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Horus and the Fight for Egypt
Isis gave birth to Horus in the marshes and hid him from Seth, Osiris’s killer. Horus suffered weakness, hunger, and attacks, but Isis and his protectors kept him alive until he could avenge his father and challenge Seth. The Birth and Hiding of Horus Isis gave birth to Horus after a pregnancy of ten months. She bore him in the papyrus marshes of Chemmis and hid him from Seth, who had killed Osiris. He was called Horus the Child, or Horus, son of Isis, to distinguish him from Horus the Elder. Isis raised him so that he could avenge his father and overcome Seth. Isis was sometimes forced to leave Horus in the marshes while she searched for food. When she returned, she found him weak and too ill to suckle. She lamented that her family were either in another realm or hostile to her. She had no one to call upon except the people who lived in the marshes. The marsh-dwellers shared Isis’s grief, but they could offer no help. A wise local woman then arrived, consoled Isis, and gave her advice. In another telling, Isis took refuge in the swamps of Buto with seven protective serpents and gave birth there. Other tellings had divine beings or humble marsh inhabitants protect Horus when Isis had to leave him. Serpents and diseases attacked the infant, but Isis shielded him with spells. She raised Horus in hiding until he could avenge Osiris and challenge Seth. Source note: Primary text: the ancient sources. Corpus check: Magic in Ancient Egypt *ISBN 0292765592*; Handbook of Egyptian Mythology. Horus Poisoned by the Scorpion Isis fled from Set while carrying Horus. Set had murdered Osiris and confined Isis to force her into marriage and strengthen his claim to the kingdom. Thoth helped her escape. He told her to hide with her unborn son and bring him forth in secret. He also promised that Horus would succeed to his father’s throne in due course. Isis travelled towards the Reed Swamps with the Seven Scorpion-goddesses. They brought her to Per-Sui, where she sought shelter for the night. A woman shut her door against Isis. In one telling, a Scorpion-goddess entered the woman’s house and stung her child to death. In another, Isis later hid Horus in Sekhet-An while she went to perform a ceremony for Osiris near Hetep-hemt. During her absence, the scorpion Uhat, sent by Set, entered the hiding place and stung Horus. The gods brought Isis news that Horus had been killed. She ran to him in despair and found his body lifeless. Her cries drew people from the neighbouring districts. They tried to comfort her, but she declared that their words only delayed the matter. She questioned the value of spells and magical commands if Horus lay in the arms of Death, poisoned by the scorpion. Thoth came from heaven and told Isis and Nephthys not to fear. He said that he had come to heal the child for his mother. He named the forms and powers that protected Horus, including the Dweller in his Disk, the Great Hawk, the Holy Beetle and the Divine Bennu. He then spoke the great spell. By his words, the life fluid of Ra entered Horus’s body. The scorpion’s poison left him, and Thoth restored the child to life. Horus Poisoned by the Scorpion. Original MythSource illustration created for this story; not a historical artwork. Source note: Primary text: the ancient sources. Corpus check: LEGENDS OF THE GODS. The Gods Judge Horus's Claim Horus brought his claim before the Ennead and the divine tribunal. He said that he should succeed Osiris as king of Egypt and that Seth was a usurper. Isis, Thoth and Anubis supported him. The gods agreed that Horus had made a good case and that he should replace Seth as pharaoh. When Seth heard this, he threatened the gods who had supported Horus. He said that he would use his royal sceptre as a club and kill one deity each day until they rejected Horus’s claim. The gods ignored his threat and placed Egypt’s crown on Horus’s head. They installed him in Osiris’s former position, and Isis cried out with joy for her son. Seth refused to accept the decision. He challenged Horus to fight for the throne, and Horus agreed. Their conflict continued through many contests. In one contest, they changed into enormous hippopotami and remained beneath the deepest waters of the Nile. In another, Seth proposed a race in stone boats. Horus secretly made his boat from cedar wood and covered it with plaster so that it looked like stone. Seth used real stone, and his boat sank when it was launched. He escaped by changing into a hippopotamus, but Horus pursued him with a harpoon and wounded him. The tribunal still could not settle the dispute. The gods approached Neith, but her judgement did not end it. At last, on Thoth’s advice, they appealed to Osiris for a final judgement. Osiris supported his son and reproached Seth. In another telling, the struggle had already lasted eighty years. Ra-Harakhte presided over the tribunal and favoured Seth because Seth was Nut’s son, older and more experienced. Horus answered that succession gave him the right to rule. Shu and Thoth then recommended Horus’s case. The traditions differed over the final process. Some said that the gods voted for Horus and crowned him king. Others continued with contests between the two gods, including the hippopotamus combat and the race in boats. The struggle was also presented as a conflict between the Followers of Horus and the Followers of Seth. Source note: Primary text: the ancient sources. Corpus check: Egyptian Mythology.
