In museums of Egyptian art one often comes across small stelae of dark stone bearing an unmistakable image: a naked boy standing on two crocodiles, gripping snakes, scorpions and wild animals in his hands. Above him juts the head of Bes. All around, the surface is dense with hieroglyphs. These are the cippi of Horus, among the most widespread magical objects of first-millennium BC Egypt.
Who the boy is
The child is Horus the younger, called Harpocrates by the Greeks, son of Isis and Osiris. Myth tells how Isis hid him in the marshes of the Delta, at Chemmis, to keep him from Seth, his father's murderer. There the infant was exposed to every danger: scorpion stings, snake bites, fevers, hunger. Each time his mother and the gods stepped in to save him.
The child Horus thus became the model of every vulnerable being that survives. Showing him victorious over dangerous animals meant affirming that life protected by the gods prevails over the forces of the desert and the river.
The iconography, element by element
| Element | Symbolic meaning |
|---|---|
| Crocodiles beneath his feet | Mastery over the waters and their dangers |
| Snakes and scorpions in his hands | Venomous creatures made harmless |
| Lion, oryx, gazelle | Desert animals, linked to Seth |
| Head of Bes above | Protector of the home and of birth |
| Side-lock of hair | The sign of childhood |
| Lotus and papyrus flowers | Rebirth and the Delta marshes |
The boy is naked and shown frontally, which is rare in Egyptian art, with its preference for profile. The frontal view seems deliberate: the god looks straight at whoever approaches the stela.
The inscribed spells
The texts on the cippi are spells against venomous animals. Some narrate episodes of the myth of Isis and Horus, others address the venom directly, commanding it to come out and fall to the ground. The logic is typical of Egyptian magic: a mythical precedent is recalled, in which the gods have already overcome the danger, and it is applied to the present case.
Many spells recur from one stela to another with variants. This shows that standard texts circulated, copied by temple scribes and adapted to the format of the object.
The Metternich Stela
The most famous example is the Metternich Stela, now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It dates to the reign of Nectanebo II, the last native pharaoh, in the fourth century BC, and takes its name from Prince Metternich, who received it as a gift in the nineteenth century. It stands almost a metre high and is covered on every side with figures of deities and with texts.
Among its spells is the long tale in which Isis, fleeing with seven scorpions as her escort, is turned away by a rich woman; one of the scorpions stings the woman's son, and Isis, moved to pity, recites the words that drive out the venom. It is one of the liveliest narrative texts in Egyptian magic.
The rite of water
Many cippi show a peculiarity: the surface is worn, or the stela is set in a base with a small basin. We know that water was poured over the stelae, running across the images and texts and then collected. In the Egyptian view, the water absorbed the power of the sacred words and carried it with it.
Cippi came in very different sizes:
- small portable pieces, a few centimetres high, that could be kept at home or carried;
- medium stelae, placed in domestic shrines or chapels;
- large monuments, set up in temples or beside statues of deified healers, accessible to many people.
The gesture is also attested by statues of private individuals covered in spells, with a basin at their feet: it was performed as a ritual act of protection, within the symbolic logic of the tradition.
Spread and meaning
The cippi of Horus multiply from the Third Intermediate Period to the Ptolemaic and Roman eras. Their spread reflects a more personal religiosity, in which individuals sought closeness to benevolent deities and effective images. The victorious child was reassuring precisely because he was fragile: not a mighty, distant god, but a boy saved by his mother.
Maestro Cornelio invites us to read these objects as a language of images: every detail, from the childish side-lock to the head of Bes, contributes to a single idea, that of an order which protects life when it is most exposed.
In short
- The cippi show the child Horus standing on crocodiles, holding snakes and scorpions.
- The myth is that of Isis protecting her son in the marshes of Chemmis.
- The spells recall mythical episodes to drive out the venom of animals.
- The Metternich Stela, from the time of Nectanebo II, is the most famous example.
- Water poured over the stelae was thought to carry the power of the sacred words.
