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One of the first gods ever conceived, with very strong connections to the historical reality of Ancient Egypt. Horus rappresenta la luce ed il bene nell’inevitabile scontro con lo zio Seth, simbolo del caos e della violenza.
Horus, son of revenge
The myth about the origins of Horus is linked to that of Isis and Osiris, of which he would be the son. The god would have been born during a brief resurrection of his father, who would have fertilized his mother to allow his revenge against the evil brother Seth. Once matured, the hawk god would undertake a clash with his uncle, a duel in which the latter would have lost his testicles, Horus would have instead lost his left eye, which later became one of the most famous amulets in the whole ‘Ancient Egypt.
Although he is his son, it seems that the origins of this divinity are much older than those of Isis and Osiris, suggesting an allegorical meaning which, however, perfectly tells the story of Egypt.
The god of united Egypt
In fact, it seems that the duel between Seth and Horus is the true central fulcrum of the myth, around which the other components were then added, including divinities. Both deities were in fact worshiped since the pre-dynastic period, finding their center of worship in opposite places in Egypt: for Horus in Nekhen, Upper Egypt, and for Seth in Napata, Nubia.
The two are exactly the opposite of the other, thus feeding more and more the role of the former as “divinity of light and order” and the latter as that of “chaos and bestiality”. Definitely an allegory to define the very role of Egypt in the world, differentiating by dividing the latter between “civilization “and”bestiality“, a very dear concept in antiquity. Due to its centrality within the Egyptian religion and its being (without even hiding it too much) an alter-ego of the pharaoh himself, Horus over time was associated more and more quality and characteristics, transforming it into the “solar god” par excellence.
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