Every year I wait until I see this meme pop up, then post my response.

I LOVE mythology, and have done since I was a wee boy. Whoever made this has no love of mythology, only of lies.

This is largely a repeat of things I’ve written before, tidied up & reformatted for Twitter
/1

So here’s a slightly sarcastic series of responses to each claim in turn.

1)

Jesus: story written down 2,000 years ago

Horus: story written down 5,000 years ago.

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Not much to dispute here - it's generous of them to say 2,000 when it's closer to 1,950 (although Isaiah's accounts are nearly a millennium older). Regardless, Egyptian mythology is older than both the gospels and Isaiah. So far, so worrying.



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2)

Jesus: Born of the Virgin Mary

Horus: Born of the virgin Isis.

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I will happily concede that Horus' birth was not exactly ordinary:

Isis's brother, Osiris, was murdered by their other brother (sometimes called their half-brother, sometimes step-brother) Set.

Set cut Osiris up and scattered the pieces across the world.

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Isis gathered up all of the pieces and reanimated him.

The one piece she couldn't find was his penis, so she made a substitute out of gold. She then slept with her brother and bore Horus.

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Now, I don't know whether there is a prescribed term for that particular series of events. If there's a word for it, it eludes me. But a virgin birth it ain't.

No one's reading that and calling the Nativity a 'rip-off'.

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3)

Jesus: Born December 25th

Horus: born December 25th.


This is correct.

Wait, no, sorry. Not only are both incorrect, but it’s a nonsense assertion:

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As cute as it is to think that the ancient Egyptians would have had Roman calendars, they obviously didn't.
The best adaptation from the Egyptian calendar's celebration of Horus' birth is some where in the 20s of August.

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Jesus' birth is celebrated on December 25th most likely thanks to Constantine. From the dates we have, smart people tell me it's probably March.

I was born in March. Zeitgeisty, eh!?

(I’m guessing the author saw one of these in the Ashmolean gift shop and became confused.)
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4)

Jesus: North star led wise men to him when he was born

Horus: Eastern star led 3 wise men to him when he was born.

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This is an odd one. It's more likely that it was some other astrological event that led the wise men to Jesus. The North star had been around for… a while - I doubt these 𝑎𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑜𝑙𝑜𝑔𝑒𝑟𝑠 suddenly noticed the largest star in the sky & followed it.

Possible though.
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Horus, though, is another story:

The names of the three stars in what we know as Orion's belt were named Mintaka, Anilam & Alnitak by the Egyptians.

I shall be generous & say that they may have been called wise men (though I don’t think they were called ‘men’, only ‘wise’)

/13

They pointed to the star (Sirius) which for them represented the harbinger of Osiris (Horus' dad). They weren't ever regarded as men in any story I can find (please point to a source if you know one!), and they didn't follow, and it's about Osiris. But close enough I guess.

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5) IT'S A CROSSOVER EPISODE!

Jesus: Taken to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod

Horus: Taken to Egypt to escape the wrath of Typhon.

Yeah… so… Typhon is from Greek mythology.

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Over four millennia after the Horus story’s origin we start to see some syncretism in the mythologies - Typhon became associated with Osiris and Isis's enemy-brother Set. I can't find any evidence of an authentic myth involving Horus escaping from Typhon…

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…but if there were, do you know what would be weird?

It would be weird if that story involved Horus escaping to Egypt… y’know, the place he’s already at.

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6)

Jesus: Taught in the temple as a child;

Horus: Taught in the temple as a child.

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Can't find a reference to this for Horus. Willing to concede anyway. I'll even say it: "Jesus & Horus probably both taught in temples as children".

&, to abridge Paul - if we had faith in Jesus for the uniqueness of his childhood pedagogy, then we are to be pitied above all
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7)

Jesus: Baptised by John the Baptist at 30

Horus: Baptised by Anup the Baptiser at 30.

There’s a bit of clumsy skulduggery going on here. Presumably they thought it would be too obvious they were making it up if they said both were called ‘the Baptist’.

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So they named one ‘the Baptiser’, and the other ‘the Baptist’. (Unless they’re intimating that John was Lutheran?)

Of course, if it were translated, these words would be translated identically.

It was never translated though, because the guy made it up in English.

