The Major Egyptian Gods and Goddesses

Who the heck were Anubis, Osiris, Thoth and Amun? Learn about Egyptian deities and the crazy stories of Egyptian mythology.

Look for the various deities from Egyptian mythology as you explore temples like Dendera, with this colorful wall featuring Thoth, Horus, Isis and others

As a kid, I loved mythology (still do) — but I hated how many different versions there were of every tale. Couldn’t they all just agree upon one story and stick with it?

Of course, now, as an adult, I realize things aren’t that simple. Deities begin as one thing and evolve into something else. They get conflated with other gods. Their worship extends to a new region, where they take on new aspects. 

If you’re planning a trip to see the wonders of Egypt, it’s helpful to know a bit about the gods and goddesses beforehand. Temple carvings can blur together after a while, so it’s more fun to be able to spot the deities in the images: Hey! I know that green-skinned mummy-looking dude! That’s Osiris, lord of the afterlife! 

Here’s a primer on this often-bizarre pantheon, mostly culled from The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt by Richard H. Wilkinson. 

Amun

Aka: Amon, Amen, Amun-Re

Domain: The sun and fertility. As the supreme god of the Egyptian pantheon, he’s also credited in some tales for thinking the world into being.

Description: A human male, often with the head of a ram

Consort: Mut

Strange story: A young daughter of the reigning pharaoh was given the role of divine wife of Amun. Her duties including rubbing the phallus of the god’s statue until she felt it “orgasm.”

Anubis

Domain: Mummification, death and the afterlife

Description: A man with a black jackal head

Strange story: Anubis mostly likely got this head because desert canines would scavenge the shallow graves in early cemeteries, and people sought protection from the very creature that would threaten their eternal peace.

Bastet

Aka: Bast

Domain: Cats and pregnancy

Description: A woman with the head of a cat, or simply a cat itself

Strange story: Entire cemeteries at Saqqara and elsewhere are filled with cat mummies killed as offerings to the goddess.

Hathor

Domain: Women, female sexuality and motherhood, as well as music and happiness

Description: A woman with bovine features, usually cow ears, as can be seen atop Hathor columns. Sometimes depicted as a cow or a woman wearing a vulture cap.

Consort: Hathor is, alternately, the mother and wife of Horus.

Strange story: One of her nicknames is Mistress of the Vagina. When the sun god Re was depressed, Hathor flashed her pussy at him. It did the trick: Re laughed and rejoined his fellow gods.

Horus

Aka: Re-Horakhty

Domain: The sky, sun and kingship

Description: A falcon-headed man or infant

Strange story: During an epic battle with his Uncle Seth, Horus climbed a mountain with his mother Isis’ decapitated head. He fell asleep, and Seth snuck up and gouged out Horus’ eyes and buried them. Lotuses sprouted from the eyes, and the goddess Hathor restored Horus’ sight by pouring gazelle milk over the sockets.

Isis

Domain: The cosmos, magic, mourning and the dead

Description: A woman with large horns and the solar disc atop her head, sometimes with wings

Consort: She’s the sister and wife of Osiris, with whom she had Horus.

Strange story: A popular way to depict Isis was to show her breastfeeding Horus. Because pharaohs were the living incarnation of Horus, Egyptian kings were said to drink Isis’ breast milk as well.

Maat

Aka: Ma’at

Domain: Truth, justice and the cosmic order

Description: A woman with a bird’s tail feather atop her head, sometimes shown with wings under her arms

Consort: Thoth

Strange story: Upon death, the heart was placed upon a scale. If it weighed less or the same as the feather of Maat, the person had led a virtuous life and could go on to the afterlife. If not, they’d be devoured by the demoness Ammit, who was part lion, hippo and crocodile. 

Mut

Domain: Motherhood

Description: Early depictions show her with the head of a lioness, but she’s most often shown as a woman in a feathered dress wearing either the White Crown of Upper Egypt or the Double Crown of the Two Lands.

Consort: Amun

Strange story: Mut was sometimes shown with an erection and three heads — those of a vulture, lion and human. In this aspect, she was said to be “mightier than the gods.”

Osiris

Domain: Ruling over death, resurrection and fertility, he’s the lord of the underworld.

Description: A green mummy holding the crook and flail, symbols of Egyptian royalty, and wearing the atef crown, a white bowling pin-like headpiece flanked by two tall feathers

Consort: Isis

Strange story: His jealous brother Seth murdered him and chopped him into pieces, hiding the body parts all over Egypt. Osiris’ dutiful wife, Isis, hunted down and found all the pieces, save one: his pecker.

Re

Aka: Ra (though he merged with many other deities as well, including Amun and Horus)

Domain: The sun

Description: The sun, encircled by a cobra, sometimes with wings. He has a falcon head in his Re-Horakhty version.

Strange story: In one myth, Re created the world. When he “cut” his cock, possibly a reference to circumcision, two deities sprang from the drops of blood: Hu (Authority) and Sia (Mind).

Seth

Aka: Set

Domain: Violence, chaos, confusion, cunning and storms

Description: A man with a long tail and a strange curved animal head that has tall, squared-off ears

Strange story: He molested his nephew Horus but then lost the throne of Egypt when he unwittingly ate lettuce that had Horus’ jizz on it. 

Thoth

Domain: Knowledge and the moon

Description: A man with the head of an ibis, a now-extinct bird with a long, thin, curved beak. Sometimes also shown as a baboon

Strange story: Thoth invented writing and is the Lord of Time, recording history. Scribes would pour out a drop of water for him from their brush pot as a libation at the beginning of each day. –Wally

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Horus vs. Seth: Homosexuality, Hippos and Familial Violence

The Egyptian myth described in The Contendings of Horus and Seth is as graphic as it is bizarre.

The young falcon-headed god Horus battles his evil uncle Seth to become pharaoh of Egypt

Osiris ruled as pharaoh of Egypt with his sister-wife Isis, bringing peace and prosperity to the land. But his elder brother, Seth (or Set), became insanely jealous and led Osiris to a watery death after tricking him into a perfectly fitted coffin.

The story of how he chopped his brother into pieces, which Isis hunted down to reassemble, is a tale for another blog post. This one deals with the power struggle that ensued between the two contenders for the throne: the murderous Seth and Osiris’ son, the falcon-headed Horus. The story is told in the Chester Beatty Papyrus No. 1, The Contendings of Horus and Seth, which dates back to the early Middle Kingdom (2040-1674 BCE). The myth most likely has origins even earlier than that.

Be warned: Parts of this twisted tale get quite graphic.

Seth argues that Horus cannot be king because his breath stinks — an allusion to Horus breastfeeding from his mother, Isis, and a dig at his youth

The Battle to Become Pharaoh of Egypt

As the son of Osiris, Horus presented his claim to the throne to a tribunal of three of the most powerful deities in the Egyptian pantheon: the sun god Ra (aka Re); Thoth, the god of wisdom; and Shu, the god of air.

Thoth and Shu declared Horus the rightful ruler of Egypt, but Ra argued that Seth was more powerful and therefore deserved the throne.

“The throne is mine by virtue of my strength,” Seth said. “‘Let Horus prove that he is better than I, and he can have the throne!”

“Challenge me to what you will. I will prove you the weaker!” Horus declared.

Much like the shapeshifting Egyptian gods Horus and Seth, these hippos battle for dominance

Hippos Holding Their Breath

Seth decided that the first feat of strength would be to have them both turn into hippopotami and sit on the bottom of the Nile. The first to come up for air would lose.

Isis, desperately wanting her son to be pharaoh, magically created a copper harpoon, which she threw into the water. Her aim was off, though, and she hit Horus instead of Seth. Realizing this, she pulled free the harpoon and cast it back into the water. This time it sunk into the body of Seth.

But the injured god appealed to Isis as her brother, and she caved and helped him. Horus, enraged, emerged from the water. He wasn’t worried about losing the first challenge — he was focused on taking revenge on his mother for what he felt was a betrayal. Horus cut off Isis’ head, carried it up a mountain and tossed it away. Talk about mommy issues!

