Introduction
Horus, son of Isis, is the falcon-headed god of kingship and the sky, conceived by Isis from the restored body of the murdered Osiris and raised in secret in the Delta marshes to protect him from his uncle Set.
Family
- Father: Osiris
- Mother: Isis
- Children: Imsety, Hapy (son of Horus), Duamutef, Qebehsenuef
The Contendings and the Living King
Once grown, Horus contested Set for the throne of Egypt in a prolonged mythic and legal struggle recorded in detail in the New Kingdom text known as The Contendings of Horus and Set, which the assembled Ennead eventually resolved in Horus's favor. This victory established Horus as the mythological model and patron of every living pharaoh, who was understood as "the living Horus" upon the throne, while the deceased pharaoh was identified with Osiris — a theological pairing that structured Egyptian royal ideology for millennia.
Ancient Egyptian religion spanned three millennia and many regional cult centers, so parentage, roles and even gender pairings for a given deity often differ between the Heliopolitan, Hermopolitan, Memphite and Theban theological systems; the account above follows the most widely attested classical version.