Saturday, November 26, 2005
Shepen's Compendium of Egyptian Gods
The Egyptian "Pantheon"
The following is a very limited listing of the Egyptian gods and goddesses. As there are hundreds of Them, and various ones were more or less important depending on the time and place one lived in Ancient Egypt, it is based on the ones my research has led me to believe are the most influential and/or popular. Also worthy of note is the fact that there are several versions of the myths, and I have tried to put forth the most common ones to the best of my knowledge. Since whole books have been written in an attempt to untangle Egyptian theology, I suggest one turn to them for more complete information. This is in no way intended to be a summary of ancient Egyptian religion. Note that the names in bold are what the gods were called in the original Ancient Egyptian language, rather than the Greco-Roman versions.
© 2005 Shepen -- http://shepengarden.blogspot.com/ Please do not copy this or any part of it without including this notice.
Creation and Elemental Gods:
Atum: a creator god. He rose out of Nun, the Primordial Abyss, on a mound of earth and created the first couple, Shu and Tefnut through an act of masturbation and/or spitting. When Shu and Tefnut left Him, He sent His eye out to look for them. He replaced the eye, and when the old one came back, it wept because it had been replaced, these tears forming the first humans. Atum and Re are often used interchangeably in this creation myth.
Shu: The air god. He holds aloft the sky goddess and forms the space in which all creatures live and breathe.
Nut: The sky goddess. She is the mother of Isis, Osiris, Set, Nepthys, and Horus the Elder (Heru-Ur). Either depicted as a nude woman or a cow. The stars adorn Her belly, and one of Her titles is "A Thousand Souls is She," referring to those stars.
Geb: The earth god. Coupled with Nut and is the father of Her children before their father, Shu separated them.
Ptah: Another creator god. In His creation story, He named everything and brought it into being. As a creator, He is also the patron of craftsmen. Ptah is the husband of Sekhmet and the father of Nefertem.
Apep: Though technically a god, Apep (the "Mysterious One") is a great serpent who embodies chaos-as-destructuion and is therefore not worshipped. Apep is also the only immortal god. Though he is killed every night, he keeps on regenerating.
Osiris and Friends:
Isis (Aset): Wife of Osiris, Mother of Horus. Her name is believed to mean "Throne," and the symbol atop her head is of a stylized throne. She is the Mistress of Magic and is one of the most powerful netjeru. In Her most well-known myth, she restores Her dead husband to life, thus creating the possibility for everyone to be resurrected as Osiris was. She also protects her infant son in the marshes and later asks that her brother Set's life be spared when Horus is about to kill him, despite the fact that Set murdered her husband and created much trouble for her family. In another story, Isis tricks Re into revealing his true name (and the source of his power) to her by poisoning him with a snake made from his own drool. As one can see, Isis is a very complex goddess, caring and protective, yet at the same time cunning and willing to poison Re to gain power over him.
Nepthys (Nebet-Het): The twin sister of Isis, she used the fact that she was identical to Isis to seduce Osiris and concieved Anubis. She accompanies Isis in mourning Osiris and in the tribunal of the gods during the judging of the dead.
Osiris (Wesir): Osiris is primarily the lord of the dead, as well as a vegetation god. As Osiris died and was reborn, so too are the crops in the fields. Osiris is also the judge of the dead during the famous "weighing of the heart" in the Book of the Dead. In funerary magic, the dead are referred to as "Osiris So-and-so" to identify them with Osiris for resurrection. Legend says that Osiris is buried at Abydos, an early dynastic cemetery.
Set (Sutekh): God of chaos, storms, and the Western Desert. Also a god of Lower Egypt. It was Set who killed Osiris, and later challenged Horus for the throne for eighty years in The Contendings of Horus and Set. Set is a violent god, but this violence is often protective, as the Egyptians believed that chaos is necessary to defeat chaos. It is Set, for example, who slays the chaos serpent Apep while the Boat of Millions travels across the sky. Set is also ascociated with sterility. He has no children, rules over the desert, and lost a testicle in a fight with Horus. Set is either shown completely in the form if his animal, which appears to be a donkey-like dog, or with the head of this animal on a human body.
