Forms of Divinity

The word we translate as "god" in the Egyptian language is 'netjer', which may perhaps be better thought of as 'divine power'. This is both a type of being and a trait that beings in general may have. It was commonly written with the hieroglyph of a flag and cloth-wrapped staff, such as might be raised to mark a place of power, and which were found as part of temple complexes throughout the nation; wrapping or draping with cloth is a means of clothing an item with respect and dignity, and such adornments are appropriate for icons and were common in antiquity.

We know of some three thousand names for Egyptian gods. Many of those names may be titles, epithets, or minor aspects of better-known deities; others may simply be unknown to us and now unknowable. The nature of Egyptian divinity does not make this a simpler question for us.

Many Egyptologists have found the deities of Egypt to be vague and undefined, some even going so far as to suggest that They are without clear and distinct personality. Certainly, the ease by which one god may adopt the titles, the regalia, even the identity of another makes it easy for a modern mind to collapse them, to suggest that this god is always a form of another one or that there is a simpler, small number of powers that one might wish to address. However, the principles by which one god might indwell within another, manifest as a form of another, or otherwise relate to another divinity are clear and distinct, and those unions appear to have typically been temporary and dissoluble when the conditions that made such equivalence plausible pass. When deities are identified with each other, it remains a manner of ineffable plurality; even when the divine powers appear as one, They are often multiple.

The forms of the gods are changeable, and each has manifestations that are unknown, even to other gods. A god may have many kheperu - "becomings" - representing aspects, titles, epithets, particular specific manifestations; these are, in brief, perhaps limited enough to each be comprehensible by a mortal mind, but they do not encompass the full mystery of the true nature of the god because they are mere facets, transient and impermanent. One of the kheperu is a photograph of the god in that moment, at best, not the deity Themself. When a kheperu is something that can be seen and known - a theophany, a particular symbolic representation, or whatever else - it is called an iru. (These words are often treated near-synonymously.) No appearance is exclusive to a god; a god may adopt traits and manifestations such that the other deities will be able to properly identify Them.

References

Horning, Erik. Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many. Trans. John Baines. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996.

Meeks, Dimitri and Favard-Meeks, Christine. Daily Life of the Egyptian Gods. Trans. G. M. Goshgarian. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996.