Full English Translation Of The Kahun Papyrus's "Tale Of Horus And Set" (the Horus/Set Gay Sex Papyrus)

Full English Translation of the Kahun Papyrus's "Tale of Horus and Set" (the Horus/Set gay sex papyrus)

The "Tale of Horus and Set" is two surviving "pages" of a Middle kingdom papyrus that was found at the site of Kahun/El Lahun with the rest of the "Kahun Papyrus"/"Kahun Papyri" collection. It's pretty small, and one page is almost completely destroyed, but what can still be read of it is a version of the Horus vs. Set lettuce myth. There is some debate about whether it is a piece of a magic spell or of a longer narrative. If was part of a spell than the story was probably not very long, but if it was a narrative text then this would be the only surviving part of a a much larger story (perhaps similar to the Contendings of Horus and Set).

This translation was done by me. I speak Middle Egyptian, although I am not an Egyptologist. As far as I'm aware there is no publicly available full English translation of this story (there was the original Latin one in 1898 and then some partial English ones you can find in various papers), so I've created this for anyone who's curious. While doing this, I tried to find as many other translations as possible to compare notes, and have left notes to explain where other translations disagree with me.

Most of the first page is so destroyed that what’s left is basically just gibberish. The gibberish looks something like this:

(1) … him (2) …he/his [something] (3) …that, with regard to it, is made(?) (4) …this [some type of person?]. I, moreover, will give (5) …to you against the stomach. Look, you (6) …[something] which has been repeated, without that, when I give (7) …stomach. You are upon the water, giving…

Sadly Egyptian is a language where meaning depends heavily on context, so brief snatches of only a couple words like this could have many, many different meanings depending on what the other words around them were.

The fragment proper begins on the last line of the first page.

(8) Then the Majesty of Set said (1) to the Majesty of Horus, “How beautiful your two buttocks are! Make wide (the space between) your two feet!…” (2) Then the Majesty of Horus said: “Wait, so that I may tell this [to my mother.” And he returned] (3) to their house. Then the Majesty of Horus said to his mother, Isis: “[What should I do?] (4) Set [has come], so that he may ‘become acquainted’ with me.” Then she said to him: “Be careful! Don’t approach him about that. [But], after he tells you that (5) again, you must say to him: ‘That would be utterly too difficult for me, because you are too heavy. (6) My strength will not bear your strength,’ you will say to him. "Then, after he has given you strength, (7) you must shove your fingers between your buttocks. Indeed [it] will cause… it to him like… (8) ...Indeed, it will be highly sweet upon his heart… (9) this semen which comes forth from his phallus, without letting Ra see." (10) [Then the Majesty of Set said:] “Come, do not [be afraid] of me (11) … I [will stop] that which I produce."

The papyrus becomes more damaged and disconnected as it goes on. It seems like Isis is advising Horus to "catch" Set's sperm in his hands, so it can't get inside of him, similar to what he did in The Contendings of Horus and Set, but since the end is so disconnected it's hard to tell if there are any significant differences in how that plays out here from Contendings.

The word the story uses for "strength" is pHty, a word that specifically means male sexual strength or strength with a sexual connotation. Ancient texts frequently describe Set as having a lot of pHty (he is often called aA pHty, "great of strength"). pHty sounds similar to pHwy, the word for "buttocks," so “My strength will not bear your strength” is wordplay, it sounds a lot like "my ass will not bear your strength." That line could also be read as "my strength will not be equal to your strength" since rmni can mean both "to support" or "to equal."

In “Homosexual Desire and Middle Kingdom Literature” by RB Parkinson, which has a section about this story, Parkinson believes "strength" in the line "after he has given you strength," may be referring specifically to Set's semen or phallus, (so “giving strength” means Set penetrating Horus.)

At the very end of the fragment it seems like Set shows back up again (there's a divine name determinative there but the divine name itself is missing). What he says is very unclear, but for the sake of completeness I have tried to make an attempt at filling it in. In the original 1898 Latin translation (from "Hieratic Papyri from Kahun and Gurob"), Petrie guessed that the first thing Set says might’ve been “don’t be afraid of me,” which fits the context, although I’m not sure what word would be used for "afraid" there. Given that there’s a force/activity determinative visible in the second thing he says, although the rest of the word is missing, I have made an extremely tentative guess that he’s promising to pull out.

The two big places where my translation deviates from other translations are right at the beginning:

After complimenting his ass, the second thing Set says to Horus appears to be wsx rdwy.ky, and what that is supposed to mean in this context is very hard to decipher. Parkinson translated it as “broad are your thighs,” but I don't think it makes sense to use rdwy to refer to thighs, it seems to always be used to mean feet and feet related things, not other parts of the leg. So I think it is more likely that this referring to stance, and what he's saying means something like "widen your stance" or "spread 'em."

In response to what Set has just said, Horus tells him to "sAi" (𓊃𓅭𓄿𓀸𓂻), which my dictionaries tell me means "wait." The 1898 translation has something like “Away with you!, I will tell that to my mother!” here, which is iconic, but that’s because Petrie didn’t recognize this word and had to guess what it meant; because sAi looks like sAw (𓊃𓅭𓄿𓀸𓀜) a word that means “beware!,” but with a 𓂻 legs determinative, he guessed it to mean "go away." (He explained his reasoning in his translation notes, it's pretty cool to read). Parkinson translates it as though the word just was sAw; he has Horus say “watch out, I shall tell this”, so I think he assumed the legs were a mistake. But "wait" also works in this context so I don't see any reason to assume it wasn't intended.

I was able to read this papyrus using Petrie's scans and hieroglyphic transcriptions from the plates volume of Hieratic Papyri from Kahun and Gurob, linked here. The plate for this papyrus is on page 24. (You may notice that the hieratic scans have different line numbers than the transcriptions; I've used the numbers on the scans.)

To make it easier for people to check my work if they want to, I've also made this alternatively formatted version, showing the translation line by line beside the hieroglyphs. The glyphs have been reformatted slightly to be all horizontal and left to right. I've marked the parts where my transcription differs from Petrie's in red: