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Seth

Min Bannister

Possessed dog
Joined
Sep 5, 2003
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I have always wondered about Seth (or Set). As far as I know, he is the only god who also appears to be a fantastic animal. Seemingly the ancient Egyptians were keen on fantastic animals as this link shows

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/beasts.htm

Fantastic animals were apparently thought of as being beneficial and used as protectors of tombs, pregnant women etc.

But Seth, even before his status change, was always rather a tempestuous and warlike god, not really in keeping with a protector animal. Also, the other fantastic animals seem to be the head of this, the body of that and so on. Seths head by itself doesn't seem to belong to any animal we know. He never seems to be spoken of as a fantastic animal either. He is usually described as "unknown" or "like" a jackel, aadvark or okapi. He isn't really.

Seth as an animal

Seth as an animal headed man

So what is he? Any thoughts?
 
Well, according to this, Seth's head doesn't correspond to any known animal, and could either be mythical or a composite:
Depicted as a man with the head of a 'Sut animal' (or a 'Typhonian animal' because of the Greek identification with Typhon), or as a full 'Set animal' the god is unrecognizable as any one particular animal today. He was also identified with other animals, such as the hippopotamus, the pig and the donkey, which were often abhorred by the Egyptians. These animals were sacred to him. Set's followers took the form of these animals, as well as crocodiles, scorpions, turtles and other 'evil' or dangerous creatures. Some fish were sacred to Set, too - the Nile carp, the Oxyrynchus or the Phagrus fish - because they were thought to have eaten the phallus of Osiris after Set chopped him to pieces....
The 'Set animal' has long, squared ears and a long, down-turned snout, a canine-like body with an erect forked tail. He may have been a composite animal that was part aardvark (the aardvark that the ancient Egyptians would have seen was the nocturnal Orycteropus aethiopicus which was between 1.2-1.8 meters long and almost 1 meter tall, and was generally a reddish color because of the thin hair, allowing the skin to show through), part canine (perhaps the salawa, a desert dwelling creature) or even a camel or an okapi. The sign for his name, from the Middle Kingdom hieratic onwards, tended to replace the sign for 'donkey' and 'giraffe', so he was possibly linked to the giraffe, as well.
This page just sticks to the mythical beast theory:
Seth. The God of chaos and confusion, generally depicted with a human body and the head of a mysterious unknown animal, probably a mythical beast....
I do remember in a School text book that Seth's head was described as that of an ass - in some hieroglyphs it does look a bit equine, but in others it's hard to tell what it is.
 
stu neville said:
I do remember in a School text book that Seth's head was described as that of an ass - in some hieroglyphs it does look a bit equine, but in others it's hard to tell what it is.

Says here, he CAN be depicted as an ass or jackal (and can also take the form of a crocodile or hippo to fight other gods) but is normally the strange animal.

http://www.aldokkan.com/religion/seth.htm

Seth is symbolized by the ass and the jackal; however, His main theophany is an unknown canid with square ears and a forked tail, often called simply the "Seth-animal," whose species has been a mystery to Egypt.

The haughty expression is quite equine though! The squared off ears are the odd bit. He is very beautiful I think.:)
 
Yes, I remember the jackal bit as well, because apparently he could sometimes be confused with Anubis (IIRC in one version of the Osiris legend, Anubis could travel the Underworld as he was easilty mistaken for Seth).

And I agree entirely - most of the Egyptian gods as portrayed are very striking :).
 
Min Bannister said:
I have always wondered about Seth (or Set). As far as I know, he is the only god who also appears to be a fantastic animal.

How could I forget Ammut, the devourer? Ammut though, is very clearly made up of different animal parts. Some pictures here

Separated at birth? (see attached picture) Okay perhaps I'm clutching at straws a tiny bit, but it shows that ancient Egypt wasn't the only home to oddly-headed thin creatures.:)
 
Re: Re: Seth

Min Bannister said:
How could I forget Ammut, the devourer? Ammut though, is very clearly made up of different animal parts. Some pictures here

And the ancient Egyptians didn't have Photoshop to help them, either!

I always thought Khepri was pretty wierd - a man with a scarab beetle for a head . . . :confused:

Carole
 
The haughty expression is quite equine though! The squared off ears are the odd bit. He is very beautiful I think.

he looks like a Llama to me

were there camels in ancient Egypt? (an asiatic beast, as you may know)
 
He does look a bit like a llama. This would be REALLY cool as they are from South America! I did have a look through a load of South American animals with this in mind (there were pyramids in S.America after all). I also think he is more similar to an anteater (South American) than an aardvark. I am fairly certain there were camels.

Though all these animals are really far too cuddly IMO. I would have thought the Seth animal to be one more fitting to his position as a storm god.

I woke up the other night convinced Seth was a giraffe...the "ears" actually being horns and so on. It made sense at the time...

The thing that bothers me is that the other animal headed gods looked EXACTLY like their animals. Anubis is exactly like a jackal, Thoth is exactly like an Ibis. They are pretty accurate representations so whatever Seth is, I am sure that that is exactly what he looked like.

Carole you are right about Khepri, ew!
 
Homo Aves said:
he looks like a Llama to me...were there camels in ancient Egypt? (an asiatic beast, as you may know)

They were around from very early times, but they weren't widely used for transport until the Assyrians, and later the Persians and then the Ptolemies took over.

The early Dynastic Egyptians certainly knew about them.


Apropos the inevitable Timble SF trivia:
 
According to The Illustrated Anthology of World Myth and Storytelling ...
"...Seth was often pictured with the head of an animal - usually the strange "Seth beast", an imaginary creature wtih a vague resemblance to an ant-eater ..."

