in ancient Egyptian religion, god in the form of a falcon whose eyes were the sun and the moon. Falcon cults were widespread in Egypt. At Nekhen (Greek: Hierakonpolis), however, the conception arose that the reigning king was a manifestation of Horus, and, after Egypt had been united by the kings from Nekhen, this conception became a generally accepted dogma. The first of the Egyptian king's five names was the Horus name—i.e., the name that identified him with Horus. The hovering form of Horus depicted above a king's head, sometimes portrayed as a winged sun disk, is that of Horus of Behdet, a town in the Nile River delta where the falcon god enjoyed a cult.

Horus appeared as a local god in many places and under different names and epithets; for instance, as Harmakhis (Har-em-akhet, “Horus in the Horizon”), Harpocrates (Har-pe-khrad, “Horus the Child”), Harsiesis (Har-si-Ese, “Horus, Son of Isis”), Harakhte (“Horus of the Horizon,” closely associated with the sun god Re), and, at Kawm Umbū (Kom Ombo), as Haroeris (Harwer, “Horus the Elder”). Horus was later identified by the Greeks with Apollo, and the town of Edfu (Idfū) was called Apollinopolis (“Apollo's Town”) in the Greco-Roman period.