Seth the Egyptian god
The Egyptian god Seth or Set is a multi-pun of things that are written roughly like “Seth”. Since those include terms like “attacker”, “causing disorder”, “lead astray”, Seth was made into an evil god in his stories.
In Egyptian, the god Seth is written ztẖ / stẖ / stš. There are even more spellings. Note the 3rd letter, which is missing in the Latin transcription.
Seth is displayed as a strange unknown animal with a long, downward-curved snout like that of an ant-eater, and an erect tail with a tuft.
Such an animal doesn’t exist. I doubt it ever existed, but that doesn’t even matter. Only its depicted features are important, because as usual, Seth is a multi-pun.
To understand the meaning of Seth, we need to understand the Egyptian prefix s-, which is a causative verb prefix. In English, it would roughly mean “to cause X” or “to make X”. 🡻
To invent Seth’s puns, the ancient spook rulers could now attach arbitrary things to this s- prefix that are spelled like Seth without the S. Many of these things are bad, like dḥ for “lowness”, th for “transgression”, ṯȝw for “storm”, tḫtḫ for “disorder”. That’s why the punners made Seth an evil god: He is s-dḥ “causing lowness”, s-th “causing transgression”, s-ṯȝw “causing storm”, s-tḫtḫ “causing disorder”.
These are the Seth puns I spotted so far:
- Seth has a downturned snout, because s-dḥ means “make low”. 🡻
- Seth has a pronounced tail, because sd / sḏ means “tail”. 🡻
- Seth has an raised tail, because sṯz means “raising up” (which puns with a different spelling of Seth). 🡻
- Seth is the perverter, because s-th means “make transgress” & “lead astray” (also “attack”). 🡻
- Seth is the god of chaos, because s-tḫtḫ means “to cause disorder”. 🡻
- Seth is the god of storms, because s-ṯȝw means “to cause wind” (and also “to cause misdeeds”). 🡻
- Set is the attacker of Horus, because sṯȝw means “attacker” (identical spelling, perhaps related). 🡻
- Seth is paired with Horus as 2 opponents, because ḥrw for “Horus” also puns with ḫrw for “enemy”.
- Seth was made a symbol by our hidden rulers, because sdḥ / stḫ means “hidden”. 🡻
- Seth & Horus together were made a symbol by our hidden rulers, because Horus & Seth pun with ḥr-stḫ for “hidden ruler”.
The most important official meaning is probably the “attacker”, because our rulers have always loved to make us afraid of something. Satan is a similar pun-enemy.
(The Biblical Seth seems unrelated, he’s probably a mere grammar particle in some genealogy phrase.)
Egyptian s- = causative prefix
𓋴 s- : prefix: used to form a causative verb from a non-causative verb — Egyptian (Wikt)
Egyptian stẖ, stš = Seth
Egyptian sdḥ, stḫ = conceal, hide, hidden
Egyptian dḥ = low; s-dḥ = make low
Egyptian sṯz, sṯs = raise up
Egyptian sd, sḏ = tail
Egyptian th = transgress; s-th = make transgress, lead astray, pervert
sthj : to pervert; to cause obstruction; to seduce; to ban — Egyptian (TLA)
𓏏𓉔𓂾𓂻 thj : to go astray; to transgress; to damage; to deceive; to attack — Egyptian (TLA)
𓏏𓉔𓂾𓂻 thj : go astray, transgress, trespass, attack with, err — Egyptian (AED)
𓏏𓉔𓂾𓂻 thj : lead astray, mislead, overstep path, disobey — Egyptian (AED)
𓏏𓉔𓂾𓂻 thj : impugn one’s character, falsify account — Egyptian (AED)
𓏏𓉔𓅪 thj : falsify account — Egyptian (AED)