A modern artistic rendition of Set (left), square-tipped ears and proboscis-like snout as compared to his modern-day reformulation as the Devil (Satan) or fallen angel.

“We have now seen how the god Set was the opponent first of Heru-ur [3,100BC], then of Ra [2600BC], and finally of Osiris [1100BC] and his son Horus [332BC], and that during the long period of Egyptian history his attributes changed according to the various modifications which took place in the beliefs concerning this god in the minds of the Egyptians, and that from being a power of nature, the darkness, he became the symbol and personification of both physical and moral evil.”

“Set was the god of the downward motion of the sun in the lower hemisphere, in a southerly direction, and for this reason he was the source of the destructive heat of summer; and since the days began to diminish after the summer solstice, it was declared that he stole the light from Horus or Ra, and he was held to be the cause of all the evil, both physical and moral, which resulted therefrom.

The light which Thoth brought with the new moon was withdrawn by Set as soon as it was possible for him to obtain power over that luminary, and he was, naturally, thought to be the cause of clouds, mist, rain, thunder and lightning, hurricanes and storms, earthquakes and eclipses, and in short of every thing which tended to reverse the ordinary course of nature and of law and order. From a moral point of view he was the personification of sin and evil.”

“The Hebrew Satan was the Egyptian Sut [Set], who became the evil one of the later theology as an anthropomorphic rendering of Apap [Apep] the serpent of evil. Sut was one of the seven sons of the old ‘first mother’, the goddess of the Great Bear in the astronomical mythology [astro-theology]. He was not one of ‘the sons of god’, as there was no god extant when he was born. Sut was brought forth twin with Horus, and first born as the adversary of his brother Osiris. In a truer version of the mythos the conflict was in phenomena that were physical, not moral.”

A depiction (Ѻ) of Jesus as Roman emperor, wearing military dress, holding cross, with sun disc behind his head, and crushing the serpent representing Satan [Devil] (aka Set as Apep). "I am the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6) reads the inscription. Ravenna, after 500.

“There are no morals in mythology, when the characters are non-human, and when the mythical heroes and monsters have been represented as human characters we need to know the mythology once more. The Bible is full of such characters, and Job is one of them. In the ritual, Sut [Set] is the adversary of Osiris, or, stilt earlier, the opponent of Horus. He undoes what the ‘good being’ does. He is the malicious destroyer; the author of disease. lie is permitted to persecute Horus or Osiris to the death. In his character of the adversary, the power of darkness, he says. " I am Sut [Set], who causeth the storms and tempests. and who goeth round the horizon of heaven, like one whose heart is veiled" (Rit, ch. 39). Which is equivalent to saying: ‘I am black-hearted’. Sut is here the prototype of Satan, who ‘goes to and fro in the earth’, and of whom it is elsewhere said, ‘Your adversary the devil walketh about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour’ (I. Peter, v. 8). So, Satan the destroyer plays the devil with the person, the possessions, the belongings of Job. who answers to the suffering Osiris in this development of the ancient drama, in which Horus or Job was no more a human personage than is Set or Satan. They can be studied in the ritual [Passion of Osiris] without disguise or falsification of character, and without a long series of disputations, lamentations, and sermons taking the place of the primitive mystery. The ‘parable’ taken up by Job is the battle of Set and Osiris in the mythical representation. Job the afflicted one is the suffering Osiris who passed into Amenta as the victim of the power of darkness, Set the tormentor, the tempter, the desolator, the destroyer. Amongst other devilries, Set flung his ordure at Horus (Rit. ch. 17); he also pierced him in the eye; but, where Osiris suffered dumbly and opened not his mouth. Job laments his lot, and takes to cursing the day of his birth and wishing that he had been addled in the egg. The character of Job is fathomlessly inferior to that of the good Osiris, called the motionless of heart.

The suffering Horus transforms in ‘in the west’ and becomes the bennu Osiris or the phoenix. Job does the same, or expects to do so, when he says: ‘I shall die in my nest, and I shall multiply my days as the phoenix’. The phoenix was the emblem of the solar god who died to resuscitate in the nest of Amenta. He enters the nest as a hawk and issues forth as a phoenix (Rit., 13, 1). When the battle with Set is over and Horus rises again triumphant over all his trials that were inflicted on him by the adversary, his property is doubled; he is crowned with the double crown as conqueror and king of the double earth. This is puerilely represented by the Lord restoring to Job two-fold of all he had before and overwhelming him with material wealth.”

