Gods of Ancient Egypt

Sreerup Raychaudhuri
The greatest god of the ancient Egyptians was
Usire (Osiris in Greek), who represented life
and death. Himself having died and risen from
the dead as a metaphor of the dead grain
which sprouts afresh in spring, Osiris
therefore held the key to fertility and eternal
life. He was the great judge of the Under-
world, where every Ka or soul would have its
heart weighed in a scale against a feather
representing justice. If the heart was lighter,
the Ka would gain eternal life; if weighed
down with evil deeds, the heart would be
thrown to the crocodile god Sobek to devour.
Osiris is always depicted with green skin, as a
god of vegetation, and he holds in one hand
an 'ankh' or looped cross, the symbol of life,
and in the other a flail, signifying his power
over all things. His double crown and royal
beard proclaim him master of Upper and
Lower Egypt, which the Pharaohs ruled in his
name.
Left: Pillar in the tomb of Queen Nefertari, in
the Valley of the Queens. Right: Tomb of
Horemheb at Saqqara. Note the beard-strap.
Isse (Isis in Greek) was the mother
goddess, who presided over
childbirth, prosperity and harmony.
As the devoted wife of Osiris, she
was the one who brought him back
to life after he had been killed by
his jealous brother Seth. She was
also the mother by Osiris of the god
Horu (Horus in Greek), and is often
depicted suckling the baby Horu.
Isis is also the goddess of the Moon
and wears a full Moon on her head
along with a pair of cow's horns.
The cult of Isis survived into Roman
times, even in Rome itself, and
continued till all pagan worship was
banned by the Christian Emperor
Theodosius I in the 5th century AD.
Right: Relief from the Temple of Isis
on Philae island at Aswan.

Left: Fresco from the tomb of Queen

Nefertari.
Nebet-Het (Nephthys in Greek) was the sister of Isis, and
presided over deaths as her sister did over birth. She is
always shown in tombs.

Left: In this relief, from the temple of the Ptolemaic kings at Edfu, Isis
(R) and Nephthys (L) together crown an unidentified Ptolemaic King,
signifying that this gives him power of life and death over Egypt.

The upper picture is from the mortuary temple of Nefertari at Abu

Simbel. Nefertari’s husband Ramesses II commends her Ka to Nephthys.
Horu (Horus in Greek) was the god of
power, of war, of strength, Son of Osiris
and Isis, he is always depicted as a falcon.
His folded wings protect the monarch
from his enemies. His round, unblinking
eye, often depicted all by itself as the
'Eye of Horus' was a symbol of health and
well-being and survives even today in the
Coptic Christian worship as a symbol. It is
a popular motif for modern jewellery.

Right: This magnificent relief of a standing

Horus is from the temple of Horus and Sobek
at Kom-Ombo, and the ‘Eye of Horus’ (Left) is
from one of the pillars of the Karnak Temple.
Below left is a detail from Kom-Ombo.
Isis was the mother goddess and as
such she is often depicted suckling
the child Horus. This iconography
passed through Roman times into
Christian iconography as the
Madonna suckling the baby Jesus,
producing some of the finest
Christian paintings.

Left: This beautiful relief of Isis suckling Horus

is from the walls of the temple at Philae, and
the painting on the right is the Litti Madonna,
attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. Above is
detail showing vandalisation in the early
Christian era.
Hut-Horu (Hathor in Greek) was the
Egyptian goddess of love, laughter
and joy. Originally a mother goddess
and a fertility deity, by classical times
she had been identified as the wife of
Horu and a daughter-in-law of Isis.
She is depicted with a small Moon
and cow's horns like Isis, but is
characterised by having cow's ears.
She often carries a sistrum, or
musical rattle, signifying her role as
patroness of the arts.

Right: This pillar capital is in the National

Museum at Alexandria.

Left: This fresco from the tomb of Queen

Nefertari shows her apotheosis as Hathor.
holding hands with her divine husband Horus.
Ra was the ancient Egyptian god of
the Sun, and stood for life, warmth
and fertility. By dynastic times he
was merged with Horus and
worshipped as Ra-Horakhty. Both
deities are represented with the
head of a falcon. The solar disk
above signifies Ra.

The Pharaoh would generally

present the first fruits of his
victories, or his earnings to Ra, and
his later merged versions. Sun
worship always played a big role in
Egyptian religion.
Left: This relief is from the temple of Horus
at Edfu, near Luxor.
Right: This fresco is from the tomb of
Queen Nefertari in the Valley of Queens.
Amun (Ammon in Greek) was a god of air who was adopted by the
Theban kings as their patron. He was originally represented as a ram,
or a man with a ram's head. As Thebes rose to prominence in the New
Kingdom, under powerful rulers like Amenhotep I, Hatshepsut,
Thothmosis III and Amenhotep III, the importance of Amun grew and
he was merged with Ra as the great god Amun-Ra. Under the
Ramesside kings he was also merged with Osiris.

