TO THE VICTOR THE SPOILS
It may seem strange that two opponents with such a violent rivalry, engaged in a civil war, should be happy to engage in such non-lethal challenges as staying underwater, and a boat race. However, such challenging – and generally non-fatal – sports were no strangers in Ancient Egypt.
Perhaps understandably, as with the development of so many sports in other societies throughout history, most Ancient Egyptian sports originated with a martial element, as practice or training for warfare. Many martial skills are known to have been played as sports because they were displayed in tomb paintings. Archery, for example, was a popular contest, in which, as today, archers would shoot at flat target boards, on each of which was hung a brass ring. The competing archers would try to place as many arrows into the board through the ring as they could.
Fencing was practiced with special hardened sticks not unlike modern police batons, which were dual-wielded and could be held along the forearm in order to aid with blocking attacks. In the movie The Mummy Returns, the duel between the two lead female characters using anachronistic Japanese sai (which obviously didn’t exist in Ancient Egypt) is shot to resemble Egyptian paintings of boys fencing with these sticks.
Other physical sports with obvious military applications included horse-racing, wrestling, boxing, weight-lifting, swimming, javelin-throwing, and so on. They also, however, held competitions for other sports that even schoolchildren would recognize today. For example, they held tug-of-war contests, though in Ancient Egypt they didn’t use a rope between the teams – each team member would wrap their arms around the teammate in front, and the front person of each team would grasp their opponent’s wrists, and the teams would then try to pull each other over. In fact, Egyptians still do this version of the game today.
The Egyptians also had some surprisingly modern sports, including handball, which is shown in tomb paintings at Saqqara as being a game for four girls, just like modern Beach Volleyball… They even had a game – depicted on tombs at Beni Hassan – that looks just like hockey, and a variation of this that used a hoop instead of a ball. Games aren’t always sports, of course. The Egyptians even had a draughts or checkers-like board game (a set was found in Tutenkhamun’s tomb) and gambled on dice made from bones.
As for underwater breath-holding and boat racing, well, breath-holding probably comes under swimming. The Egyptians did host boat races, however, with rowers pulling to the call of a helmsman, much like the Oxford vs Cambridge boat race today. Again, this had a clear military training element to it, as galleys – oar-powered warships – were the order of the day back then. At least the mortals who engaged in these sports didn’t have to build their own boats out of stone.
HISTORY AND WARFARE
I’ve Heard it Both Ways
Like all stories, the tale of the enmity between Set and Horus has varied over the millennia and over many retellings. This was inevitable, not simply because stories always change as new people from different societies tell them, but also because the original religious context of the story has largely been lost. That said, some of the political context remains in the fragments of the story that have survived longest.
There are both major and minor variations in the myth, ranging from simply how many pieces Osiris was cut into (usually varying between 12 and 16 – though at least one version gives 42 – with most retellings splitting the difference and calling it 14), or even if he was cut up at all. In some versions, Set and Horus duel alone, while in others they have allies and armies.
Herodotus, whose linking of Set with Typhon is followed up on by Plutarch. Which is ironic, as Plutarch hated Herodotus and in fact authored a vicious criticism of him, entitled The Malice of Herodotus.
There is no surviving complete native Egyptian version of the myth of Set, Horus, and Osiris. Episodes from the overall story are found as far back as the 5th Dynasty, but the earliest complete telling of the myth that survives from classical antiquity is the version told by the Greek writer and Roman citizen, Plutarch, in his Moralia, published in AD 100. Like other Greek and Roman historians, Plutarch tells a good story, targeted towards an audience and a world of the first century AD. This means he added things to the story that reflect things that happened long after the myth was originally created. He also imported a number of elements from Greek myth, most notably following Herodotus’s lead in equating Set with the Greek figure of Typhon, the ‘father of monsters’. In fact, the text of Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride uses the name Typhon in place of Set throughout. Plutarch also has Horus (the Younger) conceived before Osiris dies in the sarcophagus.
The Greeks ruled Egypt for several centuries, with the Ptolemies and Cleopatras being the most famous of their pharaohs. But the most successful Greek conqueror was also pharaoh, and seen here in monumental sculpture form in Pharaonic headdress: Alexander the Great. (The Art Archive / Alamy)
The Greek writer Herodotus, who was born about 50 years after Cambyses conquered Egypt, and died in 425 BC, wrote down the tale of the wars between the Greeks and Persians, which included much about the state of Egypt in the previous hundred years, before and after the conquest of Cambyses. This is included in his famous work Histories. Herodotus is known for having been slightly gullible in his researches, but remains one of the earliest written sources for a lot of history in the region. Although his treatment of Ancient Egypt and the beliefs of its people in the second book of the Histories is somewhat fanciful (he said they use their feet to make bread, due to religious taboos, for example), it’s not judgemental.
Some of the post-Herodotus creation myths that do survive from Ptolemaic times, when Egypt was ruled by Greek pharaohs, have Osiris being named Horus the Elder before his death. These versions take the view that because Osiris is the name for the ruler of the underworld, he could only have been called that after he died and went there. In fact, Plutarch’s version of the Egyptian creation myth differs from what we know of both original versions in a number of ways. For example, Plutarch describes five children of Geb and Nut: Osiris, Horus the Elder, Set, Isis, and Nephthys. This is a problem because it means there would be ten members of the Ennead – a Greek word meaning a group of nine! He also has Set being the elder brother at some points and younger at others.
However, although Plutarch’s is the earliest complete version of the Set and Horus story, it is far from being the earliest version of the whole tale, which began to be told in pre-Dynastic times.
The tales of the gods were undoubtedly first told as oral stories, around campfires and in temples. The first written version of the story of Osiris’s death and Set and Horus’s feud was as part of the Pyramid Texts.
Plutarch was writing 2,500 years after these original fragments, so there is no surprise that chunks of the original tales had been forgotten. Aside from adding contemporary Greek elements, Plutarch also smoothed over some of the gaps with parts of other fragmentary Egyptian stories. For example, at one point in Plutarch’s version, Set cuts off Osiris’s manhood and throws it into the Nile, where it is eaten by a catfish. This is in fact a borrowing from a totally different Egyptian folk tale, The Tale of Two Brothers, which was recorded onto papyrus around 1200 BC. The Tale of Two Brothers was perhaps chosen for this borrowing because it features two feuding brothers, just like Set and Horus, although the brothers in this story were not gods. Having said that, The Tale of Two Brothers may have itself been inspired by an earlier version of the actual Set and Horus myth. After all, The Tale of Two Brothers was written during the reign of Seti II, part of the dynasty that venerated Set and indeed took the throne name (Seti) from him. Oddly enough, one part of the original Ancient Egyptian version that does survive is the ending, and, surprisingly, it ends on a cliffhanger. Instead of Horus being awarded the throne, it was said that the struggle would continue until the chaos of the end of the world, at which point Osiris would return to rule Egypt.
The Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara. This pyramid is right next door to the
original Pyramid of Unas, which has largely crumbled away into a rough hill. It would originally have looked more like this one. (Library of Congress)
Casting Against Type
In the earlier dynasties, Set had been one of the good gods, who helmed the ‘Boat of a Million Years’, and defended Ra against the evil serpent Apep, who was the one who wanted to bring darkness and chaos. Then, by the time of the Ptolemies, when Herodotus was writing, Set was firmly established as a cosmic villain. He was the usurper, who wished to bring chaos to the world.
Herodotus identified Set with the Greek ‘father of monsters’, Typhon, an evil Titan who rebelled against the gods. From that point onwards, writers and folklorists – and even the Egyptian priesthood itself – would cast Set in that role, as the arch-villain of myth. It is doubly ironic that he was equated with Typhon, as that Greek Titan had the coils of a giant serpent, the most obvious trait of the original villain, Apep. By the time of Ptolemaic Egypt, in fact, Set’s attributes – as a bringer of chaos and darkness – were all those that had once been the attributes of Apep.
This did not happen by accident. It is no coincidence that the god of foreigners was made into a figure of evil at a time when the kingdom was being ruled by foreigners. The story of Set’s changing morals and allegiances is pretty much the chronological story of Egypt’s governance.
