The Gods of Egypt formed one of the largest pantheons in the ancient world. Over the course of Egyptian history hundreds of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses were worshipped by the ancient Egyptians. The characteristics of individual gods could be hard to conclude, for the fact that they were manifested in various forms and some times they were mixed up in various myths. Most of them had a principle association (for instance, with the sun or the underworld) and form. But these could change over time as gods rose and fell in importance and evolved in ways that corresponded to developments in Egyptian society. Here are some of the most important deities that were worshipped all over Egypt.
The Most Popular Gods of Egypt
OSIRIS: God of Underworld, Resurrection, Paradise
Osiris, no doubt is one of Egypt’s most important Egyptian Gods, was god of the underworld. He also symbolized resurrection, paradise, and the Nile floods for agricultural fertility.
The Osiris myth is the most elaborate and influential story in ancient Egyptian mythology. It concerns the murder of the god Osiris, a primeval king of Egypt. According to the myth, Osiris was murdered and dismembered by his brother Seth, who later usurped his throne. Meanwhile, Osiris’s wife Isis restored her husband’s body, allowing him to posthumously conceive their son, Horus.The remainder of the story focuses on Horus, the divine offspring of the union between Isis and Osiris, who is at first a vulnerable child protected by his mother and Hathor, then he becomes Set’s rival for the throne. Their often violent conflict ends with Horus’s triumph, which restores Maat (cosmic and social order) to Egypt after Set’s unrighteous reign and completes the process of Osiris’s resurrection.
ISIS: Iset the throne, Devine mother, Lady of Love, Mistress of Heaven
Gods of Egypt – Goddess Isis, Met Fifth Museum, New York
The origins of Isis are a but obscure. Unlike many Egyptian gods, she can’t be tied to a specific city, and there are no solid mentions of her in the early Egyptian literature. Over time her importance grew, though, eventually becoming the most important goddess in the Egyptian pantheon. As the devoted wife who reassembled and resurrected Osiris after his murder and raised their son, Horus, Isis embodied the traditional Egyptian virtues of a wife and protective mother.As the wife of the god of the underworld and paradise, Isis was also one of the major deities concerned with rites for the dead. Along with her sister Nephthys, Isis was depicted as a divine mourner, and her maternal care was often extending to the dead in the underworld.Isis was one of the last ancient Egyptian gods to still be worshipped. Later, in the Greco-Roman period she was identified with the Greek goddess Aphrodite of love and beauty and her cult spread as far east as Afghanistan and as far west as Great Britain. It is believed also that depictions of Isis with the infant Horus influenced Christian imagery of Mary with Jesus the child.
HORUS: Lord of the sky, Eye of Ra, Protector of both horizons
Horus, gray granite statue at his temple in Edfu, south Egypt.
Horus can be depicted as a falcon or as a man with a falcon’s head, Horus was a sky god associated with war and hunting. He was also the embodiment of the divine kingship, and in some eras the ruling king was considered to be a manifestation of Horus on earth.According to the Osiris myth, Horus was the legit son of Isis and Osiris, who magically conceived after the murder of Osiris by his brother Seth. Horus was raised by Isis and Hathor to avenge his father’s murder. One tradition holds that Horus lost his left eye fighting with Seth and colored the sky blue, but his eye was magically healed by the god Thoth and became the symbol of ancient Egyptian medicine. Because the right and left eyes of Horus were associated, respectively, with the sun and the moon, the loss and restoration of Horus’s left eye gave a mythical explanation for the different phases of the moon.
SETH: Lord of Chaos, Violence, and Desert
Seth on the left, blessing the coronation King Ramses II, a scene from Abu Simbel temple, Aswan, Egypt
Seth was depicted as the god of chaos, violence, deserts, and storms. In the Osiris myth, he is the murderer of his brother Osiris (in the myth, he tricked Osiris into laying down in an elaborate sarcophagus and then sealed it shut.)Seth’s appearance seems to be problematic for Egyptologists. He is often depicted as weird looking animal or as a human with the head of that animal. But they can’t figure out what animal he’s supposed to be. Seth usually has a long snout and long flat ears. In his fully animal form, he has a long thin doglike body and a straight tail with a tuft on the end. Many scholars believe that no such animal ever existed in Egypt and that the Seth animal is some sort of mythical composite, may be of dog and donkey.