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Anyhoo…the closest thing I could find to Anup the Baptiser was the Anpu-Bata story- I kid you not- about two brothers called Anpu and Bata. This is lexically similar(?)ish &the number 30 comes up a couple of times.Horus does not.
It reads like a retelling of the Osiris myth.
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(Also, I've never once seen a reference to Horus' age. If you find one, let me know - until then I am regarding anything that talks about Horus in his teens or 30s as 'fan-fiction garbage', or, as it is more commonly called, just ‘fan fiction’.
/23

Apparently there’s a limit to the number of tweets in a thread :(

8)
Jesus: Had twelve disciples

Horus: had 12 disciples.
(Written numbers for Jesus, digits for Horus, so you know it’s legit, just like Baptist/Baptiser)

In short, no - Horus did not have 12 disciples.

He had a group of followers called the Shemsu-Heru (or Shemsu-Hor) who were created by Isis and her sister Nebet-Het. Their purpose was to act as bodyguards/standing army for Horus, but they got up to all sorts of high jinks.

Early stories number them at 42, but sometimes only specific ones are mentioned so it’s sometimes claimed that there were 4 main ones. One of them is known as the Immortal Avenger - I’m guessing Marvel have him in the back pocket for when they next need another Deus ex machina.

9) a. Jesus: Performed miracles; Horus: Performed miracles

Yep.

b) Jesus: Walked on water; Horus: Walked on water

Nope

10) Jesus: Raised Lazarus from the dead; Horus: Raised El-azur-us from the dead.

Another bit of Neanderthal trickery. This goes back to Isis (not Horus) reanimating Osiris.

There is no justification for writing Osiris as El azur us, which could conceivably mean Lord Osiris in some Coptic/Hebrew mongrol language.

The name Osiris, as best can be expressed in Twitter’s format is ‘𓊍𓁹𓁚’. Lazarus is written in the gospels as ‘Λάζαρος´.

Guys, it takes less credulity to believe in the virgin birth than to believe that... *deep breath* ...this name was bastardised & stolen from Egyptian, via Coptic, transliterated into Hebrew, then translated roughly into Greek by John... all for the purpose of stealing a story…

…of how Egypt’s Cersei Lannister reanimated the corpse of her brother for the purpose of arts&crafts copulation so as to bear a son &’slightly editing’ it into a story in which Jesus tells Lazarus(a normal name in his time&place) 2 come out of his tomb and he does and he’s fine.

11)
Jesus: Was transfigured on a mount

Horus: Was transfigured on a mount

Kind of - Horus takes on many different forms, most commonly a falcon. He probably was on a mountain in this form. Read Mark 9 and tell me if you still have a problem. We may use the word ‘transfigure’ for both, but I’m pretty sure something different is going on.

12) Jesus: Titles included ‘the way, the truth, the light, the messiah, God’s anointed son, son of man, the good shepard (sic.) lamb of God, the morning star, the light of the world; Horus: The same (I’m not repeating all of that)

These are false and it doesn’t seem worth going into each one. (Also, what did they think happened!? That over 3000 years, the names were gradually introduced to Judaism and then early Christianity without any preserved literature accounting for the process?)

I will say this - both had many names & both were associated with light.

I did find one pair of names which match nicely for a Christmassy debunking though:

One of Horus’ names is ‘The distant one’. Last Sunday we sang my favourite carol: ‘O Come, O Come Emmanuel’.

Emmanuel means ‘God with us.’

13)
Jesus: Crucified, buried in a tomb and resurrected (yes and amen!)

Horus: crucified, buried in a tomb and resurrected.

The oldest record of crucifixion is from Herodotus’ Histories and dates in the 450sBC (please put me right if you know otherwise). “Having killed him in a way not fit to be told, Oroetes then crucified him [Polycrates]”.

Oroetes was Persian - there is no evidence to my knowledge of Egyptian crucifixions.

Horus was not put in a tomb, which is weird, because that is an odd thing to make up. No one would have a problem with that. A lot of people have been put in tombs -it’s a normal part of the burial process.

Horus was killed though: in his infancy he was poisoned by a scorpion sent from Set. Isis called to Ra to help - he sent Thoth to bring him back. This is not the Easter story.

A comparatively brief follow-up, for those interested in thinking more about the relationship between mythology & Truth. https://twitter.com/mrashcunningham/status/1336632970392834049

We go into a bit more detail in this conversation - for anyone who’s interested.