Horus and Seth Battle Part 1/3

Horus and Seth Battle Episode 1/3
Horus God attempts to avenge his father’s murder and to regain control over the territory taken by  Seth God led to the great battles of Egyptian mythology. The tale begins with a young son who seeks to avenge his father’s death, but it continues on to become a fight for the territory or position that the son thinks the killer wrongfully gained through murder. These events combine to make up the Egyptian equivalent of the Iliad, an ancient Greek epic, and the battles that result are of epic importance.

 

Battle between Horus and Seth

Interestingly enough, this myth has survived in two versions with entirely different tones. Many Egyptian myths have been told in different places and with different details, but this particular story has been recorded in versions so divergent as to lead to exactly opposite attitudes toward the central characters and events. One version is entirely serious, even though it describes events that are fantastic. Since this version is similar to the epics of the Western world (great battles, heroes fighting villains with gods taking an active role, supernatural events, and an oral tradition including repetition of key phrases), it is called here the epic version.

The other version presents a satiric view of the same characters. In this “parody” of the epic version (the reader should note that there is no proof which of the two versions was the first), the gods in the central roles are ridiculed and the battle is reduced to a petty squabble among deities who possess very human characteristics.

No evidence suggests that early Egyptians could not have held both the serious and humorous attitudes toward these events at the same time, since humor does not necessarily denote disrespect the two accounts are separated here, however, in order to make the narratives and attitudes clearer.

The Epic Version (briefly told)
The great battles between Horus God and Seth God began during the three hundred and sixty-third year of the reign of Ra-Herakhty on earth and ended decades later. Ra assembled a massive army in Nubia in preparation for an attack on Seth God who had rebelled against him. From a boat floating on the river he directed his troops of footmen, horsemen, and archers. Among them was Horus God who had long sought to avenge his father’s death but had been unable to trap Seth God in battle; Horus, who loved an hour of fighting more than a day of feasting, looked forward to the battle with glee. Thoth gave the young god magical power to transform himself into a solar disk with large golden wings, the color of the sky at sunset; in this form Horus God led Ra’s troops into battle and prepared the tactics for the first encounter.

When Horus God sighted the legions of Seth God , he rose on his great wings above them and uttered a curse: “Your eyes shall be blinded and you shall not see; your ears shall be deaf and you shall not hear.” The enemy beneath him suddenly became confused: each warrior looked at the soldier next to him and, deceived by the power of the curse, saw a stranger where moments before an ally had stood. The speech around him sounded like a foreign language. The warriors cried out that their ranks had been infiltrated by the enemy, and they turned and fell upon each other. In a moment the army had defeated itself. Meanwhile, Horus God was hovering above, looking for Seth God . His archenemy was not in this advance guard, but hiding in the marshes to the north. Horus God continued to have trouble cornering Seth God in battle, even though he was to chase Seth’s troops through three more battles in the south and six in the north. Some took place in rivers, where the combatants changed themselves into crocodiles and hippopotamuses, some took place on land where again the slaughter was terrible, and one was even fought on the high seas.
 
On one occasion when Horus God thought he had captured his chief enemy during the heat of a battle, he cut off the soldier’s head and severed the body into fourteen pieces as Seth God had cut up Osiris. Once the dust from the battle had settled, however, Horus God finally saw his victim clearly and realized he had the wrong enemy: Seth God had escaped him once again.

Related Web Search :

• Horus God
• Horus God of War
• Seth God
• Egyptian God of Evil and Chaos
• Ancient Egyptian Gods
• Ancient Egyptian Gods And Goddesses
• Ancient Egyptian Gods for Kids
• List Of Ancient Egyptian Gods

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