PTAH: Lord of Crafts, King of all gods
God Ptah, Egyptian Gods
Ptah was the head of the triad of Memphis, the first capital of unified upper and lower Egypt not far from the great Pyramids of Giza. The other two members of the triad were Ptah’s wife, the lioness-headed goddess Sekhmet of war, and their son Nefertem, a beautiful young man with the blue water-lily flowers around his head. The ancient Egyptians often carried small statuettes of him as good-luck charmsPtah’s original association seems to have been with craftsmen, builders, and creativity. The most famed architect Imhotep from the 3rd-dynasty was deified after his death as a son of Ptah.Scholars suggest that the Greek word Aiguptos—from which the the name of Egypt was sourced—may have started as an abbreviation of Hwt-Ka-Ptah, the name of one of Ptah’s shrines in Memphis.
RA: The sun god, Lord of Heavens
Re (Ra), sun god, one of the creator gods.
Was the most important ancient Egyptian deity of the sun. By the Fifth Dynasty, around the 25th and 24th centuries BCE, he had become one of the patron gods in ancient Egyptian pantheon, identified primarily with the noon-day solar desk. Ra was believed to have ruled in all parts of the created worlds: the sky, Earth, and the underworld alike. He was the patron god of the sun, order, kings, and the sky.Ra was depicted as a falcon or as a human with the falcon’s head and shared characteristics with the sky-god Horus. At times the two deities were merged as Ra-Horakhty, “Ra, Horus of both Horizons“. In the Middle Kingdom, the name of the Sun god was changed to Amun “the hidden’, referring to the hidden power of the solar desk, later in the New Kingdom, god Amun rose to prominence he was fused with Ra as Amun-Ra.
AMON: the Hidden One, the self-created Creator
God Amon – Karnak temple, Luxor, Egypt
Amon, Amun, or Imen, probably means the “Hidden One” rose to the position of patron god of Thebes by replacing Montu, the god of war. Before rising to national importance in the New Kingdom, god Amon was worshipped locally in the southern city of Thebes as the god of the Air. After the rulers of Thebes rebelled against a dynasty of foreign rulers known as the Hyksos and reestablished native Egyptian rule throughout Egypt by king Ahmose I (c. 16th century BC), Amon received credit for their victory and acquired national importance and was merged with the Sun god, Ra, as Amun-Ra to become the creator and the king of gods on the ancient Egyptians.
Amun-Ra held the position of transcendental, self-created creator deity “par excellence”; he was the champion of the poor or troubled and central to personal piety. With Osiris and Anubis, Amun-Ra is the most widely recorded of the Egyptian gods.
As the chief deity of the Egyptian Empire, Amun-Ra also happened to be worshipped outside the Egyptian empire, according to the testimony of ancient Greek historiographers in Libya and Nubia. As Zeus Ammon or Jupiter Ammon, he came to be identified with Zeus, the king of gods of the Greeks. Jupiter Ammon was also a tutelary deity of Alexander the Great and posthumous images of Alexander depict him with the horns of Ammon. Roman rulers used Jupiter Ammon as decoration on their armors and for its protective powers as well as for asserting the supremacy of the military.
HATHOR: The house of Horus, Lady of Turquoise
Goddess Hathor, Philae temple, south Egypt
Hathor “ḥwt-ḥr” in ancient Egyptian language, meaning ‘the House of Horus’, who took care of Horus after Isis gave birth and Hathor helped Isis raising and protecting him from his uncle Seth. She was usually pictured as a full cow, as a woman with cow’s head, or as a woman with cow’s ears. Hathor was associated with motherhood and female fertility, it was believed that she watched over women during childbirth to protect both the mother and the new born. Hathor acted as the consort of several male deities and the mother of their sons, especially those of the sky, such as Ra and Horus, both of them were associated with royalty and kingship, thus she was the symbolic mother of their earthly representatives, the pharaohs. She was one of several goddesses who acted as the Eye of Ra, Ra’s feminine counterpart, and in this form she had a vengeful aspect that protected him from his enemies.Hathor crossed boundaries between worlds, helping deceased souls in the transition to the afterlife, which gave her an important funerary aspect, being known as “the lady of the west.” (where the sun sets and tombs were build.) She would protect and welcome the setting sun; Egyptians hoped to be welcomed into their afterlife in the same manner.
