Egypt had one of the largest and most complex pantheons of gods of any civilization in the ancient world. Over the course of Egyptian history hundreds of gods and goddesses were worshipped. The characteristics of individual gods could be hard to pin down. Most had a principle association (for example, 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 a few of the most important deities to know. Osiris, one of Egypt’s most important deities, was god of the underworld. He also symbolized death, resurrection, and the cycle of Nile floods that Egypt relied on for agricultural fertility.
According to the myth, Osiris was a king of Egypt who was murdered and dismembered by his brother Seth. His wife, Isis, reassembled his body and resurrected him, allowing them to conceive a son, the god Horus. He was represented as a mummified king, wearing wrappings that left only the green skin of his hands and face exposed. The origins of Isis are obscure. Unlike many gods, she can’t be tied to a specific town, and there are no certain mentions of her in the earliest Egyptian literature. Over time she grew in importance, though, eventually becoming the most important goddess in the pantheon. As the devoted wife who resurrected Osiris after his murder and raised their son, Horus, Isis embodied the traditional Egyptian virtues of a wife and mother.
As the wife of the god of the underworld, Isis was also one of the main deities concerned with rites for the dead. Along with her sister Nephthys, Isis acted as a divine mourner, and her maternal care was often depicted as extending to the dead in the underworld.
Isis was one of the last of the ancient Egyptian gods to still be worshipped. In the Greco-Roman period she was identified with the Greek goddess Aphrodite and her cult spread as far west as Great Britain and as far east as Afghanistan. It is believed that depictions of Isis with the infant Horus influenced Christian imagery of Mary with the infant Jesus. 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 reigning king was considered to be a manifestation of Horus.
According to the Osiris myth, Horus was the son of Isis and Osiris, magically conceived after the murder of Osiris by his brother Seth. Horus was raised to avenge his father’s murder. One tradition holds that Horus lost his left eye fighting with Seth, but his eye was magically healed by the god Thoth. 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 phases of the moon. Seth was the god of chaos, violence, deserts, and storms. In the Osiris myth, he is the murderer of Osiris (in some versions of the myth, he tricks Osiris into laying down in a coffin and then seals it shut.)
Seth’s appearance poses a problem for Egyptologists. He is often depicted as an animal or as a human with the head of an animal. But they can’t figure out what animal he’s supposed to be. He usually has a long snout and long ears that are squared at the tips. In his fully animal form, he has a thin doglike body and a straight tail with a tuft on the end. Many scholars now believe that no such animal ever existed and that the Seth animal is some sort of mythical composite. Ptah was the head of a triad of gods worshipped at Memphis. The other two members of the triad were Ptah’s wife, the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet, and the god Nefertem, who may have been the couple’s son.
Ptah’s original association seems to have been with craftsmen and builders. The 4th-dynasty architect Imhotep was deified after his death as a son of Ptah.
Scholars have suggested that the Greek word Aiguptos—the source of the name Egypt—may have started as a corruption of Hwt-Ka-Ptah, the name of one of Ptah’s shrines. One of several deities associated with the sun, the god Re was usually represented with a human body and the head of a hawk. It was believed that he sailed across the sky in a boat each day and then made a passage through the underworld each night, during which he would have to defeat the snake god Apopis in order to rise again.
Re’s cult was centered in Heliopolis, now a suburb of Cairo. Over time, Re came to be syncretized with other sun deities, especially Amon. The goddess Hathor was usually depicted as a cow, as a woman with the head of a cow, or as a woman with cow’s ears. Hathor embodied motherhood and fertility, and it was believed that she protected women in childbirth. She also had an important funerary aspect, being known as “the lady of the west.” (Tombs were generally built on the west bank of the Nile.) In some traditions, she would welcome the setting sun every night; living people hoped to be welcomed into the afterlife in the same way. Anubis was concerned with funerary practices and the care of the dead. He was usually represented as a jackal or as a man with the head of a jackal. The association of jackals with death and funerals likely arose because Egyptians would have observed jackals scavenging around cemeteries.
In the Old Kingdom (c. 2575–2130 BCE), before Osiris rose to prominence as the lord of the underworld, Anubis was considered the principal god of the dead. According to the Osiris myth, Anubis embalmed and wrapped the body of the murdered king, becoming the patron god for embalmers. Thoth, the god of writing and wisdom, could be depicted in the form of a baboon or a sacred ibis or as a man with the head of an ibis. He was believed to have invented language and the hieroglyphic script and to serve as a scribe and adviser for the gods. As the god of wisdom, Thoth was said to possess knowledge of magic and secrets unavailable to the other gods.
