Talk:Four sons of Horus

Sarcastically?!?

Ok, I gotta admit, the authors detail and research are commendable. Especially the parellel to the chinese philosophy. The jokes "Broken hearts are caused by women..." That's just funny. Usually opinions entered into articles are done so by weasling but this is done with plain sarcasim that is suprisingly cute but not overwhelming and has actually made my Egyptian research more enjoyable.

--Trey Nitrotoluene 01:47, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

No sources!

These stories behind the names -- it's the first I've ever heard of them -- Qebehsenuef is a reference to poison!? Imseti means kindly one!? Duamutef in reference to his motherland!? ims-ib means kindly -- but that has a different orthography. If there are no sources for any of this, this article should be scrapped. --Cliau 04:33, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree the derivation and meaning of the SoH given here are highly speculative and I intend to update. I would like to know where they came from since I can find no reference to any of this in the books I have read.Apepch7 23:56, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Egyptian artefact type

This is one of the most common artefact types of Egypt, since so many tombs, and mummies are in museums. I'm pretty sure some great examples (A Picture) of One of the four Canopic jars could be put on this page. Michael intheHOTdesertofYUMA,Az--Mmcannis 13:10, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

A more appropriate picture would be a group of the 4 jars, good resolution, with the 4 differing lids on the jars.--MichaelinHotYUMA,Az--Mmcannis 17:24, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I have added some pictures today - but these are the best I have - so if you have better. Apepch7 23:57, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Complete re-edit

I have completely redone this page but I still have to add references (which are available) and further reading. I liked some of the previous entry especially the link to forms of death but could find no justification for this view in Egyptology which makes it just an opinion not fact.Apepch7 11:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Umm ... the photos you have used are the Canopic Jars at the British Museum which have the heads of Duamutef and Quebesenuef swapped! Apparently they were made that way, but it might confuse people who are learning hieroglyphs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hamstermoon (talk • contribs) 18:44, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Merge individual entries for the Four sons ??

I was wondering whether it would make sense to move any information about each of the Four Sons not already in this entry here and then turn the other entries into redirections to here. The reason I think this is that I am not sure there is very much to say about the Four Sons individually rather than as a group.

Molybdomancer 23:15, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be much in the individual entries that isn't in the main article - except perhaps the names of the seven spirits under Queb. I think your suggestion is a good one. Apepch7 17:57, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Am guessing that Molybdomancer has already gone ahead with the merger, as there's little extra in the other offshoot articles. I recommend that you keep the links to the individual sons as is though, since more can be written about them outside of the canopic connotations presented here in this article.

Will try to spend some time tonight cleaning up the formatting for the article. Can somebody supply page references for the spells from the Book of the Dead referenced here?

Kudos to Apepch7 for supplying the main photo used at the top of the article. For the record there are others that could also be used on Wikimedia Commons, in a specific category for canopic jars. However the image on the four sons from the tomb of Ay appears to be derived from here, and ought to be removed (it's a good image, but it's arguably a copyright violation).

Cheers! Captmondo 00:13, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I've removed the offending pic - no idea where I got it from probably where you said. Shame because I think its significant link between these deities and the ancient pre-dynastic kings of Upper and Lower Egypt and may explain the jackal/hawk symbolism. Ah well. Apepch7 21:29, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't disagree with you. Hopefully somebody will make a trip to the tomb of Ay someday, take a (flashless) pic and then post the image to Wikimedia Commons. Will keep an eye out for something else that might be able to used in its place if I run across it. Cheers! Captmondo 23:25, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Pictures

The pictures now appear in the entry for Hapi - but should be with the intro section can anyone move them I can't figure out how. Apepch7 (talk) 01:42, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Compass Directions Reference: NPOV?

I've noted this and the Hapi (son of Horus)pages have been constantly vandalized and for that my confidence in it is a little bit hurt. I really cannot find any reliable reference linking the "Hapi" son of Horus with the direction north. Looks like it was a later edit and could be some sort of vandalism. Several online references, including [1] page 78 links Hapi with east direction. Also, unless I've looked in the wrong place, the Spell 148 of the Book of Dead don't even mention the sons of Horus, or Hapi specifically. Please take a look in the Hapi historic page to see what I'm talking about.

