Who made Set a snake god?

[Yora]

Pretty much any time you have some kind of desert or tropical fantasy, there's the big evil snake god Set.

Who invented this public domain character? Because he certainly isn't the ancient Egyptian god Set. That one has the head like an aardvark and fights the evil snake god Apep.

[MLai]

Pretty much any time you have some kind of desert or tropical fantasy, there's the big evil snake god Set.
Who invented this public domain character? Because he certainly isn't the ancient Egyptian god Set. That one has the head like an aardvark and fights the evil snake god Apep.
Who thinks Set/Seth is a snake-headed god??? I've always known Set has a jackal head (or some jackal-like animal). I mean c'mon, the Egyptians drew pictures for us you can't get any more clear.

It's basically due to Conan. In the novels, Set is referred to as the serpent god. He's a fictional god with the same name as the actual Egyptian god, but not meant to be the same one.

[tensai_oni]

The same people who always have Hades from greek myths be evil.

[huttj509]

Stargate's Satesh/Seth has the Jackal-thing head. It's even the subject of a Jaffa joke. Ok..."joke."

I mean, ok, he's evil, but they all are in Stargate (ok, almost all).

[Hazzardevil]

I recall Rick Riordan had Set be a snake god in his Egyptian Gods book, which is very explicitly about the Egyptian Gods. So I'm partially blaming him, but it's too recent to be the root cause of it.

[Morty]

Set is a snake god in Robert Howard's Conan stories, unless I'm misremembering. It's doubtful Howard made him this way, but it might have had an influence.

[Eldan]

Yeah, I'd blame Howard too, if only because I don't know anything older.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Marvel Comic's Set is based on the Conan one at least.

[Yora]

Howard really hated snakes, so it's no surprise the he made the big evil god a snake god. But I wonder if he was the first to use the name Set instead of Apep.

[BWR]

Probably because 'Set' sounds more snake-y, more evil than 'Apep'. Sibilants, especially 's', are more animalistic and threatening than most other sounds.

[Man on Fire]

Howard really hated snakes, so it's no surprise the he made the big evil god a snake god. But I wonder if he was the first to use the name Set instead of Apep.

From what I remember from reading about Egyptian Mythology, as the time went Set pretty much became more and more seen as god of evil and replacing Apep as that diety - early hieroglyps show him on Ra's boat, stabbing Apep with a spear and myth about Osisis, Isis and Horus is much younger. Set was unlucky to be god of desert and foreigners, and as the time went and Egypt became more xenophobic and more and more families had lost members to the desert, his image suffered.


Marvel Comic's Set is based on the Conan one at least.

Actually, there are two Sets in Marvel Universe. Egyptian god Set who is an evil prick. And Elder God Set, who is evil snake monster from Conan stories (and conan comics are still canon in Marvel Universe, even if they cannot refference them).

[Terraoblivion]

Who thinks Set/Seth is a snake-headed god??? I've always known Set has a jackal head (or some jackal-like animal). I mean c'mon, the Egyptians drew pictures for us you can't get any more clear.

The jackal-headed one is Anubis, the one judge of the dead.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Apparently according to Herodotus the Greeks linked Set with Typhon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhon#Related_concepts_and_myths) who's always been rather snake-y. Ancient syncretism sounds like a pretty good explanation to me.

Also until wikipedia it wasn't exactly easy to clear these sorts of things up so that's why such things propagate... and even the actual Egyptologists don't know what the heck Set is really supposed to be. Snakes are a lot more threatening then some droopy doggy thing. :P

[Terraoblivion]

Sure they do. He's the Set animal or sah. :smalltongue:

Now what the Set animal is, nobody knows. Thoughts range from a jackal that's drawn oddly to make him distinct from Anubis to a giraffe, but still.

[Bulldog Psion]

The second I saw the title of this thread, I thought "it must be the Conan novels."

I've never even read any of them, and I assume it's Howard's fault whenever some item of pop-culture mythology-botching is brought up. :smallbiggrin:

[Zaydos]

It's Howard's fault. I will note Set underwent a change in mythology (it involved wars between Upper and Lower Egypt one of which Set was the patron god of) with his original role being usurped by Horus and Set taking Apep's role in attacking the barge of the sun. But Howard was the first to actually present him as a serpent to my knowledge, although due to this conflation with Apep in mythology Set was already conflated with other evil mythological forces/forces of destruction (such as Typhon). I'm not the best with Egyptian mythology/the history there of (it's one place where my little brother knows more) so can't go into too much detail.


The second I saw the title of this thread, I thought "it must be the Conan novels."