Back in pre-Dynastic times, Set and Horus were considered the rulers of Upper and Lower Egypt respectively, but both gods were worshipped equally in both kingdoms. In this period, Set was viewed as a kind of a trickster god like the Norse god (and Marvel comics villain) Loki, the Native American spirit Coyote, or the Afro-Caribbean spider god Anansi. These are gods whose attempts to trick people are intended to teach people to think about what they say and do. He is portrayed this way in the New Kingdom story The Tale Of Truth And Falsehood, only a fragment of which survives on papyrus dating from around 1250 BC. Here, Set is not really good or evil, but a god who keeps people on their toes.
Throughout the dynasties of Egypt, there was a certain amount of both political and religious struggle between the two kingdoms. This is reflected in the fact that there are two creation myths, and two sets of original gods: the nine gods of the Ennead in Upper Egypt, and the eight gods of the Ogdoad in Lower Egypt. When Upper Egypt was stronger, the Ennead was more popular, and when Lower Egypt was stronger, so the Ogdoad was more likely to be favoured.
Both the Ennead and Ogdoad, however, were only really set in stone around the 5th and 6th dynasties, while Set and Horus – as individual deities – were much older. Horus was first worshipped as a local patron deity in Nekhen, in Upper Egypt, in pre-dynastic times, while Set came along in the 2nd Dynasty. This immediately provided a motive for a rivalry between them, as the cult of Set – and his priesthood – began to take over from the cult of Horus, which had been established for a few centuries already. During this 2nd Dynasty, the serekh, or symbol, of King Peribsen’s name – which had been surmounted by a Horus falcon in the 1st Dynasty – was surmounted by a Set animal, indicating that there had been a struggle between the priesthoods of the two gods that the cult of Set had now won. Later, the fifth and final Pharaoh of the 2nd Dynasty, Khasekhemwy, surmounted his serekh with both the falcon of Horus and a Set animal, showing the two now to be equals.
In other words, Horus was now the god of Lower Egypt, and Set the god of Upper Egypt, both with equal importance to the pharaoh. This continued until the period between 1800 BC to 1560 BC or so, when the Hyksos began to take over Lower Egypt until eventually they ruled the Nile Delta, from a capital they had set up at Avaris. They chose Set, originally Upper Egypt’s chief god, the god of foreigners and the god they found most similar to their own chief god, as their patron, and so Set became worshipped as the chief god over Lower Egypt as well. In fact the Hyksos Pharaoh Apophis insisted that Set should be the only god worshipped at all. This was incomprehensible to the Ancient Egyptians, that one god could usurp the positions of the others.
This was bound to provoke a reaction, and, sure enough, the Egyptians rose up and expelled the Hyksos, installing Ahmose I as pharaoh. The new rulers in Thebes were keen to reverse all the cultural changes imposed by the foreign rulers, and that included Set’s position as chief god. That said, Set was still one of Egypt’s own pantheon, and so his cult at Avaris remained strong on its home ground, and the garrison of soldiers that Ahmose put there became a new generation of his priesthood. Nevertheless, the xenophobia that Hyksos rule had left in Egyptians meant that Set was now viewed with more suspicion and distaste than before.
That new generation of Set’s priesthood at Avaris, however, came to the fore with the founding of the 19th Dynasty, around 1295 BC, by Rameses I. Several of his descendants who followed him as pharaoh were actually named for Set. In particular the pharaohs’ name Seti meant ‘man of Set’, and Setnakht meant ‘Set is strong’. Likewise, Rameses II erected the ‘Four Hundred Years’ Stele at Pi-Ramesses, commemorating the 400th anniversary of Set’s priesthood in Lower Egypt.
Later, around the 22nd Dynasty, from 943 to 716 BC, Egypt was ruled by the descendants of Libyans – foreign rulers again – and Set was again identified with overtly darker gods. Some Egyptians compared him to the Hittite god Teshub, because both were storm gods. However Set’s reputation was further blackened by royal and priestly propaganda which equated Set with his own ancient enemy, Apep. Apophis, of course, the foreign king who had once put Set above all others, shared the Greek name for Apep. The comparison was therefore perhaps inevitable, and now even some of the carvings of Set on temples were replaced with those of other gods, such as the crocodile god Sobek. Within three hundred years, the Persians were on the march, and Cambyses had taken Egypt – another foreign ruler surely favoured by the god of foreigners.
