Tefnut - Water

 

Tefnut is a deity of moisture, moist air, dew and rain. In Ancient Egyptian religion, Tefnut is the sister and consort of the air god Shu, and the mother of Geb and Nut.

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In a much later myth, representing a terrible weather disaster at the end of the Old Kingdom, it's said that Tefnut and Shu once argued, and Tefnut left Egypt for Nubia (which was always more temperate). It was said that Shu quickly decided that he missed her, but she changed into a cat that destroyed any man or god that approached. Thoth, disguised, eventually succeeded in convincing her to return.

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Shu - Emptiness & Air

 

Shu (Egyptian šw, "emptiness" or "he who rises up") was one of the primordial Egyptian gods, spouse and brother to the goddess Tefnut, and one of the nine deities of the Ennead of the Heliopolis cosmogony.

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As the air, Shu was considered to be a cooling, and thus calming, influence, and pacifier. Due to the association with dry air, calm, and thus Maat (truth, justice, order, and balance), Shu was depicted as the dry air/atmosphere between the Earth and sky, separating the two realms after the event of the First Occasion. Shu was also portrayed in art as wearing an ostrich feather. Shu was seen with between one and four feathers. The ostrich feather was symbolic of lightness and emptiness. Fog and clouds were also Shu's elements and they were often called his bones. Because of his position between the sky and Earth, he was also known as the wind.

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Nut - Sky

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The pronunciation of ancient Egyptian is uncertain because vowels were long omitted from its writing, although her name often includes the unpronounced determinative hieroglyph for "sky". Her name Nwt, itself also meaning "Sky", is usually transcribed as "Nut" but also sometimes appears in older sources as Nunut, Nenet, Nuit or Not.

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Nut is the goddess of the sky, stars, cosmos, mothers, astronomy, and the universe in the ancient Egyptian religion. She was seen as a star-covered nude woman arching over the Earth.

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Nut is a daughter of Shu and Tefnut. Her brother-husband is Geb. She had four children – Ausar, Sutekh, Isis, and Nephthys.

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Gebeb (Geb) - Earth

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Gebeb is the Egyptian god of the Earth and a mythological member of the Ennead of Heliopolis. It was believed in ancient Egypt that Geb's laughter created earthquakes and that he allowed crops to grow.

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In the Heliopolitan Ennead (a group of nine gods created in the beginning by the one god Atum or Ra), Gebeb is the husband of Nut, the sky or visible daytime and nightly firmament, the son of the earlier primordial elements Tefnut (moisture) and Shu ("emptiness"), and the father to the four lesser gods of the system – Ausar, Set, Isis and Nephthys. In this context, Gebeb was believed to have originally been engaged with Nut and had to be separated from her by Shu, god of the air.

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Ra - Sun

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Ra is the Egyptian word for 'sun'. As a solar deity, Ra embodied the power of the sun but was also thought to be the sun itself, envisioned as the great god riding in his barge across the heavens throughout the day and descending into the underworld at sunset. As he made his way through the darkness beneath the earth, he was attacked nightly by the giant serpent Apophis (also known as Apep) who tried to prevent the sun from rising and so destroy all life on earth.

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Ra is one of the oldest deities in the Egyptian pantheon and was later merged with others such as Horus, becoming Ra-Horakhty (the morning sun), Amun (as noonday sun), and Atum (the evening sun) associated with primal life-giving energy.

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Maat - Order & Justice

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Although little mythology survives concerning the goddess Maat, she was the daughter of the Egyptian Sun god Ra; and the wife of Tehuti, the god of wisdom. Maat (which is associated with solar, lunar, astral, and the river Nile's movements) is a concept based on humanity's attempt to live in a natural harmonic state.

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Maat represents the ancient Egyptian concepts of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice. Maat was also the goddess who personified these concepts, and regulated the stars, seasons, and the actions of mortals and the deities who had brought order from chaos at the moment of creation. Her ideological opposite was Isfet, meaning injustice, chaos, violence or to do evil.

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Maat represents the ethical and moral principle that all Egyptian citizens were expected to follow throughout their daily lives. They were expected to act with honor and truth in matters that involve family, the community, the nation, the environment, and the gods.

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Maat is associated with the judgment of the deceased and whether a person has done what is right in their life. Thus, to do Maat was to act in a manner unreproachable or inculpable. So revered was the concept of Maat that Egyptian kings would often pay tribute to gods, offering small statues of Maat, indicating that they were successfully upholding the universal order: the interconnection among the cosmic, divine, natural, and human realms.

