Set animal

In ancient Egyptian art, the Set animal, or sha, is a chimerical beast, the totemic animal of the god Set. Because Set was identified with the Greek Typhon, the animal is also commonly known as the Typhonian animal or Typhonic beast.

Unlike other animals, Set is not easily identifiable in the modern animal world. Today, there is a general agreement among Egyptologists that it was never a real creature and existed only in ancient Egyptian imagination. In recent years, there have been many attempts by zoologists to find the Set animal in nature. Despite the fact that the animal’s existence is unknown, it had much significance for the Egyptians. The Set animal is one of the most frequently demonstrated animal determinatives

Hieroglyphic representation

The ancient Egyptian Set-animal, Gardiner no. E20, E21, is one of the portrayals of the god Set. The other common hieroglyph used to represent Set is a seated god with the head of the Set animal, Gardiner no. C7.

The linguistic use in the Egyptian language is as the determinative, for words portraying items with chaos, example words related to suffering, violence, perturbation. Also for the 'violent storms' of the atmosphere, a tempest.