In underworld scenes showing the judgment undergone by the deceased after their deaths, Thoth is depicted as weighing the hearts of the deceased and reporting the verdict to Osiris, the god of the dead. In her earliest forms, the cat goddess Bastet was represented as a woman with the head of a lion or a wild cat. She took the less ferocious form of a domestic cat in the first millennium BCE.
In later periods she was often represented as a regal-looking seated cat, sometimes wearing rings in her ears or nose. In the Ptolemaic period she came to be associated with the Greek goddess Artemis, the divine hunter and goddess of the moon. Before rising to national importance in the New Kingdom (c. 1539–1292 BCE), the god Amon was worshipped locally in the southern city of Thebes. Amon was a god of the air, and the name probably means the “Hidden One.” He was usually represented as a man wearing a crown with two vertical plumes. His animal symbols were the ram and the goose.
After the rulers of Thebes rebelled against a dynasty of foreign rulers known as the Hyksos and reestablished native Egyptian rule throughout Egypt, Amon received credit for their victory. In a form merged with the sun god Re, he became the most powerful deity in Egypt, a position he retained for most of the New Kingdom.
Today the massive temple complex devoted to Amon-Re at Karnak is one of the most visited monuments in Egypt.
The gods and goddesses of Ancient Egypt were an integral part of the people's everyday lives. It is not surprising then that there were over 2,000 deities in the Egyptian pantheon. Some of these deities' names are well known: Isis, Osiris, Horus, Amun, Ra, Hathor, Bastet, Thoth, Anubis, and Ptah while many others less so.
The more famous gods became state deities while others were associated with a specific region or, in some cases, a ritual or role. The goddess Qebhet, for example, is a little known deity who offered cool water to the souls of the dead as they awaited judgment in the afterlife, and Seshat was the goddess of written words and specific measurements overshadowed by Thoth, the better known god of writing and patron of scribes.
Ancient Egyptian culture grew out of an understanding of these deities and the vital role they played in the immortal journey of every human being. Historian Margaret Bunson writes.
The gods evolved from an animistic belief system to one which was highly anthropomorphic and imbued with magic. Heka was the god of magic and medicine but was also the primordial force, pre-dating all the other gods, who enabled the act of creation and sustained both mortal and divine life. The central value of the Egyptian culture was ma'at - harmony and balance - represented by the goddess of the same name and her white ostrich feather, and it was Heka who empowered Ma'at just as he did all the other deities. Heka was the manifestation of heka (magic) which should be understood to be natural laws which today would be considered supernatural but, to the Egyptians, were simply how the world and the universe functioned. The gods provided people with all good gifts but it was heka which allowed them to do so.
These gods all had names, individual personalities and characteristics, wore different kinds of clothing, held different objects as sacred, presided over their own domains of influence, and reacted in highly individualistic ways to events. Each deity had their own area of expertise but were often associated with several spheres of human life.
Hathor, for example, was a goddess of music, dancing, and drunkenness but was also understood as an ancient Mother Goddess, also associated with the Milky Way as a divine reflection of the Nile River, and, in her earlier incarnation as Sekhmet, as a destroyer. The goddess Neith was originally a war goddess who became the epitome of the Mother Goddess, a nurturing figure, to whom the gods would turn to settle their disputes. Many gods and goddesses, such as Set or Serket, transformed through time to take on other roles and responsibilities.
These transformations were sometimes dramatic, as in the case of Set who went from a hero protector-god to a villain and the world's first murderer. Serket was almost certainly an early Mother Goddess, and her later role as protector against venomous creatures (especially scorpions) and guardian of women and children reflects those characteristics. Bunson writes:
The following list of the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt is derived from numerous works on the subject which follow below in the bibliography. Every attempt has been made to create a comprehensive listing but minor regional deities have been omitted if their role seems uncertain or they were transformed into major gods. When a major god evolved from an earlier minor deity, it is noted.
Included also are concepts, such as The Field of Reeds or Lily Lake, which were regions in the afterlife associated with the gods. The definitions of the god's characteristics and the roles they played are synthesized for clarity but it should be noted that not every deity listed was understood in the same way throughout Egypt's long history. Osiris, for example, was most likely a fertility god in the Predynastic Period of Egypt (c. 6000-3150 BCE) but was already understood as the First King by the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150-2613 BCE) and was the most popular god in Egypt during the time of the New Kingdom (1570-1069 BCE) at the same time that Amun was considered King of the Gods. Although these developments are sometimes noted below, the gods are generally described in the roles they were best known for at the peak of their popularity.
Anubis - God of the dead associated with embalming. Son of Nephthys and Osiris, father of Qebhet. Anubis is depicted as a man with the head of a dog or jackal carrying a staff. He guided the souls of the dead to the Hall of Truth and was part of the ritual of the Weighing of the Heart of the Soul in the afterlife. He was probably the original God of the Dead before that role was given to Osiris, at which time he was made Osiris' son.
Hathor - One of the best known, most popular, and most important deities of ancient Egypt. She was the daughter of Ra and, in some stories, wife of Horus the Elder. A very ancient goddess, she was sent by Ra to destroy humanity for their sins. The other gods implored Ra to stop her destruction before no humans were left to benefit from the lesson. Ra then had a vat of beer dyed red, to resemble blood, and placed at Dendera which Hathor, in her blood lust, drank. She fell asleep and woke as the benevolent goddess who was a friend to all. She was the patron goddess of joy, inspiration, celebration, love, women, women's health, childbirth, and drunkenness. One of her names is "The Lady of Drunkenness". She was thought to live in sycamore trees and so was also known as 'The Lady of the Sycamore." In the afterlife she helped guide the souls of the dead toward paradise and was one of the deities aboard the sun barge of Ra who defended it from Apep. She is further associated with gratitude and a thankful heart. The Greeks associated her with Aphrodite. She is depicted as a cow or a woman with a cow's head and evolved from the earlier goddess Bat. Her characteristics were later largely absorbed by Isis.
Horus - An early avian god who became one of the most important deities in ancient Egypt. Associated with the sun, sky, and power, Horus became linked with the king of Egypt as early as the First Dynasty (c. 3150-2890 BCE). Although the name 'Horus' might refer to a number of avian deities it principally designates two: Horus the Elder, one of the first five gods born at the beginning of creation, and Horus the Younger who was the son of Osiris and Isis. Following the rise in popularity of the Osiris Myth, Horus the Younger became one of the most important gods in Egypt. In the story, after Osiris is murdered by his brother Set, Horus is raised by his mother in the Delta swamps. When he comes of age he battles his uncle for the kingdom and wins, restoring order to the land. The kings of Egypt, with some exceptions, all linked themselves with Horus in life and with Osiris in death. The king was thought to be the living incarnation of Horus and, through him, the god gave all good things to his people. He is usually depicted as a man with the head of a hawk but is represented by many different images. His symbols are the Eye of Horus and the hawk.
Isis - The most powerful and popular goddess in Egyptian history. She was associated with virtually every aspect of human life and, in time, became elevated to the position of supreme deity, "Mother of the Gods", who cared for her fellow deities as she did for human beings. She is the second-born of the First Five Gods (Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys, and Horus the Elder), sister-wife of Osiris, mother of Horus the Younger, and symbolically understood as the mother of every king. Her Egyptian name, Eset, means "Goddess of the Throne" because of her association with the monarch. She was also known as Weret-Kekau, "The Great Magic", because of her incredible powers. She cared for people in life and appeared to them after death to help guide them safely to paradise. After the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, her worship traveled to Greece and then to Rome. During the time of the Roman Empire, she was worshipped in every corner of their realm from Britain through Europe to Anatolia. The Cult of Isis was the strongest opponent of the new religion of Christianity between the 4th-6th centuries CE, and iconography, as well as tenets of belief, of the Isis cult were incorporated into the new faith. Imagery of the Virgin Mary holding her son Jesus comes directly from Isis cradling her son Horus and the Dying and Reviving God figure of Jesus himself is a version of Osiris.
Osiris - Lord and judge of the dead, one of the First Five gods born of Nut at the dawn of creation, and one of the most popular and enduring gods of Egypt. His name means "Powerful" or "Mighty". Osiris was originally a fertility god who grew in popularity and influence through the Osiris Myth in which he is killed by his brother, Set, brought back to life by his wife Isis, fathers sky god Horus, and descends to the underworld as Judge of the Dead. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead he is mentioned frequently as the just judge in the Hall of Truth who weighs the hearts of the souls of the dead against the white feather of ma'at. He is an early example of the Dying and Reviving God figure in mythology who leant himself to the later version of this figure, Jesus Christ. Egyptian kings identified themselves with Osiris in death and he is usually depicted as a mummy (symbolizing death) and with green or black skin (symbolizing the fertility of the Nile region and life). He was so popular that people in ancient Egypt paid to have their bodies buried at Abydos near his cult center and those who could not afford that would pay for memorials to be erected to them or their loved ones at Abydos believing that proximity to Osiris on earth guaranteed easier access to paradise after death. His cult naturally merged with that of his wife and the Cult of Isis, with its symbolism of salvation, eternal life, the dying and reviving god, and the divine son born of a virgin mother, would later influence the development of early Christianity.
Ra (Atum or Re) - The great sun god of Heliopolis whose cult spread across Egypt to become the most popular by the Fifth Dynasty (2498-2345 BCE). The pyramids of Giza are associated with Ra as the supreme lord and creator god who ruled over the land of the living and the dead. He drives his sun barge across the heavens by day, showing another aspect of himself with each advance of the sun across the sky, and then dives into the underworld at evening where the barge is threatened by the primordial serpent Apep (Apophis) and must be defended by the other gods and souls of the justified dead. Ra was among the most important and popular gods of Egypt. Even when the god Amun rose in prominence, Ra's position was undiminished and he merged with Amun to become Amun-Ra, the supreme god.
Sekhmet - One of the most significant goddesses of ancient Egypt. Sekhmet was a leonine deity usually depicted as a woman with the head of a lion. Her name means "Powerful" and is usually interpreted as "The Female Powerful One". She was a goddess of destruction and healing, of desert winds and cool breezes. She was the daughter of Ra who appears in one of the most important stories concerning the Eye of Ra/Distant Goddess motif. When Ra became tired of the sins of humanity, he sent Sekhmet to destroy them. She ravaged the land until the other gods implored Ra to stop her before humans were destroyed completely. Ra had a vat of beer dyed red to attract Sekhmet's blood lust and left it at Dendera where she drank it and fell into a deep sleep; when she woke she was the benevolent Hathor. Sekhmet continued to exist in her leonine form, however, and was the patron deity of the military for her powers of destruction and vengeance. She was known as "Smiter of the Nubians" in this regard but she also brought natural disaster. Plagues were known as "Messengers of Sekhmet" or "Slaughterers of Sekhmet". In the same way that she could bring the desert winds, she could deflect them, and the same with pestilence; just as she had brought the plague, she could cure it and was known as "Mistress of Life" in this capacity (and so was frequently invoked in healing spells and incantations by ancient doctors). She was closely associated with other leonine deities such as Bastet and Pakhet and was thought to be the aggressive, violent aspect of the goddess Mut.
Set (Seth) - God of war, chaos, storms, and pestilence. His name is translated as "Instigator of Confusion" and "Destroyer". He is depicted as a red beast with cloven hooves and a forked tale and is the prototype for the later iconography of the Christian Devil. Set was originally a hero-god who drove away the serpent Apep (Apophis) from the barge of the sun god and killed it nightly. He was a desert god who brought the evil winds of the dry lands to the lush Nile Valley and was associated with foreign lands and people. His consorts were Anat and Astarte, both goddesses associated with war and both from foreign countries, as well as Taweret, the benign protective goddess of childbirth and fertility. Set is often characterized as "evil", and did manifest many evil qualities, but was not regarded by the ancient Egyptians as an embodiment of evil or darkness. He was rather seen as a necessary balance to gods like Osiris and Horus who represented all things noble and good, fertility, vitality, and eternity. Set is best known as the world's first murderer in the Myth of Osiris where he kills his brother to usurp the throne. Isis returns Osiris to life but, because he is incomplete, descends to the underworld as Lord of the Dead. Isis gives birth to Osiris' son, Horus, who grows up to challenge set for the throne. Their battles, which lasted for eighty years, are described in the text The Contendings of Horus and Set and were resolved in one version by Isis while, in another, by Neith with Horus declared rightful king and Set banished to the desert lands.
Thoth - God of writing and wisdom, truth and integrity, one of the most important deities in the Egyptian pantheon worshipped from the Predynastic Period (c. 6000-3150 BCE) on to the Ptolemaic Dynasty (323-30 BCE), the last to rule Egypt. He was probably originally a lunar god, son of Atum (Ra) but later texts represent him as the son of Horus. Thoth is depicted in some texts as a baboon but mostly as a man with the head of an ibis holding a writing implement. He is credited with inventing writing and was the record-keeper of the gods. He was known as "Lord of Time" and "Reckoner of Years" because he marked the passage of time and, through the powerful magic of his divine knowledge of words, gave the king a long reign so he could maintain order on earth. He was the patron god of libraries and of scribes. In every story told of him, Thoth is the divine friend and benefactor of humanity who gave people understanding through the gift of the written word. He appears in one story as gambling for the five days required for Nut to give birth to the First Five Gods and in others as mediating between the gods and delivering messages. In the afterlife he stands with Osiris and keeps records in the Hall of Truth at the ritual of the Weighing of the Heart. His consort was Seshat, his daughter or his wife, who was his female counterpart and also patron deity of libraries and books.
According to the myth, Osiris was a king of Egypt who was murdered and dismembered by his brother Seth. His wife, Isis, reassembled his body and resurrected him, allowing them to conceive a son, the god Horus. He was represented as a mummified king, wearing wrappings that left only the green skin of his hands and face exposed. The origins of Isis are obscure. Unlike many gods, she can’t be tied to a specific town, and there are no certain mentions of her in the earliest Egyptian literature. Over time she grew in importance, though, eventually becoming the most important goddess in the pantheon. As the devoted wife who resurrected Osiris after his murder and raised their son, Horus, Isis embodied the traditional Egyptian virtues of a wife and mother.
As the wife of the god of the underworld, Isis was also one of the main deities concerned with rites for the dead. Along with her sister Nephthys, Isis acted as a divine mourner, and her maternal care was often depicted as extending to the dead in the underworld.
Isis was one of the last of the ancient Egyptian gods to still be worshipped. In the Greco-Roman period she was identified with the Greek goddess Aphrodite and her cult spread as far west as Great Britain and as far east as Afghanistan. It is believed that depictions of Isis with the infant Horus influenced Christian imagery of Mary with the infant Jesus. 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 reigning king was considered to be a manifestation of Horus.
According to the Osiris myth, Horus was the son of Isis and Osiris, magically conceived after the murder of Osiris by his brother Seth. Horus was raised to avenge his father’s murder. One tradition holds that Horus lost his left eye fighting with Seth, but his eye was magically healed by the god Thoth. 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 phases of the moon. Seth was the god of chaos, violence, deserts, and storms. In the Osiris myth, he is the murderer of Osiris (in some versions of the myth, he tricks Osiris into laying down in a coffin and then seals it shut.)
Seth’s appearance poses a problem for Egyptologists. He is often depicted as an animal or as a human with the head of an animal. But they can’t figure out what animal he’s supposed to be. He usually has a long snout and long ears that are squared at the tips. In his fully animal form, he has a thin doglike body and a straight tail with a tuft on the end. Many scholars now believe that no such animal ever existed and that the Seth animal is some sort of mythical composite. Ptah was the head of a triad of gods worshipped at Memphis. The other two members of the triad were Ptah’s wife, the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet, and the god Nefertem, who may have been the couple’s son.
Ptah’s original association seems to have been with craftsmen and builders. The 4th-dynasty architect Imhotep was deified after his death as a son of Ptah.
Scholars have suggested that the Greek word Aiguptos—the source of the name Egypt—may have started as a corruption of Hwt-Ka-Ptah, the name of one of Ptah’s shrines. One of several deities associated with the sun, the god Re was usually represented with a human body and the head of a hawk. It was believed that he sailed across the sky in a boat each day and then made a passage through the underworld each night, during which he would have to defeat the snake god Apopis in order to rise again.
Re’s cult was centered in Heliopolis, now a suburb of Cairo. Over time, Re came to be syncretized with other sun deities, especially Amon. The goddess Hathor was usually depicted as a cow, as a woman with the head of a cow, or as a woman with cow’s ears. Hathor embodied motherhood and fertility, and it was believed that she protected women in childbirth. She also had an important funerary aspect, being known as “the lady of the west.” (Tombs were generally built on the west bank of the Nile.) In some traditions, she would welcome the setting sun every night; living people hoped to be welcomed into the afterlife in the same way. Anubis was concerned with funerary practices and the care of the dead. He was usually represented as a jackal or as a man with the head of a jackal. The association of jackals with death and funerals likely arose because Egyptians would have observed jackals scavenging around cemeteries.
In the Old Kingdom (c. 2575–2130 BCE), before Osiris rose to prominence as the lord of the underworld, Anubis was considered the principal god of the dead. According to the Osiris myth, Anubis embalmed and wrapped the body of the murdered king, becoming the patron god for embalmers. Thoth, the god of writing and wisdom, could be depicted in the form of a baboon or a sacred ibis or as a man with the head of an ibis. He was believed to have invented language and the hieroglyphic script and to serve as a scribe and adviser for the gods. As the god of wisdom, Thoth was said to possess knowledge of magic and secrets unavailable to the other gods.
In underworld scenes showing the judgment undergone by the deceased after their deaths, Thoth is depicted as weighing the hearts of the deceased and reporting the verdict to Osiris, the god of the dead. In her earliest forms, the cat goddess Bastet was represented as a woman with the head of a lion or a wild cat. She took the less ferocious form of a domestic cat in the first millennium BCE.
In later periods she was often represented as a regal-looking seated cat, sometimes wearing rings in her ears or nose. In the Ptolemaic period she came to be associated with the Greek goddess Artemis, the divine hunter and goddess of the moon. Before rising to national importance in the New Kingdom (c. 1539–1292 BCE), the god Amon was worshipped locally in the southern city of Thebes. Amon was a god of the air, and the name probably means the “Hidden One.” He was usually represented as a man wearing a crown with two vertical plumes. His animal symbols were the ram and the goose.
After the rulers of Thebes rebelled against a dynasty of foreign rulers known as the Hyksos and reestablished native Egyptian rule throughout Egypt, Amon received credit for their victory. In a form merged with the sun god Re, he became the most powerful deity in Egypt, a position he retained for most of the New Kingdom.
Today the massive temple complex devoted to Amon-Re at Karnak is one of the most visited monuments in Egypt.
The gods and goddesses of Ancient Egypt were an integral part of the people's everyday lives. It is not surprising then that there were over 2,000 deities in the Egyptian pantheon. Some of these deities' names are well known: Isis, Osiris, Horus, Amun, Ra, Hathor, Bastet, Thoth, Anubis, and Ptah while many others less so.
The more famous gods became state deities while others were associated with a specific region or, in some cases, a ritual or role. The goddess Qebhet, for example, is a little known deity who offered cool water to the souls of the dead as they awaited judgment in the afterlife, and Seshat was the goddess of written words and specific measurements overshadowed by Thoth, the better known god of writing and patron of scribes.
Ancient Egyptian culture grew out of an understanding of these deities and the vital role they played in the immortal journey of every human being. Historian Margaret Bunson writes.
The gods evolved from an animistic belief system to one which was highly anthropomorphic and imbued with magic. Heka was the god of magic and medicine but was also the primordial force, pre-dating all the other gods, who enabled the act of creation and sustained both mortal and divine life. The central value of the Egyptian culture was ma'at - harmony and balance - represented by the goddess of the same name and her white ostrich feather, and it was Heka who empowered Ma'at just as he did all the other deities. Heka was the manifestation of heka (magic) which should be understood to be natural laws which today would be considered supernatural but, to the Egyptians, were simply how the world and the universe functioned. The gods provided people with all good gifts but it was heka which allowed them to do so.
These gods all had names, individual personalities and characteristics, wore different kinds of clothing, held different objects as sacred, presided over their own domains of influence, and reacted in highly individualistic ways to events. Each deity had their own area of expertise but were often associated with several spheres of human life.
Hathor, for example, was a goddess of music, dancing, and drunkenness but was also understood as an ancient Mother Goddess, also associated with the Milky Way as a divine reflection of the Nile River, and, in her earlier incarnation as Sekhmet, as a destroyer. The goddess Neith was originally a war goddess who became the epitome of the Mother Goddess, a nurturing figure, to whom the gods would turn to settle their disputes. Many gods and goddesses, such as Set or Serket, transformed through time to take on other roles and responsibilities.
These transformations were sometimes dramatic, as in the case of Set who went from a hero protector-god to a villain and the world's first murderer. Serket was almost certainly an early Mother Goddess, and her later role as protector against venomous creatures (especially scorpions) and guardian of women and children reflects those characteristics. Bunson writes:
The following list of the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt is derived from numerous works on the subject which follow below in the bibliography. Every attempt has been made to create a comprehensive listing but minor regional deities have been omitted if their role seems uncertain or they were transformed into major gods. When a major god evolved from an earlier minor deity, it is noted.
Included also are concepts, such as The Field of Reeds or Lily Lake, which were regions in the afterlife associated with the gods. The definitions of the god's characteristics and the roles they played are synthesized for clarity but it should be noted that not every deity listed was understood in the same way throughout Egypt's long history. Osiris, for example, was most likely a fertility god in the Predynastic Period of Egypt (c. 6000-3150 BCE) but was already understood as the First King by the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3150-2613 BCE) and was the most popular god in Egypt during the time of the New Kingdom (1570-1069 BCE) at the same time that Amun was considered King of the Gods. Although these developments are sometimes noted below, the gods are generally described in the roles they were best known for at the peak of their popularity.
Anubis - God of the dead associated with embalming. Son of Nephthys and Osiris, father of Qebhet. Anubis is depicted as a man with the head of a dog or jackal carrying a staff. He guided the souls of the dead to the Hall of Truth and was part of the ritual of the Weighing of the Heart of the Soul in the afterlife. He was probably the original God of the Dead before that role was given to Osiris, at which time he was made Osiris' son.
Hathor - One of the best known, most popular, and most important deities of ancient Egypt. She was the daughter of Ra and, in some stories, wife of Horus the Elder. A very ancient goddess, she was sent by Ra to destroy humanity for their sins. The other gods implored Ra to stop her destruction before no humans were left to benefit from the lesson. Ra then had a vat of beer dyed red, to resemble blood, and placed at Dendera which Hathor, in her blood lust, drank. She fell asleep and woke as the benevolent goddess who was a friend to all. She was the patron goddess of joy, inspiration, celebration, love, women, women's health, childbirth, and drunkenness. One of her names is "The Lady of Drunkenness". She was thought to live in sycamore trees and so was also known as 'The Lady of the Sycamore." In the afterlife she helped guide the souls of the dead toward paradise and was one of the deities aboard the sun barge of Ra who defended it from Apep. She is further associated with gratitude and a thankful heart. The Greeks associated her with Aphrodite. She is depicted as a cow or a woman with a cow's head and evolved from the earlier goddess Bat. Her characteristics were later largely absorbed by Isis.
Horus - An early avian god who became one of the most important deities in ancient Egypt. Associated with the sun, sky, and power, Horus became linked with the king of Egypt as early as the First Dynasty (c. 3150-2890 BCE). Although the name 'Horus' might refer to a number of avian deities it principally designates two: Horus the Elder, one of the first five gods born at the beginning of creation, and Horus the Younger who was the son of Osiris and Isis. Following the rise in popularity of the Osiris Myth, Horus the Younger became one of the most important gods in Egypt. In the story, after Osiris is murdered by his brother Set, Horus is raised by his mother in the Delta swamps. When he comes of age he battles his uncle for the kingdom and wins, restoring order to the land. The kings of Egypt, with some exceptions, all linked themselves with Horus in life and with Osiris in death. The king was thought to be the living incarnation of Horus and, through him, the god gave all good things to his people. He is usually depicted as a man with the head of a hawk but is represented by many different images. His symbols are the Eye of Horus and the hawk.
Isis - The most powerful and popular goddess in Egyptian history. She was associated with virtually every aspect of human life and, in time, became elevated to the position of supreme deity, "Mother of the Gods", who cared for her fellow deities as she did for human beings. She is the second-born of the First Five Gods (Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys, and Horus the Elder), sister-wife of Osiris, mother of Horus the Younger, and symbolically understood as the mother of every king. Her Egyptian name, Eset, means "Goddess of the Throne" because of her association with the monarch. She was also known as Weret-Kekau, "The Great Magic", because of her incredible powers. She cared for people in life and appeared to them after death to help guide them safely to paradise. After the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, her worship traveled to Greece and then to Rome. During the time of the Roman Empire, she was worshipped in every corner of their realm from Britain through Europe to Anatolia. The Cult of Isis was the strongest opponent of the new religion of Christianity between the 4th-6th centuries CE, and iconography, as well as tenets of belief, of the Isis cult were incorporated into the new faith. Imagery of the Virgin Mary holding her son Jesus comes directly from Isis cradling her son Horus and the Dying and Reviving God figure of Jesus himself is a version of Osiris.
Osiris - Lord and judge of the dead, one of the First Five gods born of Nut at the dawn of creation, and one of the most popular and enduring gods of Egypt. His name means "Powerful" or "Mighty". Osiris was originally a fertility god who grew in popularity and influence through the Osiris Myth in which he is killed by his brother, Set, brought back to life by his wife Isis, fathers sky god Horus, and descends to the underworld as Judge of the Dead. In the Egyptian Book of the Dead he is mentioned frequently as the just judge in the Hall of Truth who weighs the hearts of the souls of the dead against the white feather of ma'at. He is an early example of the Dying and Reviving God figure in mythology who leant himself to the later version of this figure, Jesus Christ. Egyptian kings identified themselves with Osiris in death and he is usually depicted as a mummy (symbolizing death) and with green or black skin (symbolizing the fertility of the Nile region and life). He was so popular that people in ancient Egypt paid to have their bodies buried at Abydos near his cult center and those who could not afford that would pay for memorials to be erected to them or their loved ones at Abydos believing that proximity to Osiris on earth guaranteed easier access to paradise after death. His cult naturally merged with that of his wife and the Cult of Isis, with its symbolism of salvation, eternal life, the dying and reviving god, and the divine son born of a virgin mother, would later influence the development of early Christianity.
Ra (Atum or Re) - The great sun god of Heliopolis whose cult spread across Egypt to become the most popular by the Fifth Dynasty (2498-2345 BCE). The pyramids of Giza are associated with Ra as the supreme lord and creator god who ruled over the land of the living and the dead. He drives his sun barge across the heavens by day, showing another aspect of himself with each advance of the sun across the sky, and then dives into the underworld at evening where the barge is threatened by the primordial serpent Apep (Apophis) and must be defended by the other gods and souls of the justified dead. Ra was among the most important and popular gods of Egypt. Even when the god Amun rose in prominence, Ra's position was undiminished and he merged with Amun to become Amun-Ra, the supreme god.
Sekhmet - One of the most significant goddesses of ancient Egypt. Sekhmet was a leonine deity usually depicted as a woman with the head of a lion. Her name means "Powerful" and is usually interpreted as "The Female Powerful One". She was a goddess of destruction and healing, of desert winds and cool breezes. She was the daughter of Ra who appears in one of the most important stories concerning the Eye of Ra/Distant Goddess motif. When Ra became tired of the sins of humanity, he sent Sekhmet to destroy them. She ravaged the land until the other gods implored Ra to stop her before humans were destroyed completely. Ra had a vat of beer dyed red to attract Sekhmet's blood lust and left it at Dendera where she drank it and fell into a deep sleep; when she woke she was the benevolent Hathor. Sekhmet continued to exist in her leonine form, however, and was the patron deity of the military for her powers of destruction and vengeance. She was known as "Smiter of the Nubians" in this regard but she also brought natural disaster. Plagues were known as "Messengers of Sekhmet" or "Slaughterers of Sekhmet". In the same way that she could bring the desert winds, she could deflect them, and the same with pestilence; just as she had brought the plague, she could cure it and was known as "Mistress of Life" in this capacity (and so was frequently invoked in healing spells and incantations by ancient doctors). She was closely associated with other leonine deities such as Bastet and Pakhet and was thought to be the aggressive, violent aspect of the goddess Mut.
Set (Seth) - God of war, chaos, storms, and pestilence. His name is translated as "Instigator of Confusion" and "Destroyer". He is depicted as a red beast with cloven hooves and a forked tale and is the prototype for the later iconography of the Christian Devil. Set was originally a hero-god who drove away the serpent Apep (Apophis) from the barge of the sun god and killed it nightly. He was a desert god who brought the evil winds of the dry lands to the lush Nile Valley and was associated with foreign lands and people. His consorts were Anat and Astarte, both goddesses associated with war and both from foreign countries, as well as Taweret, the benign protective goddess of childbirth and fertility. Set is often characterized as "evil", and did manifest many evil qualities, but was not regarded by the ancient Egyptians as an embodiment of evil or darkness. He was rather seen as a necessary balance to gods like Osiris and Horus who represented all things noble and good, fertility, vitality, and eternity. Set is best known as the world's first murderer in the Myth of Osiris where he kills his brother to usurp the throne. Isis returns Osiris to life but, because he is incomplete, descends to the underworld as Lord of the Dead. Isis gives birth to Osiris' son, Horus, who grows up to challenge set for the throne. Their battles, which lasted for eighty years, are described in the text The Contendings of Horus and Set and were resolved in one version by Isis while, in another, by Neith with Horus declared rightful king and Set banished to the desert lands.
Thoth - God of writing and wisdom, truth and integrity, one of the most important deities in the Egyptian pantheon worshipped from the Predynastic Period (c. 6000-3150 BCE) on to the Ptolemaic Dynasty (323-30 BCE), the last to rule Egypt. He was probably originally a lunar god, son of Atum (Ra) but later texts represent him as the son of Horus. Thoth is depicted in some texts as a baboon but mostly as a man with the head of an ibis holding a writing implement. He is credited with inventing writing and was the record-keeper of the gods. He was known as "Lord of Time" and "Reckoner of Years" because he marked the passage of time and, through the powerful magic of his divine knowledge of words, gave the king a long reign so he could maintain order on earth. He was the patron god of libraries and of scribes. In every story told of him, Thoth is the divine friend and benefactor of humanity who gave people understanding through the gift of the written word. He appears in one story as gambling for the five days required for Nut to give birth to the First Five Gods and in others as mediating between the gods and delivering messages. In the afterlife he stands with Osiris and keeps records in the Hall of Truth at the ritual of the Weighing of the Heart. His consort was Seshat, his daughter or his wife, who was his female counterpart and also patron deity of libraries and books.