Egyptian Mythology and Magick Forum ☥

The God, Thoth

Thoth, God of Knowledge.

Thoth, in one of his forms as an ibis-headed man
Major cult center   Hermopolis
Symbol   Moon disk, papyrus scroll
Consort   Seshat, Ma'at, Bastet or Hathor
Parents   None (self-created); alternatively Ra or Horus and Hathor.

Thoth (/ˈθoʊθ/ or /ˈtoʊt/; from Greek Θώθ thṓth, from Egyptian ḏḥwty, perhaps pronounced */tʃʼiħautiː/ or */ɟiħautiː/, depending on the phonological interpretation of Egyptian's emphatic consonants) was one of the deities of the Egyptian pantheon. In art, he was often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis or a baboon, animals sacred to him. His feminine counterpart was Seshat, and his wife was Ma'at.[1]

Thoth's chief temple was located in the city of Khmun,[note 1][2] later called Hermopolis Magna during the Greco-Roman era[3] (in reference to him through the Greeks' interpretation that he was the same as their god Hermes) and Shmounein in the Coptic rendering. In that city, he led the Ogdoad pantheon of eight principal deities. He also had numerous shrines within the cities of Abydos, Hesert, Urit, Per-Ab, Rekhui, Ta-ur, Sep, Hat, Pselket, Talmsis, Antcha-Mutet, Bah, Amen-heri-ab, and Ta-kens.[4]

Thoth played many vital and prominent roles in Egyptian mythology, such as maintaining the universe, and being one of the two deities (the other being Ma'at) who stood on either side of Ra's boat.[5] In the later history of ancient Egypt, Thoth became heavily associated with the arbitration of godly disputes,[6] the arts of magic, the system of writing, the development of science,[7] and the judgment of the dead.[8]

Common names for Thoth[9]
in hieroglyphs
The Egyptian of ḏḥwty is not fully known, but may be reconstructed as *ḏiḥautī, based on the Ancient Greek borrowing Thōth (Θώθ [tʰɔːtʰ]) or Theut and the fact that it evolved into Sahidic Coptic variously as Thoout, Thōth, Thoot, Thaut, as well as Bohairic Coptic Thōout. The final -y may even have been pronounced as a consonant, not a vowel.[10] However, many write "Djehuty", inserting the letter 'e' automatically between consonants in Egyptian words, and writing 'w' as 'u', as a convention of convenience for English speakers, not the transliteration employed by Egyptologists.[11]

According to Theodor Hopfner,[12] Thoth's Egyptian name written as ḏḥwty originated from ḏḥw, claimed to be the oldest known name for the ibis although normally written as hbj. The addition of -ty denotes that he possessed the attributes of the ibis.[13] Hence his name means "He who is like the ibis".


Thoout, Thoth Deux fois Grand, le Second Hermés, N372.2A, Brooklyn Museum
Further names and spellings
Djehuty is sometimes alternatively rendered as Jehuti, Tahuti, Tehuti, Zehuti, Techu, or Tetu. Greek versions Thot, Thout and Thoth are derived from the letters ḏḥwty.

Not counting differences in spelling, Thoth had many names and titles, like other goddesses and gods. (Similarly, each Pharaoh, considered a god himself, had five different names used in public.[14]) Among the names used are A, Sheps, Lord of Khemennu, Asten, Khenti, Mehi, Hab, and A'an.[15]

In addition, Thoth was also known by specific aspects of himself, for instance the moon god Iah-Djehuty, representing the Moon for the entire month,.[16] The Greeks related Thoth to their god Hermes due to his similar attributes and functions.[17] One of Thoth's titles, "Three-times great, great" (see Titles) was translated to the Greek τρισμεγιστος (Trismegistos), making Hermes Trismegistus.[18]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

God, Horus the Elder

Heru-ur (Har-wer, Haroeris, Horus the Elder) was one of the oldest gods of Ancient Egypt. He was a sky god, whose face was visualised as the face of the sun. As a result his name ("Heru") was sometimes translated as "face", rather than "distant one", and was sometimes modified to "Herut" ("sky"). He absorbed a number of local gods including Nekheny the Nekhenite (a hawk god) and Wer (a god of light known as "the great one" whose eyes were the sun and moon) to become the patron of Nekhen (Heirakonpolis) and later the patron god of the pharaohs. Nekhen was a powerful city in the pre-dynastic period, and the early capital of Upper Egypt. By the Old Kingdom Horus had become the first national god and the patron of the Pharaoh.

