Roger Pearse

My attention has just been drawn in another forum to a late Egyptian legend (26th dynasty, Nectanebo I, 378-360 BC) in which Horus is stung by a scorpion, dies, and his mother Isis casts a spell and resurrects him.

The story is found on the Metternich stele, and an English translation by E.Wallis Budge is here. Pp. lxxvi on seem to be the key bits.

I'm sure that I am not the only one who keeps an eye on new takes on the modern Horus=Jesus myth; this one came up in just such a context, as 'justification' for the statement "Horus was resurrected".

Unlike the corn-king myth, of course, this story doesn't have a god dying and rising again. Instead Isis is going around bringing people back, one of whom is her son.

I hope this is interesting.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

dog-on

Is Isis' "son" a god?

Civil1z@tion

Horus was a god (full-blooded his parents were Isis and Osiris) and this story just sets a precedent in Semitic religion for resurrection (the Ancient Egyptians were a Semitic people).

chrisengland

Didn't Richard Carrier advice against linking other religions with resurrection stories to Christianity?
When even some atheists don't think it is a good argument I think that meens it's probably not a good argument.
Chris

Toto

Carrier rejected one particular attempt to connect allegedly crucified saviors to Christianity, written by Kersey Graves. You can find that in the II Library here. But he does find parallels between two pagan crucified gods and Christianity.

Robert Price has stated informally that he suspects that Jesus' resurrection was based on Horus, but that there is not enough surviving evidence to prove it.

andrewcriddle

J Gwyn Griffiths in The Conflict of Horus and Seth pps 100-101 claims that Budge is wrong to translate the Metternich Stele as referring to the death of Horus and suggests that Horus is unconscious not dead.
The modern translation of the Metternich Stele is by Sander-Hansen in German with an earlier partial translation by Moret in French but there is an English translation of the Leiden Statue by Klasens (which is parallel in this section) which reads; Isis put her nose into his mouth to know the smell of it in his skull. She examined the disease of the divine heir. She found that he had been poisoned. She quickly embraced her son jumping about with him like fishes put on a coal-fire "Horus has been bitten.....
Sander-Hansen renders the words translated by Klasens as in his skull
as in seinem Sarge ie in his coffin and Moret as dans son naos ie in his temple ?

Sander-Hansen has a discussion which seems to suggest that this is a euphemism for Horus being dead. I know no ancient Egyptian but in context this story serves as a charm for curing snake/scorpion bites and it would make more sense if Horus is revived from unconsciousness rather than from death.

(There is a puzzling passage in Diodorus Siculus book 1 chapter 25 she [Isis] discovered the drug which gives immortality by means of which she not only raised her son Horus from the dead, who had been conspired against by the Titans and had been found dead under the water, giving him his soul again, but also made him immortal . However it probably involves some confusion of the story of Isis and Osiris with that of Isis and Horus.)

Andrew Criddle

Roger Pearse

Interesting indeed.

andrewcriddle

Struggling with an Ancient Egyptian dictionary the isuue IIUC is with the Egyptian word hen or hn, which primarily means chest, but can mean sacred chest, coffin, container for skull, and even skull itself.
There is supposedly a parallel in an Ancient Egytian surgical text which reads "the odor of the skull (hn) of his head..."

It may be best to say that the Metternich Stele and parallel text(s) do not unambiguously say that Horus is dead, although several prominent Egyptologists have interpreted the text as referring to the death and restoration to life of Horus the Child.

Andrew Criddle

Jeffrey Gibson

May I suggest that you post a query regarding how the text can/ should be translated to ANE-2?

Jeffrey

Roger Pearse

That's an excellent idea.