The land of ancient Egypt was alive with the spirit of the gods. The sun god Ra broke from the darkness every morning in his great boat, bringing the light, and many of the gods watched over the people by night as the stars. Osiris caused the Nile River to flood its banks and fertilize the land while Khnum directed its flow. Isis and her sister Nephthys walked with the people of the land in life and protected them after death, as did many of the other gods, and Bastet guarded the lives of women and watched over the home. Tenenet was the goddess of beer and brewing and also present at childbirth, while Hathor, who had many roles, was one’s close companion at any party or festival as the Lady of Drunkenness.
The gods and goddesses were not distant deities to be feared but close friends who lived among the people in the temple-homes built for them, in the trees, lakes, streams, swamps, and out in the desert beyond the Nile River Valley. When the hot winds blew in from the arid wastes it was not just a confluence of air but the god Set stirring up some trouble. When the rain fell it was a gift of the goddess Tefnut, “She of Moisture”, who also was associated with dryness and was asked to hold back the rain on festival days. Human beings were born from the tears of Atum (also known as Ra) when he wept for joy at the return of his children Shu and Tefnut in the beginning of time when the world was created from the waters of chaos. In all aspects of life, the deities of Egypt were present and continued to care for their people after death.
Origins of the Deities
Belief in supernatural entities is attested to as early as the Predynastic Period in Egypt (c. 6000-3150 BCE) but the practice is no doubt much older. As historian Margaret Bunson writes:
The Egyptians lived with forces that they did not understand. Storms, earthquakes, floods, and dry periods all seemed inexplicable, yet the people realized acutely that natural forces had an impact on human affairs. The spirits of nature were thus deemed powerful in view of the damage they could inflict on humans
The early belief in the gods took the forms of animism, the belief that inanimate objects, plants, animals, the earth have souls and are imbued with the divine spark; fetishism, the belief that an object had consciousness and supernatural powers; and totemism, the belief that individuals or clans have a spiritual relationship with a certain plant, animal, or symbol. In the Predynastic Period animism was the primary understanding of the universe, as it was with early people in any culture. Bunson writes, “Through animism humankind sought to explain natural forces and the place of human beings in the pattern of life on earth” (98). Animism not only concerned higher cosmic forces and earth energy but the souls of those who had died. Bunson explains:
The Egyptians believed firmly that death was just a doorway to another form of existence, so they acknowledged the possibility that those who had died were more powerful in their resurrected state. Thus politically, spiritually, or magically powerful members of each community took on special significance in death or in the realm beyond the grave. Special care was taken to provide such souls with all due honors, offerings, and reverence. Dead persons were thought to be able to involve themselves in the affairs of the living, for good or ill, and thus had to be placated with daily sacrifices
The belief in a life after death gave rise to an understanding of supernatural beings who presided over this other realm which connected them to the earthly plane seamlessly. The early evolution of religious belief can perhaps best be summed up by the line from Emily Dickinson’s poem number 96 (best known as My Life Closed Twice Before its Close): “Parting is all we know of heaven” or from Larkin’s Aubade where religion is “created to pretend we never die.” The experience of death required some explanation and meaning which was provided by a belief in higher powers.
Animism branched off into fetishism and totemism. Fetishism is exemplified in the symbol of the djed, representing earthly and cosmic stability. The djed symbol is thought to have originally been a fertility sign, which came to be associated with Osiris so closely that inscriptions such as “the Djed is laid on its side” meant Osiris had died while the raising of the djed symbolized his resurrection. Totemism evolved out of local association with a certain plant or animal. Every nome (province) of ancient Egypt had its own totem, whether a plant, animal, or symbol, which signified the people’s spiritual connection to that locale. Every Egyptian army marched into battle divided into nomes, and each nome carried its own staff flying its totem. Individuals each had their own totem, their own spirit guide who watched over them especially. The king of Egypt, in any period, was watched over by a hawk who represented the god Horus.
In time, these spirits understood through animism became anthropomorphized (attributing human characteristics to non-human things). The invisible spirits which inhabited the universe were given form, shape, and names and these became the deities of ancient Egypt.
Mythological Origins
The primary creation myth of the Egyptians begins with the stillness of the primordial waters before the beginning of time. Out of these endless, depthless waters rose the primordial mound (the ben-ben). The pyramids of Egypt have been interpreted as representing this first hill of earth to rise from the primordial depths. Existing eternally with these silent waters (Nu) was heka – magic – personified in the god Heka who in some versions of the myth causes the ben-ben to rise.
