Horus

• name of the sun among the Egyptians, Macr. S. 1, 21, 13.

(Ὧρος, Egyptian Har). An Egyptian god, the son of Osiris and Isis. At the death of his father he was still a child, but when he had grown to be a stalwart youth (Harver—i. e. “stronger Horus”), he overcame and captured Typhon, the murderer of his father, after a combat lasting over many days, and handed him over to Isis, who, however, let him go free. By the Egyptians he was deemed the victorious god of light, who overcame darkness, winter, and drought, and was identified with Apollo by the Greeks. He is often represented with the head of a sparrowhawk, which was sacred to him. He must be distinguished from a younger Horus, the Harpocrates of the Greeks (in Egyptian Harpechruti—i. e. “Har, the Child”), who was received by Isis from Osiris in the under-world, and is the representative of the winter-sun, and also the image of early vegetation, and therefore identified with Priapus (q.v.). Statues represent him as a naked boy with his finger on his mouth. Misunderstanding this symbol of childhood, the Greeks made him the god of Silence and Secrecy. Afterwards, in the time when mysteries were in vogue, his worship was widely extended among the Greeks, and also among the Romans. See Beauregard, Les Divinités Égyptiennes (Paris, 1866); and Isis.

• Apollod. 3.7.7