the Accursed', and 'the Madman'.^[154] At Edfu, royal and priestly falcon harpooners ritually speared hippopotamus figurines in reenactments of Horus's victory.^[155]

In Egyptian astronomy and myth, Set's severed leg was identified with the Great Bear, a constellation of the northern sky..^{[15][44][156]} According to the Jumilhac Papyrus and the seventeenth chapter of the Book of the Dead, Horus severed Set's anterior leg (khepesh) after the murder of Osiris and hurled it into the northern circumpolar sky.^{[44][157][158]} The constellation, corresponding to the seven stars of Ursa Major (the Big Dipper or Great Bear), was depicted on coffin lids from the First Intermediate Period onward as the foreleg of an ox or a full bull.^[158] The gods chained the limb to the northern pillars of heaven with golden tethers, placing the pregnant hippopotamus goddess Tawaret (also identified as Isis-Hesamut) to guard it with a tethering cord so that Set could never escape or sail among the circumpolar imperishable stars.^[159]

Modern reception and popular culture

. In 1975, former members of the Church of Satan led by Michael Aquino founded the Temple of Set in California, an initiatory magical order adhering to an individualist left-hand path philosophy that views Set as a symbol of consciousness, self-deification, and non-conformity.^[160] In 2017, an entomological species of parasitic crypt-keeper wasp that consumes its insect host from within was named Euderus set in honour of the god.^[161][162]

Modern fictional depictions frequently draw upon Set's demonized Late Period persona, casting him as a malevolent antagonist or cosmic destroyer.^[163] In the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, Set appears under the name Sutekh, portrayed by Gabriel Woolf; he is introduced in the 1975 serial Pyramids of Mars as an Osirian alien imprisoned beneath an Egyptian pyramid who seeks the destruction of all living beings, and he returns in the 2024 season finale episodes 'The Legend of Ruby Sunday' and 'Empire of Death' as the God of Death.^[164] In the television series Stargate SG-1, Set appears in the episode 'Seth' as a parasitic alien Goa'uld living in hiding on Earth as the leader of a heavily armed, brainwashed doomsday cult in Washington state.^[165][166] In fantasy literature, Robert E. Howard introduced Set in 1932 as the serpent god of Stygia in the Conan the Barbarian story The Phoenix on the Sword, a concept adapted into Marvel Comics.^[167][168] In the 2016 film Gods of Egypt, Gerard Butler portrays Set as a power-hungry usurper who murders Osiris and seizes the crown, while in the 1999 video game Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Set serves as the primary antagonist trapped within an underground vault beneath Egypt.^{[169][170][171]}

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