r observes further that
Maat "is called mistress of Heaven, ruler of earth, and president of the
nether world," and in a further description of the conception embodied
in this Deity, refers to the fact that while she is the mother of the
sun she is also the first emanation from God.

89) The Religion of Ancient Egypt, p. 126.

Although Typhon Seth was long worshipped as the sole Deity in Egypt,
in later ages the god-idea came to be represented by Seth and Osiris.
Toward the close of Typhon Seth's reign, Horus, the child, the young
sun, was represented "as rising from his hiding-place, attracting
beneficent vapors to return them back as dews, which the Egyptians
called the tears of Isis."

Seth and Osiris represent a division of the Deity. Osiris, as the sun,
represents heat; as man, or as god, he stands for desire. Seth or Typhon
stands for the cold of winter, the simoom of the desert, or the "wind
that blasts." Seth, Osiris, and Horus constitute a Trinity of which
Muth is the Great Mother. Finally, with the gradual ascendancy of male
influence and power, it is observed that Seth appears as the brother of
Osiris.

It is the opinion of Bunsen that the fundamental idea of Osiris and Set
was "not merely the glorification of the sun, but was also the worship
of the primitive creative power."(90) But, as in Egypt the creative
agency was regarded as both female and male, the former being in the
ascendancy, this fact of itself would seem to determine the sex and
position of Seth.

90) History of Egypt, vol. iv., p. 319.

In the ideas concerning Seth and Osiris may be observed something of the
manner in which the fructifying agencies of the sun and the reproductive
power in human beings were blended and together worshipped as the Deity;
while through the history of these gods are to be traced some of the
processes by which the idea of the Creator was changed from female to
male.

In all countries, at a certain stage in the history of religion, the
transference of female deified power to mortal man may be observed.
In the attempt to change Seth or Typhon into a male God may be noted
perhaps the first effort in Egypt to dethrone, or lessen the female
power in the god-idea.

The fact seems plain that the Great Typhon Seth, or Set, who conferred
on the sovereigns of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties of Egypt
"the symbols of life and power," was none other than the primitive
Regenerator or Destroye