Seth, one of our most prominent figures, and yet also a greatly contested one. From the Old Kingdom to the New, we had lost the truth behind his depictions. He was drawn with an animal head no one knew the source of. What was he? But as I took in his figure, it was so clear, seeing him in full dimension instead of etched or painted on flat surfaces.
He had medium-dark skin, a red and gold wrist cuff with the symbol of his animal on it, which had a long nose and tall ears, somewhere between an aardvark and a jackal. In truth, he wore a headdress like many of his brethren but with a mask attached made entirely out of bone, the skull of an antelope with its tall horns, which in shadow looked very much like the Seth animal argued about. From beneath the bottom of the headdress spilled long, wild red hair, as long as Ra’s had been but like the reddest part of the sands at sunset.
As Seth came crashing down upon the giant coiled body of Apophis that had infiltrated Ra’s boat, he stabbed the end of his spear into the beast’s side and sliced deep along its tail, causing several large scales to dislodge and clatter to the boat deck. The scales were dark, black where they connected to Apophis’s flesh, but red along their edges as if dipped in blood.
“Go!” Seth yelled at me as actual blood began to pour from Apophis’s wound, and the great snake rose up again, snapping its teeth and readying to attack.
I turned and leapt from the boat as sense at last returned to me, racing through the entrance into the rockface and down thecorridor. As I went, the illumination inside made it easier to see that I escaped into a home, for I could see chairs, a table, a daybed, and household items, including a burning hearth.
I whipped around once I had reached the safety within, staring back down the corridor to the docked boat and ensuing battle.
Apophis snapped at Seth again and again, truly massive in size and greatly dwarfing the god, while he continued to leap and flip through the air like some hero out of an epic, weightless and thrilling to witness. Relentless as he was, however, I could already see some of the places where he had torn into Apophis starting to heal and stitch back together. Any damage done to the beast was temporary, and Seth had to stay ahead of its healing, enough to force it into submission until the next dawn.
For that was Seth’s punishment, an endless loop of fending off Apophis’s chaos.
Once, Ra had fought the beast each morning on his own, but it was Seth’s job now to protect the sun god and ensure his day boat reached the sky as penance for having slain his brother, Osiris, and later losing to Osiris’s avenging son.
It was one of the most famous of the gods’ stories, for Osiris was a very special god, son of Geb and sent to earth to guide humanity as Kemet’s first king. Some stories gave that title to Ra, but his supposed rule on earth and ascent to the skies was mostly one of our stories used to explain the rising and setting of the sun. Osiris was the true king, the one who had brought civilization to Kemet.
But Seth had been jealous of his brother, believing it should be him who reigned. He murdered and dismembered Osiris and took over the kingdom, ruling with an iron fist and sewing chaos over Osiris’s peace. Osiris’s wife, Isis, retrieved his scattered remains and rebuilt him, resurrecting him with the power of her devotion, but it was still only a partial rebirth. He became ruler of the Underworld instead of a king of men. His reunion with Isisalso birthed Horus, Seth’s nephew, who immediately sought to avenge his father and challenged Seth for the throne. Uncle and nephew were called to face each other in a number of challenges. Who truly won each round was much debated, and the details were... odd, to say the least. But one thing was certain: Seth eventually lost, Horus was made king, and Seth's punishment from then after was decided.
In our history, he had gone from being a necessary chaos, much like Apophis itself, to a cosmic villain, sometimes even reviled. But to witness him defend against the snake, feinting, twirling out of harm’s reach, and flying through the air to get in strike after strike was like watching my fellow dancers. Mesmerizing and mighty.
What made Seth’s attire even more elaborate than the other gods’ was that it was in shades of red more than gold, with intermittent blues, as well as scales that adorned it all, clearly taken as trophies from Apophis and mixed with the bones from other kills.
Or so I assumed. The bones were too small to have also been from Apophis.
I just hoped none of them were from humans.
As Seth finally lodged his spear into the snake’s eye, Apophis roared—definitely the sound I had been hearing—shook its head in frustration and panic, and dove over the side of the boat to the depths below. It would slither off into hiding to heal and return again before the next night ended.
I sagged against the archway that opened from the corridor into Seth’s home, my knees weak and trembling and heart still pounding. I glanced behind me, taking in more of the humble living space. It was small, a single cozy room with bare amenities, but everything inside was so beautiful. The furniture was carved from the stone itself and inlaid with more of those glittering scales. Indeed, everything was made from reddish-brown stone and Apophis’s red and black snake scales, giving everything from practical items to artistic decor a ruby shimmer.
There were bones here too, used as decoration with the scales, some even forming the full animals they once had been that I assumed Seth had hunted and eaten, like antelope, similar to his mask. He lived among death, entombed all alone. As beautiful as it all was, I felt an instant sinking sorrow.
I heard snuffling like from a dog and whirled back around. Ra’s boat was leaving, transforming as it unmoored from the night boat to the bright and colorful one for the day. I couldn’t see Ra, but I knew he was there, ready to bring the morn.
At the far entrance into the corridor stood the silhouette of a jackal.
I lurched backward. No. That was the Seth animal on all fours, hidden in shadow. Was he a man with an antelope skull for a crown, or some chimera yet unknown? Having spent my time with Ra, I had to remind myself that both could be true.
As I continued to back up until I felt my legs reach the table, the animal trotted toward me. It was too low to the ground for the torchlight to fully illuminate it, but just as it reached the archway and would become bathed in light it couldn’t escape, the torso of a man stretched upright, like Seth had simply been crawling.
He was the warrior I had seen, with a skull mask and long red hair.
With no weapon.
“Your spear?” I questioned, for Ra’s boat was out of sight and Apophis long gone too.
Seth held out a hand, and a roar echoed, more distant than any of the others but also more pained, as the spear was summoned from the eye it had been lodged within, as if the monster had already started to heal around it, only for the wound to violentlyreopen. Next, I heard the slicing song of air being cut until the spear found its home back in Seth’s grasp.
It showed no stains, perhaps having cleaned itself during its flight, and Seth hung it upon the wall just inside the archway on a custom-made hook. He spread his arms, and his armor, dismissed from him like he had shrugged off a robe, hung itself on the wall beside the spear, leaving him in a simple red tunic that may as well have been dyed with blood.
The skull mask remained, and as Seth moved his hands to either side of it, I knew not what to expect or whether the headdress was only a headdress.
I opened my mouth to speak.
“Do not tell me I need not hide my nature,” Seth snarled, easier to recognize now as his voice than when he was yelling at me. This was the same snide and unimpressed tambor I had taken as his when the gods offered me these trials.
