The Case of Horus versus Seth
Bird-headed creatures from the ancient world! See them bite! Fight! And—they’re gods!
It ain’t just mummies in Egypt, y’know!
The text comes from a twelfth-century BCE papyrus, purchased on the illegal antiquities market in the ‘Roaring Twenties’ of the twentieth century.
The 3,400 year old ‘fable’ is a parade example of the particularly African genius of this particularly African country. Written in play form (and possibly performed as a puppet show), it shows an intuitive humor and love of language which will be familiar from Black American comedy. This story is also, unambiguously, an African animal fable, of the kind familiar from Uncle Remus and the Signifying Monkey folk poetry.
As much as any Grimm’s Fairy Tale, this narrative also works on the level of children’s literature—but not the sanitized, dumbed-down, and prettied-up children’s literature of commercial
publishing. This is the kind of primary-process, uninhibited, nastily hilarious fantasy that children (and adults) actually delight in. Literature with guts: greasy grimy gopher guts, to be precise.
excerpt from the book
Neith’s letter was brought to the gods as they sat in the hall named “Long-Horned-Horus-Prevails.” It was given to Thoth. He read it before Ra and the gods, who said with one voice, “This goddess is right!”
The lord of all things, Ra, became angry at Horus as a result of this, and said to him, “You’re a puny weakling, the job of kingship’s too big for you. You’re just a little boy with sour milk-breath from sucking your mother’s tit.”
Then Onuris began to rage, and the whole divine senate with him. A minor demon named Baba pulled himself up to his full height and said to Ra, “Oh, who cares what you think, you’re nothing but an implausible old superstition.”
Ra was terribly hurt by this. He lay down on his back, with his heart just aching.
The gods left, shouting at Baba, “Leave us, what you have done is a terrible, awful crime.” Then they retired to their tents.
The supreme god passed a day lying on his back in his pavilion, all alone, his feelings brutally wounded. Now after a long while the tree-goddess Hathor came along, stood before the lord god her father, lifted her skirt, bent over and wiggled her ass and cunt at him.
This made the great god laugh. He got up, went back to his seat among the pantheon and said to Horus and Seth, “Let’s hear what you two have to say for yourselves.”