Isis: oh no! I can't find my husband phallus in his remains! How will I ever conceive a heir, a hero from my beloved? Who could commit such monstrosity?!
Set, with a suspiciously phallus shaped throat:
After pondering this long and hard I've come up with three possible explanations for what happened to the old head:
Horus never gave it back. It's in a chest of drawers in his house somewhere. He remembers it every time he has to do spring cleaning.
Horus did give it back; Isis has two heads now. She's like that princess from the wizard of oz books who wears different heads every day instead of different outfits.
Horus was going to give it back, but he lost it somewhere. It's now in the place where all lost Egyptian things go (the archives of the British Museum).
sometimes horus hears ominious humming coming from deep within the storage room, but he pays no mind to it
maybe he should clean it out. one day.
was messing around on gmod earlier cause i have nothing better to do with my time
Happy women's day, gals!!!
And remember: Aphrodite, Xochiquetzal, Hathor Bastet, Coatlicue, Nyx, all of the goddesses love you! š·
-You should give him a chance, my moon.
-Why? Iād only hurt him more than I already do.
-Thatās exactly why⦠let him taste the bittersweet sting of your love.
-You say that like itās poetic, but it just feels⦠most sounds like you just want someone to share the misery, someone who gets how hollow this kind of love feels.
-At least youāre self-aware about it.
-Yeah, well⦠at least I know my flaws. Doesnāt make it any easier, though.
kiss kiss kiss (I'm improved drawing people kissing, let's f-cking gooooooo)
Inprnt | VGen Comm | more of my art
Wake up babe pesedjet posted
ra is someone who is self-aware of his handsomeness. he kind of has to be; he's not exactly omnipotent but he just knows. it fuels his vanity and definitely inflates his ego, but he's not selfish. when he was younger and the king of egypt, he certainly was reckless. being a god, especially a creator god, who was revered among humans definitely went to his head, and as a result he's had a couple flings. none of them meant anything to him, and they certainly don't nowāthose humans have long since been dead, and he's got more pressing issues to worry about.
gods don't experience attraction like humans do, especially romantic attraction. this is true for much older gods of the ennead, but the five younger siblings and their children are more in tune to more human-like feelings. for the most part, gods pair up together because they fulfil ma'at, and that in and of itself is incredibly broad. not to say that gods cannot love each other deeply and as passionately, but there is a sort've quiet understanding that this is your partner for life and they will always be by your side. no need for anything flashy.
creator gods take this one step further: they simply have no need for a partner. they have no desire to seek out their "other half" to complete themselvesāit's redunant because they already are. ma'at is fulfilled, what more does one need? again, not to say they are incapable of feeling such thingsāthere are plenty exceptions to the rule. it's just highly unlikely. think of them as asexual, basically.
what ra looks for in a relationship is an equal. certainly not a human and not any other god. finding an equal to a creator god is hard enoughāthe only equivalent to him would be another creator god. there are plenty in the pantheon, but ra isn't looking for a relationship; he just wants it to happen, to fall into his lap. eventually, he does get what he wants, but he feels conflicted about it.
his partner is understanding to a fault, ra thinks. they accept his false gifts of love and affection without a complaint; they even know there is no meaning behind those words and actions. so why doesn't he put an end to this charade and call off their relationship? in theory, it should be easy; they agreed that if it didn't work out, there would be no hard feelings. yet, ra's guts squeeze and he feels sick thinking about it. he keeps giving them useless gifts and dishonest praises in the hopes of seeing them smile.
one day, it all kind of hits himāhe's in love, actually. he isn't stupid, he's just been denying it for as long as he could. there isn't any rules about dating another creator god, and it certainly isn't against ma'at. ra doesn't have internalized homophobia either, and has never had any issues with same-sex relationships. it's just... strange, to him. he's never understood the concept of crushes or of love or of being in a relationship at all, but hathor had described it to him a long time ago when he did ask. love is as easy as breathing, she had said. it's a feeling you know deep inside of you that permeates your bones. it is the warmth of the sun against your skin, the feeling of being satisfied after a large meal. it doesn't, and it has never needed to be "romantic"āit is just something you know.
later on, he confesses the depth of his feelings. he has always felt bad for essentially leading them on even if it was consensual, but they simply smile. they're just glad that their feelings were at least reciprocatedāit's the bare minimum for this type of relationship.
The "Tale of Horus and Set" is two surviving "pages" of a Middle kingdom papyrus that was found at the site of Kahun/El Lahun with the rest of the "Kahun Papyrus"/"Kahun Papyri" collection. It's pretty small, and one page is almost completely destroyed, but what can still be read of it is a version of the Horus vs. Set lettuce myth. There is some debate about whether it is a piece of a magic spell or of a longer narrative. If was part of a spell than the story was probably not very long, but if it was a narrative text then this would be the only surviving part of a a much larger story (perhaps similar to the Contendings of Horus and Set).
This translation was done by me. I speak Middle Egyptian, although I am not an Egyptologist. As far as I'm aware there is no publicly available full English translation of this story (there was the original Latin one in 1898 and then some partial English ones you can find in various papers), so I've created this for anyone who's curious. While doing this, I tried to find as many other translations as possible to compare notes, and have left notes to explain where other translations disagree with me.
