50 Fun Facts About Horus

Egyptologists think the falcon shown as Horus was most likely a lanner or which other species?

A peregrine: either falcon suits a sky god whose name is thought to mean 'the distant one' or 'the one who is above'.

Besides being husband and wife, how were Horus's parents Isis and Osiris related?

Brother and sister: both were children of the sky goddess Nut, and Plutarch wrote that the pair fell in love before they were born, inside their mother's womb.

Set, the uncle who fought Horus for Egypt's throne, was the god of what?

Deserts and storms: Egyptians gave Set the barren Red Land beyond the Nile's fields, yet he was also shown at the prow of the sun god's boat, spearing the serpent Apep.

In the Papyrus of Hunefer, Horus leads the dead scribe to Osiris after his heart is weighed against what?

A feather: it stood for Maat, the goddess of truth, and a heart that outweighed it was thrown to Ammit, the 'Devourer', ending its owner's hope of an afterlife.

What was the ancient Egyptian word for the Eye of Horus symbol?

Wedjat means the 'whole' or 'sound' eye; because the eye was restored after Set's attack, its image became one of Egypt's most popular protective amulets.

Which Greek god did the ancient Greeks identify with Horus?

Apollo: the Greeks even renamed Edfu, the home of Horus's great temple, Apollonopolis, meaning 'city of Apollo'.

Which famous artefact was found at Nekhen, the early cult centre of Horus?

The Narmer Palette: carved about 3100 BC, it shows the king raising his mace over a kneeling enemy while the Horus falcon above holds a second captive for him.

Which funerary writings of about 2400 to 2300 BC describe the pharaoh as Horus in life and Osiris in death?

The Pyramid Texts: carved inside royal tombs at Saqqara, they made each reign a relay, with the dead king joining Osiris while his successor took over as the new Horus.

Where did the pregnant Isis flee to hide from Set before giving birth to Horus?

The Nile Delta marshlands: Isis hid in a thicket at a spot the Greeks called Khemmis, because Set saw her unborn child as a threat to his hold on the throne.

In one tale, which part of Horus's dismembered father was never recovered because a fish had eaten it?

His penis: Plutarch says this is why Egyptians avoided eating certain Nile fish, and that Isis shaped a replacement; Egyptian accounts have the organ found intact.

In their long struggle Horus lost an eye, but what did his rival Set lose?

A testicle: Egyptian texts have Horus tear away Set's testicles, a wound read as the loss of his virility and strength, and in some versions both gods are later healed.

In The Contendings of Horus and Seth, which food does Isis secretly taint with her son's seed to trick Set?

Lettuce: Set's gardener told Isis it was the only vegetable he ate there, and when the gods later called the seed to testify it answered from inside Set, sinking his claim.

What did Horus bring to his race of stone boats against Set?

A wooden boat coated in plaster: it passed for stone and floated while Set's real stone boat sank, yet the win settled nothing and the eighty-year court case dragged on.

Which occultist claimed that a new age he called the 'Aeon of Horus' began in 1904?

Aleister Crowley: on honeymoon in Cairo that year he wrote down The Book of the Law, which he said a supernatural voice had dictated to him over three days.

In the Memphite Theology, which god, Set's own father, first splits Egypt between Set and Horus and then gives Horus it all?

Geb: the text says it 'seemed wrong' to him that Horus's share should only equal Set's, so he handed Horus the whole inheritance as the son of his firstborn son.

Which Dublin-held 20th Dynasty manuscript preserves The Contendings of Horus and Seth?

Chester Beatty Papyrus I is named for Alfred Chester Beatty, an American mining millionaire who moved to Dublin with his manuscripts in 1950 and left the collection to the Irish nation.

Which god is most often credited with restoring the Eye of Horus that Set destroyed?

Thoth: in Egyptian myth he seeks out the injured eye and heals it, and one medical text invokes him as 'Thoth, the physician of the Eye of Horus'.

In one tale, Hathor finds Horus blinded in the desert and heals his eyes with the milk of which animal?

A gazelle: Set had torn out both eyes and buried them on a mountainside, and once the milk had healed them Hathor went to tell the sun god that Horus could see again.

Egyptians saw the wounding and healing of the Eye of Horus played out in the sky by which heavenly body?

The moon: Egyptians spoke of 'filling' the injured eye, the same picture as a thin crescent filling out, night by night, into a full disc.

Egyptologists long believed hieroglyphs for pieces of the Eye of Horus stood for what in Egyptian mathematics?

Fractions: the pupil was read as 1/4 and the eyebrow as 1/8 of a grain measure, but a 2002 study challenged the theory, finding that the oldest signs look least like parts of an eye.

The stylized eye that stands for the Eye of Horus could also stand for the fierce 'Eye' of which other god?

Ra: his Eye was pictured as a goddess, and in one myth she comes close to wiping out humankind until he tricks her into drinking beer dyed red like blood.

Where did Egyptian sailors often paint the Eye of Horus?

On the bows of their boats: the eye was meant to guard the vessel and let it see its way, and the eyes still painted on Mediterranean boats may descend from the custom.

What was the Greek name for Horus the Child, Heru-pa-khered?

Harpocrates: Greeks and Romans misread his finger-to-mouth pose, an Egyptian sign of childhood, as a call for hush and made him their god of silence and secrets.

At Edfu, a granite falcon of Horus shelters a small figure thought to be which child at Cleopatra's court?

Caesarion: the falcon is thought to shelter her son by Julius Caesar, who shared her throne as a small child and was put to death at 17 once Octavian took Egypt.

Which god shares the unusual double temple at Kom Ombo with Horus the Elder?

Sobek: he has the southern half and Horus the Elder the northern, so everything from the entrances to the sanctuaries is built twice, side by side.