He was originally considered to be the counterpart and enemy of Set. While Horus represented Lower Egypt, Set represented Upper Egypt, and the two were locked in a battle which would not be won or lost until the world ended and everything slipped back into chaos. This myth evolved and soon it was thought that Horus and Set fought for eighty years before the Council of the Gods ruled that Horus should rule Egypt. It may seem strange that Horus was associated with Lower Egypt and yet he is associated with Nekhen, in Upper Egypt. It has been suggested that Horus actually originated in Upper Egypt (as Horus Behedet in Behedet) and that his cult spread north with the unification of the country under Narmer or Hor Aha

He was the son or husband of Hathor and was considered to be a creator god and the archetypal king. His right eye was the sun and his left eye was the moon and images of the "Eye of Horus" were considered to be powerful protective amulets. His speckled feathers formed the stars and his wings created the wind.

Source: www.ancientegyptonline.co.uk/

The God, Shu

God of the wind and air.

The ancient Egyptian god Shu is represented as a human with feathers on his head, as he is associated with light and air. This feather serves as the hieroglyphic sign for his name. Shu could also be represented as a lion, or with a more elaborate feathered headdress.[1]

Major cult center   Heliopolis, Leontopolis
Symbol   the ostrich feather
Consort   Tefnut
Parents   Ra or Atum and Iusaaset
Siblings   Tefnut
Hathor
Sekhmet
Offspring   Nut and Geb

Shu (/ʃuː/; meaning "emptiness" and "he who rises up") was one of the primordial Egyptian god, a personification of air, one of the Ennead of Heliopolis.

Contents  [hide]
1 Family
2 Myths
3 See Also
4 References
5 Sources
Family[edit]
He was created by Atum, his father and Iusaaset, his mother in the city of Heliopolis. With his twin sister Tefnut (moisture), he was the father of Nut and Geb. His daughter, Nut, was the sky goddess whom he held over the Earth (Geb), separating the two. The Egyptians believed that if Shu didn't hold his son and daughter (the god of the earth and the goddess of the sky) apart there would be no way life could be created.

Shu's grandchildren are Osiris, Horus, Isis, Set and Nephthys. His great-grandson is Anubis.

Myths[edit]

Shu is shown holding the sky above his head.
As the air, Shu was considered to be cooling, and thus calming, influence, and pacifier. Due to the association with air, calm, and thus Ma'at (truth, justice and order), Shu was portrayed in art as wearing an ostrich feather. Shu was seen with between one and four feathers. The ostrich feather was symbolic of light and emptiness. Fog and clouds were also Shu's elements and they were often called his bones. Because of his position between the sky and earth, he was also known as the wind.[2]

In a much later myth, representing the terrible weather disaster at the end of the Old Kingdom, it was said that Tefnut and Shu once argued, and Tefnut left Egypt for Nubia (which was always more temperate). It was said that Shu quickly decided that he missed her, but she changed into a cat that destroyed any man or god that approached. Thoth, disguised, eventually succeeded in convincing her to return.

The Greeks associated Shu with Atlas, the primordial Titan who held up the celestial spheres,as they are both depicted holding the sky.[3]

The air god Shu separated the sky goddess Nut from the earth god, Geb. This treatment symbolized duality, the separation of the world into opposites: above and below, light and dark, good and evil. Shu is mostly represented by a man. Only in his function as a fighter and defender as the sun god does he sometimes receive a lion's head. In Egyptian mythology, Shu arrived as breath from the nose of the original god, Atum-Ra, together with his sister and wife, Tefnut, the moist air. The first pair of cosmic elements then created the sky goddess, Nut, and the earth god, Geb, who in turn created the deities Isis, Osiris, Nephthys and Set.[2]

He carries an ankh, the symbol of life.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The God, Geb

God of the Earth.

Symbol   Geese, Snakes, Bulls, Barley
Consort   Nut
Parents   Shu and Tefnut
Siblings   Nut

Offspring   Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys, and sometimes Horus.
Geb was the Egyptian god of the Earth and a member of the Ennead of Heliopolis. It was believed in ancient Egypt that Geb's laughter were earthquakes[1] and that he allowed crops to grow.

The name was pronounced as such from the Greek period onward and was formerly erroneously read as Seb[2] or as Keb. The original Egyptian was perhaps "Gebeb"/"Kebeb". It was spelled with either initial -g- (all periods), or with -k-point (gj). The latter initial root consonant occurs once in the Middle Kingdom Coffin Texts, more often in 21st Dynasty mythological papyri as well as in a text from the Ptolemaic tomb of Petosiris at Tuna el-Gebel or was written with initial hard -k-, as e.g. in a 30th Dynasty papyrus text in the Brooklyn Museum dealing with descriptions of and remedies against snakes.

