Stealing That Idea - Blog Posts

can you tell who captivated me who my favourite character is

Hey do you ever think there was an extremely awkward moment where Set realized that at least* two of his wives (Nephthys and Taweret) were helping to raise baby Horus behind his back?

Like, imagine it. Isis has decided her son is finally prepared to face Set. She has presented him to the Ennead. The court case to decide which one should hold the kingship has begun.

And as Set is watching Horus, trying to calculate what to do (he's not good with words so. best bet is probably just to punch him in the face really hard when no one is looking. oh no, the annoying child is dead! of completely unidentifiable causes! we can all go home now!), he notices that Taweret is, like, always slipping Horus honey candies whenever Isis isn't looking? And she keeps ruffling his hair affectionately with her hands?

And, also, Nephthys is correcting Horus's posture on how he holds his weapons? Like, he'll be holding a spear or a khopesh (wrong! cause he's stupid!), but then Nephthys will make eye contact with him while miming how to do it properly, and he corrects himself? And when his belt sash comes undone she'll point at her own so he fixes it? And she thinks she's being sly about it but SET CAN SEE HER DOING THIS???

Why is this happening? What does it mean? Because to be honest Set hasn't been speaking with his wives a lot recently. There were really long periods of time where they didn’t see each other, since he was busy stalking through the marshes of the Nile Delta trying to hunt down and kill this kid. And, now that he thinks about it, he doesn't really know exactly where they were when that was happening. And-- Oh. OH GOD.

*I say "at least" because there are a lot of goddesses who you could speculate are Set's consorts based on various evidence, and the amount of goddesses in the Egyptian pantheon who are said to have helped/watched over Horus at some point is basically all of them. So the number of women this happened with is potentially infinite.

Also if you're wondering about Set and Taweret, Plutarch says that they had a relationship at some point, and it kind of makes sense if you consider that Taweret is supposed to be a very fearsome guardian, hence her association with female hippos (who are very violent when they protect their young), and Set also is very fearsome, hence his association with male hippos (who are also violent but minus the protecting their young part).