Abstract

In his De Iside, Plutarch uses the example of the Osirian myth and the cases of Osiris, Horus and Typhon (Seth) to define his doctrine of dualism which according to him offers an explication for the philosophical problem of the existence of Good and Evil. Since the philosopher has based himself on Egyptian mythology, the present study seeks to elucidate what the documentation of “pharaonic” Egypt teaches us about the conception of an opposition between Good and Evil, about the place that the complex figure of Seth takes within this concept, and about the typically Egyptian binary way of thinking.