Talk:Eye of Horus/Archive 1

Horus parentage
Issue: Hathor as mother of Horus. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.180.8.112 (talk) 18:25, 11 December 2008 (UTC)


 * According to the Horus article, Hathor was his wife and Isis was his mother. Were there multiple traditions, perhaps? --benadhem (talk) 02:54, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I find this statement perplexing:
yet on the numeration side denoted a decimal system where round off was set to the first 6-terms. Perhaps it can initially be stated that the symbol also had numerical/mathematical uses, and move an expanded (more intelligible) version of the above referenced statement to the section on the numerical use.

Fractions and the Pyramid Texts
It would be really good if the quoted texts could be given accurate citations by the original poster or anyone else who knows where those passages may be found.

Kay Dekker 22:41, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Consistent spelling
Can someone please sort our "Wadjet" vs "Wedjat"? I have seen other spellings as well. --Hugh7 23:16, 1 October 2007 (UTC) To mix things up, it's also sometimes spelt Udjat.

Truth is, translating a pictoral language to phonetic is difficult at best. Look at the two main spellings for the capitol of China, Peking and Beijing. And that is with authentic people still speaking the language today. Add in the difficulties of a language several thousand years dead.... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.169.195.238 (talk) 13:35, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed, but this article needs to pick a spelling and stick with it, and save the other spellings for a parenthetical "also spelled as" note. 68.156.95.34 (talk) 07:08, 21 June 2015 (UTC)

In arithmetic
In this section someone has linked the fractions of the eye to various senses and so on - such as smell - also there are quotes which seem to have nothing to do with the ideas presented. I would like to know where this comes from - and unless someone can cite a reference then I will delete it.Apepch7 09:15, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

the very first comment is correct in a sense (Eye of Ra discussion)
The Eye of Ra (The Story of Sekhmet's Fury) Ra was angry when he heard this, and he was more angry still at the evil deeds which men were doing in disobedience to his laws. So he called together the gods whom he had made - Shu and Tefnut and Geb and Nut - and he also summoned Nun. Soon the gods gathered about Ra in his Secret Place, and the goddesses also. But mankind knew nothing of what was happening, and continued to jeer at Ra and to break his commandments. Then Ra spoke to Nun before the assembled gods: "Eldest of the gods, you who made me; and you gods whom I have made: look upon mankind who came into being at a glance of my Eye. See how men plot against me; hear what they say of me; tell me what I should do to them. For I will not destroy mankind until I have heard what you advise."

hen Nun said: "My son Ra, the god greater than he who made him and mightier than those whom he has created, turn your mighty Eye upon them and send destruction upon them in the form of your daughter, the goddess Sekhmet."

one person can not have 2 mothers and 2 fathers so there for there is a missleading statement RA or THE EYE OF RA (the right eye) was placed on the book of the dead (look it up) due to RA'S destructive nature. HORUS or THE EYE OF HORUS (the left eye) was placed on the book of the living because horus was the god of birth rebirth (movie trivia as well). IF you noticed the eye of ra and the eye of horus are placed in 2 different paterns but yet still have the same shape because the mathmatical fractions of 10. Now the eye of ra aka horus make the right side of the eyes, the left R is the eye of Thoth (its polar oppisite) makes a R there also the eye of Thoth was considered the moon and the eye of ra the solar eye.

not to mention: the eye of horus : udjat : mother - Isis : father - Osiris the eye of ra : wedjat : mother - Nun : father - one of the other gods (all in all its the same guy)

the funny thing is that in school the most common one used is the eye of horus but we are told in some pictures that the eye of ra is the eye of horus.

places: www.phoenixphamily.com/displayarticle303.html www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/e/eye_of_horus.html http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/eyeofhorusandre.htm (<- a really good one that explains it all) and some others but i can find them at the moment —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.96.54.132 (talk) 21:01, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Daisy is pretty much the beez kneez Isn't this sentence --The Eye of Horus (originally, The Eye of Ra) is... -- should be --The Eye of Horus (mistakenly known as, The Eye of Ra) is... -- As far as I know the original is Eye of Horus then many people for various popularity reasons know as Eye of Ra. What do you think? —Jack in the box 00:37, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

