Egyptian gods: list and meaning

Image: De revolutionibus

The Egyptian world has always aroused great interest from society due to the enigmatic nature of society, culture and religion. The way of seeing the life of that Empire, its policies and its entire culture revolved around a single issue: its gods and its pharaoh. In this lesson from a PROFESSOR we will delve into the pantheon of Egyptian gods in which we will leave you a list and what each of them represented, that way we will see how the Pharaonic monarchy was sustained in the fidelity of the people to their gods to be able to rule in the high and in the under Egypt. Keep reading and discover the List of Egyptian Gods and their meaning in this ancient culture.

Index

1. List of the main gods of Egypt
2. Ra, the Egyptian god of the Sun
3. Osiris, another of the most important Egyptian gods
4. Isis, the Egyptian goddess of love and fertility
5. Other important Egyptian gods

The Egyptian culture had a very numerous pantheon of gods, as many as there were elements in the world and even in many cases different gods were represented for the same things. Therefore we cannot stop at all of them and we will make a

• Ra: Sun god.
• Amun: supreme creator.
• Mut: goddess of the sky and wife of Amun.
• Jonsu: god of the sick, medicine and protector against evil spirits.
• Osiris: god of resurrection, the Nile and fertility.
• Isis: goddess of magic.
• Horus: pharaoh god.
• Seth: god of evil and the desert.
• Hathor: goddess of nurture, education, music, love and fertility.
• Anubis: god of embalming.
• Tot: god of writing and knowledge.
• Path: god of craftsmen and architects.
• Nut: goddess of the night.
• Maat: goddess of justice.
• Apis: god of agriculture.
• Sobek: god of fertility, of the Nile and its waters.

Next we will take a closer look at the most important gods of the Egyptian pantheon.

We start this list with the Egyptian gods talking about Ra, one of the main. He was the god of the Sun and was frequently depicted as a hawk wearing a crown with a solar disk and on top of it a serpent. We can also find it represented as a beetle or a ram.

He is the chief god of Egypt, for he represented life and he was the one who guaranteed death and resurrection. In fact the pharaohs always claimed to come from his lineage.

According to legend, Ra emerged from the primordial ocean and created the gods Tefnut, Nut, Shu, Hathor, Geb, Sekhmet and the rest of the elements that made up the world. In the same way, it is considered that he was the first pharaoh. After thousands of years of rule and to protect the world, he decided to accompany the sun on his journey by day and night to protect his creation from great monsters.

We can also find it assimilated with the god Amun (theban god) becoming called Amun-Ra.

Image: About Egypt

He is the god who presides over the court that judges people after death. In this trial, the deceased had to plead innocent of various sins and prove to God that he had done well. During this trial, the god Anubis weighed the soul of the deceased while the god Tot noted the result of the same. If the test was satisfactory he passed to paradise, while if he did not pass he was condemned to be eaten by a monster.

This god has one of the best known legends of all the gods that make up the Egyptian pantheon. In this one, Osiris embodies good, while his brother Seth is evil. According to legend, Seth killed Osiris and tore his body to pieces, distributing it throughout all parts of Egypt so that he could rule throughout Egypt.

Thus Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris, undertook the search for all parts of the god, to bring him back to life and beget a son, Horus. It would be this, when he was older, who would fight against Seth and defeat him.

We continue this list of egyptian gods To tell you about Isis, the goddess of magic, love and fertility, she is usually represented in a human figure and crowned with a throne.

It seems that it influenced the representation of the Virgin Mary, because she was sometimes represented breastfeeding her son Horus. The cult of him remains in many of the regions of the Roman Empire until the year 535, when it will be totally forbidden by Justinian.

Image: arqueoEGIPTO

Next, we are going to give you a list of the Egyptian gods that are also very important within this ancient culture and that their history is worth knowing. We talk about Horus, Seth and Anubis.

Horus

As we mentioned before, he will be the son of Osiris and Isis, he was represented in the form of a hawk or as a man and the head of said bird. She is one of the oldest deities in Egypt and one of the most important, in fact the pharaohs claimed to come from him.

Seth

God of nomadic shepherds, he was represented with the head of a greyhound. He begat evil and was the god who dwelt in the desert. As we know he has a very important presence in one of the strongest legends of the pantheon. His worship was very restricted although as a god, we know that he had to be worshiped.

Anubis

A very important god within the Egyptian culture, because he was responsible for leading the dead to the court that judged them. He was also the god of embalming and was depicted with the head of a jackal. In fact Anubis also appears in the legend of Horus, as it was this who joined the pieces of the deceased god in order to resurrect him.

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