*Includes pictures
*Includes ancient accounts
*Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading
Africa may have given rise to the first human beings, and Egypt probably gave rise to the first great civilizations, which continue to fascinate modern societies across the globe nearly 5,000 years later. From the Library and Lighthouse of Alexandria to the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Ancient Egyptians produced several wonders of the world, revolutionized architecture and construction, created some of the world's first systems of mathematics and medicine, and established language and art that spread across the known world. With world-famous leaders like King Tut and Cleopatra, it's no wonder that today's world has so many Egyptologists.
To the ancient Egyptians, as was the case with any society made up of inquiring humans, the world was a confusing and often terrifying place of destruction, death and unexplained phenomena. In order to make sense of such an existence, they resorted to teleological stories. Giving a phenomenon a story made it less horrifying, and it also helped them make sense of the world around them. Unsurprisingly, then, the ancient Egyptian gods permeated every aspect of existence.
There are few characters in Egyptian myth whose image and name are more widely known than Horus. His name most probably means "the Distant One;" as the celestial falcon, his wings were believed to span the length of the distant sky and his eyes were the sun and the moon. This name betrays the connection Horus shared with Re, the "all powerful" sun god, and also hints at his earlier incarnation as one of the earliest celestial gods in Egyptian religious belief.
One of the earliest images from ancient Egypt is that of a falcon residing in the famous "sun-Barque" of Re, which the ancient Egyptians believed traversed the sky during the day and crossed the dangerous land of the dead during the night. Horus' place in the sun-barque probably represents Horus as a 'star or planet crossing the Winding Waterway of the sky," since the ancient Egyptians were famous for their complex astronomical system that incorporated many mythical elements, but his position there is much more than being just another of the sun-god's divine entourage. Horus' mythological lineage places him as the direct descendant of the Ennead, the nine gods and goddesses who were formed from the earlier abstract concepts in the primordial waters of "Nun". Thi