Ancient Egyptian Deities - Major Cosmological Deities

Major Cosmological Deities

  • Amun-Ra or Amen – "the hidden one", a creator deity with a cult centre in Thebes.
  • Amunet – the primordial goddess, the in the Ogdoad cosmogony; depicted as a cobra snake or a snake-headed woman
  • Apophis or Apep – evil serpent of the Underworld and enemy of Ra; formed from a length of Neith's spit during her creation of the world.
  • Atum – the oldest creator deity with a cult centre in Heliopolis.
  • The Aten – a sun deity worshipped prominently during the period of Atenism in the eighteenth dynasty under Pharaoh Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten)
  • Geb – god of the Earth, first ruler of Egypt and husband of Nut
  • Hathor or Hethert – cow or cow-goddess of the sky, fertility, love, beauty, and music
  • Horus or Heru – falcon-headed god of the sky and kingship.
  • Khepri – the scarab beetle or scarab-headed creator god identified with the rising sun.
  • Khnum – ram-headed creator god who causes the Nile flood.
  • Ma'at – goddess who personified the order and balance of the universe,and worked in the underworld to do the "weighing of the heart ceremony.
  • Isis or Aset – goddess of magic, motherhood and fertility and consort of Osiris, represented as the throne
  • Min – god of fertility represented as a man with an erect penis.
  • Mut – mother goddess, consort of Amun.
  • Neith – goddess of creation, war, and hunting.
  • Nu – deification of the primordial watery abyss.
  • Nut – goddess of the sky and heavens.
  • Osiris or Wesir – judge of the dead and ruler in the afterlife and consort of Isis.
  • Ptah – creator deity, also a god of craft.
  • Ra – the sun, also a creator deity, whose chief cult center was based in Heliopolis.
  • Sekhmet – lioness goddess of the sun, destruction, pestilence, and war; fierce protector of the pharaoh, and later as an aspect of Hathor; later identified as a sister to Bast.
  • Set or Seth – god of chaos; protector of Ra.
  • Shu - god of the air.
  • Tefnut – goddess of moisture, moist air, dew, and rain.
  • Thoth or Djehuty – ibis-headed god of the moon, drawing, writing, geometry, wisdom, medicine, music, astronomy and magic.

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