Gods of Ancient Egypt...

                                             Gods of Ancient Egypt


Ra/Re: The god Ra was known as the sun god. However, like the majority of cosmic gods, his history is lost in a fog that obscures the exact time and place of the origin of his cult. Ra, the oldest of the great principle gods, was also known as Ra-Atum. The god Atum was incorporated with Ra to form one god during the Fourth Dynasty. The first solid evidence of Ra dates to the reign of Pharaoh Djoser in the Third Dynasty (around 2630 B.C.). Some evidence suggests that Ra originated outside of the limits of earth, as an extraterrestrial being who imparted advanced knowledge to the Egyptians. In the Third Dynasty, Pharaoh Djoser was said to have been visited by Ra himself and was given the sacred Book of Ra. The books pages made of gold, was said to have contained the sum knowledge of the universe, it vanished in the Fourth Dynasty, to date it has never been proven to have existed. Most Egyptologists are skeptic of the book's existence.

Apophis: The god Apophis was known as the serpent god of darkness, whom Ra battles every morning at sunrise, destroying the darkness.

Horus: This God is the falcon god, one of the greatest Egyptian gods. He was given powerful influence by the affirmation of the monarchy in upper Egypt, becoming the dynastic and national god. The city of Hierakonpolis was the center of the movement to conquer and unify predynastic Egypt. The Greeks gave the city the name City of the Falcon. The falcon Horus was early on associated with the cult of the sun, a union that was active in the Pyramid Texts during the Fifth Dynasty, but perhaps as early as the First Dynasty.
 In the Third Dynasty, Horus was known and identified with the solar diety Ra. The two gods together were known as Ra-Harachte, portrayed with the head of a falcon beneath a solar disk. It is still unclear and difficult to understand the mysterious meanderings that carried the falcon god into the circle Osiris. Here Horus is the son of Osiris and Isis, heir and revenger of his father against his uncle, Seth, with whom Horus battled fiercely for the crown and in the end was the undisputed winner.

Osiris: Osiris symbolized the triumph of good over evil, and the promise of immoratality for all Egyptians. According to the ancient myth, Osiris was so powerful and highly esteemed that he inspired jealousy in the heart of his evil brother Seth, who arranged for his murder. At a banquet, Seth presented Osiris with an ornate coffin. When Osiris climbed inside to test the fit, Seth slammed the lid shut locking it, then cast the coffin into the Nile. Osiris's wife, Isis, later found and retrieved the coffin and hid it in the marshes. Upon discovering this, Seth found and dismembered the body and scattered its pieces. Isis and her sister Nephthys patiently recovered the body parts, and with the help of the god Thoth, Isis formed Osiris's broken body into a mummy and brought her husband back to life.
Together again, they conceived a child, Horus, then Osiris descended into the nether world to rule the dead. When Horus came of age, he avenged his father's death by disposing Seth and became the new king of Egypt. During their battle, however, Seth tore out one of Horus's eyes. The god Thoth restored Horus's eye, and it became a popular symbol of protection for both the living and the dead.

Seth: This is the god whom the Egyptians associated with confusion and cosmic and social disorder. The god Seth was often expressed by the hieroglyph depicting a human body and an animal's head, similar to a Chimerical, a member of the fabled desert fauna. Seth was the brother of  the god Osiris.

Thoth: Thoth is the god of writing and of wisdom, master of magical spells, and the patron of scribes. He was often portrayed with the head of an Ibis.

Anubis: Anubis was a god of the dead and protector of tombs. Anubis was depicted in hieroglyph's with the head of a canine, either a dog or jackal, and the body of a man.

Seshat: Seshat was depicted as a woman with her head surmounted by an "unknown" instrurment. Seshat was connected from the beginning with writing and perhaps with astronomical calculations. One theory is that Seshat was Ra's aide, scribe and consort who helped in the early formation of the hieroglyphic system in the early Egyptian civilization, upon Ra's arrival on earth.

Isis: Isis was the wife of Osiris and goddess who personified the virtues of the wife and mother.