Most of the first page is so destroyed that whatās left is basically just gibberish. The gibberish looks something like this:
(1) ⦠him (2) ā¦he/his [something] (3) ā¦that, with regard to it, is made(?) (4) ā¦this [some type of person?]. I, moreover, will give (5) ā¦to you against the stomach. Look, you (6) ā¦[something] which has been repeated, without that, when I give (7) ā¦stomach. You are upon the water, givingā¦
Sadly Egyptian is a language where meaning depends heavily on context, so brief snatches of only a couple words like this could have many, many different meanings depending on what the other words around them were.
The fragment proper begins on the last line of the first page.
(8) Then the Majesty of Set said (1) to the Majesty of Horus, āHow beautiful your two buttocks are! Make wide (the space between) your two feet!ā¦ā (2) Then the Majesty of Horus said: āWait, so that I may tell this [to my mother.ā And he returned] (3) to their house. Then the Majesty of Horus said to his mother, Isis: ā[What should I do?] (4) Set [has come], so that he may ābecome acquaintedā with me.ā Then she said to him: āBe careful! Donāt approach him about that. [But], after he tells you that (5) again, you must say to him: āThat would be utterly too difficult for me, because you are too heavy. (6) My strength will not bear your strength,ā you will say to him. "Then, after he has given you strength, (7) you must shove your fingers between your buttocks. Indeed [it] will cause⦠it to him like⦠(8) ...Indeed, it will be highly sweet upon his heart⦠(9) this semen which comes forth from his phallus, without letting Ra see." (10) [Then the Majesty of Set said:] āCome, do not [be afraid] of me (11) ⦠I [will stop] that which I produce."
The papyrus becomes more damaged and disconnected as it goes on. It seems like Isis is advising Horus to "catch" Set's sperm in his hands, so it can't get inside of him, similar to what he did in The Contendings of Horus and Set, but since the end is so disconnected it's hard to tell if there are any significant differences in how that plays out here from Contendings.
The word the story uses for "strength" is pHty, a word that specifically means male sexual strength or strength with a sexual connotation. Ancient texts frequently describe Set as having a lot of pHty (he is often called aA pHty, "great of strength"). pHty sounds similar to pHwy, the word for "buttocks," so āMy strength will not bear your strengthā is wordplay, it sounds a lot like "my ass will not bear your strength." That line could also be read as "my strength will not be equal to your strength" since rmni can mean both "to support" or "to equal."
In āHomosexual Desire and Middle Kingdom Literatureā by RB Parkinson, which has a section about this story, Parkinson believes "strength" in the line "after he has given you strength," may be referring specifically to Set's semen or phallus, (so āgiving strengthā means Set penetrating Horus.)
At the very end of the fragment it seems like Set shows back up again (there's a divine name determinative there but the divine name itself is missing). What he says is very unclear, but for the sake of completeness I have tried to make an attempt at filling it in. In the original 1898 Latin translation (from "Hieratic Papyri from Kahun and Gurob"), Petrie guessed that the first thing Set says mightāve been ādonāt be afraid of me,ā which fits the context, although Iām not sure what word would be used for "afraid" there. Given that thereās a force/activity determinative visible in the second thing he says, although the rest of the word is missing, I have made an extremely tentative guess that heās promising to pull out.
The two big places where my translation deviates from other translations are right at the beginning:
After complimenting his ass, the second thing Set says to Horus appears to be wsx rdwy.ky, and what that is supposed to mean in this context is very hard to decipher. Parkinson translated it as ābroad are your thighs,ā but I don't think it makes sense to use rdwy to refer to thighs, it seems to always be used to mean feet and feet related things, not other parts of the leg. So I think it is more likely that this referring to stance, and what he's saying means something like "widen your stance" or "spread 'em."
In response to what Set has just said, Horus tells him to "sAi" (šš šæšøš»), which my dictionaries tell me means "wait." The 1898 translation has something like āAway with you!, I will tell that to my mother!ā here, which is iconic, but thatās because Petrie didnāt recognize this word and had to guess what it meant; because sAi looks like sAw (šš šæšøš) a word that means ābeware!,ā but with a š» legs determinative, he guessed it to mean "go away." (He explained his reasoning in his translation notes, it's pretty cool to read). Parkinson translates it as though the word just was sAw; he has Horus say āwatch out, I shall tell thisā, so I think he assumed the legs were a mistake. But "wait" also works in this context so I don't see any reason to assume it wasn't intended.
I was able to read this papyrus using Petrie's scans and hieroglyphic transcriptions from the plates volume of Hieratic Papyri from Kahun and Gurob, linked here. The plate for this papyrus is on page 24. (You may notice that the hieratic scans have different line numbers than the transcriptions; I've used the numbers on the scans.)
To make it easier for people to check my work if they want to, I've also made this alternatively formatted version, showing the translation line by line beside the hieroglyphs. The glyphs have been reformatted slightly to be all horizontal and left to right. I've marked the parts where my transcription differs from Petrie's in red:
Behold! Thoth!
You are welcome to ask him for knowledge on any topic, but he gets full reign to judge your taste.
Making shrinky dinks:)