The Animal Nobody Can Name

Egyptian tradition gives most of its figures the head of an animal anyone can identify — falcon, jackal, cat, ibis. It drew composites too, and those are legible as well: Ammit is crocodile, lion and hippopotamus, and you can name every part. Set is the exception. A long down-curved snout, tall squared-off ears, a stiff forked tail — and Egyptologists have proposed the aardvark, the donkey, the fennec, the okapi, an extinct species, and pure invention. None of it has settled. One reading, attractive and unprovable, is that the creature was never meant to exist at all.