Legends Library

Egyptian Legends

Horus: The Falcon God of Ancient Egypt

Horus, the falcon-headed son of Isis and Osiris, avenged his father, fought his uncle Set for the throne of Egypt, and became the divine protector of every pharaoh.

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Soaring over the Nile valley, the falcon was the highest-flying creature the ancient Egyptians knew. It was natural that one of their greatest gods should take its form. Horus (Egyptian Ḥr, probably pronounced something like Heru, “the distant one” or “the one above”) was the falcon god of the sky, whose right eye was the sun and whose left eye was the moon. He was the son of Isis and Osiris, the avenger of his murdered father, the rival of his uncle Set, and — above all — the god of kingship. Every living pharaoh was “the Horus,” the god on earth.

Horus is one of the oldest and most important gods of Egypt, worshipped for more than three thousand years, from before the unification of the country around 3100 BCE until the end of the Roman period. His emblem, the Eye of Horus, is one of the most recognized symbols of the ancient world.

Many Horuses

Egyptian religion did not have a single, fixed version of any god, and Horus is especially complex. Several distinct forms of Horus existed, which over time merged and overlapped:

  • Horus the Elder (Heru-wer, Greek Haroeris), an ancient sky god, sometimes considered a brother of Osiris and Set rather than a son of Osiris.
  • Horus son of Isis (Heru-sa-Aset, Greek Harsiese), the avenger of his father Osiris.
  • Horus the Child (Heru-pa-khered, Greek Harpocrates), the infant Horus, shown as a naked child with a finger to his mouth and a sidelock of youth. The Greeks misread the gesture as a sign of silence and made Harpocrates a god of secrets.
  • Horus of the Horizon (Heru-akhety, Greek Harmachis), a form of the sun god at dawn, identified with the Great Sphinx of Giza.
  • Ra-Horakhty, “Ra who is Horus of the Two Horizons,” a fusion of Horus with the sun god Ra, shown as a falcon-headed man with the sun disk on his head.
  • Horus of Behdet (Heru-Behdety), the winged sun disk, protector of temple doorways.

These forms were worshipped in different places and times, and the Egyptians saw no contradiction in their coexistence.

The Falcon of the Sky

In his earliest form, Horus was a sky god imagined as a vast falcon whose wings spread across the heavens. His two eyes were the sun and the moon. The speckled feathers of the falcon’s breast were the stars. The markings beneath the peregrine falcon’s eye — a dark streak like a teardrop — became the model for the stylized Eye of Horus.

Horus’s cult centres included Nekhen (Hierakonpolis, “city of the falcon”) in Upper Egypt, one of the earliest royal centres, and later Edfu, whose great Ptolemaic temple of Horus is one of the best preserved in Egypt.

The Son of Isis and Osiris

In the great myth of the Osiris cycle, Horus is the son of Osiris, king of Egypt, and his sister-wife Isis. Osiris was murdered by his jealous brother Set, who seized the throne. Isis searched the land for her husband’s body, found it, and — with the help of her magic — revived Osiris long enough to conceive a child (see Isis and Osiris).

Isis gave birth to Horus in secret, in the papyrus marshes of Khemmis in the Nile Delta, where she hid him from Set. The infant Horus faced many dangers: scorpion stings, snake bites, and fevers. In one famous story, Horus was stung by a scorpion, and Isis’s cries of grief stopped the boat of the sun in the sky until Thoth came down and healed the child with a spell. Images of the infant Horus standing on crocodiles and holding snakes and scorpions — the so-called cippi of Horus — were used as healing charms. Water poured over them was drunk to cure bites and stings.

The image of Isis nursing the infant Horus on her lap was among the most popular in Egyptian religion, and it may have influenced early Christian images of the Virgin and Child.

The Contest with Set

When Horus grew up, he challenged Set for the throne of his father. The struggle between the two gods lasted eighty years and involved a series of trials, battles, tricks, and humiliations, judged by the tribunal of the gods. In one episode, Set tore out Horus’s eye, which was later restored — the origin of the Eye of Horus. Horus, for his part, castrated or wounded Set. In the end, Horus was declared the rightful king of Egypt. The whole story is told in The Contendings of Horus and Set.

The Eye of Horus

The Eye of Horus (wedjat or udjat, “the sound one” or “the whole one”) represents the eye that Set damaged and Thoth or Hathor healed. It became the most powerful symbol of protection, healing, and wholeness in Egyptian religion, worn as an amulet by the living and placed with the dead. Its story, meaning, and use are explored in The Eye of Horus: Symbol of Protection and Healing.

Horus and the Pharaoh

The central role of Horus was political. From the very beginning of Egyptian history, the king was identified with Horus. The first element of the pharaoh’s formal titulary was his Horus name, written inside a serekh — a rectangle representing the façade of the royal palace — with a falcon perched on top. The earliest known kings of Egypt, such as Narmer, are known by their Horus names.

The ideology was simple and powerful. The dead king became Osiris, ruler of the underworld; the living king was Horus, his son and heir, ruling the land of the living. Every coronation re-enacted Horus’s victory over Set and his succession to his father. The pharaoh was the god’s earthly form, maintaining ma’at — cosmic order, truth, and justice — against the forces of chaos.

A famous statue of the pharaoh Khafre (c. 2550 BCE), builder of the second pyramid at Giza, shows the king seated on his throne with a falcon perched behind his head, its wings wrapped protectively around him.

The Four Sons of Horus

Horus had four sons, who guarded the internal organs of the dead during mummification. Their heads were carved on the lids of the canopic jars that held the organs:

  • Imsety, with a human head, guarded the liver.
  • Hapy, with a baboon head, guarded the lungs.
  • Duamutef, with a jackal head, guarded the stomach.
  • Qebehsenuef, with a falcon head, guarded the intestines.

Horus and Hathor

The goddess Hathor, whose name means “House of Horus,” was sometimes considered his mother, sometimes his wife. Every year, in the festival of the Beautiful Reunion, the statue of Hathor was carried in procession from her temple at Dendera to the temple of Horus at Edfu, where the two gods celebrated a sacred marriage. See Hathor: Goddess of Love, Music, and Joy.

The Temple of Edfu

The temple of Horus at Edfu, built between 237 and 57 BCE under the Ptolemies, is one of the most complete temples surviving from the ancient world. Its walls are inscribed with the Myth of Horus at Edfu, a version of the conflict with Set in which Horus, in the form of the winged sun disk, pursues Set and his followers — who take the form of crocodiles and hippopotamuses — and defeats them. The story was performed annually as a sacred drama in the temple’s festival, with a hippopotamus-shaped cake cut up and eaten to symbolize Set’s destruction.

Horus in Later Times

Horus remained one of the most popular gods in Egypt through the Greek and Roman periods. The Greeks identified him with Apollo, and the Greek name for Edfu was Apollonopolis Magna. The cult of Isis and her son Harpocrates spread throughout the Roman Empire.

Today the falcon-headed Horus is one of the most recognizable images of ancient Egypt, and the Eye of Horus is worn as jewellery, tattooed, and printed on everything from book covers to logos.

Last reviewed: September 2026.