Right: This beautiful fresco is from the tomb of Nefertari, wife of Rameses II, in the
Valley of the Queens at Luxor. Above: The avenue of ram-sphinxes at Karnak – all are
depictions of Amun.
Thoth (Thouth or Tut in Greek) was the god of wisdom, writing
and philosophy. He was mostly represented with the head of an
Egyptian ibis, but also sometimes as a baboon or the god Babi.
He was also the god of magicians, physicians and soothsayers.

Left: This beautiful fresco is also from the tomb of Nefertari in the Valley of
the Queens. Above: This stone statute of a baboon (representing Thoth) is in
the Egyptian Museum.
Anpu (Anubis in Greek) was the
protector of the dead. Black as night,
and always depicted with the head of a
jackal (sometimes dog or wolf), he
presided over the rite of
mummification, and then held the Ka
(soul) by the hand to guide it through a
thousand dangers till the final
judgement of Osiris. He is often shown
in a seated posture, hand on breast to
show his devotion to Isis, whose
dedicated servant he was.

Left: Anubis leads Seti I by the hand (from

Seti’s tomb in the Valley of Kings).

Right: This magnificent statue, made of black

basalt, is in the Egyptian museum at Cairo,
but I could not find any label which would tell
where it came from.
P'th' (Ptah in Greek) was the god of
art, of workmen and of artificers. He
was also the god of earthquakes and
natural disasters. Represented with a
round head, he is depicted with
green skin and wrapped in a white
shroud. He carries the djed, a symbol
of stability which was identified with
the spine and ribs of Osiris.

Left: Ramesses III stays the destructive

influence of Ptah, with the blessings of Isis
flowing through the ankh in his hand. In the
tomb of his son Prince Amen-Khopshef (Valley
of the Queens).

Right: Another depiction from the tomb of

Nefertari in the Valley of the Queens. This is
the classic Ptah.
Sekhmet (Sochmiss in
Greek) was the Egyptian
goddess of war. Depicted
as a woman with a lioness'
head, she stood for power,
ferocity and the annual
Nile flood (because the
mud turned the Nile
reddish, as if it ran blood).
Most of the Pharaohs were
happy to invoke her aid in
their constant wars with
Nubia and Syria.

Left: This massive granite head

is at the Luxor Museum.

Right: This evocative relief is

from the great temple of
Rameses II at Abu Simbel.
Bisu (Bes in Greek) was a kindly
god, protecting households,
looking after children, easing the
pain of childbirth, and generally
bringing happiness and mirth to
the common people. He also
represents carnal pleasures, as
opposed to the more Platonic
version of love presided over by
Hathor. The parallels with
Dionysus and Pan are obvious.

Left: Bes is portrayed as a dwarf, playing a

harp, in this pillar from the temple of Isis
at Philae island in the Nile at Aswan.

Right: Ivory panel depicting an ithyphallic

Bes, in the Egyptian museum, with an
unmistakably lustful gaze.
Sobek (Suchos in Greek) was the crocodile god, powerful, greedy and sly. But he
could also be a protector and a fertility symbol. In the Underworld it was Sobek
who would snap up the hearts of evildoers. In late dynastic times, he came to be
identified with Ra-Horakhty.

This relief and the detail are both from the temple of Sobek-Ra at Kom-Ombo, close to Aswan.
Shethek (Set or Seth in Greek) was the god of evil, of deceit, misery, violence
and chaos. He presided over the desert and brought dust storms to torment
the people. Elder brother of Osiris, he was the great adversary who slew
Osiris and cast him into the Underworld. His violent rule over Creation was
brought to an end by Horus and since then he fought on the side of the
Osirian gods. But he could always revert to his innate wrongdoing unless
propitiated by gifts and worship.
During the judgement of the Ka, Seth argues against the person, bringing up
all his or her misdeeds – essentially acting as a prosecutor. Seth is usually
portrayed as a hippopotamus, with flabby breasts and a huge belly.

Left: This ceiling fresco from the tomb of Seti I in the Valley of the Kings portrays Seth
and Sobek at the judgement, tongues lolling out as they anticipate feasting on the
heart of the king. Of course, they don't get it...
Above we see a relief from Kom-Ombo showing Seth slain by the spear of Horus.
The gods of Egypt were depicted in art as animal-human composites,
but were understood to be spirits – vague, inchoate powers that
hovered around the Egyptian people and had to be propitiated with
gifts, worship and blood sacrifices.