I can't see that myself, but still...

"....Sometimes he was depicted as one of the animals considered to be "unclean" by the Egyptians - such as the hippopotamus or the pig."

Maybe, as Lord of Chaos, he was a composite beast?
 
This reminds me of the time a Jehovahs Witness knocked on my door to sell me his particular brand of salvation, his name was Seth, and he wasn't particularly amused when I explained to him where it came from
 
Set wasn't always associated with bad things to start with. There's an early depiction of him killing the serpent Apep, and thus being a benefical god - he was more a representation of wild uncontrolled forces of nature and was associated with the desert. It was only later than he became associated with much more negative things - a kind of pariah for things that had gone wrong for the Egyptians. IIRC, orginally Set was a god from another tribe and was amalgamated into the Egyptian pantheon.
 
Ah, just found this thread. He doesn't look quite as much like the Chalicotherium (see the Horse-Men thread) as i thought, from just the descriptions, that he might...

However, the picture of him as a human with the mystery animal's head reminds me a bit of some of the extinct giraffe/camel relatives that lived around the North African/Middle Eastern area a few million years ago IIRC... wasn't there one that basically looked like a bigger okapi, but with big, hair covered but "flattened" horns/antlers? I want to call it Shivatherium or similar... (hmmm, Hindu god connection? ;) ) Could be entirely wrong tho.

Wasn't there a cryptid report fairly recently from Egypt or thereabouts of a "horned" wolf or jackal?
 
Goldstein said:
Ah, just found this thread. He doesn't look quite as much like the Chalicotherium (see the Horse-Men thread) as i thought, from just the descriptions, that he might...

However, the picture of him as a human with the mystery animal's head reminds me a bit of some of the extinct giraffe/camel relatives that lived around the North African/Middle Eastern area a few million years ago IIRC... wasn't there one that basically looked like a bigger okapi, but with big, hair covered but "flattened" horns/antlers? I want to call it Shivatherium or similar... (hmmm, Hindu god connection? ;) ) Could be entirely wrong tho.

Wasn't there a cryptid report fairly recently from Egypt or thereabouts of a "horned" wolf or jackal?
Ooh, I haven't heard of that. I'll keep an eye out.

I have nicked the Chalicotherium picture from the horse-men thread in case anyone is wondering. He is not really like that as you say, more slender.
I looked for "shivatherium" which is apparently an ice age relative of the giraffe. This would fit in with my mad giraffe dream described earlier!:p
It might also fit in with Seths role. A fossil animal uncovered in the desert by the wind perhaps? Not much decent info on the net it would seem. I think a proper old fashioned look through books at the library might be in order.
The only picture I could find is here

Worth looking into I reckon. Good one Goldstein!:yeay:
 
i reckon seth was a kangaroo relative or something...er maybe
 
There is of course the giant sloth to consider, which of course brings us into the Chariots of the Gods realm, snd did the ancient Egyptians visit South America

giantgroundsloth1.jpg
 
cocaine and marijuana have been found in
mummies and in thier wrappings. So if Im correct those two items only grew in South America back in the day.
 
So they have. Here is a review (welcome to the board Treefox BTW). And it is in our own FT.

Perhaps Erich wasn't that daft after all?;)

Though I think that there would really be no need for the Ancient Egyptians to need south America for animals as gods (though I like the idea!).

I think the first Sivatherium in Goldsteins post is a possibility. Particularly if you try to imagine it in fossil form.
 
Thank you Min , Im glad to be here.

Im surprized no one has brought up the Lowland Tapir . It might be a bit off but just taking a crack at it. It was the first thing I thought of when I saw the picture of Seth for some reason.
 
Interesting. Even if the egyptians had made it to south america they would have been about 6,000 years too late to see the ground sloth. Nice idea with Sivatherium and other fossils as being the basis, though. Someone (cant remember who) used this idea in a book and FT article to explain Griffins in mythology. And there was talk of the Hydra in greek mythology being based on the skull of Samotherium, another extinct giraffid based on a picture found on a vase.
 
Ravenstone said:
According to The Illustrated Anthology of World Myth and Storytelling ...
"...Seth was often pictured with the head of an animal - usually the strange "Seth beast", an imaginary creature wtih a vague resemblance to an ant-eater ..."

I'm sure they mean the aardvark (orycteropus) - the "earth pig" - and not the giant anteater. Aardvarks eat ants, too, and are therefore often called "anteaters" as well.
Doesn't sound that unlikely to say Seth looks like an aardvark somehow, considering that the aardvark has rather long ears and a curved snout.

Seth is associated with a lot of very different animals; most important being the dog/jackal, but also the antelope, the gazelle, the pig, the hippo, the crocodile, and the donkey... not all of them being his sacred animals, though.
So maybe he really is a composite creature or something like that. I always thought the ears looked a bit artificial, maybe like a strange crown of some sort, a bit like Isis's cow horns.
 
barndad said:
Interesting. Even if the egyptians had made it to south america they would have been about 6,000 years too late to see the ground sloth...
Not necessarily - if the Mapinguari turns out to exist, it could solve more than one problem here :). At least as credible a cryptid as, say, the yeti.
 
Okay, so I asked a friend of mine who's really big on Egyptian stuff (to the point of actually worshipping their gods, even...) and she had this to say:

"You know I have often wondered that myself, I have a book of prehistoric mammals and there are none in there that match the description... I dont think anyone knows what Seth is."

So there you have it. Not even a true believer can answer this question.
 
The more I think about it, the more I think he is an amalgamation of different animals, given his link with chaos and wildness.
 
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