Lecture IV. The Sun-God And The Ennead. 69
Dynasty, Sharu and Khufu, are carried in boats on the prows of
which a hawk is perched, while above each name are two other
hawks, standing on the hieroglyph of“gold,”and with the crowns
of Upper and Lower Egypt on their heads. The title“follower of
Horus”would take us back to the earliest traditions of Egyptian
history. The“followers of Horus,”according to the later texts,
were the predecessors of Menes and the First Dynasty of united
Egypt, the Pharaohs and princes of the southern kingdom whose
very names were forgotten in after days. Nevertheless, it was
remembered that they had founded the great sanctuaries of the
country; thus an inscription at Dendera declares that in the reign
of king Pepi of the Sixth Dynasty there was found in the wall of
the palace a parchment on which was a plan of the temple drawn
upon it in the time of“the followers of Horus.”The legends of
Edfu told how these followers of Horus had been smiths, armed
with weapons of iron, and how they had driven the enemies
of their leader before them until they had possessed themselves
of the whole of Egypt.^43 But many hard-fought battles were [074]
needed before this could be accomplished. Again and again had
the foe been crushed—at Zadmit near Thebes, at Neter-Khadu
near Dendera, at Minia, at Behnesa and Ahnas on the frontier
of the Fayyûm, and finally at Zaru on the Asiatic borders of the
Delta. Even here, however, the struggle was not over. Horus and
his followers had to take ship and pursue the enemy down the
Red Sea, inflicting a final blow upon them near Berenicê, from
whence he returned across the desert in triumph to Edfu.
In this legend, which in its present form is not older than the
Ptolemaic period, echoes of the gradual conquest of Egypt by
the first followers of the Pharaohs have probably been preserved,
though they have been combined with a wholly different cycle
of myths relating to the eternal struggle between Horus the son
(^43) On themesnitiuor“blacksmiths”of Horus, see Maspero,Études de
Mythologie, ii. p. 313 and sqq. TheMesnitor“Forge”was the name given to
the passage opening into the shrine of the temple of Edfu.