Horus (Heru): (There are several gods named Horus. For simplicity's sake, I will limit this entry to Horus-Son-of-Isis.) Horus is first and foremost a sky god, and his is name believed to mean "Lofty One." He is a god of Upper Egypt. Appearing first wholly in falcon form and later as a falcon-headed human, he is also the god of kingship; the Pharaoh is believed to be his living incarnation. As Osiris rules over the dead, Horus rules over the living. Horus as the Pharaoh was especially important during the Archaic period. Horus's main myths center on his battles with Set to reclaim his slain father's throne and avenge his death. As such, he is seen as a god of vengeance and justice.
National Gods:
The Two Ladies, Nekhbet and Wadjet: Very old goddesses, they are the patrons of Upper and Lower Egypt and protect the pharaoh. Nekhbet, the Goddess of Upper Egypt, assumes vulture form, and Wadjet (a.k.a. Buto) assumes cobra form and is the goddess of Lower Egypt. Wadjet is especially credited for spitting fire into the faces of the enemies of the Pharaoh, and She also protected baby Horus in the marshes while Isis was away from him. Together they adorn the crown of the Pharaoh.
Re: Re is the sun god; his sacred animals are primarily the cat and goose. Often shown as the king of the gods, He is often combined with Amun and Atum, as well as Horus to form Re-Horakhti (Horus of the Horizon.) Re rides the sun boat, known as the Boat of Millions, with a host of other gods and the souls of the dead across the sky. At night, he combines with Osiris in the underworld to be the sun of the land of the dead. He was most associated with the Pharaoh during the Old Kingdom.
Amun: His name means "Hidden One," and he is primarily an air god. As a god of air and therefore wind, he is also a god of sailors (wind being important to sailboats.) By the New Kingdom, He had become the national god of Egypt, and his influence spread to all spheres of life. Like many gods, He is often given a female counterpart, Amunet. He is often depicted as ram-headed.
Mut: Her name literally means "Mother" and she is a wife of Amun and a mother goddess. She is the queen of the gods, and her sacred animals are the cat and vulture. The famous "vulture crown" on the heads of queens of Egypt symbolize Mut.
Neith (Nit): Neith is a very old goddess of Lower Egypt, called the "oldest of the gods" in some texts. She was especially influential in predynastic times, and many early Queens' names had "Neith" in them. She is primarily a protective goddess, though also rather warlike. She is shown in human form wearing the red crown of Lower Egypt.
Montu: Montu is a falcon-headed war god who rose to national god status for a brief time at the beginning of the Middle Kingdom when Montuhotep ("Montu is Pleased") re-united the country.
Other Important Gods:
Ma'at: She is the embodiment of the concept of ma'at: divine order and all that is good and just and true in Egypt. Depicted as a woman with an ostrich feather in her hair, she is the embodiment of the state of the world at the time of creation. The concept of ma'at is difficult to define in such a limited space. It is a system of ethics defined not in a system of rules to be obeyed, but rather in portraying an idealized or virtuous life and trying to emulate that life. Humans must strive to live lives in accordance to ma'at and offer it to the gods.
Thoth (Tehuti): The god of wisdom, writing, mathematics, and the moon. His sacred animals are the ibis and the baboon. Tehuti is also the vizier and scribe of the gods. The instances of Him using his wisdom to solve problems among the gods are too numerous to relate here.
Seshat: Seshat is a godess of writing, often portrayed with Thoth, though her writing spheres apply more to architecture and surveying. She wears a leopard skin and has a star-like headdress of indeterminate meaning.
