Horakhty * "Horus of the two horizons",





As Horakhty (Harakhty), or "Horus of the two horizons", Horus was the god of the rising and setting sun, specifically the god of the east and the sunrise who was worshipped in Heliopolis. The Pyramid Texts refer to him as "god of the east" linking him with Anhur (who may have been a form of Horus the Elder and Shu), and indicate that the deceased king will be reborn in the eastern sky as Horakhty. He was depicted as a falcon or a falcon-headed man wearing the solar disk and the double crown or the atef crown and the uraeus (royal cobra). Sometimes he was depicted as a falcon-headed crocodile who occassionally wears a sun disc.

When this aspect was adopted into the Ennead (Heliopolitan theology), he became Ra-Heru-akhety (Ra-Horakhty), a combined god of Horus and Ra who represented the sun as it traveled across the sky (while Khepri and Atum represented the rising and setting suns respectively). He was the patron of the Pharaoh and the noble classes and the most popular form of Ra after the Middle Kingdom.