THE DEATH OF OSIRIS AND THE CONTEST OF HORUS AND SETH

Seth (left) and Horus (right)The tale of The Death of Osiris and the Contendings of Horus and Seth, as it’s usually known, was the final act of the sweeping ancient Egyptian mythological story that established how the world as the ancient Egyptians knew it came into being.[1]

The Death of Osiris

When the cosmos was fresh from the hands of the creator god – usually Atum,Amun, or Ra, depending on the version of the ancient Egyptian creation myth – its creator was also its king. The rulership then passed to the air god Shu, then to his son, the earth god Geb, and finally to Geb’s son, Osiris. Osiris’s sister Isis was his queen. His reign was a “golden age” of abundance and peace, which earned him the favor of all of the gods.

Well, almost all of the gods, that is. There was one who was jealous of the king’s popularity and success, and wanted the throne for himself. This was none other than Osiris’s own brother, Seth. Seth murdered the king, hacked his body to pieces, and scattered the pieces all across the vast Egyptian landscape. He then installed himself as king, and his sister and consort Nephthys as queen.

Isis was inconsolable. So profound was her anguish that Nephthys, her sister, was moved to help her locate the sundry parts of her murdered husband. The two scoured the land day and night until they had found every last fragment of Osiris’s corpse, which they successfully reassembled.

However, despite her formidable magical powers, Isis couldn’t accomplish a feat as daunting as bringing Osiris back to life without a certain power that Ra, the sun god, alone possessed, by virtue of his being reborn every morning. So Isis tricked Ra into divulging his secret name to her, which, whenever pronounced, could revive the dead.

Isis spoke Ra’s secret name over her husband’s corpse, which enlivened it just enough for them to copulate to conceive a rightful heir to the throne. Then, his feeble vitality spent, Osiris quit the world of the living completely and descended down into the underworld, over which he would rule from that point forward.

The Contest of Horus and Seth

When Isis gave birth to her son, Horus, she had to hide him in the papyrus marshes for fear that Seth would murder him, too, to prevent any challenge to his kingship. Under Isis’s devoted care, Horus grew into a healthy, strong man. In due time, he set out to claim the throne that was rightfully his.

Horus strode into the assembly of the gods, chaired by Ra, and asserted his claim on the throne as the son of Osiris. Naturally, Seth vehemently disputed this right. The gods debated the relative merits of the two contenders, and in the end all of the gods favored Horus except for Ra, who felt that he was too young and inexperienced. The council was at an impasse.

Ra’s mother, Neith, was called in to issue a verdict and resolve the stalemate. She declared that the throne should be Horus’s, but that Seth should be compensated by being given two of Ra’s daughters, Anat and Astarte (Canaanite goddesses whose cults had become established in Egypt), as his wives. Everyone was pleased with Neith’s decision except for Ra, who stormed off to his quarters, leaving the council once again in a stalemate.

Ra’s daughter Hathor, goddess of sexuality, joy, and vitality, found her father sulking in his pavilion. She cast a warm smile at him and exposed herself to him. This should surely be understood as her imparting some of her cheer and vigor to Ra, whose mood instantly improved. He then returned confidently to the council.

With the assembly reconvened, Seth and Horus once again presented their claims to the throne. Seth’s arguments were based on his demonstrated skill and strength, while those of Horus were based on his unique legitimacy as the proper heir of Osiris. Isis intervened to make an impassioned plea in her son’s defense, but the outraged Seth successfully protested against her presence at the council.

Isis was then removed from the proceedings, but she surreptitiously made her way back in disguised as an old woman. Once inside, she disguised herself as a beautiful young woman whose beauty the virile Seth would not fail to notice. She went before Seth as a supplicant before her king and told him that her son had been cheated out of what was rightfully his, and requested his aid in restoring these things to him. Seth was moved by her plea and enraged by the injustice her son had suffered. Isis then revealed her true identity to Seth, and did not miss the opportunity to spell out how he had just condemned himself.

This time, Ra refused to come to Seth’s aid, and the assembly decreed that Horus should be the king. But Seth still had one last recourse: to challenge his adversary to a series of contests, the victor of which would assume the throne. Horus accepted the challenge.

Then followed a series of (to our ears) extremely bizarre competitions, most of which featured Isis’s intervention.

The two competitors turned themselves into hippopotami and battled. Isis was about to harpoon Seth, but Seth addressed her as “sister” and Isis found herself unable to go through with it. Horus, enraged, decapitated Isis.

Horus then fled into the desert, but Seth pursued him, and, when he found him, ripped his eyes out. Afterwards, Horus’s and Isis’s wounds were healed.

Horus and Seth then engaged in a competition wherein each tried to deposit his semen in the other’s body. Isis obtained some of Horus’s semen, put it on a piece of lettuce that Seth was about to eat, and thereby won the contest for her son.

The two contenders then held a boating competition. Horus built a sound boat, but Seth’s was made of stone and sank as soon as it was put into the water.

In the end, each of the contests, which Seth had designed to demonstrate his greater strength and skill, backfired, and instead showed that Horus was the fitter to rule in every way. The competitions had left Seth without any compelling arguments to advance for why he should be king instead of Horus.

Meanwhile, the assembly received a letter from Osiris in the underworld, which ordered them to grant the throne to his son. If this demand wasn’t met, Osiris threatened to withhold the fertility of the earth and deprive the gods of their food, send demons and the dead against the gods, and treat the gods badly when they ended up in his domain (such as when Ra passed through the underworld at night).

Earlier, the contest had pitted the legal/moral/spiritual right of Horus against the allegedly superior raw power of Seth and his party. However, after Osiris’s letter and Horus’s decisive defeats of Seth in the competitions of strength and cunning, Horus had demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that he had both right and might on his side.

Seth sullenly relinquished the throne, and Horus was crowned the king of the gods.

As compensation, Seth was not only granted Anat and Astarte as wives, as Neith had suggested, but was also given the prestigious position of guardian of the boat in which Ra traversed the sky by day and the underworld by night. From that time forward, Seth stood at the prow of the ship with his weapons, valiantly fighting off the forces of true chaos, such as the snake Apophis, when they attacked and attempted to devour the sun god and his party.

Horus’s reign became renowned as a period of wondrous prosperity, justice, and peace.[2][3]

Themes and Meanings

As with many mythological narratives from the ancient Near East, The Death of Osiris and the Contest of Horus and Seth was powerfully connected to the annual agricultural cycle. As Osiris’s threat to the divine council shows, he was a preeminent fertility power. Like the grain that was the staff of life for the early Egyptians, Osiris had to die (at the harvest) and be dismembered and scattered (as grain must be to separate its seeds and sow them) in order to be reborn (like the new plants at the beginning of the growing season).[4] However, while the dead Osiris continued to live in some capacity as the ruler of the underworld, the rebirth here was principally accomplished through the birth and ascension of his son, Horus, who grew from his seed.[5]

But the foremost significance of this story was that it provided a sacred basis for Egyptian kingship. To say that the pharaoh ruled by divine right was an understatement. He was thought of as being the incarnation of Horus – fully human but also fully divine himself. The pharaoh, whoever he was at the time, was thus the sole legitimate successor to Osiris, Geb, Shu, and Ra/Atum/Amun. His own legitimate heir could only be his son, who would in turn become the incarnation of Horus when he himself died and became united with Osiris. Any potential usurpers of the throne were identified with Seth, instantly invalidating their claims.[6]

Additionally, as Horus’s repeated and resounding defeats of Seth in every realm of life demonstrated, the hereditary successor to the throne not only had the rightto rule, but would inevitably be the most capable of all possible rulers.[7]