Hathor (Hrt Hrw): Her name means "House of Horus." Other titles include "Golden One," "Lady of the Vulva," and the "Lady of Turquoise." She was extremely popular throughout Egyptian history, because she is the goddess of love, beauty, music, and fertility. Besides symbolizing all things joyful, she basically embodies all things the Egyptians considered feminine. She is also the mother/wife of Horus, hence Her name. Her sacred animal is the cow, and she appears in full bovine form or with the head of the cow, although Her most common image is as a woman with cow's ears and cow-like facial features. Sycamore trees are sacred to Her. She also has sacred instruments of the sistrum, which bore Her face, and the Menat necklace, which was more of a sacred rattle than jewelry. Her main Temple was in Dendera, and Her sacred festival was called The "Festival of the Beautiful Embrace" during which Her cult statue was taken to the Temple of Horus at Edfu, where a ritual marriage took place between the two. During the 14-day festival, Hathor would make stops along the way to visit the shrines of other deities.
Sekhmet: Goddess of war, healing, and plague. Her name means "She who is Mighty". Depicted as a lioness headed human. In Her main myth, Re wanted to destroy a group of rebellious humans. He called forth Hathor, who became Sekhmet and began destroying all of humanity. Re asked her to stop, but by this time, Sekhmet was in a blood frenzy and kept on killing. In order to end the carnage, Tehuti had a lake of beer made and dyed red with hematite. Sekhmet mistook the lake for blood, drank it all, and fell asleep. Sekhmet is associated with plagues and healing, because of the belief that only the cause of the illness could cure it. (Remember the bit about chaos defeating chaos? Same principle.) Sekhmet is also in charge of a group of plague demons, called the Seven Arrows of Sekhmet and the Slaughterers of Sekhmet. Her breath was believed to spread plague. On Her more positive side however, Sekhmet is a protector of the gods and the Pharaohs, showing that like Set, She had an important place in the universe despite Her often-violent nature. On new year's day it was customary to give Sekhmet amulets to offer protection from illness in the coming year.
Min (Menu): A fertility god that appears in art very early, depicted as a man with an erect penis in one hand and a flail in his raised hand. Lettuce is sacred to him, because some kinds of lettuce have juice that resembles semen.
Bes: Depicted as an ugly, nude, lion-faced dwarf playing a tambourine, Bes is believed to be an introduced foreign deity. He is a god of music and childbirth, and also has protective attributes.
Hapy: God of the Nile's fecundity, he is depicted as a rather hermaphroditic man clad in only an apron of white strips with a beard, pregnant belly, pendulous breasts, and blue waves on his body. Also usually depicted as an offering bearer, he presents tables filled with food and flowers to the people, clearly symbolic of the Nile's flood as giver of life in Egypt.
Bast (sometimes Bastet): On of the most "fluffified" netjeru, Bast remained a relatively minor deity until the Greco-Roman period when She became hugely popular. At first a fierce protective solar goddess (She predates the domestication of the cat, so the cat she represents here is not cute and cuddly.) Bast's less warm'n'snuggly aspects have been largely ignored as of late, but in translations of Egyptian texts she can be angry, threatening, and protective; e.g. "Bastet shall not overpower him." She later became associated with fertility and music. Some translate Bast's name as Ba-Aset, or "Soul of Aset." This, as with the idea that She is a moon goddess, is a Greco-Roman one, and Her name nore likely means "She of the Perfume Jar."
Anubis (Anpu): Anubis is the "Lord of the Cemetery" and protects the dead. He is the son of Osiris and Nepthys. He is also a god of embalming. He is represented as a jackal-headed human.
Wepawet: Another jackal funerary god, similar to, but not the same as Anubis. Wepawet is the "opener of ways."
Sothis (Sopdet): Sopdet is the goddess of Sirius, the Dog Star, whose appearance on the horizon coincided with the Nile’s annual flood around the time of the Summer Solstice 4,000 years ago (due to the Earth’s habit of wobbling on its axis, this is no longer the case, unfortunately.) This event marked the Egyptian New Year, or the “Opening of the Year". Sopdet is usually shown as a woman wearing the white crown of Upper Egypt topped by a star.