I've never even read any of them, and I assume it's Howard's fault whenever some item of pop-culture mythology-botching is brought up. :smallbiggrin:

This is about the one time it's really Howard's fault, he typically didn't really reference myths directly. He referenced the idea that the Aesir/Vanir were actually early ancestors of the Nordic people, which wasn't really his new introduction into pop culture, coming as it did from Snorri's suggestion that the Aesir were Trojan Heroes who the Nordic people were descended from, other than that he messed more with history than mythology.

[GloatingSwine]

It's all those pesky sibillants in his name. You don't go around having names with esses in and not get associated with snakes eventually.

[SiuiS]

It's all those pesky sibillants in his name. You don't go around having names with esses in and not get associated with snakes eventually.

And why is that? They don't actually hiss at all.

[MLai]

And why is that? They don't actually hiss at all.
Wait what.

[Eldan]

And why is that? They don't actually hiss at all.

At least some do. Maybe not all, but I'm reasonably sure I've had some hiss at me while cleaning the terraria.

[Giggling Ghast]

Set is a snake god in Robert Howard's Conan stories, unless I'm misremembering.

No, you are remembering correctly.

Though he was evil, Set wasn't precisely THE God of Evil in Hyboria. There were many gods associated with unpleasant stuff.

[The Glyphstone]

See, my first thought was to blame White Wolf, with their depiction of Set as a snake-themed vampire demigod. But I guess they were drawing on Conan in turn.

[Pronounceable]

Totally Howard, %100. Though serpentine evil gods (and Set) became all encompassing in fantasy due to all the Conan fanfictioners after Howard getting weirdly obsessed with making Thoth-Amon into an archnemesis and inflating Set's role as a result.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Apparently according to Herodotus the Greeks linked Set with Typhon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhon#Related_concepts_and_myths) who's always been rather snake-y. Ancient syncretism sounds like a pretty good explanation to me.


More like Herodotus just uses the name Typhon when discussing Egyptian religion and we have to infer that he's talking about Set because we have no idea what he actually knew about Egyptian religion (he claims the Pythagoreans got their reincarnation ideas from Egypt which Egyptian sources don't confer at all). Herodotus also claims incorrectly that the Greek gods all have Egyptian names and while he occasionally uses Egyptian ones he tries not to, my translation has him state at least twice that Osiris is Dyonisos and Horus is Apollo and later that Demeter is Isis and Artemis is Bubastis but just throws around the names Pan, Zeus, Typhon, Hephaestus and Heracles without a coda. For some random reason I have a copy of Herodotus burried in the clutter on my desk and find it easier just to check the book than some dubious online source that doesn't explain itself.

For all I know Herodotus meant Apep not Set when he describes Horus/Apollo as battling Typhon and some later tradition mistranslated it as Set. He could easily have been talking about Ra rather than Horus when he says Apollo since Horus and Ra were heavily syncretised (as Ra-Horakhty), especially by Herodotus' time which is quite late by Egyptian standards of history and Apollo was himself syncretised with Helios. The notes in my copy say he probably meant Seth, but I'd say its 60% in that direction from my amateur opinion. I don't know about any later Greeks that might have interpreted Set as Typhon but can't say it definitely started with Herodotus.

Interpretato isn't quite the same thing as syncretism, Herodotus is over a century before that got started between Greece and Egypt under the Ptolomaic dynasty.

[Hazzardevil]

Didn't Ra and Horus slowly merge with time, or am I thinking of something else?
I think it would also help to remember that later on, Ptolemaic Egypt half merged Greek and Egyptian Gods, with the Roman gods later still mixing in. I recall from somewhere Zeus and Amum merging, but Amun was merged with Ra.

My point being, it's difficult for us to get any clear view of anything from ancient religions, especially from how they all merged with each other over time.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Didn't Ra and Horus slowly merge with time, or am I thinking of something else?

They were well merged by the 5th century BC.


I think it would also help to remember that later on, Ptolemaic Egypt half merged Greek and Egyptian Gods, with the Roman gods later still mixing in.

The most famous Ptolemaic deity, Serapis, is a merger of two Egyptian gods, but is portrayed in a very Greek style despite not being a Greek god per say.


I recall from somewhere Zeus and Amum merging, but Amun was merged with Ra.

Gods were merged in multiple ways. Hence Amun-Ra and Ra-Horakhety both being worshipped at the same time despite both being Ra + another god.

Egyptian cults were city specific, so a pan-Egyptian pantheon as we think of it didn't really exist. The Pharoah had to worship all the gods as he was ruler of all the cities but the individual citizens might not obviously share a religion with other Egyptians. Most near eastern countries were similar at the time.

Zeus-Ammon was worshipped in Sparta quite early but I don't think he was that popular in Ptolomaic times.



My point being, it's difficult for us to get any clear view of anything from ancient religions, especially from how they all merged with each other over time.

That's mainly due to simplifying historians leaving out dates. BC dates for Egyptian chronology should be taken with a grain of salt but that doesn't mean a clear Egyptian chronology isn't portray-able.