Horakhty (Re-Horakhty)

Definition

Horakhty — Egyptian Ḥr-ꜣḫty, "Horus of the Two Horizons" — is the form of the falcon-god Horus as the Sun at the horizon, and especially as the rising Sun of the east at dawn. The horizon (Egyptian akhet) is the band of light where the Sun comes up and goes down. Fused with the great sun-god Ra, he becomes Re-Horakhty, the falcon-headed Sun shown crowned with the solar disk. He is the horizon-Sun deity — distinct from Khepri, the dawn scarab-form, from the Aten sun-disk, and from the planet Horus of the night sky.

In Tradition

Egyptologists treat Horakhty as a solar form of Horus tied specifically to the horizon and to sunrise, who was drawn into the sun-cult of Heliopolis and fused there with Ra as Re-Horakhty. The compound name keeps both ideas: Horus the falcon, and the akhet — the horizon-region of light from which the Sun emerges each morning and into which it sets each evening.

In Practice

Horakhty is one of several names Egyptians used for the Sun at different stages of its daily journey, and his stage is the horizon: the threshold of rising and setting rather than the noon-high disk. In the Pyramid Texts the dead king is reborn in the eastern sky as Horakhty, taking on the Sun's own daily renewal at dawn. The Coffin Texts name Harakhty as the first of the "three bas of the easterners" — the eastern souls of the morning sky — and have him purified in the Field of Reeds, the afterlife marsh, which ties him to the start of the day. In Greco-Roman temple ceilings the falcon-headed Re-Horakhty appears among the solar and stellar gods, sometimes even shown travelling the night Duat. For an Egyptian-tradition reading, Horakhty is the Sun caught at the horizon-moment — the rising point, what later astrology would think of as the eastern edge of the sky.

Historical Origin

Horakhty is attested from the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts (Dynasties 5-6, c. 2400-2300 BCE), where the king is reborn in the eastern sky as Horakhty, and in the Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts (Spell 159) as the chief of the eastern bas. The fused Re-Horakhty form continues through the New Kingdom into the Graeco-Roman temple zodiacs such as Dendara. He is treated in Wilkinson, *The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt* (2003); Priskin, *The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Moon* (2019); and Belmonte & Lull, *In Search of Cosmic Order* (2009-2010).

Further Reading

• Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
• Gyula Priskin, The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Moon
• Juan Antonio Belmonte & José Lull, In Search of Cosmic Order: Selected Essays on Egyptian Archaeoastronomy