Millennia ago, before humans ruled Egypt, it was thought that the gods acted as Pharaohs on Earth. The long and glorious reign of Ra, the Sub God, ended with his abdication in favour of Osiris. Osiris was a good, wise and just king. He taught his human subjects the art of farming, and ensured plenty for them. He was loved and adored, supremely powerful and singularly praised by the human race. His brother, Seth, grew jealous, and conceived a plan to rid himself of his brother once and for all. He invited Osiris to a great feast, at which he plied the god with food and wine. At the end of the feast, he presented Osiris with a magnificent chest, and told him a tale that it was designed so that it would perfectly fit any human who lay inside it. Scoffing at his brother’s incredulous claim, Osiris sought to prove him wrong, and climbed in, laying down. Of course, Seth had built the chest exactly to Osiris’ dimensions. With his brother inside, he nailed the box shut, and hurled it into the River Nile, perhaps considered the only fate which might kill a god. Osiris drowned, and when the box resurfaced, Seth took his brother’s body, and sliced it into pieces, scattering them over the four corners of the Earth. Osiris’ distraught wife, the magician-goddess Isis, searched all over for his body, finding his spine in Babylon, and his heart in Abydos. But one piece was never recovered, at least according to the version of the myth reported by Plutarch (de Osiride et Iside 18.1). Osiris’ penis was lost somewhere in the Nile marshes. But without the full body, Isis’ plan to resurrect her husband using her powerful magic would have failed. So the goddess created a substitute member from Nile clay. This was, apparently, successful. Using his prosthetic phallus, Osiris copulated with Isis, and from this posthumous lovemaking, a son, Horus, was conceived.

The infant Horus was hidden in the marshes until his teenage years, during which time Seth learned of his existence, and threatened him with dangerous animals. One incident caused Horus to lose his eye; crying in pain, the goddess Hathor poured her healing breastmilk into the socket, and his eye regenerated. The plucked eye, named as wadjet, was used as one of Egypt’s most popular apotropaic amulets. In the ensuing years, Seth and Horus contended over the throne. Their contest served as the model by which the strength, alacrity and morality of future kings were judged. Through the guise of his symbol, the lanner falcon (Falco biarmicus), Horus became the protective deity of Pharaohs. The earliest Egyptian monarchs even had their names protected by the Horus falcon, sitting atop a palace facade (serekh) within which the name was inscribed. The Horus name, as it became known, was one among the five-name titulary which was employed by the Pharaohs. The importance of these names, each ritually significant, cannot be overestimated.

Keen to assimilate themselves to Horus, the Pharaohs produced images of the god in their thousands. But this popular god was widely revered throughout Egypt. In seeking legitimacy from their ancestral practices, later Egyptian Pharaohs – often conquerors rather than native-born – invested much in the cult of Horus, such that his cult centre at Edfu is mostly Ptolemaic in its current form. It is to this later period that this remarkable Horus figurine is dated. The Tenth to Sixth Centuries BC were periods of great upheaval for the Egyptians, resulting in conquest by the Assyrians, then the Kushites, then the Assyrians again, and finally, the Persians. In the face of these incursions, the final native Egyptian dynasties, notably the Twenty-Sixth (Saïte) Dynasty and the Thirtieth (Sebbenytic) Dynasties, sought to instigate a renaissance in Egyptian culture. Images of Horus fit into this nationalist agenda. Carved of a hardstone with a remarkable orange hue this beautifully-formed figurine demonstrates the Egyptian craftsman’s close study of the bird at rest. The hunch of the shoulders, ellipsoid wings, fanned tail, all contribute to the brooding presence of the falcon. The eye, with its distinctive markings, is prominent, both in reference to the supreme eyesight of the falcon, and to the magic of Horus’ own eyes.