Egyptian Mythology
Egyptian Mythology | Legends of the Pharaohs, Ancient Egypt Gods and Goddesses

Egyptian Mythology | Legends of the Pharaohs, Ancient Egypt Gods and Goddesses Creation Story, Facts and more about Ancient Egypt History.

Discover Myths of the Pharaohs, Pharaonic stories and Egyptian creation myths in the Pharaonic civilization, heaven and hell in Egyptian mythology and funerary beliefs and Ancient Egyptian religion to discover the lives of the ancient Egyptian Pharaohs.

The legends of creation in the Pharaonic civilization | The facts of the tree of the genealogy of the Egyptian gods among the Pharaohs and what are the symbols of the gods and gods of the regions of the civilization of Ancient Egypt and more.

Egyptian Mythology

Who is the Egyptian god of death?

God Anubis

The Legend of Paradise and Fire in Egyptian Mythology:

The remains of solar theology in The Book of the Dead indicate that the righteous dead go directly to the celestial Field of Reeds, Aaru, ascend into the sky and join a boat as in Ancient Egyptian religion.

What is the Egyptian afterlife trial?

As for the completion of Osiris myth, there are two ways after the trial of the dead leading to the Kingdom of the Righteous (the Osirian paradise), one by water and the other by land, both of which limp, but you cannot limp from one to the other because they have a sea of fire,  and there are also secondary roads that should not be led because they lead to fire or are winding roads. Before walking on one of these two roads, the dead must pass through the gate of fire.

In the Book of the Day (The Book of the Dead), paradise was divided into seven levels: the righteous class, purgatory, the saints, the martyrs of the army of God Horus, the lords, the class of eternal light, the throne of God. These were agricultural fields where those who lived had to work received seven (poplar cows) and a bull.

Egyptian Mythology. There are rivers of sacred wine and milk that fall from the chests of the God Nut, not the goddess of heaven, and there are evergreen trees and white clothes that are not old and have golden ears of wheat, and there are those who help their peasants.

Aaru, the land of the reeds, the place of the taste of happiness in other lives, ” paradise “, in the Pyramid Texts, the place of the rebirth of the dead pharaoh, similar to God Osiris, and the perceptions of the land of Eyaro in the texts mingle with the perceptions of the doubt, which exists according to the beliefs of the time of  the Old Kingdom in the eastern parts of the sky (where Osiris, Pharaoh and the sun are resurrected.

In the early Middle Kingdom, models of the lower world were formed and paired with the lower land of Aaru, and since the Middle Kingdom era, it has been like Osiris, a dead human being, the fields of Aaru – an “oasis” in the Dwat, where the dead goes after innocence in Court of the Dead.

 The legend of Hell in Egyptian funerary beliefs:

The idea was not similar to that of a  Jewish Henum, Christian hell or Islamic hell… But we think that’s the source of those ideas.

The idea of Egyptian fire was based on the fact that most sections of hell contain fire chambers guarded by some lords and containing sacred beings that bring fire out of their mouths, and this fire destroyed the bodies, souls and ghosts of the heads of being’s hostile to Ra as he passed through the pedals and tried to hinder his progress.

Egyptian Mythology. which was embodied in drawings on papyrus, inspired much like the scene of the burning of the cursed souls of human beings, then because of the haste and lack of reflection on the Hieroglyphic texts and their knowledge, the idea emerged that the heretic understood the fire that was destined for the wrongs and curses of people.

The Egyptians believed that the wrong man was directly considered and died when he was devoured by a monster or dog after the weight and weighting of his sins. But fire was not a direct punishment, it was among the tools of beings faithful to God (Ra) to destroy beings who were hostile to him, so that fire is a solar doctrine related to the myth of (Ra’s) descent into life, and that his disbelievers and   infidels will undoubtedly be among those that Ra is fighting.

Anyone who hinders his daily progress may have turned fire into a kind of punishment in some later religions (from unbelief to God in life, his destiny is fire!!).

Myths of the Emergence of Humanity (Anthropogony): Egyptian Mythology.  

What is the meaning of the word anthropogony?

The myth of the creation of humans from the eye of God Ra seems to us very simple compared to the myths of the creation of the gods and the universe.

Legend has it that Ra, the sun god, has lost an eye and is no longer able to see clearly.

Long later, it came back (the missing eye) but found no place in Ra’s face, so he  cried and shed tears called in Egyptian (Remet). It seems to us that the symmetry between tears and humans (Ramot, Remet) is the cause of this myth, and this supports linguistic theory in the genesis of mythology.

The legend continues, where Ra deals with the situation and delivers the God Thoth God of wisdom this lost eye to raise this in turn to the sky and be (the moon) so that the eye of heaven at night.

We add to this that Thot gives this lost eye to the God Horus when he lost his left eye in his war with Seth the murderer of his father Osiris. It is the eye that has been transformed into a symbol known as the God Wadj-wer or the eye of Horus, which is taken as an amulet of protection against evil.