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Maat as a principle was formed to meet the complex needs of the emergent Egyptian state that embraced diverse peoples with conflicting interests. The development of such rules sought to avert chaos and it became the basis of Egyptian law.

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Tehuti (Thoth) - Wisdom & Moon

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Also known as "the scribe of the Neter", Tehuti is often depicted as a man with the head of an ibis or a baboon, animals sacred to him. Tehuti is the god of the Moon, wisdom, knowledge, writing, hieroglyphs, science, magic, art and judgment. His feminine counterpart is Seshat, and his wife is Ma'at.

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The ancient Egyptians regarded Tehuti as One, self-begotten, and self-produced. He was the master of both physical and moral (i.e. divine) law, making proper use of Ma'at. He is credited with making the calculations for the establishment of the heavens, stars, Earth, and everything in them.

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The Egyptians credited him as the author of all works of science, religion, philosophy, and magic. The ancient Greeks further declared him the inventor of astronomy, astrology, the science of numbers, mathematics, geometry, surveying, medicine, botany, theology, civilized government, the alphabet, reading, writing, and oratory. They further claimed he was the true author of every work of every branch of knowledge, human and divine.

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Tehuti played many vital and prominent roles in Egyptian mythology, such as maintaining the universe, and being one of the two deities (the other being Ma'at) who stood on either side of Ra's solar barque. In the later history of ancient Egypt, Tehuti became heavily associated with the arbitration of godly disputes, the arts of magic, the system of writing, and the judgment of the dead.

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Tehuti's chief temple was located in the city of Hermopolis (Ancient Egyptian: "Khemenu", Coptic: Shmun). Later known as el-Ashmunein in Egyptian Arabic, the Temple of Tehuti was mostly destroyed before the beginning of the Christian era.

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Wusa (Isis) - Natural World

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​Wusa was a major goddess in ancient Egypt. As one of the main characters of the Ausar myth, in which she resurrects her slain brother and husband, the divine king Ausar, and produces and protects his heir, Horus. She was believed to help the dead enter the afterlife as she had helped Ausar, and she was considered the divine mother of the pharaoh, who was likened to Horus. Her maternal aid was invoked in healing spells to benefit ordinary people. Isis is often depicted in art as a human woman wearing a throne-like hieroglyph on her head.

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In the first millennium BCE, Ausar and Wusa became the most widely worshipped Egyptian deities, and Isis absorbed traits from many other goddesses. Her reputed magical power was greater than that of all other gods, and she was said to govern the natural world. Wusa was often portayed as a personification of nature or the feminine aspect of divinity.

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Ausar (Osiris) - Fertility

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​Ausar is the Egyptian god of life, death, and fertility. At the height of the ancient Nile civilization, Ausar was regarded as the primary deity of a henotheism. Ausar is not only the merciful judge of the dead in the afterlife, but also the underworld agency that granted all life, including sprouting vegetation and the fertile flooding of the Nile River.

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Ausar was murdered and mutilated by his own brother, Sutekh. Ausar's sister-wife, Isis, reassembled his corpse and resurrected her dead brother-husband with the help of the goddess Nephthys. The resurrection lasted long enough to conceive his son and heir, Horus. Horus later sought revenge upon Sutekh, and many of the ancient Egyptian myths describe their conflicts.

 

Beginning at about 2000 B.C. all men, not just dead pharaohs, were believed to be associated with Ausar at death.

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Heru (Horus) - Sun & Sky

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In Ancient Egypt, Heru is one of the most significant ancient Egyptian deities who served many functions, most notably as the god of kingship, healing, protection, the sun, and the sky. Horus is most often depicted as a man with a falcon head.

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Horus was worshipped from at least the late prehistoric Egypt until the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Roman Egypt. The earliest recorded form of Heru is the tutelary deity of Nekhen in Upper Egypt, who is the first known national god, specifically related to the ruling pharaoh who in time came to be regarded as a manifestation of Horus in life and Ausar in death. The most commonly encountered family relationship describes Horus as the son of Isis and Ausar, and he plays a key role in the Ausar myth as Ausar's heir and the rival to Sutekh, the murderer and brother of Ausar.

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From the 1st dynasty (c. 2925–2775 bce) onward, Heru and the god Sutekh were presented as perpetual antagonists who were reconciled in the harmony of Upper and Lower Egypt. In the myth of Ausar, who became prominent about 2350 bce, Heru was the son of Ausar and Isis and was the nephew of Sutekh, Ausar’s brother. When Sutekh murdered Ausar and contested Horus’ heritage (the royal throne of Egypt), Heru became Sutekh’s enemy. Horus eventually defeated Sutekh, thus avenging his father and assuming the rule. In the struggle, Sutekh lost a testicle, and Horus' eye was gouged out. It was later healed by the god Tehuti. The restored eye (the wedjat eye) thus became a powerful amulet.

