Seth is one of the oldest gods in Egypt. He is depicted as a man with the head of a mysterious animal. This "Seth's beast" has a narrowed face, standing, but shortened, as if "circumcised" ears. Some scientists believe this image is the fruit of the fantastic imagination of the Egyptians. Others try to guess one of the real representatives of the African fauna. The "Seth's Beast" has been associated with the African fox by a fenek, an ocapi, a tapir or (the most probable hypothesis) a pipe tooth at different times.
In myths, Seth represents chaos, disorder and turmoil. These qualities were also emphasized by ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, where the sign "Seth's beast" was included in the writing of the words "storm", "disease", "cruelty", "rage", "despoty", etc.
Seth is best known as the hero of the myth of Osiris. According to this legend, Osiris and Seth were brother gods, sons of the sky goddess Nut and the goddess of the earth Geba. Osiris began to reign in Egypt. He has glorified the board of many blessings, distribution of knowledge and a civilization. Seth, who envied his brother, insidiously inclined him to lie in a magnificent box and killed him, leaving him in the Nile. However, Osiris' wife, Isis, sought out her husband's body and, through magic spells, was able to conceive from a dead son, the Glee Club (Mountain). Having given birth to a child, Isis had to hide with him in the papyrus of the Nile marshes, for Seth wanted to kill the heir to his victim. The choir was happy to escape the terrible dangers, and when it grew up it entered into a long and brutal battle with Seth. In this battle, Seth ripped out Seth's eyes from the Glee Club, which turned into a magic wadget, and the Glee Club castrated Seth and finally defeated him. He had fallen from the Egyptian throne, which he had captured after Osiris' murder, and forced him to leave the fertile land around the Nile for the surrounding desert. Seth remained in power over these strange, hostile territories to Egypt. His castration by the Choir explained the infertility of these lands, which were devoid of living vegetation
There are a number of explanations for the myth of Glee Club and Seth fighting. On some assumptions in this legend events of political association of Egypt on boundary IV-III millennia BC were reflected in this legend. In this epoch two parts of the country struggled with each other - southern (the Top Egypt) and northern (the Lower Egypt, around Nile Delta). Result, however, became conquest of the North by the South - and it contradicts sense of a myth where the Choir, on the contrary, personified the North, and Seth - the South.
According to other interpretation, the myth has been connected with even more ancient historical incidents - association of only the South of Egypt, earlier divided on a number of Princedoms (Nomes). Chronologically, it preceded the conquest of the North by the South. According to this hypothesis, the god Khor was revered in the upper Egyptian city of Nechen, and Seth - in the city of Nagada, which was located down the Nile. In struggle for hegemony over the South of Egypt Nechen subdued Nagada, which was expressed in the legendary legend.
Researchers note that in representation of ancient Egyptians the Choir and Seth acted as eternal contenders - but also inseparable up to an intercondition. They could not think without each other, as if they were two sides of one essence - the royal power. The image of the Choir embodied its creative, ordering, gracious sides, and in Sete - destructive, harsh, punitive. The contrast between these two gods revives in the memory of F. Nietzsche's reasoning about the Apollonian and Dionysian principles as the two fundamental principles of life.
The image of Seth was demonized only at the end of the history of Ancient Egypt, while at the beginning of its cult this god carried a lot of positive things. Legend has it that Seth, thanks to his desperate bravery, defended the celestial barque of the solar god Ra from the attacks of the evil snake Apopus. The Egyptians probably thought that without destruction and violence it was impossible to create, neither statehood nor the world order in general.
Probably, in the most ancient Egyptian mythology Seth and Glee Club seemed to be opposite, but equally necessary beginnings, whose constant conflict and creates a universal balance. If we consider Seth a purely negative deity, it is impossible to explain why his cult was preserved in Egypt for many centuries and enjoyed great respect. There is vague information that at first after the creation of a single Egyptian monarchy (beginning of the III millennium BC) Seth continued to challenge the rank of the main state god of the choir. During the Ist dynasty of pharaohs the worship of the Glee Club prevailed, but one of the representatives of the II-nd dynasty, Peribsen, in his royal title put Seth in first place. This religious struggle ended under Pharaoh Hasekhemui, who included both Chorus and Seth in his title as a religious compromise.
The image of Seth became negative only in the New Kingdom era, after the period of conquest of Northern Egypt by the Hiksocians.