Saturday, September 1, 2007

Set

“SET, OR SETH, whom the Greeks called Typhon, the nefarious demon of death and evil in Egyptian mythology, is characterised as ‘a strong god (a-pahuti), whose anger is to be feared.’ The inscriptions call him ‘the powerful one of Thebes,’ and ‘Ruler of the South.’ He is conceived as the sun that kills with the arrows of heat; he is the slayer, and iron is called the bones of Typhon. The hunted animals are consecrated to him; and his symbols are the griffin (akhekh), the hippopotamus, the crocodile, the swine, the tortoise, and, above all the serpent âpapi (in Greek ‘apophis’) who was thought to await the dying man in the domain of the god Atmu (also called Tmu or Tum), who represents the sun below the western horizon.

Set's pictures are easily recognised by his long, erect, and square-tipped ears and his proboscis-like snout, which are said to indicate the head of a fabulous animal called Oryx. The consort and feminine counterpart of Set is called Taour or Taourt. The Greeks called her Theouris. She appears commonly as a hippopotamus in erect posture, her back covered with the skin and tail of a crocodile...”

Source:
“Ancient Egypt” - History of the Devil [1900] by Paul Carus.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/evil/hod/hod05.htm