No, it was originally the Eye of Ra for a few centuries, then when Horus and Ra started to amalgamate, becoming Ra-Herakhty (literally meaning "Ra who is Horus, of the two horizons"), so Horus, as the stronger identity, became the owner of the symbol. Technically, you could say that it is the Eye of Ra-Herakhty, but it was always referred to as Eye of Horus as this was easier to write (and much less long winded than "the Eye of Ra who is Horus of the two horizons"). ( ! | ? | * ) 19:50, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, thank you for the info. I didn't know that way. Maybe you should add a few more lines on that paragraph. — Jack in the box 21:10, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I would dispute that the eye of Horus was originally the eye of Ra as stated above and in the article - anyone got any evidence for this? I think they both refer to the sun but I don't recognise the idea that one preceded the other historically - unless someone can substantiate I want to delete this.Apepch7 09:09, 9 August 2007 (UTC)


 * In my experience, It is my understanding that It came to be known as the Eye of Ra when Ra threw out his eye (Sekhmet), upon mortals who plotted agaist him and she killed them until her vengence filled the earth, and Ra stopped her by trickery, mixing beer and red ochere, to appear to be blood, causing her to drink and become asleep. lol, what you remember from high school. Source: http://www.thekeep.org/~kunoichi/kunoichi/themestream/hathor.html Sephiroth storm 02:50, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

merged by: Sephiroth storm (talk) 04:17, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

I think the eye of Horus symbolises the brain stem.
Thats what I have read on some prophecy site. Doesn't mean this detail cannot be taken seriously. --N33 (talk) 21:08, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it symbolizes comic strip fumigation; this interpretation is self-evident from the shape.
 * Excuse me, but what the hell do you mean by that? :p--N33 (talk) 06:57, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I believe what he may be referring to is the symbol's correlation to the glands and inner parts of the human brain as they appear when vivisected in certain ways. [REMOVED BLACKLISTED LINK] It's a long shot, though. It's probably coincidence. Hieroglyphics look like a lot of things. Then again, the Egyptians were ahead of their times when it came to understanding the human body, so it's possible...just not likely.98.210.88.228 (talk) 04:22, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

There is a pubmed publications by 5 credible authors who claims this is true. As the rule is : citations from trusted sources go above personal opinions I assume this is now true: [REMOVED BLACKLISTED LINK]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6649877/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.80.200.208 (talk) 23:04, 6 September 2020 (UTC)

Correlations in Other Languages to the Eye of Horus
Being that humans traveled around on this big globe, I noticed that in Japanese, "hora" means "look" and then immediately thought of the eye of horus. I could be stretching it, though I think this would make an interesting addition to the discussion. [] If anyone has further language correlations (other than arguments regarding Ra vs. Horus), I would love to see them displayed on here! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.26.58.18 (talk) 23:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Direction of the eye
in this article it says that the eye of horus is depicted as the right eye, and that the mirror or left eye is something to do with the moon, but i notice that all but one of the pictures on this page are showing the left eye and not the right.... so i would like to know which way it is supposed to go, and if anyone replys to this could they please include a picture or link to a picture of which way is correct for horus, thanks Any Spelling Mistakes are due to my Dyslexia ,A.S. (Comms) 17:50, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
 * after leaving this comment i have read this site and would like to direct anyone who wishes to correct this article to it. [[Image: FireFlames.jpg|25px]] The Illuminati are coming ,A.S. (Comms) 18:04, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

This anomaly has not yet been explained or resolved. The Illuminati have evidently got lost on the way (Comms) Centrepull (talk) 11:32, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

This is a very good question. Even the Egyptians themselves seem to either be confused or not to care as you can find examples both ways. Horus (the ancient sky god version) had two eyes, the right being the sun and the left the moon. The eye that is injured and healed by Thoth and so on is usually taken to be the left/moon because the phasic nature of the moon can indicate decline (injury) and revival. The Eye of Ra is always the sun (obviously). The Eye of Horus is also seen as a kind of vital force (hence Wadjet the 'green one' as green was the colour of freshness and health) and the food offerings are identified with it. The Eye of Horus is said to 'shine like ra' which makes it like the sun also - so I suppose the answer to left or right has to be based on which function is being addressed. BTW the website you direct to is no more accurate than the article.Apepch7 (talk) 15:05, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Eye of Horus and the senses
The article suggests an identification of the fraction portions of the Eye and the five senses but does not give a citation. Does anyone know where this comes from - its position in the text seems to imply it is from one the mathematical papyri Ebers maybe. Apepch7 (talk) 16:58, 18 June 2009 (UTC)