Käthe Kollwitz and The Weavers' Revolt
In 1893, German artist Käthe Kollwitz attended a performance of Gerhart Hauptmann's play The Weavers. Inspired by the theatrical depiction of labour oppression, she created her first major print series, A Weavers' Revolt. The project established her focus on social criticism, working-class struggle, and graphic printmaking techniques. Inspiration and A Weavers' Revolt Käthe Kollwitz was born in Königsberg, East Prussia, in 1867. She trained initially as a painter, but turned to printmaking around 1890 to produce images centred on social criticism. Attending Gerhart Hauptmann's play The Weavers in 1893 inspired her to depict the severe hardships of industrial workers. Kollwitz wrote that Hauptmann's drama helped her recognise art's capacity to transform ugly reality into something deceptively grand. Between 1893 and 1897, she developed her six-plate series titled A Weavers' Revolt. In the lithograph Need, executed between 1893 and 1897, she depicted a dark, cramped room where a despairing mother holds her head while watching her sleeping infant. The series concluded with prints such as March of the Weavers in 1897. At the 1898 Great Berlin Art Exhibition, the jury voted to award Kollwitz a gold medal for A Weavers' Revolt. Emperor Wilhelm II rejected the decision, stating that granting a medal to a woman went too far. Conservative critics supported this exclusion. Hans Rosenhagen, editor of a German magazine, claimed that women's art lacked powerful expression, originality of invention, and depth of feeling. Despite these institutional obstacles, Kollwitz continued using historical accounts and direct observation of economic inequality to construct direct visual statements equal in emotional intensity to the work of Edvard Munch. Printmaking Techniques and Social Reality In 1891, Käthe Kollwitz married Karl Kollwitz, a physician who treated working-class families. The couple established their home in a proletarian quarter of Berlin, where Kollwitz witnessed the physical and emotional distress of industrialisation. To record these conditions, she chose printmaking because it was immediate and accessible. She focused primarily on etching until about 1911, before expanding into lithography to create direct graphic compositions. Kollwitz reduced her visual compositions to essential gestures and forms, eliminating extra detail to ensure her depictions of working-class struggle remained direct and universally understandable. Kollwitz drew artistic inspiration from various sources, including an 1871 illustration by Arthur Boyd Houghton published in the magazine The Graphic. In her 1903 etching Woman with Dead Child, she produced a raw portrait of maternal grief, depicting a mother clinging tightly to her deceased infant. Later, when commissioned by the Society for Historical Art (Verbindung für Historische Kunst) to illustrate the German Peasants' Revolt of 1522 to 1524, Kollwitz used herself as the visual model for the revolutionary figure Black Anna in preparatory drawings. In the fifth plate of that series, Black Anna raises her arms to urge a crowd of peasants into battle. Tod (Death) (BM 2018,7046.1). Public domain; source: Wikimedia Commons. Political Commitments and Opposition Kollwitz was raised in a family with radical political and religious beliefs. After reading August Bebel's 1883 treatise Woman under Socialism, she formed the belief that female emancipation required a socialist society. Although she viewed