ANUBIS: The embalmer, Lord of the sacred land
Anubis weighing the heart, Egyptian Book of the Dead, c. 1275 BCE.
Anubis is a Greek rendering of Anpu or Inpu, which means “a royal child.” in ancient Egyptian. Inpu has a root to “inp,” which means “to decay.” referring to the god’s main role of embalming. Anubis held many titles that reflected his positions, including “First of the Westerners,” “He Who is in the Place of Embalming,” “Foremost of the Divine Booth.” “Lord of the Sacred Land,” “Master of Secrets,” “He Who is Upon his Sacred Mountain,” “Ruler of the Nine Bows,” and “The Dog who Swallows Millions.”
Anubis usually depicted as a Jackal “canine” or a man with a canine head. Like many other Egyptian deities, Anubis assumed different roles in various contexts. He was depicted as the god of death, protector of graves as early as the First Dynasty (c. 3100 – c. 2890 BC), Anubis was also the master of embalmers, who supervised the embalming process. One of his prominent roles was as a Shepard who ushered souls into the afterlife. He also attended the “Weighing of the Heart” after resurrection, in which it was determined whether a soul would enter the realm of the dead.
By the Middle Kingdom (c. 2055–1650 BC) Anubis was replaced by god Osiris as lord of the underworld. Anubis is one of the most frequently depicted gods in the Egyptian pantheon, however no relevant myth involved him directly. Anubis was usually depicted in black, a color that symbolized regeneration, the soil of the Nile, and the discoloration of the corpse after mummification. Anubis had a brother called Wepwawet, another Egyptian god portrayed as a jackal or in a full canine form, but with grey or white fur. Scholars assume that the two brothers were eventually combined. Anubis’ female counterpart is called Anput and their daughter is the serpent goddess Kebechet.
THOTH: Lord of Writing and Wisdom
Gods of Egypt – Thoth, Seti I temple at Abydos, south Egypt
Thoth was the god of writing and wisdom, depicted as a baboon, ibis bird or as a human with the ibis head. He was believed to have invented the hieroglyphic script. He served as a scribe and adviser for the gods. Thoth’s main role was maintaining the universe, and was also one of the two deities (the other being Ma’at) who protected Ra’s solar barque.
Thoth, borrowed from Ancient Egyptian ḏḥwtj. His feminine counterpart was Seshat, the goddess of writing and his wife was Ma’at of justice. He was god of the moon, wisdom, writing, hieroglyphs, magic, art, science, and judgment. Hermes is his equivalent in the Greek pantheon.
Thoth’s cult center was in the city of Hermopolis in Greek “Khemenu” in Egyptian, or Shmun in Coptic, later known as el-Ashmunein in Egyptian Arabic, the Temple of Thoth was mostly destroyed before the beginning of the Christian era, but its very large pronaos was still standing in 1826.
Thoth led “the Ogdoad” of Hermopolis, a pantheon of eight principal gods who created the world, his spouse was Nehmetawy “she who embraces those in need” – depicted as a woman with a sistrum on her head and a child in her lap.
BASTET: Goddess of Protection and Fortune
Egyptian goddess Bastet – Egyptian Museum, Cairo, Egypt
Bastet or Bast was worshipped as early as the Second Dynasty (c. 2890 BCE). Her cult center was in Bubastis in South Egypt, originally she was a lioness goddess and the role was shared by Sekhmet. Eventually Sekhmet and Bastet were characterized as two aspects of the same deity, with Sekhmet, the lioness, representing the power of the warrior and protector aspect and Bastet, the cat, representing a gentler aspect of protection and fortune.