Note 9 — Chapter VI · Bird and Serpent Myths

How did this myth of the struggle between bird and serpent have origin? The only country in the world in which a great bird hunts serpents is Africa. The bird in question is the famous secretary bird (Serpentarius secretarius), which is nowadays domesticated by South African farmers so as to keep down snakes. It is found in East and West Africa. “In general appearance it looks like a modified eagle mounted on stilts.”9 The bird attacks a snake with wings outspread, and flaps them in front of its body to prevent itself from being bitten during the conflict. Early Egyptian seafarers were no doubt greatly impressed when, “in the land of Punt”, they saw these strange birds, with heads like eagles or hawks, standing over snakes they had clutched in their talons, and then flying away with them dangling from their beaks. The mariners’ stories about the snake-devouring bird appear to have crept into the mythology of Egypt, with the result that the Horus hawk became the hunter of Set in his “hissing serpent” form. Above the hole in the ground into which the Set serpent fled for concealment and safety was set a pole surmounted by the head of the Horus hawk. As Dr. Budge puts it: “Horus, the son of Isis, stood upon him (Set) in the form of a pole or staff, on the top of which was the head of a hawk”.10 But, one may urge, it could not have been until after Egyptian vessels visited the coasts haunted by the secretary bird that the bird and serpent variation of the Horus-Set myth was formulated in the land of Egypt, whence, apparently, it was distributed far and wide. Horus was not necessarily an enemy of serpents, seeing that there are two in his disk.