The Mystery Animal on the Head of the Egyptian God Set
The mystery animal on an ancient god's head
Several Egyptian gods have animal heads: Horus a falcon, Anubis a jackal, Thoth an ibis. But Set's head is a mystery. Scholars call it the 'Set animal' or 'Typhonic beast', but no one knows what it is. Candidates include a Saluki hunting dog, a donkey, or an extinct creature. Some depictions were chiseled away, complicating the puzzle. The search reveals how Egyptian religion evolved over millennia.
So we may not know for sure what the Set animal is, but it’s certainly teaching us a lot about one of the world’s oldest civilizations and how they worshiped.
- evandrofisico
As the Old Jaffa joke says:
A serpent guard, a Horus guard, and a Setesh guard meet on a neutral planet. It is a tense moment. The serpent guard's eyes glow. The Horus guard's beak glistens. The Setesh guard's... nose drips.
- tomrod
Huh. Pretty clearly a dog/jackal though, right?
Set was the god of Libya and was at war with the "good guy gods" in Egypt, so one has to assume the civilization based in Libya would be were we could correlate the answer -- and we have the contention that the Sahara has grown since the early days of Egypt, so its possible the definitive answer remains buried.
- jjtheblunt
anteater / aardvark looks like what Set is modeling back in the day