(B) List of gods:—1. NATIVE EGYPTIAN DEITIES.—Ra is the god of the sun, who, conceived of as a man, or as a man with a hawk’s head, guides the heavenly bodies, creates new life by his rays, and thus blesses mankind, although at times he also shoots forth consuming fire (his eye is the goddess Sechet, cf. above, p. 182). The centre of his worship is Heliopolis (Egyp. An [Heb. jk] or Pa-ha, Gr. ‘H\vovrodts [Heb. vp m3]), where the kings of the 12th dynasty built him a great temple. For the most part he stands alone, but occasionally an artificially formed consort (see above, p. 179%), Ra-t (Ra-t-ta-ui), is placed by his side. The monuments of the cult of Ra resemble the conical stone in which among others he embodied himself at Helio- polis. In the time of the Old Empire huge build- ings were erected to him in the form of a flat- topped pyramid surmounted by an obelisk. The best known of these was that erected by king Ra-en-user at Abusir (see above, p. 183%).
The god pursued his course in the heavens by ship. ‘wo barks, bearing the names Madet and Sekti, are generally attributed to him; in later times he is supposed to use a special vessel for every hour of the day. The name of Rais associ- ated with numerous legends which depict him as a king decaying with age, against whom gods and men rebel, but who always emerges victorious from the resulting conflicts. The texts name a number of other sun-gods along with and often confused with Ra. Of these we now proceed to notice the five most important—
(1) Horus.—Our treatment of this god is rendered difficult by the circumstance that under this name were understood two deities, who were originally quite distinct, although afterwards they passed into one another: Horus, the son of Isis (see below, p. 194°), and Horus the sun-god. The latter, again, is separated into a number of independent indi- vidual forms, which are distinguished by additions to the name Horus. Thus we have: Her-ur, ‘Horus the ancient,’ of Letopolis; Her-men-ti, ‘ Horus of the two eyes,’ of Shedenu in the Delta ; Her-chent-an-ma, ‘Horus in the condition of not seeing,’ of Letopolis; Her-em-chuti, ‘Horus on the horizon,’ the Greek Harmachis, at Tanis, and in the environs of Memphis, where the great sphinx of Gizeh is his symbol; Her-nub, ‘the golden Horus,’ who is regarded especially as the midday sun; Her-behudti, ‘Horus of Edfu,’ whose symbol, the winged solar disc, used to be placed as an omen-averter on temples, steles, etc. Then, again, Her-ka, ‘Horus the bull’; Her-desher, ‘the red Horus’; Her-ap-shetu, ‘Horus the revealer of the secret,’ answer to the planets Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, which were thus thought of as solar forms.—AHer-t is a later-formed female complementary form of the male Horus (see p. 179*).
(2) Chepera, ‘he that becomes’ (Germ. ‘der Wer- dende’), is primarily the morning sun. A Turin text declares: ‘I am Chepera in the morning, Ra at midday, Tum in the evening,’ but the three deities just named are usually thought of in pretty much one and the same way as=the sun in general. i
(3) Tum or Atum is the god of Heliopolis, and
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is lt regarded as the creator; he is por- trayed mostly as a man with the crowns of Egypt. A great temple dedicated to him was situated at the modern Tell el-Maskhuta, and known as Pa- Tum (‘house of Tum,’ the biblical Pithom; ef. Naville, The Store-city of Pithom, London, 1885).
(4) Shu appears, above all, as creator, and at Thebes and Memphis is named as one of the Egyptian kings of the gods. His female consort and twin sister is the lion-headed Tefnut. The notions cherished regarding this goddess, and especially her genealogical place in the Egyptian religious system, underwent numerous variations. In the myths she does not come at all prominently forward.
(5) Aten, ‘the sun’s disc,’ of whom we have spoken already (see p. 183°), is, in contrast to Ra, not an anthropomorphic form, but the celestial body itself. He is portrayed as the solar disc from which rays stream down towards the earth. These end in hands which reach down the signs for life, power, ete. Amenophis Iv. (c. 1450 B.C.) desired to make Aten the ruling god in Egypt, called himself in honour of him Chu(achu)-en-aten, ‘splendour of the solar disc,’ and built him a great temple at Tel el-Amarna in Central Egypt, to whose neighbourhood he removed the royal residence, which had been at Thebes. Apart from the prominence it gave to the new god, the henotheistic (not monotheistic) refor- mation of this king made little change in Egypt. The organization of officials remained the same (cf. Baillet, Rec. de trav. rel. ad VEgypt. xxiii. 140ff.), and so did the cultus and the religious formule, in which the ancient Divine names were simply replaced in many instances by that of Aten. In numerous hymns, touched with poetical feeling, which have been found in the tombs of el-Amarna, the god is hailed as beneficent star, bringer of light and heat, rejoicer of man and beast, creator and nourisher of all things and beings, the only deity that is worthy of veneration, etc. As a matter of course, no myth is attached to the nature god himself.