“The mythological and religious texts of all periods contain many allusions to the fight which Set waged against Horus, and more than one version of the narrative is known. In the first and simplest form the story merely records the natural opposition of Day to Night, or Night to Day, and the two Combatant gods were Heru-ur, or Horus the Elder, and Set. In its second form the two combatant gods are Ra and Set, and the chief object of the latter is to prevent Ra from appearing in the East daily. The form which Set assumed on these occasions was that of a monster serpent, and he took with him as helpers a large number of small serpents and noxious creatures of various kinds. The name of the serpent was Apep [] or Aaapef [], which is preserved in Coptic under the form [], but he was also called Rerek [], and since he was identified with a long series of serpent monsters he had as many names as Ra.”

“In the third form of the story the combatant gods are Osiris and Set, and we have already seen how Set slew his brother and persecuted his widow and child, and how he escaped punishment because Osiris had, at the time of his death, none to avenge his cause. In the fourth form of the story the combatant gods are Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, and Set, and the avowed intention of Horus is to slay him that slew his father Osiris.”

“The fight between Horus, son of Osiris and Isis, and Set, had a very important bearing on the destinies of the dead, for to it was attached the moral idea of the victory of good over evil, and the deceased was believed to conquer Set even as Osiris had done.”

A visual gist of how the Egyptian polytheistic model of the battle of dark vs light, in the gods of Set and Horus, morphed into the Roman monotheistic model of the battle of evil vs good, in the characters of the Devil (or Satan) vs Jesus.

“The cult of Set appears to have been revived under the XIXth Dynasty, for the second king thereof called himself Seti, after the name of the god, and this king caused bas-reliefs to be set up in his temples wherein Set is represented in the act of performing the coronation ceremonies. Under this Dynasty we have another king called after the name of the god, i.e. Seti II, Menephthah, but after that period the figure of Set appears in no cartouche, and his evil reputation increased.”

“To the XXth Dynasty probably belongs the very interesting bronze figure of Set in the British Museum (No. 18,191), which was worn as a pendant, and was originally plated with gold; the god stands upright and wears the double crown of the South and the North and a uraeus. When found the figure was bent double, a position which it was made to take by violence, probably by someone who detested the god, but the body has been straightened out and it is now possible to examine the head of the Set animal, which in this specimen is finely shaped.”

“The power of the triangle is expressive of the nature of Pluto, Bacchus, and Mars, the properties of the square of Rhea, Venus, Ceres, Vesta, and Juno; of the dodecagon of Jupiter; so, as we are informed by Eudoxus [c.390-337BC] (Ѻ) is the figure of 56 angles expressive of the nature of Typho: as "therefore all the others above-mentioned in the Pythagorean system are looked upon as so many Genii or Demons, so in like manner must this latter be regarded by them.”

“Now as to those who pretend that Typho [Set] escaped out of the battle upon an Ass after a flight of seven days, and that, after he had got into a place of security, he begat two sons, Hierosolymus and Judaeus, it is obvious from the very face of the relation, that their design is to give an air of fable to [what] the Jewish history [relates] of the flight of Moses out of Egypt, and of the settlement of the Jews about Jerusalem and Judaea (Squire’s Translation).”

“As a proof of the correctness of Plutarch’s statements may be mentioned the figure of Set, which is reproduced from a Demotic papyrus at Leyden by Signor Lanzone, and which represents the god as having the head of an ass; on his breast, which is that of a man, is inscribed the name CHθ.”

Above: a Horus Gilgamesh Awkward Moments: Children’s Bible (2013) rendition (Ѻ) of 2 Kings 2:24 [see also: Joshua 10:13] and the story of how Elisah issues a “curse” on 42 boys, for calling him bald, that draws two female “bears” out of the woods, who tear the boys to pieces. [5] This strange-sounding Biblical story, accordingly, i.e. according to recension theory, is a rewrite of the Set and Horus battle, in the form of two bears. The 42 boys are rewrites of the 42 gods of the judgment hall, i.e. 42 nome gods of Egypt. The character Elisah, or El-sah, is Hebrew for “god Sah”, i.e. the Orion constellation version of the god Osiris.

See main: 2 Kings 2:24

“I do not intend to do here what other scholars already have done well. Jeffrey Russell and others, e.g., have attempted to investigate cross-cultural parallels between the figure of Satan and such figures as the Egyptian god Set or the Zoroastrian evil power Ahriman. What interest me are the specific social implications of the figure of Satan.”

— Elaine Pagels (1995), The Origin of Satin [2]