A short one off comic starring everyone’s favorite agent of chaos. I may have been inspired slightly by recent drama (I have it on good authority that Set enjoys a good drama)
“How did you say the slash mark with your mouth like that”- A/pep probably.
You see this fella? This beautiful Sutekh? My Lord Set? My great devoted One?
I can’t stop kissing his head. Help.
Made by the wonderful @twofacingshrines
I know Set has positive and negative aspects, but I am still trying to wrap my head around it. Is he like Yin and Yang? Bad with some good, good with some bad. Or is he like a storm? Nourishing but potentially destructive?
AnonymousSeth’s a lot of things. He’s a wild storm that can blow back invaders or can cause destruction for inhabitants who wrong him.
He’s a great lover but he’s also an avenger. (many wives / smites a/phofis and attacks enemies of egypt)It’s more like…accepting a complex figure. I don’t think he’s evil. Obviously. I know from academics and historical primary sources that in the old ages – before middle kingdom, new kingdom and especially the graeco-egyptian era, he was highly benevolent.
He protected Egypt against invaders coming from the sea, had healing qualities, ect.
Many other egyptologists here and there agree- he’s not as evil as he’s painted out to be.
“…there is no real Devil in Egyptian theology. Set, the murdere of Osiris, was only evil in specific contexts. He represented the barren desert and the storm, forces of disorder, but he could sometimes be personable and agreeable, holding the ladder for the dead king to mount to heaven and helping Re repel the threatening Serpent. ”
Red Land Black LandSo I guess for your answer, he’s not just evil and good. He’s a complex character, but then again these gods are anthromorpic – meaning they are like humans in some ways. This case being his complex personality.
But what I can tell you is this, despite killing Osiris, in most myths before greek intervention or periods where he fell out of favor (with invaders associating theirselves with Set, pissing the native egyptians off) he was beloved. He protects Ma’at, rides with Re as he is the only one strong enough to smite a/phofis daily.
We have art of men who desired to be close to him, he was their patron and they felt honored to be named after him. (Stele of Aapathey)
Kings honored him (early ones and then the seti family). He was – and still is a friend to the dead.
I know this is probably not the answer you wanted, but it’s not black and white. It’s a little more complicated than that. The way I see it is that, for example, the killing of Osiris was both bad and good – it was murder, but Osiris was known to torture Seth and struggled to deal with Re’s power in the form of the crown. When he’s killed, it’s mentioned he’s purified. (BOTD texts)
Seth, in some cases with Thoth, is mentioned weeping for Osiris. Also, as some scholars note (I believe I posted something with this, you might have to dig through my archive) that seth started the cycle for kings. Life, death, succession, repeat.
A distinctive characteristic of Seth in addition to his strength and sexual appetite is his loud voice, which contrasts sharply with the Egyptian ideal of the person who is at once soft-spoken and laconic, exhibiting self-control and forethought. It is significant therefore that it is specifically Seth’s voice—perhaps a metaphor for thunder—that subdues the sea (spell no. 23 in Borghouts). The power of Seth’s voice is appropriated by the magician in a “conjuration against scorpions” (no. 120 in Borghouts) which states “The voice of the conjurer is loud while calling for the poison,” i.e., calling for the poison to exit the patient’s body, “like the voice of Seth while wrestling with the poison,” which, since the word for ‘poison’ and for ‘semen’ is the same in Egyptian, may be a reference to the Conflict myth, in which Seth is tricked into ingesting the semen of Horus. Another association of Seth’s which may relate to storms is iron, which was for the Egyptians paradigmatically meteoritic in origin. Hence in PT utterance 21, the iron of which the instrument used in the Opening of the Mouth ritual is said to be “the iron which issued from Seth,” and millennia later Plutarch reports the Egyptian tradition that the lodestone (magnetic oxide of iron) is “the bone of Horus” and iron is “the bone of Typhon,” i.e. Seth, in the Hellenistic syncretism (On Isis and Osiris 62, 376b).