Upon the mound stood the god Atum (or Ra) or, in some versions, he alights upon it from the air. Atum looked upon the nothingness and recognized his aloneness and so, through the agency of heka, he mated with his own shadow to give birth to two children, Shu (god of air, whom Atum spat out) and Tefnut (goddess of moisture, whom Atum vomited out). Shu gave to the early world the principles of life while Tefnut contributed the principles of order.
Leaving their father on the ben-ben, they set out to establish the world. In time, Atum became concerned because his children were gone so long and so removed his eye and sent it in search of them. While his eye was gone, Atum sat alone on the hill in the midst of chaos and contemplated eternity. Shu and Tefnut returned with the eye of Atum (depicted as the famous All-Seeing Eye), and their father, grateful for their safe return, shed tears of joy.
These tears, dropping onto the dark, fertile earth of the ben-ben, gave birth to men and women. These creatures had nowhere to live and so Shu and Tefnut mated to give birth to Geb (earth) and Nut (sky) who fell in love so deeply that they were inseparable. Atum was displeased and pushed them away from each other raising Nut high above Geb and fastening her to the canopy of the cosmos. She was already pregnant by Geb, however, and gave birth to the first five gods: Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys, and Horus. From these original gods then came all the others.
An alternate version of creation is very similar but includes the goddess Neith, one of the oldest of all Egyptian deities. In this version, Neith is the wife of Nu, the primordial chaos, who gives birth to Atum and all the other gods. Even in this myth, however, Heka pre-dates Neith and the other gods. In a number of inscriptions throughout Egypt’s history Neith is referred to as the “Mother of the Gods” or “Mother of All” and is among the earliest examples of the Mother Goddess figure in history. In yet another version, the Nu (chaos) is personified as Nun, the father and mother of all creation who gives birth to the gods and everything else in the universe.
According to the egyptologist Geraldine Pinch, once the gods were born and creation set in motion,
Qualities of the primeval state, such as its darkness, were retrospectively endowed with consciousness and became a group of deities known as the Eight or the Ogdoad of Hermopolis. The Eight were imagined as amphibians and reptiles, fertile creatures of the dark primeval slime. They were the forces that shaped the creator or even the first manifestations of the creator .
The symbol of the ouroborus, the snake swallowing its own tail, representing eternity, comes from this connection of the serpent with creation and the divine. Atum (Ra) is depicted in early inscriptions as a serpent, and later he is the serpent-as-sun-god (or a sun deity protected by a serpent) who battles the forces of chaos symbolized by the serpent Apophis.
The Nature of the Gods & Goddesses
The deities of ancient Egypt maintained harmony and balance after the primordial One divided at creation. Geraldine Pinch writes, “Texts that allude to the unknowable era before creation define it as the time ‘before two things had developed’. The cosmos was not yet divided into pairs of opposites such as earth and sky, light and darkness, male and female, or life and death” (58). In the beginning, all was One and then, with the rise of the ben-benand the birth of the gods, multiplicity entered creation; the One became the many.
Egyptian religious beliefs centered on the balancing of these ‘many’ through the principle of harmony known as ma’at. Ma’at was the central value of Egyptian culture influencing every aspect of the people’s lives from how they conducted themselves to their art, architecture, literature, and even their vision of the afterlife. The power which enabled the gods to perform their duties, allowed human beings access to their gods, and sustained ma’at was heka. Heka, the god, is represented in the Coffin Texts as claiming to have existed before any other deity.
Like the people of Mesopotamia, from whom some scholars claim the Egyptians developed their religious beliefs, the people of Egypt believed they were partners with the gods in maintaining order and holding the forces of chaos at bay. The story best illustrating this concept is The Overthrowing of Apophis which generated its own ritual. Apophis was the primordial serpent who, every night, attacked the sun barge of Ra as it traveled through the darkness toward the dawn. Different gods and goddesses manned the boat with Ra to protect him from Apophis, and the souls of the dead were also expected to help fend off the serpent. One of the most famous images from this story shows the god Set, before he became known as the villain of the Osiris Myth, spearing the serpent and protecting the light.
Tomb of Inherkau no. 359
Second chamber, South wall
“The great cat of Heliopolis” killing the enemy of the sun, Apophis.