I still can't find any link between the fractions of the eye and the five senses - also the quotes from the Pyramid Texts don't seem relevant to the assertions of the article in that they don't relate to the senses either but are just quotes from the Reversion of Offerings. Unless someone knows better I'm going to delete.Apepch7 (talk) 17:30, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Any progress on this? I did not find any references either. The concept of five senses is so firmly linked to Aristoteles that it seems unlikely to me that they actually showed up in the Middle Kingdom. Hieroglyphs for the senses also do not show any resemblance to fractions of the eye of horus. To be proven or deleted... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.52.148.107 (talk) 23:46, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

I have looked but have been unable to find the source for these ideas. I suspect it is someone's speculative ideas - not without merit possibly but certainly not proven. Maybe this section should go?Apepch7 (talk) 08:58, 20 September 2010 (UTC)

Removed the part identifying parts of eye with senses, I have looked for a reference material to support this idea but found none except other websites which repeat this article. So I think it is someone's speculative idea and not genuinely AE. Apepch7 (talk) 10:52, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Eye of Horus fractions references
The MathWorld entry Eye of Horus Fracttion has some references which might be of use here. Paradoctor (talk) 15:45, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Hobby?
The text says "The eye symbol represents the marking around the eye of the Eurasian Hobby falcon". Isn't it instead a Lanner (Falco biarmicus)? (And rather obviously so!) The lanner is a common resident breeding bird of north Africa including all of Egypt (the hobby is only seen in Egypt on migration between breeding areas north of the of the Mediterranean and wintering areas south of Sahara) and also has the light brownish crown shown on many (most?) images of Horus (often striped - and might be mistaken for an eyebrow by a non-ornithologist) while the crown of the hobby is black. Also note the thinner moustachial stripe (the stripe that goes downward from the eye), the large "rounded" white cheek and the almost unspotted underside (on adult birds - and it is adults that are depicted as juveniles have blue skin around the eye) of the lanner which agrees with images of Horus. It should also be noted that the lanner is one of the species most frequently used for falconry (which the smaller hobby never is) and thus have a long relationship to man (according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falconry it might go back to 2000 BC in Mesopotamia). I doubt the Egyptians even were aware of the existance of a species like the hobby (but they must on the other hand have been very familiar with the lanner).

Horus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horus http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Horus.jpg http://ascendingpassage.com/Merneptah-Horus.jpg http://images.imagestate.com/Watermark/1277610.jpg (falcon) http://www.globalegyptianmuseum.org/large.aspx?img=images/NMI/1091+14a.jpg (falcon) http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterjr1961/sets/72157602881797225/detail/?page=46 (falcons) http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterjr1961/5865629728/ (falcon)

Lanner: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lanner_Falcon http://ibc.lynxeds.com/files/imagecache/photo_940/pictures/IMG_1383_0.JPG http://www.flickr.com/photos/grantbrummett/4137248680/sizes/z/in/photostream/

Hobby: http://www.kolkatabirds.com/eurasianhobby8cf.jpg http://www.leonardo-pharmacy.com/fileadmin/bilder/voegel/baumfalke.jpg — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.254.200.12 (talk) 12:37, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Fringe theories/Noticeboard
There is a discussion on the mathematics/fraction section currently at the Fringe theories/Noticeboard.--Salix (talk): 21:27, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Archived here Aarghdvaark (talk) 08:50, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Mathematics - Jim Ritter, Unsourced Claims
"Studies from the 1970s to this day in Egyptian mathematics have clearly shown this theory was fallacious and Jim Ritter definitely showed it to be false in 2003.[16]"

There is no reference included or explanation given how the widely accepted interpretation of the eye of horus as representing mathematical fractions, is wrong. Only a reference to the book "Under One Sky: Astronomy and Mathematics in the ancient Near East," is given. His book is also not on Amazon.

