But this Horus is himself perfected and complete ; but he has not done away completely with
Typhon, but has taken away his activity and strength.
Hence they say that at Kopto the statue of Horus
holds in one hand the privy members of Typhon, and
they relate a legend that Hermes cut out the sinews
of Typhon, and used them as strings for his lyre,
thereby instructing us that Reason adjusts the
Universe and creates concord out of discordant
elements, and that it does not destroy but only
cripples the destructive force. Hence this is weak
and inactive here, and combines with the susceptible
and changeable elements and attaches itself to them,
becoming the artificer of quakes and tremblings in
the earth, and of droughts and tempestuous winds
in the air, and of lightning-flashes and thunderbolts.
Moreover, it taints waters and winds with pestilence,
and it runs forth wanton even as far as the moon,
oftentimes confounding and darkening the moon's
brightness ; according to the belief and account of
[p. 135]
the Egyptians, Typhon at one time smites the eye
of Horus, and at another time snatches it out and
swallows it, and then later gives it back again to the
Sun. By the smiting, they refer allegorically to the
monthly waning of the moon, and by the crippling, to
its eclipse,1 which the Sun heals by shining straight
upon it as soon as it has escaped the shadow of the
earth.
1 Cf. 368 f, supra.