But the people also had a living god of flesh and blood, and that was
their Pharaoh. From the moment of coronation, the ruler of Egypt
became the living Horus (the hawk-headed god of power) and it was
forbidden to speak his august name. So the people referred to Per-a'a
(Pharaoh in Greek), which means Big House or palace. This was in
something of the same spirit as people refer to The White House or
the Kremlin.

When the King died, he became one with Osiris and was accordingly
worshipped in a mortuary temple, where his mummification had taken
place.

This gigantic falcon-god sits in the temple of Horus at Edfu and glares at all comers.
S'sp-ankh (Sphinx in Greek), meaning 'living image' was a composite icon with a body of a lion and a human head,
representing the strength of the beast and the intelligence of the king. In Egypt it was always a royal symbol. In
Greek mythology the same name was later used to refer to a mythological creature with the head and breast of a
woman, the body of a lion and the wings of an eagle (above right). The Great Sphinx of Giza is thought to bear the
features of King Khaffra (Chephren in Greek) who also built the 2nd pyramid which towers behind the Sphinx.
However, time and vandalism has made the face difficult to recognise. It is believed that the nose was shot off by a
cannon ball by a Sufi zealot and there was a regulation beard which seems to have fallen off in an earthquake which
happened long ago. Traces of paint shows that the giant statue was originally coloured brightly.
The beard and the nose are present
in this lesser Sphinx which sits at
Memphis. However, the face is that
of the remarkable Queen Hatshepsut,
who ruled Egypt as undisputed
sovereign for 21 years back in the
15th century BC. In her inscriptions it
is said "To look upon her was more
beautiful than anything." Some of
that mature beauty still shines
through this huge stone icon.

A younger and more vivacious

Hatshepsut appears in this painted
statue (right) now in the Museum
at Alexandria.
A dead King who has become Osiris (note the green skin, the mummy shroud
and the crook and flail of Osiris) is sent off to eternal life with salutations
from two female statuettes representing Upper and Lower Egypt.
From the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
Mentuhotep, a powerful King from
the 11th dynasty, is shown on the left
as Osiris. The black basalt of the
statue and its red headdress,
combined with his distinctly African
features, make him look like a Nubian
king rather than the "Lord of the Two
Lands".

From the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Right: Rameses III is shown being

crowned by Isis and Nephthys, whose
blessings make him into the living
Horus.

From his mortuary temple at Medinet Habu,

near Luxor.
Left: Rameses II strikes a godlike
posture in this lovely statue of
lapis lazuli, now in the Egyptian
museum.

Right: The god Anubis takes the Ka or

soul of Rameses V by the hand, as a
friend, to guide him through the
terrors of the after-world to the court
of Osiris. Note that they have the
same stature, indicating that the
Kings is a god, even if he is a mortal
one.

From the joint tomb of Rameses V and

Rameses VI in the Valley of the Kings.
Thoth and Horus exchange friendly greetings with their fellow-god, Rameses II.
From the great temple at Abu Simbel.
Left: Amenhotep III, a predecessor of
Ramesses II, also liked to be
portrayed as a friend of the gods.
Here he stands comfortably with the
crocodile god Sobek, who touches his
lips with the ankh (looped cross) to
give him eternal life.

This lovely statue is in the beautifully-curated

Luxor Museum.

Right: Here it is as a giant Osiris that

Amenhotep III stands, now in the
Egyptian Museum at Cairo. His crook
and flail have disappeared over the
centuries, but the mummy shroud
remains.
Amenhotep III, who ruled in great splendour for 39 years, liked to put
up giant statues of himself. Here he awes all comers down the river Nile
from Nubia (today's Sudan) by sheer size.

The statue is so badly damaged as to be unrecognisable, except for the

inscriptions at its base. Some of the damage was due to earthquake(s),
and some due to clumsy attempts at repair in Roman times.

The Greeks wrongly called this one of two ‘Colossi of Memnon’ (a

mythical Ethiopian king who appears in the Iliad), but this name has
stuck.