herself as a moderate socialist, political violence by the Free Corps pushed her views further to the left. Following the assassination of communist leader Karl Liebknecht, his family asked Kollwitz to create a death-bed portrait. Her response, Commemorative Print for Karl Liebknecht, marked her first experiment with the woodcut medium, serving as a visual memorial to Liebknecht and the working class. The Liebknecht woodcut appeared at the Workers' Art Exhibition in Berlin in 1920. Kollwitz donated her earnings from print sales to fund similar public exhibitions. She also designed posters for anti-famine campaigns organised by International Workers' Aid, collaborating alongside cultural figures such as Albert Einstein, George Grosz, Henri Barbusse, Upton Sinclair, and Maxim Gorky. Her art generated opposition from the political left as well as conservative groups. In 1920, the communist newspaper Die rote Fahne published a critique asserting that her prints overemphasised hopelessness rather than encouraging active armed resistance. Kollwitz defended her practice by clarifying that her work represented life itself rather than mere social misery. War, Grief, and the Woodcut Medium The outbreak of the First World War altered Kollwitz's personal life and artistic direction. Her youngest son, Peter, died in combat in 1914. Devastated by his death, Kollwitz embraced pacifism and redirected her prints toward themes of mourning, sacrifice, and human suffering. Around 1920, inspired by the wood sculptures and prints of Ernst Barlach, she began working with woodcuts. The woodcut process allowed her to move away from classical graphic detail toward opaque, exaggerated shapes that heightened the emotional weight of her figures. Between 1918 and 1923, Kollwitz created her woodcut portfolio Krieg (War), which was published in 1924. The series addressed the aftermath of conflict through simplified, heavy forms. She applied this woodblock technique to individual prints, including Infant Mortality in 1925, which depicted a mother overwhelmed by sorrow using stark black tones. Kollwitz intended her prints to remain widely accessible in price and message to working people. However, art publishers Emil Richter and Alexander von der Becke encouraged her to produce limited special printings alongside regular runs to cater to a private market of art collectors. Prussian Academy and Later Years In January 1920, the post-war socialist government appointed Kollwitz to the Prussian Academy of Arts, making her the first woman elected to the institution. She maintained her dedication to portraying the poor and unemployed throughout the Weimar era. When the National Socialist regime took power, authorities expelled Kollwitz from the academy and banned her from exhibiting her work in galleries. Despite this official ban, Nazi propaganda agencies occasionally appropriated her graphic imagery without her consent. During the Second World War, Allied bombing raids damaged Berlin severely. In one air raid, Kollwitz's Berlin apartment was destroyed, resulting in the loss of numerous original drawings and prints. She relocated to the town of Moritzburg to escape further bombing. Kollwitz died in Moritzburg in 1945, approximately two weeks before the official surrender of Germany. Over a career spanning five decades, she produced 275 distinct prints, working almost exclusively in black and white to document social inequality, maternal grief, political struggle, and the destruction of war.
Freyja and the Brísingamen
Loki approached Brísingamen in seal form, but Heimdall followed in the same guise and fought him on Vágasker. Heimdall recognised Loki, stopped the theft, and returned Freyja’s necklace, while related accounts connect the ornament with Hâma in Beowulf and with Loki’s later deception. Heimdall Reclaims Brísingamen Loki slid towards Brísingamen on the sea rock Vágasker, also called Singasteinn, the ornament rock. The necklace lay there glittering above Ægir’s realm. Freyja had worn it while seeking Svipdag and finding him beneath the waves. She and the necklace had remained for a time in the sea, which gave Brísingamen the epithet fagrt hafnýra, “the fair kidney of the sea”. Its light over the water also explains Freyja’s name Mardöll, “the one diffusing a glimmering in the sea”. Loki took the shape of a seal. A seal climbing onto the skerry would cause no suspicion. He moved towards the necklace, but another seal came after him. Heimdall had seen the attempt and assumed the same shape. The two fought on Vágasker. Their disguises could not conceal their eyes, and Heimdall recognised the cunning descendant of Farbauti. Loki withdrew without completing his theft. Heimdall recovered Brísingamen and returned it to Freyja. Other accounts preserve related versions. In the saga of Olaf Tryggvason, Loki entered Freyja’s locked bower as a fly, found a minute opening beneath the roof, then bit her cheek after changing into a flea. When she turned, he resumed his own shape and unclasped the necklace. The saga names the smiths Alfrig, Dvalin, Berling and Grer, and says that Loki acted after telling Odin how Freyja had obtained it. In Beowulf, Heimdall appears as Hâma and brings Brosingamene to Asgard. The poem calls it the finest ornament under heaven. Hâma later falls into Eormenric’s snares. This has been compared with Saxo’s traps for Liserus, identified with Heimdall, and Hadding. Source note: Primary text: the ancient sources. Corpus check: Teutonic Mythology: Gods and Goddesses of the Northland. Freyja Teaches Seiðr Freyja taught seiðr to the Æsir. She was Njörðr’s daughter and a blótgyðja, a priestess of sacrifices. The Ynglingasaga says that she was the first to teach the practice to the Æsir, as it had been customary among the Vanir. This account presents her teaching as the introduction of sorcery among the gods. Another source describes Freyja as the first to practise sorcery in Ásgarðr. It also connects the spread of these arts with Gulveig-Heið, and names Aurboda among the giantesses who attended Freyja. Óðinn learned seiðr from Freyja and became its supreme master. The Ynglingasaga places this statement within a longer account of his powers. Óðinn could change his shape. His body could lie as if asleep or dead while he appeared as a bird, an animal, a fish, or a serpent. In that form, he could travel to distant lands in a single moment, for his own errands or those of other people. He could also use words to put out a fire and calm the sea. The account distinguishes these powers from the practice of seiðr while describing them together. Freyja could also appear in bird form. She chose half of the slain warriors each day and received them in Fólkvangr. Later accounts mention völur, or seeresses, and seiðmenn, male sorcerers. A passage in Hyndluljóð traces völur to Viðólfr, vitkar to Vilmeiðr, and seiðberendr to Svarthöfði. Freyja Teaches Seiðr. Original MythSource illustration created for this story; not a historical artwork. Source note: Primary text: the ancient sources. Corpus check: Price, The Viking Way. Freyja Threatens Hyndla Freyja rode through the night on Battle-hog, a boar with golden bristles made by the dwarfs Dain and Nabbi. Óttar, her protégé, was disguised as the boar. He needed knowledge of his ancestry to defend his claim to an inheritance against Angantyr. Freyja brought him to the giantess Hyndla and asked her to recount the lineages of princes descended from the gods. Freyja called Hyndla her sister and tried to persuade her to help. Hyndla answered with insults and accused Freyja of taking Óttar on the road to Valhall. Freyja denied this and praised Battle-hog. Hyndla suggested that one of her wolves should race beside the boar. Freyja replied that her excellent steed should not be overloaded. She then urged Hyndla to sit with her and discuss the ancestry Óttar needed. Hyndla settled down and recounted Óttar’s ancestors, but refused to ride with Freyja to Valhall. The poem turns briefly to another prophecy before returning to the conversation. Freyja asks for memory-ale, so that Óttar can remember the words spoken and repeat them on the third morning, when he and Angantyr compare their lineages. Hyndla refuses. She says that she wants to sleep and that Freyja will get little from her. Freyja threatens to surround Hyndla’s dwelling with fire from the troll-woman, leaving her no escape. Hyndla sees fire burning and the earth aflame. She asks that the beer placed in Óttar’s hand be mixed with much poison, so that it will bring him misfortune. Freyja rejects the curse and says that it will have no effect. She prays that the gods will aid Óttar and declares that he will drink precious liquor. The ale gives him what he needs to remember the genealogical account and support his claim against Angantyr. Source note: Primary text: the ancient sources.