The really big enemies of the Persians, however, were soon to be the Greeks, and it was the Greek writers Herodotus and Plutarch who gave us the earliest complete surviving versions of the myth. Although they themselves were somewhat foreign, the Greeks could not help but maintain the idea of Set being the evil god, as he was now so associated with Apophis, and no longer remembered as Ra’s companion and loyal ally. Set’s fate was sealed; he was forever more to be the villain.
Conquest of Cambyses
There were times in Egypt’s recorded history that were just as game-changing as the events of myth and legend. More importantly, these times were reflected in the myths and legends, as the tales and their characters changed to reflect the social and political realities of the country. This included the myth of Set and Horus, and the characters and natures of the gods involved – especially Set who was much less evil before the Persians came to Egypt…
Although Egypt maintained an official policy that all the living pharaohs were descended from the same gods, The Two Kingdoms had really undergone several regime changes, and even outright invasions, over the course of time. By 1640 BC, around the time of the 14th Dynasty, the Hyksos people – the word deriving from the Ancient Egyptian for ‘rulers of foreign lands’ – had become pharaohs through dominance in politics.
In the 8th century BC, Egypt became the target for a less subtle takeover. The Nubian kings to the south had seen that Egypt was becoming weaker and more divided, long past the heights it had achieved in the past. The Nubians first infiltrated Egyptian politics by marrying off their daughters to members of the Egyptian court. When the time was right, and Egypt’s politics were sufficiently destabilized, the Nubian King Piye marched north, defeating all of Egypt’s leaders. Soon, he was settled at Thebes, and crowned pharaoh. He and his family had founded the 25th Dynasty, but made the rulers he had defeated into regional governors, so that most of the people in towns and cities were still working for the same rulers.
Cambyses and Psamtik III confront each other to discuss terms, in an 1841 painting. (filled with anachronistic costumes) by Jean Adrien Guignet (The Art Archive / Alamy)
This 19th century painting shows the Persians of Cambyses
hurling cats into Pelusium to put off the cat-worshipping defenders. Thankfully this is a Victorian myth, though the Greek historian Palyaenus claimed that the Persians did carry cats with them in their chariots to discourage Egyptian archers from shooting at them. (North Wind Picture Archives / Alamy)
The Nubian pharaohs eventually got into a Cold War with the Assyrians. Regular border conflicts flared up, and Egypt’s usual allies had all drifted away, or had their own problems to handle. Egypt had one big disadvantage when compared to the Assyrians: a lack of trees. With more trees to cut down, the Assyrians could turn more logs into charcoal than the Egyptians; with more charcoal, the Assyrians could smelt more iron; and with more iron, they could make more swords, spearheads, and arrowheads. This they did, and then, when the Cold War turned hot, they struck.
An Assyrian army with weapons of iron and steel smashed into Egypt, making for the capital, Thebes. Once there, they looted the city of its treasures, and burned out the temples and palaces of its Nubian rulers. The Assyrians then made a deal with a noble family from the Egyptian city of Saïs, and made them puppet pharaohs.
Now that the Egyptians had Egyptian pharaohs again, tribute would flow smoothly south and east to Assyria, and the Assyrians did not have to bother using people and resources to rule Egypt.
In 525 BC, greedy eyes turned towards Egypt, whose fertile Nile Delta and supplies of gold were very tempting targets for Cambyses II, ruler of the mighty Persian Empire. Cambyses’ father, Cyrus the Great, had previously started a campaign against Egypt, but had died in a battle against nomadic archers before his invasion could be launched. Cambyses was determined to fulfil his father’s ambition, and so he soon gathered his generals and advisers around him. In the four years since his father had died, his spies had been bringing Cambyses news of everything that happened in Egypt. ‘Now’, he told his generals, ‘the Egyptian government is collapsing. The pharaoh can neither hold on to power, look after his people, nor defend his borders.’
The War of Horus and Set Page 5
