Egyptian Deities

Question 1

The hybrid god created by Ptolemy I Soter of Egypt, he was a blend of Osiris and Apis but his character and attributes were a blending of these two Egyptian deities with the Greek gods Zeus, Helios, Dionysius, Hades, and Asklepius.

Answer 1

Serapis

Question 2

One of the oldest and most important gods: the patron god of magic and medicine but was also the primordial source of power in the universe. He is depicted as a man carrying a staff and knife, and physicians were known as Priests of him. He was said to have killed two serpents and entwined them on a staff as a symbol of his power; this image (borrowed from the Sumerians, actually) was passed on to the Greeks who associated it with their god Hermes and called it the caduceus.

Answer 2

Heka

Question 3

A protector goddess in the form of a vulture who guarded Upper Egypt. She was associated with Wadjet, protector of Lower Egypt. The two are referred to as “The Two Ladies”.

Answer 3

Nekhbet

Question 4

In one myth, Ra fears that mankind is plotting against him and sends Hathor to punish humanity. While slaughtering humans she takes this form. To prevent her from killing all humanity, Ra orders that beer be dyed red and poured out on the land. Mistaking the beer for blood, she drinks it, and upon becoming intoxicated, she reverts to her pacified form, Hathor.

Answer 4

Sekhmet

Question 5

Originally a lioness goddess (and in the role of “eye of Ra,” she fought Apophis), later a cat goddess associated with fertility and childbirth and protection against contagious diseases and evil spirits

Answer 5

Bast(et)

Bastet was one of the most popular deities of ancient Egypt. Men and women revered her equally and carried talismans of her cult. She was so universally adored that, in 525 BCE, the Persians used the Egyptian devotion to Bastet to their advantage in winning the Battle of Pelusium. They painted images of Bastet on their shields and drove animals in front of their army knowing the Egyptians would rather surrender than offend their goddess.

Question 6

The most powerful and popular goddess in Egyptian history. She was associated with virtually every aspect of human life and, in time, became elevated to the position of supreme deity, “Mother of the Gods”, who cared for her fellow deities as she did for human beings.

Answer 6

Isis

Question 7

Creator god and god of craftsmen; particularly associated with the city of Memphis; generally represented in the guise of a mummified (green) man

Answer 7

Ptah

Question 8

Her powers were gained through tricking the god Ra. By placing a snake in his path, which poisoned him, she forced him to give some power to her before she would cure him.

Answer 8

Isis

Question 9

Goddess often depicted as a cow, symbolizing her maternal and celestial aspect, although her most common form was a woman wearing a headdress of cow horns and a sun disk.

Daughter or consort of Ra; in one myth, she danced naked in front of Ra until he laughed to cure him of a fit of sulking; when Ra was without her, he fell into a state of deep depression

Answer 9

Hathor

Question 10

The patroness of women, goddess of fertility, protector of marriage, and goddess of love and beauty. In that final role she became equated with Aphrodite and Venus

Answer 10

Hathor

Question 11

The part of the soul that could temporarily assume different physical forms and wander the world as a ghost.

Answer 11

akh

Question 12

Protective ancient Egyptian goddess of childbirth and fertility whose name translates as “she who is great”; typically depicted as a bipedal female hippopotamus with feline attributes, pendulous female human breasts, and the back of a Nile crocodile.

Answer 12

Taweret

Question 13

The part of the soul that remained near or within the body (which is why mummification was required).

Answer 13

ka

Question 14

God who fought the demon Apophis each day, emerging victorious; in later times, this struggle led him to be associated with the serpent itself, and he became the personification of violence and disorder, and the cause of all disasters.

Answer 14

Set

Question 15

“Lady of the House,” a goddess of the air, mourning, childbirth, and rivers; sister-wife of Set

She was considered the dark goddess to the light of Isis but this carried no negative connotation, only balance.

Answer 15

Nephthys

Question 16

God who took Isis, his sister, for his wife, and ruled over the earth. His brother Set grew jealous and killed him, afterwards cutting his body into 14 pieces and hiding them in various places around Egypt.

Answer 16

Osiris

(Isis searched the breadth of the land until she had recovered all of the pieces and, with the help of Anubis, embalmed the body.)

Question 17

Goddess of truth, justice, and harmony, she set the stars in the sky and regulated the seasons. She walked with one through life, was present in the form of the Feather of Truth at the soul’s judgment after death, and continued as a presence in the paradise of the Field of Reeds. She is depicted as a woman wearing a crown with an ostrich feather.

