Pantheon

Osiris, Usir

One of Egypt’s most important deities, was god of the underworld. He also symbolized death, resurrection, and the cycle of Nile floods that Egypt relied on for agricultural fertility.

According to the myth, Osiris was a king of Egypt who was murdered and dismembered by his brother Seth. His wife/sister, Isis, reassembled his body and resurrected him, allowing them to conceive a son, the god Horus. He was represented as a mummified king, wearing wrappings that left only the green skin of his hands and face exposed.

According to the form of the myth reported by the Greek author Plutarch, Osiris was slain or drowned by Seth, who tore the corpse into 14 pieces and flung them over Egypt. Eventually, Isis and her sister Nephthys found and buried all the pieces, except the phallus, thereby giving new life to Osiris, who thenceforth remained in the underworld as ruler and judge. His son Horus successfully fought against Seth, avenging Osiris and becoming the new king of Egypt.

The idea that rebirth in the next life could be gained by following Osiris was maintained through certain cult forms.

Osiris festivals symbolically reenacting the god’s fate were celebrated annually in various towns throughout Egypt. A central feature of the festivals during the late period was the construction of the “Osiris garden,” a mold in the shape of Osiris, filled with soil. The mold was moistened with the water of the Nile and sown with grain. Later, the sprouting grain symbolized the vital strength of Osiris.

Isis, Aset, Eset

Her name is the Greek form of an ancient Egyptian word for “throne.”

As the devoted wife who resurrected Osiris after his murder and raised their son, Horus, Isis embodied the traditional Egyptian virtues of a wife and mother. As the wife of the god of the underworld, Isis was also one of the main deities concerned with rites for the dead. Along with her sister Nephthys, Isis acted as a divine mourner, and her maternal care was often depicted as extending to the dead in the underworld.

It is believed that depictions of Isis with the infant Horus influenced Christian imagery of Mary with the infant Jesus.

Isis had strong links with Egyptian kingship, and she was most often represented as a beautiful woman wearing a sheath dress and either the hieroglyphic sign of the throne or a solar disk and cow’s horns on her head. Occasionally she was represented as a scorpion, a bird, a sow, or a cow.

The priests of Heliopolis, followers of the sun god Re, developed the myth of Isis. This told that Isis was the daughter of the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut and the sister of the deities Osiris, Seth, and Nephthys. Married to Osiris, king of Egypt, Isis was a queen who supported her husband and taught the women of Egypt how to weave, bake, and brew beer. But Seth was jealous, and he hatched a plot to kill his brother. Seth trapped Osiris in a decorated wooden chest, which he coated in lead and threw into the Nile. The chest had become Osiris’s coffin. With his brother vanished, Seth became king of Egypt. But Isis could not forget her husband, and she searched everywhere for him until she eventually discovered Osiris, still trapped in his chest, in Byblos. She brought his body back to Egypt, where Seth discovered the chest and, furious, hacked his brother into pieces, which he scattered far and wide. Transforming into a bird, and helped by her sister, Nephthys, Isis was able to discover and reunite the parts of her dead husband’s body—only his penis was missing. Using her magical powers, she was able to make Osiris whole; bandaged, neither living nor dead, Osiris had become a mummy. Nine months later Isis bore him a son, Horus. Osiris was then forced to retreat to the underworld, where he became king of the dead. Isis hid with Horus in the marshes of the Nile delta until her son was fully grown and could avenge his father and claim his throne. She defended the child against attacks from snakes and scorpions. But because Isis was also Seth’s sister, she wavered during the eventual battle between Horus and Seth. In one episode Isis took pity on Seth and was in consequence beheaded by Horus (the beheading was reversed by magic). Eventually she and Horus were reconciled, and Horus was able to take the throne of Egypt.

Horus, Hor, Har, Her, Heru

Depicted as a falcon or as a man with a falcon’s head, Horus was a sky god associated with war and hunting. He was also the embodiment of the divine kingship, and in some eras the reigning king was considered to be a manifestation of Horus. One tradition holds that Horus lost his left eye fighting with Seth, but his eye was magically healed by the god Thoth. Because the right and left eyes of Horus were associated, respectively, with the sun and the moon, the loss and restoration of Horus’s left eye gave a mythical explanation for the phases of the moon. right eye was the sun or morning star, representing power and quintessence, and whose left eye was the moon or evening star, representing healing. Horus is also associated (sometimes as son, sometimes as partner) with the ancient cow-goddess Hathor.

Seth

The god of chaos, violence, deserts, and storms. In the Osiris myth, he is the murderer of Osiris (in some versions of the myth, he tricks Osiris into laying down in a coffin and then seals it shut.) Seth was represented as a composite figure, with a canine body, slanting eyes, square-tipped ears, tufted (in later representations, forked) tail, and a long, curved, pointed snout. Originally Seth was a sky god, lord of the desert, master of storms, disorder, and warfare—in general, a trickster. Seth embodied the necessary and creative element of violence and disorder within the ordered world. Seth also joined Amon, Re, and Ptah as the fourth of the principal gods of the cosmos. In myths, Seth was the brother of Osiris. There too his character was troublesome, for he was depicted as bursting out of the womb of his mother, Nut, being an unfaithful husband to his consort and sister, Nephthys, and murdering Osiris, whom he tricked into entering a chest, which he then closed and hurled into the river to be carried out to sea. After Osiris’s murder, Horus was conceived miraculously by Isis, the wife and sister of Osiris.

