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Hauron, Haurun or Hawran (from Egyptian ') was an ancient Egyptian god worshiped in Giza. He was closely associated with Harmachis, with the names in some cases used interchangeably, and his name as a result could be used as a designation of the Great Sphinx of Giza. While were familiar with Hauron since the nineteenth century, his origin was initially unknown, and only in the 1930s it was established that he originated outside Egypt. Today it is agreed that he was the Egyptian form of a god worshiped in Canaan and further north in the city of Ugarit, conventionally referred to as Horon (, ḥrn; Ḥôrānu or Ḥōrān''') in scholarship.
In the Ugaritic texts, Hauron appears as a deity associated with magic and . This role is also attested for him in Egypt and in Phoenician sources from the first millennium BCE. The best known text focused on him is KTU 1.100, often interpreted as a myth, in which the Ugaritic sun goddess Shapash implores him to help pḥlt, a figure of unknown character troubled by snakes. He is also well attested in incantations. However, his name does not appear in any offering lists from this city, and it is assumed his importance in Ugaritic religion was minor.
In the first millennium BCE, Hauron continued to be worshiped in Egypt, but his cult also spread through the Mediterranean, and he is attested in Phoenician and Punic language sources from as far west as Sardinia. In the Hebrew Bible he is referenced in toponyms such as Bethoron. The last source to mention him is a Greek second-century BCE inscription from Delos referring to his worship in Jamnia.
It has been proposed that the name is related the root ḥwr present in Semitic languages and that it might mean "the deep one." Similarities to the Arabic word ḥaur, referring to the bottom of a well or a broad depression, and to Hebrew language ḥôr, "cave" or "hole," have been pointed out, though according to Nicolas Wyatt the fact that in Ugaritic the cognate is written ḫr rather than ḥr might cast doubts over this etymology. An alternate proposal is that the name is a cognate of Arabic ḥourroun, "falcon." The early view that it might reflect the ethnonym ḫurri (Hurrians) is no longer considered credible.
The Egyptian Papyrus Harris mentions Hauron in a role similar to that he plays in Ugaritic texts, invoking him to render a wolf harmless with the help of Anat and a third deity, identified as either Arsaphes or Resheph depending on the translation. Elsewhere he occurs as a healing deity. He was also invoked to protect fields, and in this capacity has been referred to as a shepherd. Richard H. Wilkinson proposes that Egyptians associated with the , and considered him a god of herdsmen and other people who wandered through this environment. Jacobus van Dijk concluded that he was understood as a god of the desert capable of protecting people and livestock from the animals inhabiting it. George Hart has characterized him as an earth god.
It is a matter of dispute among researchers if Hauron was also associated with the underworld, with some authors, such as Nicolas Wyatt, voicing support for this assumption, while others, for example , do not consider it to be conclusively proven. Wyatt's argument rests on the assumption that the term designating Hauron's dwelling in the Ugaritic texts, mṣd (in KTU 1.100 written as mṣdh, which is possibly a directional form, a possessive one, or both at once) refers to a location in the underworld. Similar argument has been by Udo Rüterswörden. The term mṣd is often translated as either "fortress" or "steppe," though neither possibility is regarded as certain. It also occurs in an Ugaritic ritual text pertaining to a group of deities known as Gaṯarāma (dual) or Gaṯarūma (plural), which seemingly included the moon god Yarikh, the sun goddess Shapash and the god Gaṯaru, but the context does not provide any additional hints about its meaning.
In the past it was believed that the logogram dingirNIN.URTA, found in a total of four passages in the corpus of the Amarna letters, might correspond to Hauron, but this view has been challenged in 1990 by Nadav Na'aman. He points out that his character was not similar to Mesopotamian Ninurta, and additionally that he is entirely absent from theophoric names from Ugarit and other late Bronze Age sites, unlike the deity represented by this logogram. He proposed that it should be understood as a logographic representation of the name of the goddess Anat instead. This proposal subsequently found support from other researchers, including Peggy L. Day (who extends its scope to dNIN.URTA in documents from Emar as well) and Michael P. Streck (who only considers it applicable to Canaan and the kingdom of Amurru kingdom).
