# Horus Source: https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/gods/horus Language: en # Horus The falcon of kingship — the living king is Horus, and says so in his own titles. **Also written**: Hor · Haroeris · Harpocrates · Horus son of Isis · حور · حورس بن إيزيس Useful clues to take into the temple. ## How to recognise them A falcon or falcon-headed figure may represent Horus, but several deities use falcon imagery. Crown, accompanying text and the action in the scene provide the more reliable identification. ## Who they were Horus is a sky god in the form of a falcon, and the god through whom Egyptian kingship is expressed: the first name in every royal titulary is the Horus name, written inside a rectangle with a falcon standing on top of it. In the Osiris story he is the son who avenges his father and wins the throne after a long contest with Seth, and that is the template — the living king is Horus, his dead predecessor is Osiris. A separate strand makes him the child of Isis, hidden in the marshes and healed of bites and stings, and that child version becomes one of the most popular protective figures in later Egypt. ## Where you meet them The four Sons of Horus are on the walls of nearly every decorated burial chamber in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens, and the falcon behind the king’s head appears in statuary and relief across Karnak and Medinet Habu. On any pylon (a monumental gateway formed by two massive towers), the king’s Horus name is the first thing written in his titles, in the rectangle with the falcon on it. God ## Who they are shown with [ God ### Isis The reliable sign is a small stepped throne worn on her head — a seat drawn in profile, which is literally how her name is written. From the New Kingdom on she also wears cow’s horns with a sun disc between them, and that is exactly Hathor’s crown, so the two become genuinely hard to separate: if there is a throne, it is Isis; if there is only horns-and-disc, read the caption or the context, and remember that in a tomb the two goddesses flanking a coffin are usually Isis and her sister Nephthys. The other giveaway is the pose. In funerary painting Isis very often kneels at one end of a shrine, a coffin or a scene with her arms stretched out and long feathered wings hanging from them, mirrored by Nephthys at the other end. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/gods/isis)[ God ### Osiris Osiris often appears wrapped as a mummy, holding a crook and flail. His atef crown has a tall central element flanked by feathers. The djed is a pillar-shaped symbol with stacked crossbars, associated with stability. Use these clues together with the inscription. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/gods/osiris)[ God ### Ra By day: a man with a falcon’s head carrying a plain sun disc on top, almost always with a cobra coiled at the front of it. Falcon head plus disc is Re or Re-Horakhty; falcon head with a crown but no disc is far more likely to be Horus, and that is the distinction worth holding on to. At night, in the tombs, he changes: inside the boat, in a shrine, stands a man with a ram’s head, often labelled as the flesh or body of Re — a ram-headed figure in a boat on a tomb wall is the night sun, not Amun. In the morning he is a scarab beetle pushing the disc up in front of it, and on many burial-chamber ceilings the scarab and the ram-headed figure appear at the two ends of the same journey. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/gods/ra) Continue reading ## Where to look 1–1 / 3 [Necropolis · West bank ### Valley of the Kings The royal burial landscape of the New Kingdom: rock-cut tombs tucked into a desert valley, separate from the kings’ major commemorative temples. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/valley-of-the-kings)[Temple complex · East bank ### Karnak Temple Complex Two thousand years of building, rebuilding and royal ambition, gathered around the temples of Amun. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/karnak)[Temple · West bank ### Medinet Habu Colour survives here wherever the roof did — on a temple built by a king fighting to hold Egypt together. ](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/medinet-habu) Sources & further reading 3 Tier 2 The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, Richard H. Wilkinson Thames & Hudson Tier 2 Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses and Traditions of Ancient Egypt, Geraldine Pinch Oxford University Press Tier 2 The British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt, Ian Shaw and Paul Nicholson British Museum Press Source review is incomplete. Consultation dates are shown only for checked references. Published works and institutional references for further reading. [Sources and review status](mailto:corrections@egyptmore.com?subject=Luxor101%20correction) [Gods](https://luxor101.com/ancient-luxor/gods)