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Sutekh (Set) - Desert & Storm

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​Sutekh is a god of deserts, storms, disorder, violence, and foreigners in ancient Egyptian religion. Sutekh had a positive role where he accompanies Ra on his barque to repel Apep (Apophis), the Serpent of Chaos. Sutekh had a vital role as a reconciled combatant.  He was lord of the Red Land (desert), where he was the balance to Horus' role as lord of the Black Land (fertile land).

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In the Ausar myth, Sutekh is portrayed as the usurper who murdered and mutilated his own brother, Ausar. Ausar's sister-wife, Isis, reassembled his corpse and resurrected her dead brother-husband with the help of the goddess Nephthys. The resurrection lasted long enough to conceive his son and heir, Horus. Horus sought revenge upon Sutekh, and many of the ancient Egyptian myths describe their conflicts.

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Nebet-Het (Nephthys) - Darkness

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Nebet-Het is a member of the Great Ennead of Heliopolis. In Egyptian mythology, she was a daughter of Nut and Geb. She was associated with mourning, the night/darkness, service (specifically temples), childbirth, the dead, protection, magic, health, embalming, and beer.

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Nebet-Het was typically paired with her sister Isis in funerary rites because of their role as protectors of the mummy and the god Ausar and as the sister-wife of Sutekh.

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Anpu/Inpu (Anubis) - Death

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"Anubis" is a Greek rendering of this god's Egyptian name. Before the Greeks arrived in Egypt, around the 7th century BC, the god was known as Anpu or Inpu. The root of the name in ancient Egyptian language means "a royal child". Inpu has a root to "inp", which means "to decay".

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Anpu, an ancient Egyptian god of funerary practices and care of the dead, is depicted as a man with the head of a jackal. Anpu is often holding a pair of balance, with a feather on one side, and the heart of the deceased on the other.

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Also known as "First of the Westerners", "Lord of the Sacred Land", "He Who is Upon his Sacred Mountain", "Ruler of the Nine Bows", "The Dog who Swallows Millions", "Master of Secrets", "He Who is in the Place of Embalming" and "Foremost of the Divine Booth".

 

In the Early Dynastic period and the Old Kingdom, he enjoyed a pre-eminent (though not exclusive) position as lord of the dead, but he was later overshadowed by Ausar. In his later role, Anubis became the “conductor of souls”.

 

​His particular concern was with the funerary cult and the care of the dead; hence, he was reputed to be the inventor of embalming, an art he first employed on the corpse of Ausar.

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Sobek - Nile & Crocodiles

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Sobek is, above all else, an aggressive and animalistic deity who lives up to the vicious reputation of his patron animal, the large and violent Nile crocodile / West African crocodile. Some of his common epithets portray this nature succinctly, the most notable of which being: "he who loves robbery", "he who eats while he also mates", and "pointed of teeth". Some ancient Egyptian sects believed that Sobek created order in the universe and the world when he arose from the “Dark Water” and that he was the creator of the Nile River. He was often associated with fertility

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Sobek was among the oldest deities named in the Pyramid Texts, the texts inscribed on the walls of tombs. He was the lord of the crocodiles and was depicted as a man with a crocodile head. The people of ancient Egypt worshiped Sobek in order to appease both him and crocodiles in general, and also to ensure the fertility of their people and crops. Many mummified crocodiles, of all ages and sizes, have been found in Egyptian tombs.

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However, he also displays grand benevolence in more than one celebrated myth. After his association with Horus and consequent adoption into the Osirian triad of Ausar, Isis, and Horus in the Middle Kingdom, Sobek became associated with Isis as a healer of the deceased Ausar (following his violent murder by Sutekh in the central Osiris myth). In fact, though many scholars believe that the name of Sobek, Sbk, is derived from s-bAk, "to impregnate", others postulate that it is a participial form of the verb sbq, an alternative writing of sAq, "to unite", thereby meaning Sbk could roughly translate to "he who unites (the dismembered limbs of Ausar)".

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Sobek was also associated with pharaonic power, fertility, and military prowess, but served additionally as a protective deity with apotropaic qualities, invoked especially for protecting others from the dangers presented by the Nile. Sobek was revered for his ferocity and quick movements; however, he was an unpredictable deity, as were his crocodile counterparts, He was sometimes associated with chaos. He was also considered to be the army’s patron because of his ferocity.

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Sobek was also associated with both Seth, his father, and Horus, whom he helped birth.

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