Horus and Jesus: Why the “Copied from Egypt” Theory Fails Historically

Few claims circulate more confidently in online atheist subculture than this one: Jesus was copied from Horus. We are told that Horus was born of a virgin on December 25, had twelve disciples, performed miracles, was crucified, and rose from the dead—long before Christianity. Therefore, the story of Jesus must be recycled Egyptian mythology.

The problem is simple: none of those claims correspond to the actual Egyptian sources.

• Who Horus actually was in ancient Egyptian religion?

• What are the specific parallels frequently cited online?

• How did nineteenth-century scholarship created this myth—and how modern Egyptology dismantled it?

Who Was Horus?

Unlike Mithraism, where evidence is fragmentary, Egyptian religion is richly documented through temple inscriptions, funerary texts, hymns, and iconography spanning over two millennia. But that richness creates its own complexity: “Horus” is not a single, unified character.

There are multiple forms of Horus, including:

1. Horus the Elder (a primordial sky god)

2. Horus son of Isis and Osiris

3. Horus the Child (Harpocrates in Greek sources)

4. Horus as royal ideology (the living Pharaoh)

Egyptian religion evolved over centuries, and myths vary across time and region. There is no single canonical narrative comparable to the Gospels.

In the most widely known myth cycle, Horus is the son of Isis and Osiris. Osiris is murdered and dismembered by his brother Seth. Isis reassembles Osiris’ body and conceives Horus. Horus later battles Seth to avenge his father and claim kingship.

Already we should note something important: this is not a first-century Jewish apocalyptic proclamation. It is a mythic cycle about divine kingship embedded in Egyptian cosmology.

Common Internet Claims—and Why They’re False

Let us examine the most popular claims one by one.

Claim 1: Horus Was Born of a Virgin

This is the cornerstone claim. It is also false.

In Egyptian myth, Isis conceives Horus after magically reviving Osiris’ corpse. Osiris is dead—but Isis is not a virgin. The conception is explicitly sexual and marital.

Geraldine Pinch, a respected Egyptologist, explains that Isis “revives Osiris long enough to conceive a child.”¹

There is no virgin birth tradition in the Egyptian texts.

The internet claim appears to derive from nineteenth-century speculative works such as Gerald Massey’s writings, which freely harmonized and reinterpreted Egyptian material without philological control.

Modern Egyptology does not support this reading.

Claim 2: Horus Was Born on December 25

There is no Egyptian text that assigns December 25 as Horus’ birthdate.

The December 25 claim derives from later Roman calendrical developments and has been retroactively imposed onto Egyptian myth. Egypt used its own complex civil calendar unrelated to the Roman winter solstice festival.

There is no evidence of an Egyptian tradition placing Horus’ birth on December 25.

Claim 3: Horus Had Twelve Disciples

There is no Egyptian text describing Horus gathering twelve disciples in a teaching ministry.

In some temple art, Horus is associated with divine retinues or protective deities—but this is not analogous to twelve historical followers traveling through Galilee.

The number twelve is common in ancient symbolic systems (months, zodiac signs, tribal divisions). Similarity in number is not evidence of narrative borrowing.

As Jonathan Z. Smith cautioned in another context:

“Similarity is not identity, and resemblance does not prove dependence.”²

Claim 4: Horus Was Crucified

This claim is demonstrably false.

Crucifixion was a Roman execution method developed centuries after the core Egyptian myths of Horus. There is no Egyptian text or iconographic tradition depicting Horus as crucified.

Some internet images circulate showing Egyptian figures with outstretched arms. These are symbolic or artistic conventions—not crucifixion scenes.

There is no Egyptian crucifixion narrative attached to Horus.

Claim 5: Horus Died and Rose Again

This confusion arises from conflating Horus with Osiris.

Osiris is killed and becomes ruler of the underworld. But Osiris does not return to earthly life in resurrection; he becomes king of the dead.

Horus, by contrast, does not die and rise in the central myth. He battles Seth and becomes king.

The Egyptian myth cycle is about dynastic legitimacy and cosmic order—not atonement, resurrection proclamation, or eschatological hope.

The 19th-Century Origins of the “Copied from Egypt” Theory

The idea that Christianity was derived from Egyptian religion emerged during the nineteenth century, when European scholars were first deciphering hieroglyphs and attempting grand evolutionary schemes of religion.

Writers such as Gerald Massey and others proposed sweeping comparisons between Christianity and ancient Egyptian myth. Their method often:

• Ignored chronology

• Harmonized disparate Egyptian traditions

• Treated symbolic parallels as proof of dependence

• Lacked rigorous philological control

At the time, Egyptology was young. Many texts were only partially translated. Chronologies were uncertain. It was possible—though not well grounded—to imagine Christianity as the late flowering of ancient solar myth.

But as Egyptology matured, these reconstructions collapsed.

Improved translations, better dating of texts, and more precise historical method revealed that the alleged parallels were either:

• Misreadings

• Conflations

• Anachronisms

• Or inventions

Modern Egyptologists do not argue that Jesus was derived from Horus.

The Chronological Problem

Chronology is decisive.

The earliest Christian sources—Paul’s letters—date to AD 50–60. The Gospels follow within decades. These texts place Jesus firmly within Second Temple Judaism: debates about Torah, temple, messianism, and the kingdom of God.

By contrast, the Egyptian myths of Horus belong to a radically different religious world, separated by culture, language, theology, and centuries of development.

More importantly, there is no evidence that first-century Palestinian Jews were mining Egyptian temple mythology to construct a crucified Messiah—an idea already scandalous within Jewish expectations.

The explanatory burden lies with those claiming borrowing. Where is the evidence of transmission? Where is the textual bridge? Where is the historical mechanism?

None has been produced.

Judaism, Not Egypt, Is the Context of Jesus

The earliest Christian sources interpret Jesus through:

• Hebrew Scriptures

• Jewish messianic expectations

• Temple symbolism

• Apocalyptic hope

The categories are Jewish: Messiah, Son of Man, servant of YHWH, resurrection at the end of the age.

Nothing in the New Testament suggests Egyptian cosmology, Isis-Osiris ritualism, or dynastic mythic kingship.

To understand Jesus historically is to situate him in Second Temple Judaism—not in ancient Egyptian solar mythology.

Conclusion: A Theory That Survives Only Online

The claim that Jesus was copied from Horus is not supported by primary Egyptian texts. It originated in speculative nineteenth-century comparative religion and has been rejected by modern scholarship.

It survives today largely through documentaries, memes, and recycled internet lists of “parallels.”

But once the actual Egyptian sources are consulted, the parallels dissolve.

Christianity did not emerge from Egyptian temple myth. It emerged from first-century Jewish apocalyptic expectation centered on a crucified Galilean teacher.

Superficial resemblance is not historical explanation. And repeating a claim does not turn it into evidence.

Notes

1. Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 140–145.

2. Jonathan Z. Smith, Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and the Religions of Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 52.