Answer 17

Ma’at

Question 18

During the reign of Amenhotep III (1390–1353 BC), worship of this god — a representation of the disk of the sun — was resurrected. This process was carried to its extreme conclusion by his successor, Amenhotep IV, who eventually declared this god to be the only god, thereby creating one of the earliest known monotheistic religions.

Answer 18

Aton (or Aten)

Amenhotep IV even changed his name to Akhenaton, meaning “Aton is satisfied.” The worship of Aton was centered on the capital city Tell-al-Amarna, and was largely confined to upper classes and the pharaonic court; it did not survive Amenhotep. Under his successor, Tutankhamen (King Tut), traditional religious practices were restored.

Question 19

Scarab-faced god in ancient Egyptian religion who represents the rising or morning sun (subordinate to Ra). By extension, he can also represent creation and the renewal of life.

Answer 19

Khepri

Often, Khepri and another solar deity, Atum, were seen as aspects of Ra: Khepri was the morning sun, Ra was the midday sun, and Atum was the sun in the evening.

Question 20

Son of Osiris and Isis who avenged his father’s murder and defeated Set. All subsequent pharaohs were said to be aspects of him.

Answer 20

Horus

Question 21

In the Egyptian creation myth, the god who emerged from the primordial ocean.

Answer 21

Ra (or Atum)

Question 22

God of embalming, he also served to introduce the dead to the afterlife, and to decide the fate of the dead, he would weigh the heart of the dead against the feather of truth

Answer 22

Anubis

Question 23

The god of the pharaohs, from the fourth dynasty onward all pharaohs termed themselves sons of him, and after death they joined his entourage.

Answer 23

Ra

Question 24

The part of the soul that was subjected to the Judgment of Osiris, in which the heart of the deceased was weighed against Ma’at, commonly represented as an ostrich feather.

Answer 24

ba

Question 25

His knowledge of science and calculation made him the creator of the calendar, and his symbol was the moon due to his knowledge of how to calculate its path. His knowledge of magic led to his association with the Greek Hermes: he was consulted by Isis when attempting to resurrect Osiris, and was again consulted when the young Horus was stung by a scorpion.

Answer 25

Thoth

Question 26

The sun god, depicted as a falcon and crowned with the sun disk

Answer 26

Ra

Question 27

His appearance in art was as a man in a loincloth, with a headdress topped by feathers, but other appearances show him with the head of a ram. His temple at Karnak was the largest ever built.

Answer 27

Amon-Ra

Question 28

Serving the gods as the supreme scribe, this ibis-headed god was known as the “tongue of Ptah” for his knowledge of hieroglyphics, and as the “Heart of Re” for his creative powers.

Answer 28

Thoth

Question 29

She was the goddess of writing, books, notations, and measurements. Her name means “The Female Scribe” and she was the consort of Thoth, god of wisdom and writing (though sometimes she is depicted as his daughter). She is the patroness of libraries.

Answer 29

Seshat

Question 30

God of the underworld who also served as a god of vegetation and renewal (festivals honoring his death occurred around the time of the Nile flood’s retreat and tatues representing him were made of clay and grain, which would then germinate); represented either as a green mummy, or wearing the Atef, a plumed crown.

Answer 30

Osiris

Question 31

At the dawn of creation she was sent forth by Ra as his eye to find Shu and Tefnut when they had gone off to create the world. She planted the first papyrus plants, laid out the papyrus fields in the swamps of the Nile Delta, and helped Isis raise Horus there when they were hiding from Set.

Answer 31

Wadjet

Question 32

The vizier of king Djoser who designed and built the Step Pyramid. He lived c. 2667-2600 BCE and was a polymath expert in many fields of study. His name means “He Who Comes in Peace” and, after his death, he was deified as a god of wisdom and medicine. He was identified by the Greeks with Aesculapius and was invoked in spells for healing. His medical treatises claimed, against conventional belief, that disease was natural in origin and not a punishment from the gods.

Answer 32

Imhotep

Question 33

The Divine Bull worshipped at Memphis as an incarnation of the god Ptah. One of the earliest gods of ancient Egypt depicted on the Narmer Palette (c. 3150 BCE). His cult was one of the most important and long-lived in the history of Egyptian culture.

Answer 33

Apis

Question 34

The god of the earth and husband of Nut, the sky.

Answer 34

Geb

Question 35

Scorpion goddess and protectress against venom; a story known as Isis and the Seven Scorpions tells of how Isis was insulted by a rich woman once and this goddess, who had sent her seven scorpions along as Isis’ bodyguards, instructed one of them to sting the woman’s son. The boy was going to die from the venom but Isis saved him and forgave the woman. Afterwards, this goddess followed Isis’ example of forgiveness

Answer 35

Serket

Question 36

Wife of Osiris who, after his murder by Set, searched the breadth of the land until she had recovered all the pieces of his body.

Answer 36

Isis

Question 37

One of the oldest and most enduring deities of ancient Egypt, worshipped from the Predynastic Period through the Ptolemaic Dynasty; a war goddess, creation goddess, mother goddess, and funerary goddess; in early depictions she is seen with a bow and arrows and one of her epithets was “Mistress of the Bow”; she was the mediator of the gods’ disputes, most famously as the goddess who settles the question of whether Horus or Set should rule Egypt

Answer 37

Neith

Question 38

“Devourer of Souls”, a goddess with the head of a crocodile, torso of a leopard, and hindquarters of a hippo. She sat beneath the scales of justice in the Hall of Truth in the afterlife and devoured the hearts of those souls which were not justified by Osiris.

Answer 38

Ammit (or Ammut)

Question 39

An aggressive and animalistic deity who lived up to the vicious reputation of his patron animal, the large and violent Nile crocodile, his fierceness was able to ward off evil and he was thus a common recipient of votive offerings

Answer 39

Sobek

Question 40

Collective name for Atum-Ra, Geb, Shu, Nut, Tefnut, Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nepthys

Answer 40

The Heliopolitan ennead (“group of nine”)

Question 41

The goddess of the sky and wife of Geb, the earth.

Amon-Ra decreed that she could not give birth on any day of the year. Thoth, the god of wisdom, gambled with the god of the moon (Yah or Khonsu), and won five days worth of moonlight which he transformed into days during which Osiris, Isis, Set, Nepththys, and Horus were born.

Answer 41

Nut

Question 42

One of the earliest-known Egyptian deities, originally the god of the source of the Nile. Since the annual flooding of the Nile brought with it silt and clay, and its water brought life to its surroundings, he was thought to be the creator of the bodies of human children, which he made at a potter’s wheel, from clay, and placed in their mothers’ wombs. He later was described as having moulded the other deities, and he had the title “Divine Potter.” Usually depicted with the head of a ram.

Answer 42

Khnum

Question 43

A household protector who drove off evil spirits and came to symbolize the good things in life – music, dance, and sexual pleasure; he was unusually depicted full-frontal and not in profile; the Dwarf god

Answer 43

Bes

Question 44

Daughter of Ra and instrument of his vengeance (“eye of Ra”), depicted as a lioness

Answer 44

Sekhmet

Question 45

After the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, her worship traveled to Greece and then to Rome. During the time of the Roman Empire, she was worshipped in every corner of their realm from Britain through Europe to Anatolia. Her cult was the strongest opponent of the new religion of Christianity between the 4th-6th centuries CE

Answer 45

Isis

Question 46

God of the moon. His name means “traveller”, referring to the nightly travel of the moon across the sky. He was associated with healing and along with Thoth he marked the passage of time. At Thebes he formed part of the “Theban Triad” with Mut as his mother and Amun his father.

Answer 46

Khonsu

Question 47

The manifestation of moisture (including rain); one of the first children of Amon-Ra.

Answer 47

Tefnut

Question 48

Son of Nepthys and Osiris (or Set), he was typically pictured with the head of a jackal and served as the god of the desert and the watcher of the tombs.

Answer 48

Anubis

Question 49

He began as the god of Thebes, governing the air, fertility, and reproduction. His wife was Mut, and his son was Khonsu. Later, he became linked with the sun god Ra, and in this form, he became worshipped beyond Egypt, and identified with Zeus and Jupiter.

Answer 49

Amun (later Amun-Ra)

Question 50

Brother of Osiris who grew jealous of him and killed him, afterwards cutting his body into 14 pieces and hiding them in various places around Egypt. He then claimed kingship over the land but was defeated by Osiris’s son Horus.

Answer 50

Set (or Seth)

Question 51

The manifestation of air; one of the first children of Amon-Ra.

Answer 51

Shu

Question 52

A great protective goddess and patroness of Lower Egypt, one of the oldest deities in the Egyptian pantheon, represented as the rearing cobra which became the king’s insignia (the uraeus).

Answer 52

Wadjet

Question 53

The personification of the primordial chaos (the watery abyss) from which the world arose and his female aspect and consort

Answer 53

Nu(n) and Naunet

Question 54

An early mother goddess who became prominent as the wife of Amun and mother of Khonsu, part of the Theban Triad; often associated with the vulture (She was also the divine protector of the king and state who roasted conspirators and traitors in her flaming brazier.)

Answer 54

Mut

Question 55

The god of chaos; 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

Answer 55

Apophis (or Apep)