Eye of Horus
The Eye of Horus, wedjat eye or udjat eye is a concept and symbol in ancient Egyptian religion that represents well-being, healing, and protection. It derives from the mythical conflict between the god Horus with his rival Set, in which Set tore out or destroyed one or both of Horus's eyes and the eye was subsequently healed or returned to Horus with the assistance of another deity, such as Thoth. Horus subsequently offered the eye to his deceased father Osiris, and its revitalizing power sustained Osiris in the afterlife. The Eye of Horus was thus equated with funerary offerings, as well as with all the offerings given to deities in temple ritual. It could also represent other concepts, such as the moon, whose waxing and waning was likened to the injury and restoration of the eye. The multiple meanings of the Eye of Horus sometimes overlapped with the meanings of the Eye of Ra, which was a distinct but related concept in Egyptian mythology.
The Eye of Horus symbol, a stylized eye with distinctive markings, was believed to have protective magical power and appeared frequently in ancient Egyptian art. It was one of the most common motifs for amulets, remaining in use from the Old Kingdom to the Roman period. Pairs of Horus eyes were painted on coffins during the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom. Other contexts where the symbol appeared include on carved stone stelae and on the bows of boats. To some extent the symbol was adopted by the people of regions neighboring Egypt, such as Syria, Canaan, and especially Nubia.
The eye symbol was also rendered as a hieroglyph. Egyptologists have long believed that hieroglyphs representing pieces of the symbol stand for fractions in ancient Egyptian mathematics, although this hypothesis has been challenged.
Origins
The ancient Egyptian god Horus was a sky deity, and many Egyptian texts say that Horus's right eye was the sun and his left eye the moon. The solar eye and lunar eye were sometimes equated with the red and white crown of Egypt, respectively. Some texts treat the Eye of Horus seemingly interchangeably with the Eye of Ra, which in other contexts is an extension of the power of the sun god Ra and is often personified as a goddess. The Egyptologist Richard H. Wilkinson believes the two eyes of Horus gradually became distinguished as the lunar Eye of Horus and the solar Eye of Ra. Other Egyptologists, however, argue that no text clearly equates the eyes of Horus with the sun and moon until the New Kingdom ; Rolf Krauss argues that the Eye of Horus originally represented Venus as the morning star and evening star and only later became equated with the moon.Katja Goebs argues that the myths surrounding the Eye of Horus and the Eye of Ra are based around the same mytheme, or core element of a myth, and that "rather than postulating a single, original myth of one cosmic body, which was then merged with others, it might be more fruitful to think in terms of a myth based on the structural relationship of an Object that is missing, or located far from its owner". In the myths surrounding the Eye of Ra, the goddess flees Ra and is brought back by another deity. In the case of the Eye of Horus, the eye is usually missing because of Horus's conflict with his arch-rival, the god Set, in their struggle for the kingship of Egypt after the death of Horus's father Osiris.
Mythology
The Pyramid Texts, which date to the late Old Kingdom, are one of the earliest sources for Egyptian myth. They prominently feature the conflict between Horus and Set, and the Eye of Horus is mentioned in about a quarter of the utterances that make up the Pyramid Texts. In these texts, Set is said to have stolen the Eye of Horus, and sometimes to have trampled and eaten it. Horus nevertheless takes back the eye, usually by force. The texts often mention the theft of Horus's eye along with the loss of Set's testicles, an injury that is also healed. The conflict over the eye is mentioned and elaborated in many texts from later times. In most of these texts, the eye is restored by another deity, most commonly Thoth, who was said to have made peace between Horus and Set. In some versions, Thoth is said to have reassembled the eye after Set tore it to pieces. In the Book of the Dead from the New Kingdom, Set is said to have taken the form of a black boar when striking Horus's eye. In "The Contendings of Horus and Set", a text from the late New Kingdom that relates the conflict as a short narrative, Set tears out both of Horus's eyes and buries them, and the next morning they grow into lotuses. Here it is the goddess Hathor who restores Horus's eyes, by anointing them with the milk of a gazelle. In Papyrus Jumilhac, a mythological text from early in the Ptolemaic Period, Horus's mother Isis waters the buried pair of eyes, causing them to grow into the first grape vines.The restoration of the eye was often referred to as "filling" the eye. Hathor filled Horus's eye sockets with the gazelle's milk, while texts from temples of the Greco-Roman era said that Thoth, together with a group of fourteen other deities, filled the eye with specific plants and minerals. The process of filling the Eye of Horus was likened to the waxing of the moon, and the fifteen deities in the Greco-Roman texts represented the fifteen days from the new moon to the full moon.
