Horus the Red (Mars)

HOR-us the red

egyptian: Ḥr-dšr

Definition

Horus the Red is the Egyptian name for the planet Mars (Egyptian Ḥr-dšr, "Horus the red one"). It is the most transparent of all the Egyptian planet-names: it simply describes the planet's reddish colour, the same colour that later named the star Antares "the rival of Mars." In the older New Kingdom records Mars carried a different name, Ḥr-Axtj, "Horus of the horizon"; the colour-name "Horus the red" came in only later, from the Ptolemaic period on.

In Tradition

Egyptologists read Mars as one of the three "Horus-planets" — the visible planets the Egyptians named as forms of the falcon-god Horus. Scholars stress that the descriptive colour-name is a late coinage: the New Kingdom tomb-ceilings call Mars "Horus of the horizon," while "Horus the red" belongs to the Ptolemaic-Roman demotic texts and the late temple zodiacs.

In Practice

Mars's most striking Egyptian credit is astronomical, not just theological. On the ceiling of Seti I (KV 17, c. 1290 BCE) its caption reads "he travels backwards" — a plain record of retrograde motion, the apparent backward loop a planet makes against the stars. So the Egyptians were watching Mars closely enough to note one of its hardest-to-spot behaviours. In the painted sky-images Mars is shown as a falcon-headed Horus standing in a boat with a star over his head. On the much later Dendera zodiac he sits on the back of Capricorn — his "exaltation," the sign a planet was held to be strongest in, in the imported Hellenistic scheme; that zodiacal layer is a separate, Greco-Egyptian overlay and has nothing to do with the older pharaonic Horus-naming. The colour-name "Horus the red one" survives into the Greco-Egyptian astrological texts; treat the older New Kingdom "Horus of the horizon" name and the later colour-name as two stages of the same native tradition.

Historical Origin

Mars as "Horus of the horizon" (Ḥr-Axtj) with its retrograde caption is attested on the ceiling of Seti I (KV 17, c. 1290 BCE); the colour-name "Horus the red" (Ḥr-dšr) is attested only from the Ptolemaic period, as Clagett notes (Ancient Egyptian Science Vol II, after Pogo, Isis 14 [1930]). The Dendera "pA Hrw dšr" / Capricorn attestation and the Antares parallel are treated by Belmonte and Lull, Astronomy of Ancient Egypt (2018), drawing on Neugebauer & Parker, Egyptian Astronomical Texts Vol III.

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading