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[Tyler Robinson]

 

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.

[Tyler Robinson]

 

[Tyler Robinson]

 

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.

[Tyler Robinson]

 

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

[Tyler Robinson]

 

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.

[Tyler Robinson]

 

[Tyler Robinson]

 

Egypt had one of the largest and most complex pantheons of gods of any civilization in the ancient world. Over the course of Egyptian history hundreds of gods and goddesses were worshipped. The characteristics of individual gods could be hard to pin down. 

[Tyler Robinson]

 

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.

[Tyler Robinson]

 

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.

[Tyler Robinson]

 

[Tyler Robinson]

 

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.

[Tyler Robinson]

 

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.

 

[Tyler Robinson]

 

 

[Tyler Robinson]

 

AmonRichard Maschmeyer—Design Pics/Getty Images

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.

[Tyler Robinson]

 

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.

[Tyler Robinson]

 

[Tyler Robinson]

 

[Tyler Robinson]

 

 

[Tyler Robinson]

 

In ancient Egyptian religion and mythology, Hathor (also spelled Athor) was the goddess of love, fertility, beauty, music, and mirth. She was represented either as a cow or as a woman with cow’s horns with the solar disk nested between them.

[Tyler Robinson]

 

The predynastic worship of cows may have given rise to the figure of Hathor, one of the oldest known deities of Egypt. Hathor’s name means “house of Horus,” referring to a myth in which Hathor, as a cow, stood on the earth so that her four legs became pillars holding up the sky while her belly formed the firmament. Horus, the sky god, would enter her mouth every evening in the form of a hawk and emerge reborn each morning. Because of this myth, Hathor was sometimes considered the mother of Horus. Later on, Hathor was regarded as the wife of Horus. Their son Harsomtus, also called Ihy or Ahy, was worshiped during the Ptolemaic period as a god of music. Both Hathor and her son were often represented holding a sistrum, a rattlelike instrument believed to repel evil spirits.