For a long time, Seth and Hathor had been the only gods in the Egyptian pantheon to incarnate the foreign-with Seth personifying its masculine, Hathor its feminine aspects…The ambivalent status of the outside world, which had both positive and negative aspects, was reproduced in these two gods, and at the very heart of the Egyptian pantheon…  

The arrival of foreign gods tore a breach in this way of appropriating the outside, making it possible to define the attributes of both Hathor and Set with greater precision. Hathor once again discovered her inclination for gentleness and love, and without disappearing, her sexuality was more or less shorn of its excesses…Seth was progressively confined to the role of exile and intruder, or even foreigner, whereas the new arrivals came to incarnate the positive values he himself had once embodied.

P. 51-52, Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods, Dimitri Meeks and Christine Favard-Meeks. (via thewitchingcow)