ARPORCATE. — One of the numerous forms under which the Egyptian god Horus was worshipped, specifically Horus the child: A. is in fact the Hellenized form of the Egyptian name Har-pe-krat, that is precisely Horus the child. As such, Egyptian monuments, and later Greek and Roman ones, represent him with a finger in his mouth, a gesture interpreted by Plutarch as a symbol of silence and linked to the mysteries. Together with Isis, A. was very popular in the final days of independent Egypt and even more so when Greek influence began to be felt, because he spoke to the heart as a symbol of the third constitutive element of the family, far more than the ancient forms of Horus, which arose in spiritual and cultural climates now too distant. For the same reason, A. was the only form of Horus whose cult spread beyond the borders of Egypt.