Horus

• name of the sun among the Egyptians, Macr. S. 1, 21, 13.

(Ὧρος), the Egyptian god of the sun, whose worship was established very extensively in Greece, and afterwards even at Rome, although Greek astronomy and mystic philosophy greatly modified the original idea of Horus. He was compared with the Greek Apollo, and identified with Harpocrates, the last-born and weakly son of Osiris. (Plut. de Is. et Os. 19.) Both were represented as youths, and with the same attributes and symbols. (Artemid. Oneir. 2.36; Macr. 1.23; Porphyr. apud Euseb. Praep. Exang. 5.10; Iamblich. de Myster. 7.2.) He was believed to have been born with his finger on his mouth, as indicative of secrecy and mystery; and the idea of something mysterious in general was connected with the worship of Horus-Harpocrates; the mystic philosophers of later times therefore found in him a most welcome subject to speculate upon. In the earlier period of his worship at Rome he seems to have been particularly regarded as the god of quiet life and silence (Varr. (Varr. de L. L. iv. p. 17, Bip. ; Ov. Met. 9.691; Auson. Epist. ad Paul. 25.27), and at one time the senate forbade his worship at Rome, probably on account of excesses committed at the mysterious festivals; but the suppression was not permanent. His identification with Apollo is as old as the time of Herodotus (2.144, 156; comp. the detailed mythuses in Diod. 1.25, &c.; Plut. de Is. et Os. 12, &c.) The god acts a prominent part also in the mystic works attributed Hermes Trismegistus; but we cannot enter here into an examination of the nature of this Egyptian divinity, and refer the reader to Jablonsky, Panth. Acgypt. i. p. 244. &c.; Bunsen, Aegyptens Stelle in der Weltgesch. vol. i. p. 505, &c., and other works on Egyptian mythology. [L.S]

(Ὧρος or Ὦρος), according to Suidas, an Alexandrian grammarian, who taught at Constantinople, and wrote a great many works on grammatical subjects, which are now lost. It has been supposed that he is the same as the grammarian Horapollo, but the works which Suidas attributes to Horus are different from those of Horapollo. Macrobius (Macr. 1.7) mentions a Cynie philosopher of the name of Horus. [L.S]

(Ὧρος, Egyptian Har). An Egyptian god, the son of Osiris and Isis. At the death of his father he was still a child, but when he had grown to be a stalwart youth (Harver—i. e. “stronger Horus”), he overcame and captured Typhon, the murderer of his father, after a combat lasting over many days, and handed him over to Isis, who, however, let him go free. By the Egyptians he was deemed the victorious god of light, who overcame darkness, winter, and drought, and was identified with Apollo by the Greeks. He is often represented with the head of a sparrowhawk, which was sacred to him. He must be distinguished from a younger Horus, the Harpocrates of the Greeks (in Egyptian Harpechruti—i. e. “Har, the Child”), who was received by Isis from Osiris in the under-world, and is the representative of the winter-sun, and also the image of early vegetation, and therefore identified with Priapus (q.v.). Statues represent him as a naked boy with his finger on his mouth. Misunderstanding this symbol of childhood, the Greeks made him the god of Silence and Secrecy. Afterwards, in the time when mysteries were in vogue, his worship was widely extended among the Greeks, and also among the Romans. See Beauregard, Les Divinités Égyptiennes (Paris, 1866); and Isis.

• Apollod. 3.7.7