The text consists of a series of appeals to various deities, followed by the intervention of Hauron and a marriage proposal he makes. While snakes are mentioned by pḥlt, and it agreed that the text pertains to her trouble with these animals, there is no direct reference to a snakebite occurring. The deity who asks the other members of the Ugaritic pantheon for help on pḥlt's behalf is Shapash, the sun goddess. While pḥlt addresses her as her mother, it is not certain if this statement reflects her actual genealogy or if it simply designates her as an authority figure. The deities invoked are Baal, Dagan, Anat (paired with Ashtart), Yarikh, Resheph, Ashtart (on her own), Ẓiẓẓu-wa-Kāmaṯu, Milku, Kothar-wa-Khasis and the pair Shahar and Shalim, all of them invoked from their cult centers, some of them located close to Ugarit (Jebel Aqra), other on Crete, in Anatolia (Bibitta) or Upper Mesopotamia (Tuttul, Mari). They all prove to be ineffective in this situation, and it takes the intervention of Horon to solve the problem. He uses a variety of plants he gathered, presumably to deal with venom. It is not certain if the marriage proposal is necessarily aimed at pḥlt, though this view is supported by most translators of this text, with only a minority arguing that its target is instead Shapash.
A curse invoking Hauron appears both in the Baal Cycle (KTU 1.2.1.7–8) and in the Epic of Keret (KTU 1.16.6.54–57). Most likely it was a fixed formula which was not composed specifically for these works of literature. It is similar in both cases, and can be translated as "May Hauron break (...) your head, Ashtart-Name-of-Baal your skull," though the targets are different: in the former case a deity presumed to be Baal curses his adversary, the sea god Yam, while in the latter the Kirta curses his son Yassibu. It is not known why Ashtart is mentioned alongside Hauron in this context, and the translation of the phrase specifying her relation to Baal, tentatively translated by Theodore J. Lewis and a number of other researchers as "face," is also uncertain. In neither of these texts Horon plays any role after being invoked in a curse.
Evidence for both royal and private worship of Hauron is available. However, no accounts of clergy dedicated to him or to Hauron (or Hauron-Harmachis) are available, with the exception of an isolate reference to a certain Pay, a grain measurer in his service, which is considered difficult to reconcile with the large number of available sources documenting the daily life of ancient Giza. While it is known that he did receive offerings like other deities, further features of his official cult are therefore difficult to ascertain. The limestone doors of a building from the reign of Tutankhamun located in the proximity of the Great Sphinx refer to the pharaoh as the "beloved of Hauron." Seti I dedicated a stela depicting him during a hunt and praising his military accomplishments to Hauron-Harmachis. During the reign of Ramesses II, the cult of Hauron is attested outside Giza for the first time, specifically in Deir el-Medina and possibly also in Pi-Ramesses. A reference to "Hauron of Lebanon" has been identified in the inscription on a sphinx from the Ramesside period from Tell el-Maskhuta too.
On amulets from Deir el-Medina, Hauron instead appears alongside Shed, and according to Jacobus van Dijk seemingly could be identified with him in this area, as evidenced by use of double names Hauron-Shed and Shed-Hauron.
In the Hebrew Bible, Hauron is mentioned in the toponym Bethoron (; Joshua 16:3, 5), "house of Hauron." The name apparently refers to two separate settlements, both in the proximity of Jerusalem, sometimes referred to as the "upper" and "lower" Beth Horon. Beth-Horon is also mentioned in a Hebrew ostracon from Tell Qasile and in an Egyptian Topography list from the reign of Shoshenq I. It has also been proposed that a connection existed between his name and Horonaim, a city located in Moab. A further toponym which might at least be cognate with Hauron's name is Hauran.
The worship of Hauron continued in Egypt as late as in the Saite period, though his foreign origin was no longer remembered. The so-called Inventory Stela, which despite its age mentions the Old Kingdom pharaoh Cheops, presumably because he was the first pharaoh to build his pyramid in Giza, states that a temple dedicated to Haurun was located in the proximity of the Great Sphinx of Giza, next to ones dedicated to "Isis, Mistress of the Pyramids" and "Osiris, Lord of Rasetau."
The last known reference to Hauron is a Greek language inscription from Delos from the second century BCE, which refers to a deity named Auronas, and states that he was worshiped in Yavne alongside Heracles (possibly to be understood as Melqart in this case), and that all offerings were viewed as appropriate for him except for . Since this city is located in the historical Philistia, the presence of Hauron in the local pantheon might indicate that the Philistines at some point incorporated Canaanite deities into their own beliefs. Brian Peckham argued that Hauron was introduced into this area by Judeans.
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