Which famous monument did New Kingdom Egyptians worship as Har-em-akhet, 'Horus in the Horizon'?

The Great Sphinx of Giza: it was already about a thousand years old, and Thutmose IV set a stele between its paws telling how the god offered him the throne for clearing its sand.

Which emblem of Horus was carved above the gateways of temples all over Egypt?

A winged sun disc: it stood for Horus of Behdet, the form in which the god was shown hovering over the king as his protector.

The Temple of Horus at Edfu, one of Egypt's best preserved, was built by which dynasty between 237 and 57 BC?

The Ptolemies: Cleopatra's dynasty built it, and it survives almost whole because sand buried it nearly to its column tops until Auguste Mariette began digging it out in 1860.

Carvings show Horus and Set knotting two plants together to unite Egypt: the southern lily and which northern plant?

Papyrus: it stood for Lower Egypt, and the knot, called sema-tawy or 'uniting the Two Lands', shows the two great rivals pulling together for once.

Each year a statue of Hathor sailed up the Nile to visit Horus at Edfu, setting out from which temple?

Dendera: the statue's voyage ended in the fourteen-day Festival of the Beautiful Reunion, which many Egyptologists read as a ritual marriage of the two gods.

At Edfu's annual Festival of Victory, the king played Horus and harpooned which animal, standing in for Set?

A hippopotamus: Set takes that shape in the myth, though most years a priest probably played the king and a model stood in for the animal.

The Horus name, the oldest royal crest, was written inside a rectangular palace-facade frame called what?

A serekh: older than the oval cartouche, it normally has a Horus falcon perched on top, but King Peribsen swapped it for the animal of Set and his successor Khasekhemwy used both.

One of a pharaoh's five royal names showed the Horus falcon perched on the hieroglyph for which metal?

Gold: known as the Golden Horus name, it was one of the titles a new king took at his coronation, and the choice worked as a mission statement for the reign.

Which science-fiction film features 'Horus guards', soldiers of a false god who wear morphing falcon helmets?

Stargate: the 1994 film imagines that an alien took on the role of Egypt's sun god, so his soldiers wear the heads of Horus and the jackal god Anubis.

The four sons of Horus were linked with what funerary objects?

The canopic jars: each son guarded one organ taken out by the embalmers, but the heart stayed in the body, since Egyptians held it to be the seat of the soul.

Which of the four sons of Horus was portrayed with a baboon's head?

Hapy: the animal heads were a late fashion, standard only from the 13th century BC; before that all four sons were usually shown with human heads.

Which organ did Qebehsenuef, one of the four sons of Horus, most commonly protect?

The intestines: that is the usual pairing found in burials, but no Egyptian text lays the scheme down, and some tombs shuffle the sons and their organs.

The name of the goddess Hathor is usually translated as what?

House of Horus: the 'house' may be the sky the god flies through, or the womb he was born from, since some myths make Hathor his mother.

A statue of falcon-headed Ra-Horakhty fills a niche above the entrance of which temple of Ramesses II?

Abu Simbel: twice a year the rising sun shines down the whole length of the temple into its innermost shrine, where Ra-Horakhty, 'Horus of the Two Horizons', sits carved beside Ramesses himself.

In one myth, Horus beheads his mother Isis, and her head is replaced with that of which animal?

A cow: the story explains the cow-horn headdress Isis so often wears; in Plutarch's milder telling Horus only tears off her crown and she is handed a cow-headed helmet.

Plutarch wrote that Isis bore Horus the Child at about which point in the year?

The winter solstice: Plutarch calls the child premature and imperfect, born amid the first flowers and shoots, which is why Egyptians offered him the first sprouting lentils.

Which actor played Horus in the 2016 fantasy film Gods of Egypt?

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau: he led a mostly white cast as Egypt's gods, and the backlash was strong enough that the studio and the director apologised before the film opened.

In Rick Riordan's Egyptian trilogy, which teenage character hosts the spirit of Horus after it is released in the British Museum?

Carter Kane: his sister Sadie becomes host to Isis at the same time, after their father's attempt to summon Osiris sets five gods loose at once.

Which Marvel series cast Declan Hannigan as the human avatar of Horus in 2022?

Moon Knight: its Egyptian gods act through human avatars, and the god Khonshu summons them all to a council to accuse the villain, who talks his way out.

In the second Night at the Museum film, the pharaoh Kahmunrah summons an army of Horus warriors inside which museum complex?

The Smithsonian: the falcon-headed soldiers march out of a gate to the underworld, only to be frightened back in by the giant statue of Abraham Lincoln come to life.

Horus the Child is often shown seated on a lotus, a flower that Egyptians linked with which daily event?

Sunrise: the lotus closes at night and opens again in the morning, so a child sitting on its petals was a picture of the sun being born each day.

Horus was sometimes given a falcon's head on which animal's body?

Lion: at the frontier fortress of Tjaru one form of the god, Horus of Mesen, was worshipped as a lion outright, a guardian watching over Egypt's border.

Her-iunmutef, 'Horus, Pillar of His Mother', was depicted as a priest wearing what over his torso?

A leopard skin: it was the robe of the sem priest who performed a dead king's funeral rites, and this form of Horus was the divine model for that dutiful son.

Healing stelae called cippi show Horus the Child gripping snakes and scorpions while standing on which animals?

Crocodiles: water was poured over the spells carved around him and then drunk as a cure, borrowing the power of a child who could master every dangerous creature.

In one legend Cupid gave which flower to the Greek form of Horus the Child, god of secrets, as a bribe?

A rose: the gift bought silence about Venus's love affairs, and roses carved on dining-room ceilings are said to have reminded guests that talk there stayed 'sub rosa'.