Every night the god Set stood on the prow of Ra’s solar barque and speared the chaos serpent Apep, keeping the sun alive. Yet his statues were later smashed, his face chiseled from temple walls, and his name equated with the Greek monster Typhon. This episode reconstructs the biography of Egypt’s lord of the Red Land, from his unidentifiable animal form and dominion over deserts, storms, and foreigners, to the murder and dismemberment of his brother Osiris.

We walk through the 80-year legal contest with Horus before the divine assembly, including the hippopotamus breath-holding match, the notorious lettuce incident, and the mutual mutilations that Egyptians read as eclipses and the restoration of cosmic balance, or Maat. Then we follow Set’s political comeback as patron of the Hyksos invaders and the Ramesside military pharaohs who took his name, and his final demonization when Kushite and Persian conquests made the god of foreigners a convenient scapegoat.

• Why Egyptologists simply call his symbol the Set animal
• How the desert swallowing the Nile valley became a family feud between brothers
• Why Ra, the chief judge, secretly favored Set over the young Horus
• The Greco-Roman propaganda that tried to link Set to rival cultures’ gods
• Modern villains from Doctor Who’s Sutekh to Gods of Egypt, and the groups reclaiming his complexity