Set, also known as Seth and Suetekh, was the Egyptian god of war, chaos and storms, brother of Osiris, Isis, and Horus the Elder, uncle to Horus the Younger, and brother-husband to Nephthys. His other consort was the goddess Tawaret, a hippo-headed deity who presided over fertility and childbirth. He is one of the first five gods created by the union of Geb (earth) and Nut (sky) after the creation of the world. His name is usually translated as "instigator of confusion" and "destroyer" and he was associated with disorder, foreign lands and people, and the color red.
He is sometimes depicted as a red-haired beast with a forked tail and cloven hooves or a shaggy red dog-like beast known as a sha (or, to modern-day scholars, as the Set Animal) which some scholars claim was modeled on the Saluki breed while others maintain was a purely mythological creature imagined specifically to represent Set whose other symbols were the griffin, hippopotamus, crocodile, and tortoise (though he was primarily associated with the serpent). Continue reading from Ancient History Encyclopedia
