Haroeris

Egypt had two Horuses and never tidied them up. The famous one is the son of Isis and Osiris, the heir who takes his father's throne from Set. The older one is Haroeris, Horus the Great, who is the sky itself with the sun and moon for eyes, and who is Set's brother rather than his nephew — so that the same fight between the same two names is in one telling a war of succession and in another a quarrel between siblings. He has his own half of the temple at Kom Ombo, a building constructed symmetrically so that he and Sobek could each have a complete temple inside one enclosure.

Variant accounts

• Whether Haroeris is a separate god or a form of Horus is a matter of convention.Some treatments list Haroeris among the forms of Horus, alongside Harsiese, Harpocrates and Harakhty; others treat him as a distinct older deity whom the Osirian myth later absorbed under a shared name. This registry records him separately because he has his own temple, his own genealogy and his own iconography, and marks the disagreement here rather than deciding it.Reference treatments of the forms of Horus, which differ on whether Haroeris is a form or a separate deity. (secondary)

Domains

• sky

Relations

• counterpart of: HorusThe registry's Horus is the son of Isis, the heir who contends with Set for the throne. Haroeris belongs to an older layer in which Horus is the sky itself and Set's brother rather than his nephew — the same name covering two genealogies, which Egyptian theology never resolved and this registry does not either.Reference treatment distinguishing Haroeris, Horus the Elder, from Horus son of Isis and Osiris. (secondary)

Sources

• Haroeris is Horus the Elder, the falcon sky god of the older stratum whose eyes are the sun and moon, brother rather than son of Osiris, worshipped in his own half of the double temple at Kom Ombo.: Reference treatments of Haroeris, of the Horus forms and of Kom Ombo. (secondary)