Winged Horus Defeating Set

Title

Winged Horus Defeating Set

Artist

Pet Serrano

Medium

Painting - Acrylic On Papyrus

Description

Horus is one of the oldest and most significant deities in ancient Egyptian religion, who was worshipped from at least the late Predynastic period through to Greco-Roman times. He was most often depicted as a falcon, most likely a lanner or peregrine, or as a man with a falcon head. Horus served many functions in the Egyptian pantheon, most notably being the god of the sun, war and protection.

Set or Seth, also spelled Setesh, Sutekh, Setekh, or Suty, is a god of the desert, storms, and foreigners in ancient Egyptian religion. In later myths he is also the god of darkness and chaos.

In Egyptian mythology, Set is portrayed as the usurper that killed and mutilated his own brother Osiris. Osiris' wife Isis reassembled Osiris' corpse and embalmed him. Osiris' son Horus sought revenge upon Set, and the myths describe their conflicts. The death of Osiris and the battle between Horus and Set is a popular theme in Egyptian mythology. The myth of Set's conflict with Horus, Osiris, and Isis appears in many Egyptian sources, including the Pyramid Texts, the Coffin Texts, the Shabaka Stone, inscriptions on the walls of the temple of Horus at Edfu, and various papyrus sources. The Chester Beatty Papyrus No. 1 contains the legend known as The Contendings of Horus and Set. Classical authors also recorded the story, notably Plutarch's "De Iside et Osiride".

Since Horus was said to be the sky, he was considered to also contain the sun and moon. It became said that the sun was his right eye and the moon his left, and that they traversed the sky when he, a falcon, flew across it. Later, the reason that the moon was not as bright as the sun was explained by a tale, known as the contestings of Horus and Set, originating as a metaphor for the conquest of Upper Egypt by Lower Egypt in about 3000 BC.

Horus was told by his mother, Isis, to protect the people of Egypt from Set, the god of the desert and patron of Upper Egypt, who had killed his father Osiris. Horus had many battles with Set, not only to avenge his father, but to choose the rightful ruler of Egypt. In these battles, Horus came to be associated with Lower Egypt (where Horus was worshipped), and became its patron. Thus he became a symbol of majesty and power as well as the model of the pharaohs. The Pharaohs were said to be Horus in human form.

The battle of the winged Horus and Set as the god of evil appears to be the Egyptian version of Archangel Michael defeating Satan. In many instances Egyptian artists depicted Set as having transformed into a giant serpent (crocodile) in this scene, making it also the Egyptian version of St. George and the Dragon.

In this painting, the Two Ladies, Nekhbet and Wadjet, appear as protective snakes in the battle on either side of Horus as the winged sun disk, blinding Set and resulting in victory for Horus. It has been painted in lightfast versions of accurate period pigments, with Set's Madder lake hair symbolizing death and chaos and the indigo hair of Horus signifying his godhood, among other things.

While it depicts a common scene from Egyptian mythology using papyrus and original pigments, it is an original design and not a recreation of an image in the public domain.

(Primary source: Wikipedia)

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October 9th, 2012

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