I would really like to have access to this suspicious reference 9: Lurker, op.cit., p.104. Anyone could check this one? It was created back in 14 august 2007 along with a batch by 'Andi d'. Please check here[2] the version history of Hapi

"Adtollite portas principes vestras" 23:45, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

In Richard Wilkinson's The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson 2003, the associations of the Four Sons with directions, organs, animals, and goddesses are listed on p. 88 as follows:

"Imsety Human Liver South Isis

Duamutef Jackal Stomach East Neith

Hapy Baboon Lungs North Nephthys

Qebesenuef Falcon Intestines West Serket"

Wilkinson describes these as "geographic associations" while the book you linked calls it "direction of head" and either the two books are talking about something different, one of the two books is just wrong, or the direction varied from one burial to another.

- 97.127.85.66 (talk) 04:34, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

The picture show not the sons of Horus but of Osiris

The picture didn't show the sons of Horus but the sons of Osiris (left to right: the elder Horus, Anubis, Makedon and the younger Horus).--2003:F5:F719:AA00:3C00:EDF3:2F7B:7EFB (talk) 10:33, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

@2003:F5:F719:AA00:3C00:EDF3:2F7B:7EFB: I'm sorry, but that's incorrect, and I don't know where you're getting your information from. The four sons of Horus were Imsety, Duamutef, Hapy, and Qebesenuef, and they were generally portrayed in these four animal-headed forms. As far as I know, Osiris was never said to have had four sons; most traditions seem to treat Horus as his only child, although some texts mention a daughter, Horit, whose name simply means "female Horus". A. Parrot (talk) 17:04, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Potential POV alert - Representing four corners of the earth

The Sons of Horus are on Egyptian papyri that were incorrectly translated by Joseph Smith to be the Book of Abraham. One of translations says that the sons of Horus "Represents this earth in its four quarters." This specific article was specifically called out by Egyptologist Robert K. Ritner in this podcast as having been infiltrated by Mormon apologists to support Joseph Smith's inaccurate interpretation. I am not an Egyptologist, and would like to throw it out to the wikipedia collective who hopefully has more experience before I start making too many edits, but from my research, it seems that the Sons of Horus were at times associated with cardinal directions, but did not represent the cardinal directions. Epachamo (talk) 18:52, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

@Epachamo: Having skimmed that video, I didn't find a point where Ritner said this article might have been distorted by apologists. He did say there was a POV-pushing WP article on "Shinehah", but I searched for one and didn't find it. In any case, I don't see anything in the current text that treats the Four Sons as personifying the directions rather than being associated with them. A. Parrot (talk) 22:09, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Who is "N"?

"You are the great runner; come, that you may join up my father N and not be far in this your name of Hapi, for you are the greatest of my children – so says Horus".

"You have come to N; betake yourself beneath him and lift him up, do not be far from him, (even) N, in your name of Imsety." George Rodney Maruri Game (talk) 20:27, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

It's a convention for the name of the deceased person in a funerary text, which would vary depending on which individual copy of a text you're looking at. The Pyramid Texts in the pyramid of Unas would say "Unas" where, in the same spell, the Pyramid Texts of Pepi I would say "Pepi"; the Papyrus of Ani would say "Ani" at the same point where the Papyrus of Hunefer would say "Hunefer", and so forth. The "N" stands for "name", referring to the place where the name of the text's owner would go. A. Parrot (talk) 20:48, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

After more than a week, the proposal has attracted two supporters and no opposition, so I'm going to carry out the merge. A. Parrot (talk) 03:41, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

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I think the articles about the four individual deities (Imsety, Hapi (Son of Horus), Duamutef and Qebehsenuef) should be merged into and redirected to this page. These deities only ever seem to have functioned as a group, unlike the Ennead or even the Ogdoad, where some or all members of each group had spheres of influence outside the group. The standard reference works for Egyptian deities—Richard H. Wilkinson's Complete Gods and Goddesses (2003), George Hart's Dictionary (2005), the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt (2001), Geraldine Pinch's Egyptian Mythology (2002)—all have entries for the four sons of Horus as a group, not as individuals. Even the Egyptians themselves often interchanged the functions and iconographies of each deity, so that, for example, Hapy sometimes ended up guarding the stomach and Duamutef the lungs, and the heads of Duamutef and Qebehsenuef were frequently swapped. The idea of a set of four deities protecting the remains of the deceased was seemingly paramount, and the specific functions of each deity were secondary.

