Set, Seth

Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.

From Fire from Strange Altars by J. N. Fradenburgh, 1891.

Set was also a sun-god, who had temples and was worshiped in early times. He was the god of the baneful influences of the sun, and was reverenced out of fear more than from any other motive. He was hated, persecuted, and at last so detested that his very name was, wherever possible, erased from the monuments. He was the espiecial god who received the homage of foreign peoples. One of the Shepherd Kings accorded to him exclusive worship. He was the local god of Ombos, and is called the god of the Negroes.

In remote antiquity Set seems to have been honored equally with Horos, the sun god, and, like the latter, stands on the bark of the sun and wards off the serpent of darkness. But he lost his position in the affections of the people, and became the fierce god of fire, war, and death. He was the cause of all evil—earthquakes, lightnings, tempests, pestilences, and, finally, moral evil of every kind.

The animals sacred to him were most unclean—the swine, the hippopotamus, the crocodile, and "the monster with stiff ears, peculiar snout, and tail erect, which is the hieroglyph of this god." He fought against Horos, and against Osiris, but was humiliated and conquered by these bright and beneficent powers.

Nephthis was the wife of Set, and greatly resembled her sister Isis in character. She also was called the mother goddess and the mistress of heaven. She bewailed the murdered Osiris, and is the guardian of the pious dead. She becomes by Osiris the mother of Anubis, whom Isis adopts and brings up, while, on the other hand, Isis is sometimes designated as the wife of Set.

Fradenburgh, J. N. Fire from Strange Altars. Cranston & Stowe, 1891.

J. N. Fradenburgh

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