Set (Seth)

set

egyptian: Stẖ

Definition

Set — also written Seth, Egyptian Setesh — is the Egyptian god of disorder, the desert, and storms, the "Red One." In the family of Heliopolis he is son of Nut and brother of Osiris and Isis. In the sky he is tied to two things astronomers cared about: Meskhetyu, the constellation we call the Big Dipper (part of Ursa Major), set in the contested northern sky; and the planet Mercury, which the Egyptians called Sebegu. (See Meskhetiu and Sebegu for those celestial bodies.)

In Tradition

Egyptologists read Set as the god who embodies the forces of disturbance and confusion in the world, attested from the very early Naqada I period (c. 4000-3500 BCE). His sky-links give the northern heavens a charged, contested character: Meskhetyu (the Big Dipper) sits among the circumpolar "imperishable stars," and the Egyptian planet-lists usually assign Mercury (Sebegu) to him — distinct from the Greek and Babylonian planet-naming systems.

In Practice

For Egyptian astral religion, Set is the deity behind two recurring features of the night sky. Meskhetyu — the Bull's Foreleg or Adze, our Big Dipper — is the most consistently depicted Egyptian constellation, anchoring the northern panel of temple and tomb astronomical ceilings, and it is linked to Set; priests sighted these northern stars in the "stretching of the cord" ceremony that fixed a temple's orientation. The five tracked planets were shown as gods sailing in barques, and Mercury, hardest of the five to follow because it never strays far from the Sun, was named Sebegu and associated with Set. There is also a brighter side: from the Middle Kingdom on, Set was the god who stood in the bow of the sun-god's barque to repel the cosmic serpent Apophis, defending the solar journey each night.

Historical Origin

Set is attested from the Naqada I period (c. 4000-3500 BCE) and across the dynastic age, including on the 2nd-Dynasty serekhs of Peribsen and Khasekhemwy. His Meskhetyu and Sebegu sky-associations appear on New Kingdom and Greco-Roman astronomical ceilings (Senenmut, Seti I, the Ramesseum), discussed in Belmonte & Lull, *In Search of Cosmic Order* (2009-2010). Standard reference: Richard H. Wilkinson, *The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt* (2003).

Further Reading

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