TYPHON, in Egyptian mythology, was the Greek name of a son of Seb (Kronos) and Nut (Rhea). The latter gave birth to five children on the last five days of the year; first, Osiris and Haroeris, then Typhon, and lastly Isis and Nephthys. The Egyptian name of Typhon was Set, also Suti and Sutech, and in the earliest times he was a highly ven erated god. He often appears on the monuments in the form of a beast, the cunning crocodile, the dreaded hippopotamus, or the obstinate ass, and with yellow hair and long blunted ears. From hint the kings of the 19th dynasty, Seti (Sethos, Sethosis, changed by Herodotus into Sesostris), derive their name. The city of Ombos was a special seat of his worship. In later times, however, either about the close of the 21st dynasty or afterward, his worship was abandoned, and his figure and name were oblit• crated from many of the monuments. The cause of this curious religious revolution is unknown, but at any rate, Typhon came to be regarded as a god hostile to the Egyp tians, and was gradually developed into a personification of the principle of evil—in short, the Egyptian devil, the opponent of holy doctrine, and adversary of Osiris—the god of the waste howling wilderness, of the salt lakes, of drought, and of scorching heat.
The connection between the Egyptian Set and the Greek Typhon is not very easy to trace, but it undoubtedly existed. According to Homer Typhon (called also Typhiffin) was a huge giant, chained under the earth in the country of the Arimoi, and lashed by the lightnings of Zeus. Hesiod makes him a son of Typlitieus and a hurricane, and, by the snake-goddess, Echidna, the father of the Chimaera, the many-headed dog Orthus, the hundred-headed dragon that guarded the apples of the Hesperides. the Colchian
dragon. the Sphinx, Cerberus, Scylla, Gorgon, the Lernten Hydra, the eagle that con sumed the liver of Prometheus, and the Nemean lion. TyphOens, again, was the young est son of Tartarus (hell) and Gaga (earth), or, as others say, of Hera (Juno) alone. At a later period the father and son coalesced into one person. Pindar describes Typhon as a monster with a hundred dragon-heads, fiery eyes, a black tongue, and a terrible voice, He sought to wrest the sovereignty of the world from Zeus, but after a fearful struggle, he was subdued by a thunderbolt from Olympus, and hurled into Tartarus. or buried under ,Etna. The later poets modify the older myth with fabulous additions of their own. They connect Typhon with Eapyt—a proof, perhaps, that lie had come to be identified with the Egyptian Set. According to Ovid and others, all the gods fled before him into Egypt, and through fear, changed themselves into animals, excepting Zeus and Athena. After an appalling struggle, in the course of which Zeus was once hamstrung, and carried off by the daring monster, Typhon was vanquished, but not before he had hurled all mount Hmmis against his adversary, in a paroxysm of supernatural rage. It is very possible that the fierce physical opposition of Typhon (especially when the mon ster cant,: to be identified with Set, the Egyptitul devil) may have had (along with other causes) a material influence in determining that popular conception of " satan " which reigned both in patristic and mediaeval times, and of which 31ilton has so largely availed himself in his Paradise Lost. .