The ancient seeming contest between apparent Good and Evil in Egypt,
was represented in the wars of Ra and Set. It is said (Gen. iv. 26),
'And to Seth, to him also was born a son; and he called his name
Enos; then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.' Aquila
reads this--'Then Seth began to be called by the name of the
Lord.' Mr. Baring-Gould remarks on this that Seth was at first regarded
by the Egyptians as the deity of light and civilisation, but that
they afterwards identified as Typhon, because he was the chief god of
the Hyksos or shepherd kings; and in their hatred of these oppressors
the name of Seth was everywhere obliterated from their monuments, and
he was represented as an ass, or with an ass's head. [134] But the
earliest date assigned to the Hyksos dominion in Egypt, B.C. 2000,
coincides with that of the Egyptian planisphere in Kircher, [135]
where Seth is found identified with Sirius, or the dog-headed Mercury,
in Capricorn. This is the Sothiac Period, or Cycle of the Dog-star. He
was thus associated with the goat and the winter solstice, to which
(B.C. 2000) Capricorn was adjacent. That Seth or Set became the
name for the demon of disorder and violence among the Egyptians is,
indeed, probably due to his being a chief god, among some tribes
Baal himself, among the Asiatics, before the time of the Hyksos. It
was already an old story to put their neighbours' Light for their own
Darkness. The Ass's ears they gave him referred not to his stupidity,
but to his hearing everything, as in the case of the Ass of Apuleius,
and the ass Nicon of Plutarch, or, indeed, the many examples of the
same kind which preceeded the appearance of this much misunderstood
animal as the steed of Christ's triumphal entry into Jerusalem. In
Egyptian symbolism those long ears were as much dreaded as devils'
horns. From the eyes of Ra all beneficent things, from the eyes of Set
all noxious things, were produced. Amen-Ra, as the former was called,
slew the son of Set, the great serpent Naka, which in one hymn is
perhaps tauntingly said to have 'saved his feet.' Amen-Ra becomes
Horus and Set becomes Typhon. The Typhonian myth is very complex,
and includes the conflict between the Nile and all its enemies--the
crocodiles that lurk in it, the sea that swallows it, the drouth that
dries it, the burning heat that brings malaria from it, the floods
that render it destructive--and Set was through it evolved to a point
where he became identified with Saturn, Sheitan, or Satan. Plutarch,
identifying Set with Typho, says that those powers of the universal
Soul, which are subject to the influences of passions, and in the
material system whatever is noxious, as bad air, irregular seasons,
eclipses of the sun and moon, are ascribed to Typho. The name Set,
according to him, means 'violent' and 'hostile;' and he was described
as 'double-headed,' 'he who has two countenances,' and 'the Lord of
the World.' Not the least significant fact, in a moral sense, is that
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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