11 Egyptian Gods and Goddesses

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.