Hathor: The goddess Hathor is portrayed as a woman whose head is crowned by a pair of bovine horns through which the solar disk shines. She represents mother and heavenly nourisher as well as goddess of love, joy and rapture.

Selket: Selket belongs to the group of witch goddesses associated with Isis. Selket is usually portrayed in a scorpian form.

Ptah: Ptah was the "creator god", patron of artists and sculptors, and was the local god of Memphis. He grew in importance during the First and Second Dynasties when the Thinite kings ruled from Memphis. The early Pharaohs encouraged the cult of Ptah for political reasons, for his shrine was at the centre of their sphere of influence. The Doctrine of Memphis taught that Ptah created Ra-Atum by means of a profound effort of the mind, fast forward...later Moses a Egyptian, and a Hebrew, expanded on this doctrine. At the end of the Thinite Period, Ptah lost influence by the royal house's formal adoption of the earlier sun religion of Heliopolis. The "sun priests" established the idea that Ra was "supreme"...

Amon: In the Twelfth Dynasty, in the process of reorganizing Egypt and solidifying power and control of the entire country, Amon was made from an obscure god into a national and dynastic divinity. Calling on the powerful theology of the Memphite dynasty of ancient Egypt as an obligatory step, Amon became Amon-Ra. The name Amon means the hidden one, originally the patron of Thebes. He became the national god for the Theban Dynasties.

Uraeus: Uraeus is pictured as the enraged cobra, menacing upright, who was "symbolically" carried on the pharaoh's forehead and by the god Ra, as protection against enemies. The counterpart of Uraeus is Nekhbet, the vulture goddess of ancient Nekhen, near el-Kab. Together, the vulture and cobra became "symbolic" of the unification of Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt. Thus both symbols were worn on royal headdress of the pharaohs.

Aten: Aten was portrayed in the form of the solar disk, whose rays reach out with lifelike hands to accept the offerings and bless the worshipers. This diety was promoted by King Akhenaten in the 18th Dynasty.

Montu: Montu is the god with the head of a falcon sumounted by the solar disk and two plumes fixed to the disk. He originated in the Theban region, of which he was considered the unchallenged god and was worshiped in numerous temples of the region. In the Eleventh Dynasty, it seems as though he might become the new dynastic god of Egypt, but he was replaced and supplanted by Amon, the more popular Theban god.

Min: In the religion of the Egyptians, the god Min held a preeminent post as the god of fertility, thus the erect phallus in his portrayals, a characteristic attribute of the god, was an immediate and evident sign of his sexual potency. He was usually portrayed standing with two tall plumes on his head, his body restrained by a tight- fitting tunic, and his arm brandishing a whip behind his shoulder. The god's pose is part of his oldest iconography, it occurs on monuments of the Second Dynasty, and his image was found at Coptos, the historic center of his cult. 

Mut: In reality, Mut was not a vulture goddess, as the hieroglyph would have one believe and was thought in the past. Recent studies have modified earlier theories, and have hypothesized that the name goddess should rather be connected to the noun mwt, meaning mother. One theory is that Mut was an ancient mother goddess. Also, Mut was the goddess who served as Amon's divine consort.

Khonsu: Khonsu, the moon god and son of Amon and Mut, was usually portrayed as a young boy or man.

Jackal: Besides Anubis and Wepwawet, the black jackal loaned his likeness to many gods, of both the warrior and funerary types.

Nut: Nut was the sky goddess whose body made up the heavens; she swallowed the sun god Ra every night, and then he is reborn from her womb every morning, thus Ra battles and defeats Apophis, the god of darkness.




   In the writing of this story, the pharaoh's scribe Ka, projected the following message to the readers, "I Ka, have ventured to explain to you the reader, about my lands numerous gods that we worshipped. A person cannot understand ancient Egypt without understanding Egypt's Gods and the Nile, as they are interwoven into the tapestry of our daily lives as one." Quote by: Ka,
So let us proceed with our story...