Contendings of Horus and Seth
The rightful succession of a god-king can be decided only through a farcical, decades-long tribunal of the gods, in which cleverness and spite matter as much as legitimate claim.
- a succession dispute settled by a comic divine tribunal
- an irreverent, bawdy tone applied to the central kingship myth
- Horus's kingship affirmed as rightful despite decades of delay
- Seth compensated rather than destroyed
A comic and often bawdy mythological narrative preserved on Papyrus Chester Beatty I, in which a divine tribunal, presided over by Ra and the creator-arbiter Neith, spends eighty years deciding whether Horus or his uncle Seth should inherit the throne of the murdered Osiris. The contest includes trials of strength, sexual humiliation, and outright cheating by both sides before Horus is finally confirmed as rightful king, with Seth compensated with a place at Ra's side in the sky, an unusually irreverent tone for a text concerning Egypt's central kingship myth.
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