Bronze statuette representing the god Seth, dating to the New Kingdom (about 1295-1070 B.C.), now in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen, Denmark. Ordinarily, this god is represented with long ears, which in this case have been substituted with a pair of ram horns. Seth is always shown with an animal head, but it is difficult to decide what kind of animal: its features could recall the orycteropus or aardvark (Orycteropus afer), a nocturnal mammal which subsists on ants and termites, living also in semi-arid regions, digging burrows in which to live during daytime. According to other interpretations, the animal associated with Seth is a blending of various species or a thoroughly imaginary being.
In Egyptian mythology Seth was the son of Geb, the god of the Earth, and brother of Osiris. Jealous of his brother’s role, he tricked and slew him, dismembered Osiris’s corpse and dispersed its pieces. These pieces were then recovered by Isis who brought him to life again. As a result of this episode, Seth became a symbol for evil, trickery, and of the baleful forces that threaten the social order. He was identified with the desert, with the storm that ravages the fields, with the heat that parches the crops (Lesko 2005e). While Osiris represented the regular succession of the seasonal cycles and of the Nile flood, Seth impersonated the side of disorder, of the unexpected. As “god of confusion” (te Velde 1967) therefore he represented the irruption of the “wild” element in the social and natural order.


[Image: http://www.joanannlansberry.com/fotoart/lacma/menacing.html]