SESTRI PONENTE, pi-ne'n't5. A seaport in the Province of Genoa, Italy, five miles by rail west of Genoa (Map: Italy, C 3). it has fine villas, a technical school, and a music school. It manufactures machinery, matches, and tobac co. and carries on shipbuilding. Population (com mune), in 1881, 10,872; in 1901, 17,187.
SET (Gk. karfh). An Egyptian deity. the son of Seb and Nut, and the brother of Osiris, Isis, and Neplithys, the latter being his wife. In the legend he endeavors to thwart the benefi cent plans of Osiris, and failing in this, treach erously murders him. So implacable is his hatred that he even persecutes his brother's body, tear ing it into pieces and scattering them far and wide. lint Horns, the son of Osiris and Isis, is safely guarded by his mother from the evil de signs of Set, and an attaining maturity he takes vengeance for his father's murder. According to the popular conception Set was the personifi cation of evil and of darkness; hence he was the god of the inhospitable desert and of foreign countries hostile to Egypt. His sacred ani
mals were the crocodile, the hippopotamus, and the ass, especially the latter. But Set was not always regarded as an evil deity. At Tanis, for example, he was held to be the solar deity who pierced with his lance the Apep ser pent, and he was called 'the beloved of Rea' and at ()mhos. where; he was worshiped in very early times, he was revered as lord of the South and was occasionally identified with the crocodile god Sobk (q.v.). By the Greeks Set was called Typhon (q.v.), and was identified with the giaht of that name. Consult: Meyer, Set-Ty phon (Leipzig, 1875) ; Brugsch, Religion and Mythologic (ler ultra Aegypter (Leipzig, 1888 90) : Wiedemann. Religion of the Ancient Egyp tians (trans., New York. 1897).