Role and development[edit]
The oldest representation in a fragmentary relief of the god, was as an anthropomorphic bearded being accompanied by his name, and dating from king Djoser's reign, 3rd Dynasty, and was found in Heliopolis. In later times he could also be depicted as a ram, a bull or a crocodile (the latter in a vignette of the Book of the Dead of the lady Heryweben in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo).

Geb was frequently described mythologically as father of snakes (one of the names for snake was s3-t3 – "son of the earth"). In a Coffin Texts spell Geb was described as father of the snake Nehebkau. In mythology, Geb also often occurs as a primeval divine king of Egypt from whom his son Osiris and his grandson Horus inherited the land after many contendings with the disruptive god Set, brother and killer of Osiris. Geb could also be regarded as personified fertile earth and barren desert, the latter containing the dead or setting them free from their tombs, metaphorically described as "Geb opening his jaws", or imprisoning those there not worthy to go to the fertile North-Eastern heavenly Field of Reeds. In the latter case, one of his otherworldly attributes was an ominous jackal-headed stave (called wsr.t) rising from the ground pn to which enemies could be bound.

In the Heliopolitan Ennead (a group of nine gods created in the beginning by the one god Atum or Ra), Geb is the husband of Nut, the sky or visible daytime and nightly firmament, the son of the earlier primordial elements Tefnut (moisture) and Shu ('emptiness'), and the father to the four lesser gods of the system – Osiris, Seth, Isis and Nephthys. In this context, Geb was believed to have originally been engaged with Nut and had to be separated from her by Shu, god of the air.[3] Consequently, in mythological depictions, Geb was shown as a man reclining, sometimes with his phallus still pointed towards Nut.

As time progressed, the deity became more associated with the habitable land of Egypt and also as one of its early rulers. As a chthonic deity he (like Min) became naturally associated with the underworld and with vegetation – barley being said to grow upon his ribs – and was depicted with plants and other green patches on his body.

His association with vegetation, and sometimes with the underworld and royalty brought Geb the occasional interpretation that he was the husband of Renenutet, a minor goddess of the harvest and also mythological caretaker (the meaning of her name is "nursing snake") of the young king in the shape of a cobra, who herself could also be regarded as the mother of Nehebkau, a primeval snake god associated with the underworld. He is also equated by classical authors as the Greek Titan Cronus.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The God, Ra / Re


God of the Sun and Radiance

In one of his many forms, Ra, god of the sun, has the head of a falcon and the sun-disk resting on his head.

Major cult center   Heliopolis
Symbol   sun disk
Consort   Hathor, Isis, and some say Sekhmet and Bastet
Parents   Neith and Khnum or Nun
Siblings   Apep, Thoth, Sobek, Serket, Hathor
Offspring   Shu, Tefnut, Bastet, Ma'at

Ra /rɑː/[1] or Re /reɪ/ is the ancient Egyptian solar deity. By the Fifth Dynasty (2494 to 2345 BCE) he had become a major god in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the midday sun.

In later Egyptian dynastic times, Ra was merged with the god Horus, as Ra-Horakhty ("Ra, who is Horus of the Two Horizons"). He was believed to rule in all parts of the created world: the sky, the earth, and the underworld.[2] He was associated with the falcon or hawk. When in the New Kingdom the god Amun rose to prominence he was fused with Ra as Amun-Ra. During the Amarna Period, Akhenaten suppressed the cult of Ra in favour of another solar deity, the Aten, the deified solar disc, but after the death of Akhenaten the cult of Ra was restored.

The cult of the Mnevis bull, an embodiment of Ra, had its centre in Heliopolis and there was a formal burial ground for the sacrificed bulls north of the city.

All forms of life were believed to have been created by Ra, who called each of them into existence by speaking their secret names. Alternatively humans were created from Ra's tears and sweat, hence the Egyptians call themselves the "Cattle of Ra." In the myth of the Celestial Cow it is recounted how mankind plotted against Ra and how he sent his eye as the goddess Sekhmet to punish them. When she became bloodthirsty she was pacified by drinking beer mixed with red dye.

Ra and the sun

To the Egyptians, the sun represented light, warmth, and growth. This made the sun deity very important, as the sun was seen as the ruler of all that he created. The sun disk was either seen as the body or eye of Ra. Ra was the father of Shu and Tefnut, whom he created. Shu was the god of the wind, and Tefnut was the goddess of the rain. Sekhmet was the Eye of Ra and was created by the fire in Ra's eye. She was a violent lioness.