Fear not, though: Thoth picked up Isis’ head and reunited it with her body.

Seth really liked salad — only that wasn’t ranch dressing on it!

Homosexual Incest and Semen-Covered Lettuce

Tired from decapitating his mother, Horus went to sleep on the mountaintop. Seth snuck up and gouged out his nephew’s eyes, burying them in the ground. Overnight, they grew into lotuses. Taking pity on the blinded boy, the cow-headed goddess Hathor came to Horus’ aid, pouring gazelle milk on his wounds and restoring his sight.

The judges wanted the two gods to make amends. They did reconcile, but the wily Seth decided to seduce his nephew.

Seth wasn’t discriminate in his liaisons. In the world of Ancient Egypt, there wasn’t any real conception of homosexuality. What mattered was who was the top (the one who was doing the penetrating), as that proved dominance over the other person.

Now afterward, [at] evening time, bed was prepared for them, and they both lay down. But during the night, Seth caused his phallus to become stiff and inserted it between Horus’ thighs. Then Horus placed his hands between his thighs and received Seth’s semen. Horus went to tell his mother Isis: “Help me, Isis, my mother, come and see what Seth has done to me.” And he opened his hand[s] and let her see Seth’s semen.

She let out a loud shriek, seized the copper [knife], cut off his hand[s] that were equivalent. Then she fetched some fragrant ointment and applied it to Horus’ phallus. She caused it to become stiff and inserted it into a pot, and he caused his semen to flow down into it.

So to sum this up: Seth intended to humiliate his nephew by fucking him up the ass — but Horus secretly caught Seth’s semen in his hands. When young Horus showed his mother, Isis, what had happened, she cut off her son’s hands, aroused him and jerked him off into a jar. Not quite a Disney movie.

Isis then tossed Seth’s semen into the marshes of the Nile and devised a plan to deceive him:

Isis at morning time went carrying the semen of Horus to the garden of Seth and said to Seth’s gardener: “What sort of vegetable is it that Seth eats here in your company?” So the gardener told her: “He doesn’t eat any vegetable here in my company except lettuce.” And Isis added the semen of Horus onto it. Seth returned according to his daily habit and ate the lettuce, which he regularly ate. Thereupon he became pregnant with the semen of Horus.

Seth approached the tribunal and declared with confidence, “Let me be awarded the office of Ruler … for as to Horus, the one who is standing [trial], I have performed the labor of a male against him.”

This drawing on a shard of pottery shows that Ancient Egyptians had a gay old time

Semen Calling

Horus spoke up: “All that Seth has said is false. Let Seth’s semen be summoned that we may see from where it answers, and my own be summoned that we may see from where it answers.”

Thoth put his hand on Horus’ shoulder and said, “Come out, you semen of Seth.” It answered him instead from the marsh along the Nile, where Isis had dumped it.

The god then put his hand on Seth’s shoulder and said, “Come out, you semen of Horus.” Because it had been ingested with the lettuce leaves, it answered from inside Seth’s stomach.

Deeming itself too important to flow out of Seth’s ear, the divine seed emerged from his head in the form of a golden solar disk. Thoth snatched it away and placed it as a crown upon his own head.

At some point, Horus and Seth seem to have made up, for here they are both adoring a ruler of Ramesside period

The Stone Ship Race

Despite this damning evidence, Seth somehow convinced the trio of judges to stage one more contest: a race of stone ships down the Nile. That didn’t seem like the wisest choice, since Seth’s boat sunk instantly. But Horus’ floated along the water — for he had tricked everyone by making his boat out of pine and covering it in gypsum, a sort of plaster, so that it looked like it was made of stone.

In a rage, Seth once again transformed into a hippopotamus and bashed his head into Horus’ ship. It came apart in splinters, exposing the young god’s deceit.

This back-and-forth had now gone on for 80 years. Seeking a final verdict, the judges decided to appeal to Osiris, who now ruled the underworld. Not surprisingly, Osiris argued that his son, Horus, deserved to be pharaoh, and Seth, in chains as a prisoner, finally conceded. –Wally