Curated playlist
Egyptian gods
- HorusHorus won the throne of Egypt with a boat made of painted wood. His rival Set sailed one of real stone, and it sank.
- Set (deity)The Egyptian god Set killed his brother, yet guarded the sun god's boat. He later became a symbol of evil.
- KhnumKhnum was an Egyptian god who sat at a potter's wheel and shaped human beings from clay. When a body was finished, he placed it inside its mother's womb. A text in the Ipuwer Papyrus, from the 12th dynasty, shows what it meant when this…
- PtahThe word Egypt comes from the name of a temple to the god Ptah. Hut-ka-Ptah in Memphis became Aiguptos in Greek.
- ThothPlutarch says the Egyptian god Thoth won five extra days for the calendar by gambling with the Moon.
- AtumAtum, the creator god of ancient Egypt, once told Osiris how the universe would end. According to the Coffin Texts, he said that after millions of years only the two of them would remain, both in the form of serpents. That is a startling…
- Yam (god)Yam, the Ugaritic sea god, ranks only thirtieth in his city's list of gods. Yet El favored him for king.
- RaEvery night, the serpent Apophis attacked the boat of the Egyptian sun god Ra. Hymns and spells helped him win.
- AmunAmun's name meant "the hidden one," yet his temples became Egypt's largest.
- KhepriKhepri is an ancient Egyptian god with the face of a scarab beetle, and his task was to be the sun at the moment of dawn. Each morning the sun returned to the sky, and Khepri was the deity who embodied that return. Through it, he also…
- GebAncient Egyptians said the earth god Geb laughed earthquakes into existence.
- Heka (god)Heka, the ancient Egyptian deity of magic and medicine, is described in one Coffin Text as existing "before duality had yet come into being." That line comes from spell 261, and it places Heka before pairs of any kind. Before one thing…
- Osiris mythIn the Osiris myth, the murdered god is cut into pieces and scattered. Rival Egyptian cult centers each claimed a piece.