Ra in the underworld

Ra was thought to travel on two solar boats called the Mandjet (the Boat of Millions of Years), or morning boat and the Mesektet, or evening boat.[3] These boats took him on his journey through the sky and the Duat, the literal underworld of Egypt. While Ra was on the Mesektet, he was in his ram-headed form.[3] When Ra traveled in his sun boat he was accompanied by various other deities including Sia (perception) and Hu (command) as well as Heka (magic power). Sometimes members of the Ennead helped him on his journey, including Set, who overcame the serpent Apophis, and Mehen, who defended against the monsters of the underworld. When Ra was in the underworld, he would visit all of his various forms.[3]

Apophis, the god of chaos, was an enormous serpent who attempted to stop the sun boat's journey every night by consuming it or by stopping it in its tracks with a hypnotic stare. During the evening, the Egyptians believed that Ra set as Atum or in the form of a ram. The Mesektet, or the Night boat, would carry him through the underworld and back towards the east in preparation for his rebirth. These myths of Ra represented the sun rising as the rebirth of the sun by the sky goddess Nut; thus attributing the concept of rebirth and renewal to Ra and strengthening his role as a creator god as well.

When Ra was in the underworld, he merged with Osiris, the god of the dead, and through it became the god of the dead as well.[3]

Ra as creator

Ra was worshipped as the Creator god among some Ancient Egyptians, specifically followers of his cult at Heliopolis.[3] It was believed that Ra wept, and from the tears he wept came man.[3] These cult-followers believed that Ra was self-created, while followers of Ptah believed that Ra was created by Ptah.[4] In a passage of the Book of the Dead, Ra cuts himself, and his blood transforms into two intellectual personifications: Hu, or authority, and Sia, or mind.[3] Ra is also accredited with the creation of the seasons, months, plants, and animals.[5]

Iconography

Figure of Ra-Horakhty, 305-200 BCE, Brooklyn Museum
Ra was represented in a variety of forms. The most usual form was a man with the head of a hawk and a solar disk on top and a coiled serpent around the disk.[3] Other common forms are a man with the head of a beetle (in his form as Khepri), or a man with the head of a ram. Ra was also pictured as a full-bodied ram, beetle, phoenix, heron, serpent, bull, cat, or lion, among others.[6]

He was most commonly featured with a ram's head in the Underworld.[3] In this form, Ra is described as being the "ram of the west" or "ram in charge of his harem.[3]

In some literature, Ra is described as an aging king with golden flesh, silver bones, and hair of lapis lazuli.[3]

Worship

The chief cult centre of Ra was Heliopolis (called Iunu, "Place of Pillars", in Egyptian),[2] where he was identified with the local sun-god Atum. Through Atum, or as Atum-Ra he was also seen as the first being and the originator of the Ennead, consisting of Shu and Tefnut, Geb and Nut, Osiris, Set, Isis and Nephthys. Oddly enough, this was the home of the Ennead that was believed to be headed by Atum, with whom he was merged. The holiday of 'The Receiving of Ra' was celebrated on May 26 in the Gregorian calendar.[citation needed]

His local cult began to grow from roughly the second dynasty, establishing Ra as a sun deity. By the fourth dynasty the pharaohs were seen as Ra's manifestations on earth, referred to as "Sons of Ra". His worship increased massively in the fifth dynasty, when Ra became a state deity and pharaohs had specially aligned Pyramids, Obelisks, and solar temples built in his honor. The rulers of the fifth dynasty told their followers that they were sons of Ra himself and the wife of the high priest of Heliopolis.[3] These pharaohs spent most of Egypt's money on sun temples.[3] The first Pyramid Texts began to arise, giving Ra more and more significance in the journey of the pharaoh through the Underworld.[3]

During the Middle Kingdom era, Ra was increasingly affiliated and combined with other chief deities, especially Amun and Osiris.

Ra on the Solar boat.

At the time of the New Kingdom, the worship of Ra had become more complicated and grander. The walls of tombs were dedicated to extremely detailed texts that depicted Ra's journey through the underworld. Ra was said to carry the prayers and blessings of the living with the souls of the dead on the sun boat. The idea that Ra aged with the sun became more popular during the rise of the New Kingdom.

Many acts of worship included hymns, prayers, and spells to help Ra and the sun boat overcome Apep.

The rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire put an end to the worship of Ra by the citizens of Egypt,[7] and as Ra's popularity suddenly died out, the study of Ra became of purely academic interest even among the Egyptian priests.[8]

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