Given all that, I think it's easiest to comprehensively discuss the four sons in this article rather than elsewhere, particularly if the article ceases to be padded with quotations from funerary texts the way it is now. A comprehensive version of this article would render the individual ones redundant. A. Parrot (talk) 18:00, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

yea,I think thats a good idea, so people could learn about the four sons as indivuals. 209.6.26.185 (talk) 21:44, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Agree. They are essentially discussed as a group. Redtigerxyz ^Talk 14:39, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Reworking the article

I've completed the merge, but I haven't moved anything from the merged articles into this one. The text for each of merged articles was pretty much the same as the text of the section on each son, because that text was actually copied from this article into those ones some time ago, in attempt to expand them. The only potentially useful things in those articles were a few images, but images of the four sons can be taken from the category on Commons as needed.

The extant text is a mess, too, no matter where it goes. Much of it seems to date from the days when User:-Ril- was writing dubious speculation in just about every article on an Egyptian deity. The result is a bunch of quotations from funerary texts strung together with original research, as in this passage about Hapi: "The spelling of his name includes a hieroglyph which is thought to be connected with steering a boat, although its exact nature is not known. For this reason he was sometimes connected with navigation, although early references call him the great runner: 'You are the great runner; come, that you may join up my father N and not be far in this your name of Hapi, for you are the greatest of my children – so says Horus'". We should not quote the most cryptic genre in all of ancient Egyptian literature willy-nilly; quotations should only be used when secondary sources point them out as particularly relevant.

I intend to rework the article over the next few weeks, to reflect what the secondary sources actually say and emphasize. Those sources show the sons have few individual characteristics aside from their respective connections with organs, directions, protective goddesses, and animal heads, and those attributes, as I said above, were somewhat interchangeable. So I may end up scrapping even the basic format of having one section for each deity, instead having sections that cover the group collectively. The set of sections I'm thinking of, which resembles the ones I used at Isis and Hathor, is: 1. Names and origins; 2 Roles; 3 Iconography; and 4. Worship.

If anyone has input on or objections to this, feel free to say so. A. Parrot (talk) 05:12, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

I ended up being stuck on the four sons' connection with directions. There's no disputing that the Egyptians made such a connection, but I wasn't able to trace the standard scheme that you find in most sources (Imsety: south; Hapi: north; Duamutef: east; Qebehsenuef: west) to any Egyptian text.

Maarten Raven's article "Egyptian concepts on the orientation of the human body" (2005) seems to suggest two different systems of orientation in the inscriptions on coffins: one in the Middle Kingdom, when the coffin was ideally oriented with the head to the north, and another in the New Kingdom, when the coffin was ideally oriented with the head to the west. In the Middle Kingdom, Hapy's text was placed in the northwest quadrant of the coffin, Imsety's in the northeast, Duamutef's in the southeast, and Qebehsenuef's in the southwest. In the New Kingdom, it would be Hapi NW, Qebehsenuef NE, Duamutef SE, and Imsety SW. It doesn't seem that Imsety ever appeared on a southern quadrant of a coffin at the same time that Qebehsenuef appeared on a western one, so if Raven is correct, the usual scheme can't be based on the coffins.

I thought there could well be some other source for the conventional scheme in other types of Egyptian texts or iconography, but I couldn't track it down. I looked at all the references to the four sons in the three major funerary texts (Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, and Book of the Dead) and found nothing there. Finally, I emailed Aidan Dodson, who wrote the article about the four sons in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, and his reply said "I was guilty of repeating 'common knowledge' when writing the OEAE entry many years ago, and it's also a long time (25+ years) since I’ve taken any particular research interest in the Four Sons of Horus… I would be interested if you can find an original source. There is a lot of Egyptology that has 'received wisdom' like this, and where it is tested, it is often found lacking."

The closest match to the conventional scheme that I can find is that (again, according to Raven) the four tutelary goddesses appeared on Middle Kingdom coffins with Nephthys at the head (north), Isis at the foot (south), and Serqet on the west side of the foot and Neith on the east. If you equate the four sons with the positions of their respective tutelary goddesses, you have the conventional scheme. Perhaps some nineteenth-century Egyptologist did exactly that, giving rise to the "received wisdom".

The conventional scheme is repeated widely enough that it has to be mentioned here, and no published reliable source that I know of has criticized it. But given Dodson's doubts, I will try to figure out a way to write about it without overtly criticizing it (which, in the absence of a source, would of course be OR) but also without implying that it is settled fact. A. Parrot (talk) 18:39, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, after checking Raven yet again, I found that in the conclusion it does mention that some coffins place the four sons according to the conventional scheme, even though he doesn't discuss it at any point earlier in the paper (rrrgh). My apologies if I misled you, Dr. Dodson... Anyway, I'm going to upload a rewritten version of the article. A. Parrot (talk) 19:42, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Four sons of Horus/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 17:27, 7 May 2023 (UTC) I'll have a go at this well-organised article. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:27, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

Comments

• Wikilink Horus, Isis where first used.

