69 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
69 lines
3.5 KiB
Plaintext
Set in Egyptian Theology
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by Oz Tech
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Set was one of the earliest Egyptian deities, a god of the night
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identified with the northern stars. In the earliest ages of
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Egypt this Prince of Darkness was well regarded. One persistant
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token of this regard is the Tcham scepter, having the stylized
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head and tail of Set. The Tcham scepter is frequently found
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in portraits of other other gods as a symbol of magical power.
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In some texts he is hailed as a source of strength, and in
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early paintings he is portrayed as bearer of a harpoon at the
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prow of the boat of Ra, warding off the serpent Apep. Yet the
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warlike and resolute nature of Set seems to have been regarded
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with ambivalence in Egyptian theology, and the portrayal of this
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Neter went through many changes over a period of nearly three
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thousand years. Pictures of a god bearing two heads, that of
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Set and his daylight brother Horus the Elder, may be compared to the
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oriental Yin/Yang symbol as a representation of the union
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of polarities. In time, the conflict between these two abstract
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principles came to be emphasized rather than their primal union.
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Set's battle with Horus the Elder grew from being a statement of
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the duality of day and night into an expression of the political
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conflict among the polytheistic priesthoods for control of the
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Egyptian theocracy. This was rewritten as a battle between Good
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and Evil after Egypt expelled the Hyskos in the 18th Dynasty.
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Some say the Hyskos were Asiatic invaders, and others say they
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were an indigenous minority that seized control of the nation.
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This tribe ruled Egypt for a time and happened to favor the Set
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cult, seeing a resemblence to a storm-god of their own pantheon
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The Set cult never recovered from this identification with the Hyskos.
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mages of Set were destroyed or defaced. By the time
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Greek historians visited Egypt, wild asses, pigs, and other beasts
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identified with the Set cult were driven off cliffs, hacked into
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pieces or otherwise slaughtered at annual celebrations in a spirit
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akin to the driving out of the Biblical scapegoat. The report
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of these historians is often thought to be a valid account of a
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a timeless and immutable theocracy , but just looking at the
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frequency with which the ruling capital moved to different
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cities (each being a cult-center) is enough to dispel this idea.
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One controversial Egyptologist has suggested that the worship
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of Set might have predated the concept of paternity. Later cults
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incorporating a father god would reject this fatherless son.
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This introduces another bizarre factor in the transformation of the
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Night/Day battle between brothers into an inheritance dispute
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between Set and Horus the Younger. Any book on Egyptian myth you
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pick up contains the gory details of this cosmic lawsuit, which
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includes things that make DYNASTY look like a prayer breakfast.
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I have always been intrigued, though, that while all books affirm
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that Set tore Osiris to pieces, everybody knows about Osiris, and it
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is quite hard to collect the pieces of the puzzle that is Set.
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Egyptologists have never agreed what the animal used to symbolize
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Set actually is. Since the sages of ancient Egypt did not use an
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unrecognizable creature to represent any other major deity, we
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may guess that this is intentional, and points, like the Tcham
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sceptre, to an esoteric meaning.
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References:
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Budge, E.A. Wallis. THE GODS OF THE EGYPTIANS.
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Grant, Kenneth. CULTS OF THE SHADOW.
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Graves, Robert. THE WHITE GODDESS.
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Ions, Veronica. EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY.
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Massey, Gerald. THE NATURAL GENESIS.
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Russell, Jeffrey Burton. THE DEVIL.
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