Egyptian mythology is the collection of myths from ancient Egypt, which describe the actions of the Egyptian gods as a means of understanding the world. The beliefs that these myths express are an important part of ancient Egyptian religion. Myths a...
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As Horakhty (Horakhti, Harakhty), or "Horus of the two horizons", Horus was the god of the rising and setting sun, specifically the god of the east and the sunrise who was worshipped in Heliopolis. The Pyramid Texts refer to him as "god of the east" linking him with Anhur (who may have been a form of Horus the Elder and Shu), and indicate that the deceased king will be reborn in the eastern sky as Horakhty. In the Book of the Dead Ra is described as "Atum-Horakhty" and Horakhty is linked with Osiris in his role as "the far strider when he crosses the sky".
He was depicted as a falcon or a falcon-headed man wearing the solar disk and the double crown or the atef crown and the uraeus (royal cobra). Sometimes he was depicted as a falcon-headed crocodile who occassionally wears a sun disc.
When this aspect was adopted into the Ennead (Heliopolitan theology) of Ancient Egypt, he became Ra-Heru-akhety (Ra-Horakhty), a combined god of Horus and Ra who represented the sun as it traveled across the sky (while Khepri and Atum represented the rising and setting suns respectively). He was the patron of the Pharaoh and the noble classes and the most popular form of Ra after the Middle Kingdom. Horakhty also seems to have absorbed Horemakhet (Horus in the horizon) during the Middle Kingdom, possibly during the reign of Amenhotep II.