Done.

• Actually, both Horus and Isis need to be introduced (glossed) briefly when first mentioned in the main text, just enough to set them in context. For instance, if Horus is their father and Isis is their mother, what does that say about them?

I've added very slight glosses. The problem is that the sources don't say specifically what the relationship with Isis. Both deities had a very varied range of roles, and giving them a descriptor that emphasizes one of those roles (e.g., "Isis, a goddess connected with funerary rites…") would seem to imply that that role is the one most relevant to the four sons, which would be going beyond the sources. Horus is a little different. Like Isis, he plays a major role in the mythology surrounding Osiris's funerary rites, and until I looked closely at Raven 2005, I assumed that the four sons were an extension of that aspect of their father's mythology. But the sources don't suggest that as their origin, whereas Raven 2005 suggests they were originally celestial instead.

• Wikilink sarcophagus/i.

Done.

• The acronym "PT" is used only twice, just after it was (obscurely) introduced. Suggest it is spelled out instead.

I decided to write "Spell", same as for the Book of the Dead. I hope I've written it in such a way that it's clear which funerary text I'm referring to when I do so.

• In both "Names and origins" and in "Iconography" we have mentions of femaleness of Imsety. Perhaps these belong together?

If you want, though I'll hold off on combining them until the point below is dealt with.

I suggest you do, but it can't be a show-stopper so it's up to you.

• "these two sons were originally male and female pairs of deities." --- So Hapy and Imsety were originally 4 deities? Or the 4 sons of Horus were originally two male-female pairs? Or the Hapy-Imsety pair were originally hermaphrodites? Or....? This does rather need to be clarified.

Taylor doesn't elaborate very much. His exact wording is "In these early sources [the Pyramid Texts], at least two of the 'sons' were pairs of gods, male and female counterparts, an original status reflected in the survival of the grammatical dual-endings -ty/wy in the name of Imsety, and probably also of Hapy (which seems to have originally been Hepwy)." I assume that means Hapy and Imsety were originally four deities.

This passage in Taylor seems to mean that the Pyramid Texts treat Hapy and Imsety as two pairs of deities. But I've read all the references to the four sons in Allen 2005, and if the texts treat them that way, it doesn't come through clearly in Allen's translation. It's rather strange, and I'm not entirely sure how to handle it.

Sounds as if Taylor wasn't sure either. I think we need a footnote saying the sources are unclear here.

I don't know how to go about this. We're not supposed to be making comments on the inadequacy of our sources (except grumbling on talk pages, of course).

I've tweaked the wording to make it clear that these two sons were originally two pairs of deities, so the other interpretations above are excluded. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:27, 11 May 2023 (UTC)

• I'm slightly wondering why we have separate articles for Canopic jar and Four sons of Horus but I think I see the reason. I'd suggest we have a short subsection (under Roles, maybe) on "=== Canopic jars ===" ... "{{main|Canopic jar}}" ... to explain briefly what the jars were for. I think the existing text within "Protectors of the deceased" might well work better if pulled out and slightly reformulated in this way, i.e. something about Horus and his role, something about the sons and their roles, something separately about the jars.

I'm not entirely sure what you're envisioning.

The further link certainly helps to make the relationship of the two articles clearer, thank you.

• It crossed my mind to have a diagram of the body with the four internal organs highlighted (in colour, maybe), with lines in the four compass directions NW NE SE SW to the four sons, pictured, and lines from them to the four goddesses, pictured... Maybe. Not a GA requirement but it might give the reader the impression of understanding something.

Raven 2005 has charts, so maybe I could draw something based on it at some point.

That would be lovely.

• I guess the obvious question, to which there is probably no short answer, is why the four sons are usually mapped to these four organs, what did it all mean? Ideally a one-word clue for each organ ...

It seems no one is sure, although Raven says there may be a connection between the organs and the directions. I've added a sentence about it.

• Horus is falcon-headed; is there any reason that Qebehsenuef has the same head as his father?

Your comment below is correct; nobody seems to know.

• "stars in the northern sky" --- do we know which four stars?

The sources don't specify aside from Mathieu, on which see below.

• This reader's head started to spin with all the periods mentioned. A small timeline in a box somewhere would be helpful.

I'm not sure how to handle this. All articles that cover long stretches of ancient Egyptian history have this problem. There is a navbox about this (Template:Ancient Egypt dynasties sidebar), but navboxes aren't supposed to be used outside the articles they link to.

