Italiensk for begyndere (Italian for Beginners, 2000)

Do any of you remember that post I made about how every profession has a question that will prompt a member of that profession to fly into an impassioned rant?

Egyptian gods are often depicted with animal heads right? Hey @thatlittleegyptologist what animal is Set?

*locks self in a cupboard and softly cries*

I know this isn’t the joke (or maybe it will be now) but OH O H LET ME LET ME

We’ve all heard the theories about how Seth is an aardvark, or an okapi, or maybe even a giraffe, but those are honestly just that: theories with little grounding in reality. The biggest problem with trying to zoologically identify the Seth animal is that it just doesn’t look like an animal we know*. Like. Honestly, we’ve been able to identify at least 70 different species of birds based on their hieroglyphic signs. Not even tomb paintings, no. Actual hieroglyphs are so detailed that we can tell which is a lappet-faced vulture and which is a quail chick. You’d think we’d have been able to figure out the Seth animal by now if it had been a singular, known animal.

*It mayyy technically be an unknown extinct animal, that is a possibility, but not one with a great deal of probability.  

Another difficulty in determining a single species for the animal is the fact that its depiction changed over time. In early depictions his tail was more often tufted rather than forked (though both varients existed concurrently), and to be honest we debate a lot about that tail to begin with. Some have even suggested it’s not even a tail at all, but an arrow sticking out of its butt. Which, personally, no. It’s clearly attached to him, not sticking out of him. His snout sometimes is very curved, other times it’s almost completely straight. The square ears? Not always straight/square, either. They’re all over the place: tapered, curved or parallel, and sometimes they are even shown to have indentations at the top. And his body, while distinctly canine, vary from lean to so thicc the clap of his cheeks would alert Apep.

So the theory that holds the most ground, and the one that almost every Sethxpert I know including myself ascribes to, is that the Seth animal is a fantastical conglomerate of different creatures, one that didn’t physically exist (yet was believed in as being a reality by the ancient Egyptians). This fits both with the actual images we’re looking at, as well as Seth’s role in the religion. To be honest we don’t even know which animals, if any at all!, donated their body parts to this depiction, but it’s not even that important. What actually is important about (the) Seth (animal) is his role in religion, iconography and language. Seth was a chaotic force; so to use different parts of different (non-existent or otherwise) animals to represent his animal form, is to represent that chaos, as the antithesis of ma’at. And that would also be why the iconography Seth animal is variegated to a greater degree than any other hieroglyphic sign or divine depiction in Egyptian iconography as a whole.

Bonus fun fact: Seth was identified with a lot more animals than just the Seth animal! He was also portrayed as a bull, a crocodile, or a donkey. Sometimes even as a gazelle, interestingly enough. But no matter the form, he was always an ass, and on that pun, good night!

I’d seen you talk about Seth’s appearance changing before but not quite in this depth. I love this stuff, so first off, thank you for the info! After reading your post I tried to find some visual references and came across this thesis which included a handy dandy image that showcased some of the things you were talking about (mind you, I’ve only read a few words of the thesis though because I have the attention span of a fruit fly so I can’t comment on the written content).

Yeah, as rudjedet said, he changes a bunch, so he’s likely to be a combination of creatures (kinda like Ammit), but even the Egyptians themselves over the years got confused which is why he changes a lot.

I came across an image from a Victorian book earlier this year that, while it had no accompanying text, was clearly arguing that the Animal in question was a Fennec Fox. Not a perfect case, but it did pique my interest for two reasons. 1) it would fit in with his role as a desert god 2) the idea of Set being something you could feasibly restrain/hold with one hand. Which is hilarious to me and makes me want to believe.

I’ll see if I can find it.

Here. From Erasmus Wilson’s 1882 book Egypt of the Past.

You know, with having done absolutely zero research on the presence of the fennec fox in early dynastic Egypt, I can totally see at least Seth’s ears being based on the fox’s.

That’s a very cursed drawing of a fennec fox though.

(cc: @neil-gaiman) :)