" Jim Ritter (2002) has conclusively shown that these are ‘capacity system submultiples’, which originated in hieratic texts, not hieroglyphic ones, and appear to have had non-religious meanings originally. "

Ritter shows conclusively that in their origin, and their written form, and their everyday use, the capacity system submultiples have nothing to do with the Eye of Horus.

" Ritter distinguishes this “strong” thesis from a “weak” version, in which, many centuries after their invention, the hieratic capacity system submultiples were imported into the hieroglyphic script and that some scribe or scribes wrote about them as if they could be combined into the wedjat hieroglyph. This weak version has more evidence for it, but as Ritter points out (2002: 311), this “does not automatically mean that ‘the Egyptians’ thought like that; for example, those Egyptians whose task it was to engrave hieroglyphic inscriptions on temple walls. "

I don't see where John Ritter anywhere disproves the Horus Eye Fractions.MrSativa (talk) 06:31, 24 January 2014 (UTC)


 * This issue could definitely be explained better, but I don't feel comfortable making the attempt unless I can see Ritter's full argument. If I can obtain that book, I will see what he says and rework the "Mathematics" section accordingly. A. Parrot (talk) 19:08, 28 January 2014 (UTC)

Unicode
Eye of Horus seems to be at U+13080, but is called "Egyptian Hieroglyph D010." If that really is it, this should be mentioned in the article. But I can't find a source other than the Unicode spec. Also it's not in any of the fonts I checked. Kendall-K1 (talk) 22:12, 12 April 2015 (UTC)


 * The Eye of Horus is called D10 on Gardiner's sign list, and the Unicode hieroglyph list is based on Gardiner's, so I don't think any other source should be needed to establish that they're the same. I added those details to the article. Thanks for pointing it out. A. Parrot (talk) 00:52, 13 April 2015 (UTC)


 * I wasn't 100% sure it was the same glyph but that seems pretty definitive. Thanks. I added the unicode glyph. Kendall-K1 (talk) 01:26, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Use in Pharmacology
The Rx symbol is derived from the Eye of Horus --

http://www.history.com/news/ask-history/where-did-the-rx-symbol-come-from

24.51.217.118 (talk) 14:48, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Too many images
We've got too many images. Per WP:IG we should get rid of a few. Kendall-K1 (talk) 17:31, 1 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Good point. And several weren't very high-quality or relevant. So I removed severa; let me know if you think any of those I removed should be kept. A. Parrot (talk) 03:48, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Much better. Thank you. Kendall-K1 (talk) 04:30, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

The Eye of Horus "as a plant"
I've removed the "As a plant" section, added by User:Jnbagnol back in December. It's based on a paper by Stephen Berlant, who has scholarly but not Egyptological qualifications, arguing for the widespread use of entheogens in ancient Egypt. Berlant himself has advanced related claims in other Wikipedia articles on ancient Egypt, and they've always seemed like undue weight to me. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Ancient Egypt/Archive 7 and User talk:Doug Weller/Archive 20 for some of the background. This is the text I cut:

"'In Egyptian society, the eye of Horus was also a plant, which they included in elixirs and cakes. This plant was believed to have the ability to confer immortality onto people. One myth includes gods living upon plant life growing near a lake in Sekhet-hetep. The plants by this great lake was believed to be baked into the 'bread of eternity'. (Berlant, S. (2005). The entheomycological origin of Egyptian crowns and the esoteric underpinnings of Egyptian religion. Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 102(2), 275–288.)'"

