Christianity has a bad guy named Satan. Egyptian mythology has a bad guy similarly named Set. Is this a coincidence or an example of Christians borrowing from Egyptian mythology.

We need to start with the names. We actually don’t know what the Egyptian Set means. Satan, however, is not a name. It is a title. It is Hebrew for accuser. Technically, anyone who accuses, even God, could be a satan.

What about the stories of each character?

There is an extensive mythology for Set. He has parents, Geb and Nut. He has siblings, including Osiris and Isis. He has a consort, Nephthys (also a sister). He has a son, Anubis. We have stories about what he does, including killing his brother Osiris.

What about Satan? What is his story? Many people look to Isaiah to piece together his back story. But there are some problems with that as you can see in this post. We have a bit more in Revelation with the war in heaven but even that doesn’t give us much.

We basically have no Christian mythology for Satan, at least in the biblical records. Of course later writers would add to this.

There is another problem with identifying Set and Satan. Although Set does some bad things, he is also depicted as a protector of Ra. He stands on Ra’s barge and fights the dark serpent Apep. Not something that we would expect Satan to do.

So despite some very superficial similarities, there is no connection between Set and Satan.