Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/129

 described his victories over Set or the monster Tebha (the Typhon of the Greeks). But the victory of Darkness over Light was appropriately represented by the myth of the Blind Horus. An ancient text speaks of him as "sitting solitary in the darkness and blindness." He is introduced in the royal Ritual at Abydos, saying, "I am Horus, and I come to search for mine eyes." According to the 64th chapter of the Book of the Dead, "his eye is restored to him at the dawn of day." A legend contained in the 112th chapter of the same Book describes Horus as wounded in the eye by Set in the form of a black boar. Anubis fomented the wound, of which Horus appears at first to have thought him the author, and according to another legend, Isis stanched the blood which flowed from the wound. But according to another account, Set swallowed the eye, and was compelled to vomit it from the prison in which he was confined, with a chain of steel fastened about his neck. The Eye of Horus is constantly spoken of as a distinct deity, terrible to the enemies of light.

The conflict of Light and Darkness is represented in many other mythical forms. The great Cat in the alley of Persea trees at Heliopolis, which is Rā, crushes the serpent. In most parts of Egypt the sun sets behind a mountain-range; it is only in the north that