Berlant's paper is available here; the relevant page is 286. Its source for the claim that the Eye of Horus was a plant is Budge's Gods of the Egyptians, pages 164–165 (available here), and Berlant seems to be misinterpreting it. Budge says:

"'The gods nourished themselves with celestial food which was supplied to them by the Eye of Horus, that is to say, they supported their existence on the rays of light which fell from the sun which lit up heaven, and they became beings whose bodies were wholly of light. According to one myth the gods themselves lived upon a 'wood, or plant of life', (Pepi I., line 430) which seems to have grown near the great lake in Sekhet-hetep, round which they were wont to sit but this idea belongs to the group of views which held that the beatified dead lived in a beautiful, fertile region, where white wheat and red barley grew luxuriantly to a great height, and where canals were numerous and full of water, and where material enjoyments of every kind could be found. In other places we read of 'bread of eternity', and 'beer of eternity', i.e., bread and beer which was supposed never to grow stale or to become spoiled, and we also have mention of a heavenly fig-tree, and a heavenly vine, the fruit of which is eaten by the beatified. The bread upon which the blessed fed themselves was that bread which the Eye of Horus shed upon the branches of the olive-tree…'"

In short, the Eye of Horus supplied the gods with many types of food and drink, including bread. That is consistent with the use of the Eye to represent the offerings, especially food, that the Egyptians gave to the gods or, even more generally, to represent "plenitude of life force" (as Jan Assmann put it). I can't track down the original text that Budge refers to when discussing the "plant of life"—"Pepi I" presumably refers to the Pyramid Texts of Pepi I, but "line 430" doesn't match the traditional system of organizing the Pyramid Texts, which was established four years after Budge's book was published. In any case, Budge's text does not indicate that the gods made their bread from the plant of life, and the gods' bread probably isn't even mentioned in the Pyramid Texts spell that mentions the plant. Berlant is conflating two ideas that, as far as I can tell, come from separate sources and making up his own ideas about how they fit together. I don't blame Jnbagnol for this, as journal papers are generally assumed to be reliable sources, although I know nothing about the reliability of the Journal of Ethnopharmacology. Berlant is another story. This discovery makes it even less surprising that his ideas have no traction in the Egyptological community. They shouldn't have any traction on Wikipedia, either. A. Parrot (talk) 17:14, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 April 2019
Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum. http://archaeologicalmuseum.jhu.edu/the-collection/object-stories/ancient-egyptian-amulets/wedjat-eyes/. Accessed 28 Feb. 2019. Juniata Ryan (talk) 13:49, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Have added to external links. – Þjarkur (talk) 14:55, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 November 2019
This has a lot of pictures of the eye of Ra as well as the eye of Horus and this is causing a lot of readers to get confused of which one is correct. The eye of Horus is the left eye and the rest of the pictures should be removed or flipped. This is a huge error and needs to be corrected. It is embarrassing to see this error on Wikipedia. Zmorganx1 (talk) 02:56, 25 November 2019 (UTC)


 * ❌. It's not clear what pictures you're referring to; please be more precise. Please also provide reliable source(s) for this information. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon &bull; videos) 04:49, 25 November 2019 (UTC)


 * The problem is that the distinction between right and left eyes doesn't seem to have been consistently upheld. Both right and left eyes, with the distinctive markings below the eye that indicate it is more than an ordinary human eye, were used in amulets. In 'The Contendings of Horus and Seth", the single best-known Egyptian text describing the myth of the struggle between those two gods, Set tears out both of Horus' eyes. Although I don't know whether any sources say so, I suspect the strict pattern of lunar/left and solar/right is something of an oversimplification. A. Parrot (talk) 05:08, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Mathematics
The paragraphs in this section are disjointed. The last paragraph references "this theory" without a clear definition the the theory being established in the preceding paragraphs. E.g. "the symbols used in mathematics" is ambiguous to a reader not familiar with "the theory." Also, including an image which a a caption stating that the image contains non-factual/historical information is super misleading for people reading quickly. -random user 20, Oct 2020 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.60.49.124 (talk) 06:09, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
 * Moved this to a new section. It's generally a bad idea to comment in sections that are old (especially a 6-year-old thread), since the only people who will notice are folks like me who see the change in their Watchlist.
 * That said, I agree, the section is confusingly laid out. It should state up front that the "theory" is bunk, and why. If I can devote some time to it, I'll work on that. &mdash;  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 18:37, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
 * I decided to just remove that part of the article (diff). I'm not convinced the debunked concept is even notable enough to include in this article. &mdash;  The Hand That Feeds You :Bite 19:01, 21 October 2020 (UTC)