Originally posted by Byrd
Horus, by the way, doesn't wear a solar crown (Hathor does) but rather the atef-crown (double crown).
Which is also known as the "double-feather" crown...The feathers being representative of Ma'at, the goddess representing Truth & the Way of
Order.
Originally posted by undo
And from the Amduat itself ("Book of the Underworld" translations of texts found on the walls of tombs), you can see that the dying sun becomes
Ra/Re in the underworld, travels there, confronts his serpent enemy Apophis, and defeats him and emerges from the underworld as a scarab beetle.
Set's not there and Horus doesn't die:
And every night, Apophis nearly wins until Bast (the Cat goddess) joins the fray at the last moment & kills Apophis. According to other Amduat texts,
Bast is the
only one who can defeat Apophis, but any further details would be too much "derailiing" on my part.
Originally posted by Byrd
Most are VERY aware of the history (and scholarly brawls thereof) in their fiends.
Because, Rosetta Stone aside, Egyptian Heiroglyphs are still not
completely decyphered.
Originally posted by GeneralT.
There was a legend that Cush had been cut up and sent to the four corners of the the earth.
This sounds like what Set did to Osiris...But that was
before Horus would have been born; One big difference between the two stories.
Souljah, this particular paragraph is in reference to the star map you imaged: Yes, Orion the Hunter would have been important to any early agraian
society...Simply for the reason that most of them did not give up hunting immediately after developing agriculture. In the case of Ancient Egypt, the
skills of agriculture came relatively late! The Nile Valley was so lush that they didn't need those skills for a long time! They were probably
aware of Mesopotamia's use of agriculture, but it wasn't needed for Egypt to survive, so they didn't practice agriculture until populations
grew large enough to begin tilling the ground. Even then, hunting remained as both a sport (for the wealthy) & a means to suppliment the diet (for
those who weren't rich enough to call it a "sport"). However, the Egyptians still paid close attention to the passing of months (lunar cycles) as
well as the stars; One of the prime ways they tracked the coming of the growing seasons was as much based upon the annual innudation of the Nile as
much as the lunar cycle.
As I've already pointed out, Horus' father Osiris was the god of agriculture (as well as being the "king of the dead"). But the link between Horus
& the sun was only for certain specific
aspects of the sun...Not the sun itself.
Originally posted by undo
However, in more than one instance, Horus is depicted as Re with the Red disk on his head, surmounted by a uraeus.
You mention this as if it were an isolated instance in Egyptian religion...It's not.
There are many myth cycles where different gods merged their forms (& aspects) into an amalgamated-type of entity. It was a common theme in Egyptian
religious cycles because
all deities were really nothing more than more minor aspects (ie: the decendants) of the first Egyptian god, Atum (the
culmination of creation). Since they believed that all of the other gods originated from Atum, then all gods were merely minor manifestations of Atum.
It was this common origin that allowed the gods to merge with each other...A common one was Horus & Ra (sometimes the sun was called "the Eye of
Horus"). Horus was also called Harakhte (Horus of the Horizon), which was also linked with the Sphinx at Giza, because it looks always at the eastern
horizon & sitting in a position to "guard" the Pyramids.
In short, it was very common for Egyptians to link pretty much any combination of gods together to explain ther view of cosmology & natural
phenomenon. And it should also be noted that, when gods merged, Egyptian artwork would usually depict one of the gods wearing the
crown of the
other, graphically depicting the merging of divine aspects.
[edit on 10-7-2007 by MidnightDStroyer]
I realize this was your post and why you posted it became apparent after a bit. 