During Roman times, the statue was supposed to emit strange noises at
dawn, which was interpreted as Memnon crying out to his father, the
Sun. The naturalist Pliny interpreted this as due to the escape of cold air
from the cracks of the statue when warmed by the Sun. After the
botched repair work, Memnon cried no more.
How could Ramesses II, who ruled for 67 years and died at age 90, allow his
predecessor Amenhotep III to surpass him? As against a pair of colossi of
Memnon, there are four colossi of Ramesses II in his great temple at Abu
Simbel. We see two of them in this picture. One is intact and the other has
been toppled by an earthquake. The torso and crown of Pharaoh lie in the
dust at his own feet – a fitting answer to hubris.
In an iconography which no living ruler of Egypt dared before or after, Ramesses II (2nd from left) sits as an
equal with the gods Ptah, Amun-Ra and Isis in the sanctum sanctorum of his great temple at Abu Simbel.
Not till Alexander declared himself 'son of Zeus' (after visiting Egypt) was any earthly king to presume so much.
We see above a marble head of Alexander in the Museum of Alexandria.
This series would not be complete without the tale of the Amarna
interlude, as scholars call it. The most atypical ruler ever to sit on the
throne of Egypt - perhaps on any throne in the world – was the son of
the magnificent Amenhotep III, of the 18th dynasty. Crowned as
Amenhotep IV in 1352 BC, the young man succeeded to a mighty
empire that encompassed Egypt, Nubia, Syria, Assyria and Babylon.

But, unlike his predecessors, he was not content to be the living Horus
among a pantheon of beast-headed gods. He had conceived the idea –
the very first human known to have done so – that there is only one
God and all the others which the people were worshipping are false.
The symbol of this was the actual disc of the Sun, which the Egyptians
called the Aten, as opposed to the Sun god Ra. Amenhotep IV declared
that the Aten was the only God and banned the worship of all the other
gods.

We see him here from a statue in the Egyptian Museum at Cairo, with his dreamy eyes
and long sensitive face - the face of a prophet, or a philosopher, or a poet, or an artist –
anything but a king.
For Amenhotep IV, after the Aten, the great love of his life was his wife
Nefertiti, whose name means 'The beautiful one who has come',
indicating that she was not an Egyptian princess, but maybe a Hittite,
Mitannian or Babylonian princess, perhaps even a commoner. The
beautiful bones of her face rival that of contemporary models, as is
clear in this red sandstone statue which has been denuded of its colour
and gold leaf decorations, but still remains beautiful.

Nefertiti supported her husband in his pursuit

of the new religion – she may even have been
the one who inspired it – and performed the
royal duties jointly with him in a way no queen
of Egypt had ever done.

Right: Red sandstone head from the Egyptian

Museum at Cairo.

Left: The iconic bust of Nefertiti from the Berlin Museum,

showing her surprisingly modern looks.
A few years after his coronation, Amenhotep IV shifted his capital from
Thebes (modern Luxor) to a new site on the Nile banks, which he called
Akhet-aten, the City of Aten. Its ruins lie today as Tel-el-Amarna,
halfway between Thebes and Memphis, the two traditional capitals. At
the same time, he changed his own name from Amen-hotep (Amun is
Pleased) to Akhen-aten (Strong for Aten).
The worship of Aten was proclaimed as the only true worship
throughout Egypt, probably shocking the common people, who may
have thought of it as a kind of sacrilege. Nevertheless, Akhenaten ruled
for 17 years and pursued the worship of Aten singlemindedly during his
reign.
At the same time he unleashed a cultural revolution, one trace of which
can be found in the realism of Amarna-style art. Instead of royal
sculptors portraying him as strong, athletic and handsome of face, he
allowed them to show him as he really was, with his thick lips, sagging
belly, effeminate hips and man-breasts.
From the Egyptian Museum at Cairo.
Akenaten and Nefertiti offer lotus
flowers and incense to the Aten,
who bathes them in his
benevolent rays.
The temples of Akhetaten were
built without roofs, so that the
rays of the Aten could stream in
unimpeded all day.
The king holds lotus flowers and
an incense-burning censer, the
queen holds lotus flowers and a
jar of perfume, while the little
princess holds a sistrum, a kind of
rattle used to make music for
religious festivals.

From the Egyptian Museum at Cairo.

The realism of Amarna-period art is apparent in this head of a princess from the Egyptian Museum.
She has the beauty of Nefertiti and the elongated head of Akhanaten. Recent studies of mummies
have shown that the latter is not an artistic convention, but a genuine malformation probably
caused by generations of inbreeding – the inevitable result of the brother-sister marriages practised
by Egyptian royalty.
Akhenaten clearly let all affairs of state slide as he pursued his
religious and cultural revolution singlemindedly. At Amarna, a cache
of letters was discovered where his governors in Syria, Babylon, Nubia
and Assyria write to their Pharaoh for military support to counter
revolts by the local chieftains. These appeals for help grow shriller
and more desperate from letter to letter – and then stop abruptly.
Towards the end of the reign, similar letters pour in from the border
garrisons of Egypt – in the Sinai, at the edge of the Nile delta, in
Nubia.

One letter complains of raiding by a wild desert tribe called the

Habiru – easily identified as the Hebrews. Was it at this time that the
Israelites entered Egypt? Perhaps the generous king gave them land
to settle, or perhaps was too weak and uncaring to prevent them
from encroaching on a fertile part of the Nile delta?

There is endless room for speculation.

In the 17th year of his reign, the name of Akhenaten was replaced on the
Amarna monuments by that of Nefer-neferu-aten, a title known to have
been held by Queen Nefertiti. Had the king died or been incapacitated by
disease and his beloved wife was trying to keep up the revolution? Or was
there something more sinister?

Within two years, Neferneferuaten's name was replaced by Smenkh-khare,

a shadowy figure whom some believe to be a new name adopted by
Nefertiti as she tried to rule in her own right.

And then all these were swept away and a 9-year old boy king was
enthroned. He was a son of Akhenaten and his name was Tut-ankh-aten,
which means 'Living image of Aten’.

Surely no one knew that after 32 centuries, he would become the most
famous of all the Pharaohs who ever reigned in Egypt’s forty dynasties.

This statue of a young Tutankhamun, found in his tomb, is in the Egyptian Museum at
Cairo.
 The analogue of Tutankamen for the Mughal
dynasty would be Rafi-ud-Darajat or Rafi-ud-
Daulah, but who remembers them today? Yet
everyone knows the name of Tutankhamen.

Tutankhaten ruled for ten years but he was perhaps the weakest king ever to sit on the throne of Egypt – a boy who
suffered from a crooked back, club feet and chronic malaria, and had to walk with a stick. All power was held by his
vizier Ay and his general Horemheb. Together these two worthies tried hard to restore Egypt to the days before
Akhenaten. The capital was brought back to Thebes and the worship of Amun-Ra, the great god of Thebes, was
restored along with the entire Egyptian pantheon. The young king had to rename himself Tut-ankh-Amun, and the Aten
was sent back from the pantheon to a bright object in the sky. Akhenaten's grand city of Akhetaten was deserted and
allowed to be engulfed by the desert sands. Horemheb was a mighty warrior and time and again he threw the enemies
of Egypt back from the borders. But alas! the Egyptian empire was gone and would never be restored.
In the 19th year of his short life Tutankhamun died and was succeeded
for a short time by Ay (who may have been a relative) and then by
Horemheb, the general, whose descendants formed the 19th dynasty.

Under them the memory of Akhenaten was erased from every temple
and monument (except the lost ones at Amarna), his statues were
smashed and his mummy was mutilated as was that of Nefertiti, with
all the royal symbols torn away before the mummies were stuffed into
coffins meant for commoners (we have DNA testing to thank for their
rediscovery). If it became necessary to describe Akhenaten at all, the
words used were 'enemy’, 'criminal' and 'heretic’.

The boy king Tutankhamun was ignored and lost and even his tomb in
the Valley of the Kings was covered with debris by workers digging a
tomb for a later Pharaoh.

As a result, while all the other royal tombs were looted and vandalised
by grave robbers down the centuries, Tutankamun’s tomb remained
undisturbed with all the treasures buried with him.
Providence had reserved a different
fate for Tutankhamun, the wholly
insignificant puppet king who died
(murdered?) before he could attain
maturity. Exactly a hundred years
ago, in 1920, his lost tomb was
rediscovered by Lord Carnarvon's
expedition, led by Howard Carter and
his mummy with all the treasures,
was found intact.
The sheer riches of this treasure
trove, now in the Egyptian museum,
have to be seen to be believed. For
the last centuries, his name has
become the most famous one among
all the rulers of Egypt before or after.
This picture shows his throne, as
preserved in the Egyptian Museum,
with its gold plating and tender scene
of affection with his young wife
depicted on the back.
Did Moses, who (we are told) was
brought up as an Egyptian prince,
get his idea of a sole God from
tales he had heard of Akhenaten,
and merely change Aten to the
nameless God of Abraham? Or did
Akhenaten learn monotheism
from some itinerant Hebrew
whom he sheltered at his court
while his father still ruled over
Egypt? We will never know. But in
the after-life – if there is an after-
life – the Ka of Akhenaten must be
pleased to know how monotheism
(with different names for his Aten)
spread across the world and
became the dominant belief, long
after the beast-gods of Ramesses
and Thothmosis crumbled into
ruin and slowly disappeared into
the sands of the great Sahara
desert.