Ptah

Ptah’s original association seems to have been with craftsmen and builders. The 4th-dynasty architect Imhotep was deified after his death as a son of Ptah.

Re

also spelled Ra or Pra, in ancient Egyptian religion, god of the sun and creator god. He was believed to travel across the sky in his solar bark and, during the night, to make his passage in another bark through the underworld, where, in order to be born again for the new day, he had to vanquish the evil serpent Apopis (Apepi). As one of the creator gods, he rose from the ocean of chaos on the primeval hill, creating himself and then in turn engendering eight other gods. Re’s cult was centered in Heliopolis, now a suburb of Cairo. Over time, Re came to be syncretized with other sun deities, especially Amon.

Hathor

Usually depicted as a cow, as a woman with the head of a cow, or as a woman with cow’s ears. Hathor embodied motherhood and fertility, and it was believed that she protected women in childbirth. She also had an important funerary aspect, being known as “the lady of the west.” (Tombs were generally built on the west bank of the Nile.) In some traditions, she would welcome the setting sun every night; living people hoped to be welcomed into the afterlife in the same way.

Anubis

Also called Anpu, ancient Egyptian god of the dead, represented by a jackal or the figure of a man with the head of a jackal. 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 Osiris.

Thoth / Djhuty

A god of the moon, of reckoning, of learning, and of writing. He was held to be the inventor of writing, the creator of languages, the scribe, interpreter, and adviser of the gods, and the representative of the sun god, Re. His responsibility for writing was shared with the goddess Seshat. In the myth of Osiris, Thoth protected Isis during her pregnancy and healed the eye of her son, Horus, which had been wounded by Osiris’s adversary Seth. He weighed the hearts of the deceased at their judgment and reported the result to the presiding god, Osiris, and his fellow judges.

Bastet

Worshiped in the form of a lioness and later a cat. The daughter of Re, the sun god, Bastet was an ancient deity whose ferocious nature was ameliorated after the domestication of the cat around 1500 BCE. Small figures of cats were also worn as amulets; this too was probably related to the cult of Bastet.

Amon

Egyptian deity who was revered as king of the gods. Amon’s name meant the Hidden One, and his image was painted blue to denote invisibility. This attribute of invisibility led to a popular belief during the New Kingdom in the knowledge and impartiality of Amon, making him a god for those who felt oppressed.

Cleopatra

Cleopatra VII was born in early 69 BCE, the second of five children of Ptolemy XII (117–51 BCE), a weak king who called himself the "New Dionysos" but was known in Rome and Egypt as "the Flute Player." Cleopatra's mother was probably a member of the Egyptian priestly family of Ptah, and if so she was three-quarters Macedonian and one-quarter Egyptian, tracing her ancestry back to two companions of Alexander the Great—the original Ptolemy I and Seleukos I. Her siblings included Berenike IV (who ruled Egypt in the absence of her father but was killed on his return), Arsinoë IV (Queen of Cyprus and exiled to Ephesos, killed at Cleopatra's request), and Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV (both of whom ruled jointly with Cleopatra VII for a time and were killed for her). Cleopatra was put on the throne jointly with her brother Ptolemy XIII because there was significant opposition to a woman ruling on her own. Civil war broke about between them, and when Julius Caesar arrived for a visit in 48 BCE it was still ongoing. Caesar spent the winter of 48–47 settling the war and killing off Ptolemy the XIII; he left in the spring after putting Cleopatra on the throne alone. That summer she bore a son she named Caesarion and claimed he was Caesar's. She went to Rome in 46 BCE and obtained legal recognition as an allied monarch. Her next visit to Rome came in 44 BCE when Caesar was assassinated, and she attempted to make Caesarion his heir. Rome led by Octavian began to see Mark Anthony as a rival. Anthony sent his wife home and a propaganda war about who was Caesar's true heir (Octavian or Caesarion) erupted. Octavian declared war on Cleopatra in 32 BC; an engagement with Cleopatra's fleet took place off Actium in September of 31. She recognized that if she and her ships stayed in Actium Alexandria would soon be in trouble, so she and Mark Anthony went home. She tricked Mark Anthony into suicide and then recognizing that Octavian was going to put her on exhibition as a captured leader, committed suicide herself. The legend is that she killed herself by putting an asp to her breast while sailing on a barge. After Cleopatra's death, her son ruled for a few days, but Rome under Octavian (renamed Augustus) made Egypt a province. With Cleopatra's death, the rule of Egypt finally passed to the Romans. Although her son may have held nominal power for a few days beyond Cleopatra's suicide, she was the last, effectively ruling pharaoh.

Cleopatra had one son by Caesar, named Caesarion. She had twins with Mark Antony, Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, and later, a son, Ptolemy Philadelphos.