What does the Eye of Horus mean?

Wholeness and restoration. The Egyptian name wedjat means the sound one, and the myth behind it has the eye torn out by Set and repaired by Thoth. It is an amulet about something broken being made good, which is why it went into wrappings, onto coffins and over embalming wounds.

What is the difference between the Eye of Horus and the Eye of Ra?

The Eye of Horus is lunar, injured and healed, and protective. The Eye of Ra is solar and is a goddess sent out to destroy, who then has to be calmed and brought home. They are sometimes drawn the same way, but the meanings are opposite in temperament. The protective, healing one is the wedjat.

Is the Eye of Horus a fraction system?

No, though the claim is everywhere. Alan Gardiner proposed in 1927 that the six parts of the eye represent one half through one sixty-fourth in grain measure, summing to sixty-three sixty-fourths with Thoth supplying the remainder. Jim Ritter disproved it in 2003 in Closing the Eye of Horus, showing that the hieratic capacity-fraction signs and the parts of the drawn eye developed along entirely separate lines.

Can anyone wear an Eye of Horus?

Yes. Egyptian religion has no living community restricting its use, and the amulet was a mass-market commodity in its own time, exported around the Mediterranean. Wearing one raises no appropriation question comparable to the living traditions elsewhere in this library.

Which way should it face?

Egyptian practice used both, often as mirrored pairs, and no single orientation is required. On coffins the eye was placed so the occupant could look east through it, which is a rule about the object's position rather than about the eye itself.

Talismans · Against the eye

The Eye of Horus

Also called: Wedjat, udjat, the sound eye

An eye that was destroyed and made whole again, which is why Egypt wore it for four thousand years.

At a glance

Origin: Ancient Egypt
Egyptian name: Wedjat, the sound or whole one
Earliest use: Old Kingdom, 3rd millennium BCE
Materials: Faience, carnelian, lapis, gold
Means: Wholeness, restoration, health
Not the same as: The Eye of Ra

What it depicts

A human eye with a brow above it, a straight line falling from the inner corner and a curled spiral from the outer. Those two lower marks are not human. They are the facial markings of a falcon, most likely a lanner, and they are what turn a drawn eye into the eye of a god who is a falcon.

The Egyptian word is wedjat, from a root meaning sound, whole, uninjured. It is not the eye of vigilance that later European traditions made of it. It is the eye that was damaged and then repaired, and the amulet is a claim on that repair.

The myth behind it

Horus and Set fight over the throne of Egypt after the murder of Osiris. In the course of it Set tears out or wounds Horus's eye. Thoth, the god of writing and reckoning, restores it, and the restored eye is then offered by Horus to his dead father as the great gift.

That sequence does the work. The eye is not powerful because it sees; it is powerful because it was ruined and came back. Offering the wedjat becomes the model for offering anything in Egyptian ritual, and the amulet carries the promise that a thing which has been broken can be made sound.

A long-repeated claim holds that the six parts of the eye stand for the fractions one half down to one sixty-fourth in Egyptian grain measure, as used in texts like the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, and that they sum to sixty-three sixty-fourths with the missing part supplied by Thoth's healing breath. It is a beautiful idea. Alan Gardiner proposed it in 1927 and it was repeated as fact for most of a century. Jim Ritter dismantled it in 2003 in a paper titled Closing the Eye of Horus, showing that the hieratic capacity-fraction signs and the drawn parts of the eye have separate and traceable histories. The arithmetic is a modern romance rather than an Egyptian one.

How it was used

It is the commonest amulet in Egypt, produced in glazed faience by the thousand, cheap enough for anyone and fine enough in gold and inlay for a king. Worn as a pendant in life. Painted on the sides of coffins so the dead could see out. Included in the wrappings of a mummy, and in particular placed over the incision made for embalming, because the wound had to be made sound.

It also travelled. Phoenician traders, Greek and Roman contact and the sheer portability of a bead carried the wedjat around the Mediterranean, where it feeds into a much wider family of eye amulets that are still in use.

The Eye of Horus and the Eye of Ra

These are routinely confused, including on jewellery sold as one and drawn as the other. They are different ideas.

The Eye of Horus is the injured and healed eye, associated with the moon, with wholeness and with restoration. The Eye of Ra is the sun god's eye sent out as an independent, dangerous goddess, identified with Hathor, Sekhmet, Wadjet and others, who goes out to destroy and has to be persuaded to come back. One is a promise of repair. The other is a weapon that gets out of hand.

They are sometimes drawn identically, and Egyptian religion is comfortable with that overlap. If you want the protective, healing sense, the eye you want is the wedjat.

How the wedjat was made and worn

The amulet was industrial in Egypt, and its placement was governed by rules rather than by taste.

Moulded in glazed faience for the ordinary market, or cut from carnelian, lapis and gold for those who could pay.
Pierced at the top or the side so it could be strung, sewn to clothing or laid flat on a body.
Worn at the neck in life, often with other amulets in a set rather than alone.
Painted on the left side of a coffin at eye level, so the occupant faced east through it.
Laid over the embalming incision, the wound the amulet is meant to make sound again.

Mirror-image pairs are common and deliberate. A left wedjat and a right one were often worn or placed together.

What the Eye of Horus belongs with

The purposes it served and the Egyptian material it sits beside.

Questions for reflection

The wedjat is powerful because it was damaged first. Does that change what you would carry one for?
Egypt distinguished the healing eye from the destroying one. Where would you draw that line in your own symbols?
How much of what you believe about an ancient symbol comes from the culture that made it, and how much from the century that revived it?

Frequently asked questions

: Wholeness and restoration. The Egyptian name wedjat means the sound one, and the myth behind it has the eye torn out by Set and repaired by Thoth. It is an amulet about something broken being made good, which is why it went into wrappings, onto coffins and over embalming wounds.
: The Eye of Horus is lunar, injured and healed, and protective. The Eye of Ra is solar and is a goddess sent out to destroy, who then has to be calmed and brought home. They are sometimes drawn the same way, but the meanings are opposite in temperament. The protective, healing one is the wedjat.
: No, though the claim is everywhere. Alan Gardiner proposed in 1927 that the six parts of the eye represent one half through one sixty-fourth in grain measure, summing to sixty-three sixty-fourths with Thoth supplying the remainder. Jim Ritter disproved it in 2003 in Closing the Eye of Horus, showing that the hieratic capacity-fraction signs and the parts of the drawn eye developed along entirely separate lines.
: Yes. Egyptian religion has no living community restricting its use, and the amulet was a mass-market commodity in its own time, exported around the Mediterranean. Wearing one raises no appropriation question comparable to the living traditions elsewhere in this library.
: Egyptian practice used both, often as mirrored pairs, and no single orientation is required. On coffins the eye was placed so the occupant could look east through it, which is a rule about the object's position rather than about the eye itself.

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