Set and the Gods of Chaos

Egyptian religion was not a religion of pure good against pure evil. The Egyptians believed that the world depended on the balance between order (ma’at) and chaos (isfet), and that both were necessary. This dualism was central to Egyptian theology: without the desert, there would be no riverbank; without the storm, no rain; without the dangerous god, no definition of the safe one.

The chief of the chaos gods was Set, the murderer of Osiris, the lord of foreign lands, the god of storms and the desert. Beside him stood Apophis, the chaos serpent who attacked the sun boat every night, and a handful of monstrous deities who personified the threats to the order of the world.

This page introduces the gods of chaos. For a deeper dive, see Set, the God of Storms and Disorder.

Set: The Lord of the Desert and the Storms

Set (Seth, Setesh, Sutekh) was one of the most ancient and most controversial gods of Egypt. In early dynastic times, he was a sky god, a warrior god, and the patron of Upper Egypt. He was worshipped at Naqada and Ombos, and the king of Upper Egypt was sometimes said to be a manifestation of him.

The story changed with the rise of the Osiris cult. From the Middle Kingdom onward, Set was identified as the murderer of Osiris, the brother who killed his own kin out of jealousy, and he became a god of disorder, violence, and chaos. He was said to live in the desert, in foreign lands, in storms and in the unsettled places of the world.

Yet Set was never completely demonized. The Egyptians needed him. He was the god of:

• Storms and rain, vital in a country that depended on the annual flood
• Foreign lands, the dangerous but useful peoples beyond the borders
• The desert, the wild and terrible, but also the realm of the rising sun
• The military, soldiers went into battle under his name

In the New Kingdom, Set was associated with the Hyksos, the foreign rulers who had occupied the Delta in the Second Intermediate Period. The pharaoh Seti I (“Man of Set”) took his name from the god, and several Ramesside kings were devotees of Set as a god of war.

To read the full story of Set and his contradictions, see Set, the God of Storms and Disorder.

Set’s Appearance

Set’s appearance is unlike any other major Egyptian god. He was shown as a man with the head of an unknown animal, now called the “Set animal” or “Sha animal.” It has a long, curving snout, squared-off ears, a forked tail, and a stiff, dog-like body. The Egyptians themselves called it “the beast of Set.”

Set was also shown as a donkey, a pig, an aardvark, or a crocodile, all animals considered dangerous, smelly, or both. In the Late Period, his image was often smashed by pious Egyptians who associated him with the foreign occupiers of Egypt.

Apophis: The Chaos Serpent

Apophis (Apep, Apepi) was the cosmic serpent of chaos, who lived in the depths of the Duat and attacked the solar barque of Ra every night. The Egyptians believed that the sun’s journey through the underworld was a continuous battle, and that if Apophis ever won, the sun would not rise.

Every night, Ra sailed into the underworld in the Mesektet, the night barque, accompanied by a crew of lesser gods. At the gates of each hour, Apophis tried to attack the boat, and the gods had to fend him off with magic, weapons, and the names of power. Erik Hornung has reconstructed the cosmology in detail (The Ancient Egyptian Books of the Afterlife, 1999).

The Book of Apophis contains a series of spells to be recited by the priests of Ra to weaken the serpent, and the Amduat (the book of “That Which Is in the Underworld”) includes detailed images of the sun boat and the chaos serpent. The image of Ra triumphant over Apophis became a symbol of cosmic order, and the phrase “Ra has defeated Apophis” was used to refer to any successful struggle against chaos.

Other Gods of Chaos

Alongside Set and Apophis, several other deities personified the forces of disorder:

• Ammit, the “Devourer of the Dead,” a monstrous creature with the head of a crocodile, the forequarters of a lion, and the hindquarters of a hippopotamus, who ate the hearts of those who failed the judgement of the dead. She was not a chaos god in the cosmic sense, but she was a reminder of the consequences of disorder.
• Serqet (Selket, Serket), a scorpion goddess who protected the dead and the living from venomous stings. Her image was carved on the canopic jars of the king, and her image protects the mummy of Tutankhamun.
• Seth-Typhon, the Greek identification of Set with the storm-giant Typhon, which helped turn Set into a near-demon in the Greco-Roman period.
• Meskhenet, though often a protector of childbirth, Meskhenet was also a fickle goddess who could determine the fate of the newborn.

The Myth of Set and Osiris

The central myth involving Set is the murder of Osiris, told in detail on the long-tail page. Briefly: Set, jealous of his brother Osiris, tricked him into a chest at a feast, sealed it, and threw it into the Nile. Isis retrieved the body, but Set cut it into pieces and scattered them. Isis reassembled the pieces and revived Osiris long enough to conceive Horus. Osiris descended to the underworld, and Horus grew up to avenge him.

The myth is the central drama of Egyptian religion, and Set is the central antagonist. The conflict between Horus and Set, in which Horus defeats Set and reclaims the throne of his father, is the mythological model for the king’s own claim to the throne of Egypt. The king’s first royal name, the Horus name, was the title he won by defeating Set.

Set and the King

Set’s relationship to the king was complicated. The king was the living Horus, the opponent of Set; but in some periods, the king was also said to embody the strength of Set, using the god’s power in battle. Several pharaohs took Set as a royal patron:

• Seti I, “Man of Set”
• Sethnakht, “Set is Victorious”
• Ramesses-Seth-her-miop, “Ra-mes-su-Set is with him”

The Set-cult at Tanis, in the eastern Delta, was the religious center of the Ramesside court, and Set was a major god of the army. The famous scene at the Temple of Karnak showing Ramesses II on the Battle of Kadesh features Set as a god of war.

The Demonic Set

In the Late Period, Set’s image was increasingly demonized. The Egyptians, now under Persian and then Greek rule, came to see Set as the god of the foreign occupiers, and his image was often carved in the form of a donkey on the Brooklyn Museum Papyrus to mock the Persian king Cambyses. From this point on, Set became the central villain in Egyptian mythology, and his image was sometimes smashed in temple rituals.

When the Romans and Greeks identified Set with Typhon, his image was conflated with the devil of late antiquity. Early Christian writers knew Set as the first murderer, the god of the desert, and the lord of storms, and his image was used as a model for Satan in some early art.

Chaos and Order in Egyptian Thought

The presence of the chaos gods shows that the Egyptians did not have a simple view of good and evil. The world needed both order and disorder. Without Set, there would be no storms, no military victories, no contrast against which order could be defined. The king was the defender of Ma’at, but he also used the power of Set to defend the borders of Egypt.

This dual vision is at the heart of Egyptian religion. It is the reason that the gods of chaos were never quite destroyed, and why the Egyptians kept their images alive in ritual and story. The chaos serpent Apophis had to be defeated every night so that the sun could rise, and his defeat was, in itself, a kind of order.