In the rock drawing, south of El-Kab, to which I have alluded a few minutes ago, the two Horus hawks stand on the symbol of "gold," the one wearing the crown of Southern Egypt, the other that of the North. The "Golden Horus" was, in fact, one of the titles assumed by the Pharaoh at an early date. Whether the epithet applied to the god represented originally the golden colour of the wings of the sparrow-hawk, or whether, as is more probable, it denoted the Horus-hawk of gold who watched over the destinies of the kings of Upper Egypt in their ancient capital of Nekhen, it is now impossible to say.(46) Later ages explained it as referring to the golden rays of the morning sun.
In the time of the Fourth Dynasty the title was attached indifferently to the Ka or death name given to the Pharaoh after his death, and to the living name given to him at his birth into this world. The Horus-hawk, without the symbol of "gold," surmounted, so far as we know, only the Ka name. It was the double of the Pharaoh, rather than the Pharaoh himself, in whom the god had been incarnated. Horus brings the captive northerner to the king, and presides over his kingdom; but it is only over the royal Ka that he actually watches.
At Nekhen, the Horus-hawk, to whom the city was dedicated, was represented under the form of a mummy. It was here, perhaps, that the natron of El-Kab was first employed to preserve the dead body from decay, and that Horus was supposed to be entombed, like Osiris at Abydos. At any rate, there is clearly a connection between the dead and mummified Horus and the Horus who stands above the name of the Pharaoh's double. It is probable, therefore, that the identification of Horus with the kings of Upper Egypt originated at Nekhen. The Horus-hawk was the token under which they fought and ruled; it was Horus who had led them to victory, and in whose name the Pharaonic Egyptians, with their weapons of metal, overcame the neolithic population of the Nile.
That Horus, accordingly, in one shape or another, should have become the patron god of so many principalities in Southern Egypt, is in no way astonishing.(47) He represented the Pharaonic Egyptians; and as they moved northward, subduing the older inhabitants of the country, they carried his worship with them. At Heliopolis he was adored as Hor-em-Khuti or Harmakhis, "Horus issuing from the two horizons," and identified with Ra, the sun-god, the patron of the city. His image may still be seen in the sphinx of Giza, with its human head and lion's body. At Edfu, where the Pharaonic invaders appear to have first established themselves, he was worshipped as Hor-behudet under the form of a winged solar disc, a combination of the orb of the sun with the wings of the hawk.(48) A legend inscribed on the walls of the temple, which is a curious mixture of folklore and false etymologising, worked up after the fashion of Lemprière by the priests of the Ptolemaic period, knows exactly when it was that this emblem of the god came into existence. It was in the three hundred and sixty-third year of the reign of Ra-Harmakhis on earth, when he fled from the rebels who had risen against him in Nubia and had landed at Edfu. Here Hor-behudet, the local deity, paid homage to his suzerain and undertook to destroy his enemies. But first, he flew up to the sun "as a great winged disc," in order that he might discover where they were. Then in his new form he returned to the boat of Harmakhis, and there Thoth addressed Ra, saying: "O lord of the gods, the god of Edfu (_Behudet_) came in the shape of a great winged disc: from henceforth he shall be called Hor-behudet." It was after this that Horus of Edfu and his followers, "the smiths," smote the foe from the southern to the northern border of Egypt.