The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

70 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

of Isis and his twin brother Set. But the confusion between the
two Horuses must have arisen at an early time. Already a king of
the Third Dynasty, whose remains have been found in the ruins
of Nekhen, and who bore the title of him“who is glorified with
the two sceptres, in whom the two Horus gods are united,”has
above his name the crowned emblems of Horus and Set.^44 The
titles of the queens of the Memphite dynasties make it clear that
by the two Horuses are meant the two kingdoms of Upper and
Lower Egypt, and we must therefore see in Horus and Set the
symbols of the South and North.^45
In the rock drawing, south of El-Kab, to which I have alluded
a few minutes ago, the two Horus hawks stand on the symbol
of“gold,”the one wearing the crown of Southern Egypt, the
other that of the North. The“Golden Horus”was, in fact, one
[075] of the titles assumed by the Pharaoh at an early date. Whether
the epithet applied to the god represented originally the golden
colour of the wings of the sparrow-hawk, or whether, as is more
probable, it denoted the Horus-hawk of gold who watched over
the destinies of the kings of Upper Egypt in their ancient capital
of Nekhen, it is now impossible to say.^46 Later ages explained it
as referring to the golden rays of the morning sun.
In the time of the Fourth Dynasty the title was attached
indifferently to the Ka or death name given to the Pharaoh after
his death, and to the living name given to him at his birth into
this world. The Horus-hawk, without the symbol of“gold,”
surmounted, so far as we know, only the Ka name. It was the
double of the Pharaoh, rather than the Pharaoh himself, in whom
the god had been incarnated. Horus brings the captive northerner

(^44) Quibell,Hierakonpolis, pt. i. pl. ii.
(^45) See de Rougé,Recherches sur les Monuments qu'on peut attribuer aux six
premières dynasties, pp. 44, 45.
(^46) Mr. Quibell found a large bronze hawk with a head of solid gold and eyes
of obsidian along with two bronze figures of Pepi, in the foundation of the
temple of Nekhen (Kom el-A%mar); see Quibell,Hierakonpolis, pt. i. pl. xlii.
Hor-nubi,“the golden Horus,”was the god of the Antæopolite nome.