The Falcon God »Horus«

The eye of the Falcon God Horus is represented as a human eye, however, the remarkable black mark and the arrangement of the plumage as birds of prey have it are stylised at the lower section. According to the old myth, the rivalling god Seth tore Horus' eye out. Seth was his uncle, who contended with him for the Egyptian throne after he had killed and dismembered his father, Osiris. Thot, the wise moon god and the patron of the sciences and the art of writing, put it patiently back in order and healed it. As an ambiguous symbol, it describes the status of regained soundness: In the field of astronomy it is the moon symbol absolute and refers to the increasing completion of the moon disk; in the ideology of the Pharaonic kingdom it represents the eternal renewal of the divine kingdom from king to king. Wherever a state of weakness or disturbance could undermine the natural order of things, the picture of the symbol with its power of magic protection stabilises their right course again and, as a message of hope, strengthens the faith of Egyptian thinking in the eternally returning restoration of universal harmony. For this reason, the Egyptians loved this symbol very much. In the most different sizes and degrees of preciousness of its materials, it served as an amulet worn around the neck or as a graphic motif for beautiful jewels; it decorated the lunettes of stelae and sarcophagi; it was part of auspicious picture mysteries in the ornament of receptacles or other personal objects. It was also used for a pretty graphic design of the units for grain. The value of a fraction was assigned to each individual part of the eye which Seth had torn up according to the myth. Their total, corresponding to the restoration of the eye brought about by Thot, should have added up to a whole. In fact, however, the total of the six fractions used results in only 63/64; it was assumed that Thot had withheld the missing 1/64 by magic. 

Maria Carmela Betrò
Egyptologist at the University of Pisa, Italy