Egyptian Pantheon

Three thousand years of religion

Egyptian religion was practised from before the unification of the country (c. 3100 BCE) until the closing of the last temples in late antiquity; the temple of Isis at Philae functioned until the 6th century CE. Over that span gods rose and fell in importance, merged (Amun-Ra, Ra-Horakhty), and were worshipped differently in different cities. There was no single creed or scripture: each major temple had its own theology, and several creation accounts coexisted without contradiction being a problem.

Creation accounts

At Heliopolis, Atum emerges on the primeval mound from the waters of Nun and produces Shu and Tefnut, from whom come Geb and Nut and their children Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys, the Ennead. At Hermopolis, eight primordial beings, the Ogdoad, precede the sun. At Memphis, the Shabaka Stone (c. 710 BCE, copying an older text) presents Ptah creating through heart and tongue, thought and word.

The written sources

The Pyramid Texts, carved inside royal pyramids at Saqqara from the reign of Unas (c. 2350 BCE), are the oldest religious texts. They were adapted for non-royal burials in the Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom and, from the New Kingdom, in the Book of the Dead, illustrated papyri of spells to guide the deceased. Underworld books such as the Amduat and the Book of Gates map the sun's night journey on royal tomb walls in the Valley of the Kings. Egyptian texts rarely tell myths as continuous narratives; the fullest account of the Osiris story is in Greek, in Plutarch's On Isis and Osiris (c. 100 CE), alongside Egyptian allusions and the New Kingdom tale The Contendings of Horus and Set.

Maat and the afterlife

Maat, truth and right order, was what king and temple ritual existed to uphold against isfet, disorder. The dead hoped to be judged justified before Osiris, their heart weighed against Maat's feather (Book of the Dead Spell 125), and to live on in the Field of Reeds or travel with the sun. Temples were the houses of the gods, served daily by priests on the king's behalf, and ordinary people approached the gods through festivals, household cults, amulets, and oracles.