The Egyptologist Herman te Velde suggests that the Eye of Horus is linked with another episode in the conflict between the two gods, in which Set subjects Horus to a sexual assault and, in retaliation, Isis and Horus cause Set to ingest Horus's semen. This episode is narrated most clearly in "The Contendings of Horus and Set", in which Horus's semen appears on Set's forehead as a golden disk, which Thoth places on his own head. Other references in Egyptian texts imply that in some versions of the myth it was Thoth himself who came forth from Set's head after Set was impregnated by Horus's semen, and a passage in the Pyramid Texts says the Eye of Horus came from Set's forehead. Te Velde argues that the disk that emerges from Set's head is the Eye of Horus. If so, the episodes of mutilation and sexual abuse would form a single story, in which Set assaults Horus and loses semen to him, Horus retaliates and impregnates Set, and Set comes into possession of Horus's eye when it appears on Set's head. Because Thoth is a moon deity in addition to his other functions, it would make sense, according to te Velde, for Thoth to emerge in the form of the eye and step in to make peace between the feuding deities.
Beginning in the New Kingdom, the Eye of Horus was known as the wḏꜣt, meaning the "whole", "completed", or "uninjured" eye. It is unclear whether the term wḏꜣt refers to the eye that was destroyed and restored, or to the one that Set left unharmed.
Upon becoming king after Set's defeat, Horus gives offerings to his deceased father, thus reviving and sustaining him in the afterlife. This act was the mythic prototype for the offerings to the dead that were a major part of ancient Egyptian funerary customs. It also influenced the conception of offering rites that were performed on behalf of deities in temples. Among the offerings Horus gives is his own eye, which Osiris consumes. The eye, as part of Osiris's son, is ultimately derived from Osiris himself. Therefore, the eye in this context represents the Egyptian conception of offerings. The gods were responsible for the existence of all the goods that they were offered, so offerings were part of the gods' own substance. In receiving offerings, deities were replenished by their own life force, as Osiris was when he consumed the Eye of Horus. In the Egyptian worldview, life was a force that originated with the gods and circulated through the world, so that by returning this force to the gods, offering rites maintained the flow of life. The offering of the eye to Osiris is another instance of the mytheme in which a deity in need receives an eye and is restored to well-being. The eye's restorative power meant the Egyptians considered it a symbol of protection against evil, in addition to its other meanings.
In ritual
Offerings and festivals
In the Osiris myth, the offering of the Eye of Horus to Osiris was the prototype of all funerary offerings, and indeed of all offering rites, as the human giving an offering to a deity was likened to Horus and the deity receiving it was likened to Osiris. Moreover, the Egyptian word for "eye", jrt, resembled jrj, the word for "act", and through wordplay the Eye of Horus could thus be equated with any ritual act. For these reasons, the Eye of Horus symbolized all the sustenance given to the gods in the temple cult. The versions of the myth in which flowers or grapevines grow from the buried eyes reinforce the eye's relationship with ritual offerings, as the perfumes, food, and drink that were derived from these plants were commonly used in offering rites. The eye was often equated with maat, the Egyptian concept of cosmic order, which was dependent on the continuation of the temple cult and could likewise be equated with offerings of any kind.The Egyptians observed several festivals in the course of each month that were based on the phases of the moon, such as the Blacked-out Moon Festival, the Monthly Festival, and the Half-Month Festival. During these festivals, living people gave offerings to the deceased. The festivals were frequently mentioned in funerary texts. Beginning in the time of the Coffin Texts from the Middle Kingdom, funerary texts parallel the progression of these festivals, and hence the waxing of the moon, with the healing of the Eye of Horus.