Mmm. A similar sidebar, perhaps not that exact one, could certainly be used as a timeline. Over in biology, we use explicit timeline structures like Template:Abiogenesis timeline to provide temporal context. That one is quite elaborate, but a much simpler table (for instance, with bordering lines suppressed) could provide a navigable timeline of the dynasties, with dates and significant events (Horus first named...). I'd almost dispute that the sidebar you mention is really a pure navbox as it certainly has a dual role, but specialising it would of course resolve the matter.

• Is it "Ramesseum Dramatic Papyrus" or "Dramatic Ramesseum Papyrus"?

• A. Parrot - I see you've fixed this and some other items. If you could mark the ones you've done here in this list as you go along, it'd be appreciated. Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:44, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm formulating my replies as I go; hoping to finish in just a bit. A. Parrot (talk) 07:27, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Both are used. Geisen uses R-D-P, but I've changed it to match the WP article title.

• Spot-checks OK.

• The "Further Reading" paper by Bernard Mathieu is interesting, not least for its long list of alternative names for the four sons - the children of Atum, or of Geb, or of Nut.... these do seem rather worth a mention.

The problem with Mathieu, for me, is that I can't really read French. Google Translate seems to be pretty good at rendering French these days, but I'm leery of using machine translation without a human backup. If you want, I can run Mathieu's paper through Google Translate and use it to make additions to the article addressing this point, as well as the others that you list below based on Mathieu, and you can check those passages to make sure I've understood the text correctly.

Yes, let's do that. I tend to forget that people find French difficult! I have of course already provided some human readings of Mathieu below.

• Mathieu says that there is nothing in the Pyramid Texts which mentions the iconography of the four heads (guess this answers the Qebehsenuef question with "we don't know", unless other texts mention the matter).

• Mathieu mentions that the words for Imsety and "liver" are Jms.t and mjs.t, suggesting by paronomasia an ancient connection between the two, which seems rather relevant here.

I've added a sentence about it.

• Similarly, Mathieu writes that Qebehsenuef has the etymological meaning "that which is in the belly", jmj-h.t, hence "intestines".

I don't see that in the translation. Qebehsenuef's name doesn't really resemble jmj-h.t. I think Mathieu is saying that the word for "intestine" means "what is in the belly", so Qebehsenuef's purview can encompass all the organs and thus he can represent the four sons collectively.

• Mathieu also mentions stars both in the northern sky and the southern, including Orion's Belt with 4 stars around it which he suggests could easily be Osiris protected by the Four Sons of Horus. A glance at Orion (constellation) shows these to be Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Saiph, and Rigel.

• Done.

• The images are all appropriately licensed on Commons.

• Image captions are helpful and appropriate. I would suggest though that we accompany the image of the Human-headed canopic jars with a brief statement that this form persisted for many centuries, i.e. it was not limited to the 18th Dynasty.

That feels a bit repetitive of the text in the body. Adding another image of jars from an earlier period would emphasize the point without repeating it (File:Ignota prov., cista con vasi canopi, XII-XIII dinastia, 1938-1640 ac..JPG is a decent one, and it has the advantage of showing the jars in a canopic chest), but that would end up pushing the last image in the gallery onto another line. A. Parrot (talk) 07:49, 9 May 2023 (UTC)

Good idea, that would help; we could add the image using Template:multiple image to place the images side-by side, or we could use a gallery with mode=packed to centre the images.

Done.

Summary

This is a fascinating and well-constructed article, suitably illustrated. I hope to see it at GA very shortly. If you could indicate under each comment when you have responded to it, that would be helpful. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:34, 7 May 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Bruxton (talk) 00:56, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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Depiction of the four sons of Horus

• ... that the four sons of Horus (pictured) were believed to have protected deceased people in the afterlife by creating a specialized connection with the internal organs of the deceased? Source: Pinch, Geraldine (2002). Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517024-5. Page 204
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Supreme War Command

Improved to Good Article status by A. Parrot (talk). Nominated by Onegreatjoke (talk) at 20:44, 15 May 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Four sons of Horus; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.

• Very interesting article, well written and referenced. Hook is interesting, fact is in the article and referenced, but not to the source cited in the nomination (instead, reference is Ikram & Dodson 1998, pp. 276, 278). AGF on the largely offline sources, but a Google search gives little reason to doubt that they have been misused. QPQ done. Good to go! Constantine ✍ 12:36, 18 May 2023 (UTC)