Egyptian Mythology. To complete the myth of the creation of humanity, we must explain how the gods separated themselves from human beings and let them be ruled by king Pharaoh, who is a god responsible for the domination of mankind. Legend has it that Ra decides to withdraw from the earth to the sky and settles above his celestial cow (raised by his son Shou), and Thot takes over the management of the earth, and Geb the god of the earth, takes over the administration of the royal symbols, and separates the gods from human beings.

The legends and myths of the pharaohs and secrets of the 30 most important legends of the Pharaonic Civilization.

discover the most important legends of heaven and hell in Egyptian mythology, the end of the Pharaonic Golden Age, and more in the ancient Pharaonic civilization.

Myths of Genesis | Genesis creation narrative

Legends of the emergence of the gods (Theogony):

The Egyptian God Family Tree – Egyptian Mythology.

The difficulties we face as we try to form a tree of genealogy of the Egyptian gods are many, including the multitude of gods that can reach 3,000 gods, and the lack of clear models of proportions that make us put them in a real frequent sequence, in addition to the multiplicity of this They of priestly power who have made their cities and gods of their cities possessed at the top of the divine pyramid and the diversity of the material of this pyramid according to the spiritual heritage and nature of its gods.

First, give us a quick overview of the sections of this tree and the most important gods it contains, but the detailed discussion about the gods and their legends will be made by talking about all the ancient Egyptian gods when displaying these Egyptian Mythology of creation in the Pharaonic civilization.

Who is the chief god of the Egyptians?

The Egyptian family tree consists of several homogeneous divine complexes that we can include from its origins and ancient roots:

The ancient gods:

the Octad, which houses the ancient gods before the creation of the universe, four divine pairs according to the doctrine of the Octad of the Al Ashmunin.

The Creator God: Egyptian Mythology.

He is multi-named according to the cities in which his theology appears, and the Creator God first forms a stage in the transformation and creation of the universe, and we have counted seven basic creator gods (Shepesi in Khenemu, God Ra in Iuno, God Ptah in Memphis, God Amun in Thebes, God Aton in Tell el-Amarna, God Khnum in Elephantine Island, Neith in Sais) most of which have taken on a sun character.

The gods of creation: Egyptian Mythology.

the gods who embodied the elements of the universe, whose totals and legends of creation differed in the Pharaonic civilization and their nature according to the God Creator under which they were incorporated, the most famous of which is The God Hathor.

The gods of the afterlife:

they are the beings of the world of the afterlife, who are many and varied.

There are foreign secondary gods that include: the ancient Iraqi gods (Mesopotamia), the Syrian gods, the recital, and the Sudanese gods.

Symbols of the Gods of the Pharaohs:

The ancient Egyptians used symbols more than any other people in history, and most of these symbols were religious, especially those relating to the gods as well as hieroglyphic writing symbols, and these symbols can not be limited to such a small research, but we mention the symbols of the beetle,  the  papyrus,  the snake, the  cabbage,  the bee, the vulture, the falcon, the feather, the eye of Horus, the pillar of symbol of stability. and many others are present part of a multitude of symbols that appear in the attached images

The eye of Horus:

Eye of Horus sacred eye that “travels the path in the dark”: the eye that combines the human eye “decorated with the Kohle” as it appears in the gaze of the human face on the side, which hangs at the bottom of a long “tear to pour”.

The symbol of “Ankh” or the key to life: Egyptian Mythology.

its meaning is “life” or “eternal life” in the sense of “immortality”.

What is the Egyptian symbol Djet?

We now turn to the Djed symbol, the last of our examples, to conclude our research, and we will present it briefly. The symbol of the Djed (or “Tet” is associated with the god Osiris, who rose from death and ended up in the trunk of a huge tree; Another explanation is that the “Djed” column is the backbone of Osiris’ .

Was-sceptre Symbols:

The collection of symbols of royal authority symbolizes the flow of energy throughout the body.

Cosmic gods of the Pharaonic civilization: Egyptian Mythology.

“The Egyptians have honored so many people that the list of their names alone fills a whole volume, but it is also true that the groups educated in Egypt throughout the ages have never put the gods to the level on which God has put himself and have never imagined that their views on this subject could be false.

The English Egyptologist Sir E. A. Wallis Budge says about of the Egyptian gods. Before history, every village or town, for every ball or crackle, for every big city, had a particular private lord.

The Egyptian gods were never isolated in their heavenly heart but were saturated with people’s lives and details; every rich or poor family had a special god, and many aspects of daily life had special gods.

Egyptian Mythology. we can look at the divine institution according to the family tree we have mentioned and in accordance with the territorial divisions of Egypt itself in a progressive and top-down way. Cosmic gods are the gods who control the great manifestations of the universe, such as the sky, the earth, the sun, the moon, the planets, and the air… Etc., we have mentioned in the tree of the gods all these gods with the details of their offspring, their relationships, and the legends of creation in the Pharaonic civilization.

The organization of these gods into groups that the Egyptians themselves call bot consists of a specific number of gods such as the Trinity, Ben Ben, the Octad or the Eneade.   It consists mainly of a cosmic father and a wife and son who are in a lower rank, and the triads of Egyptian cities and territories are famous and there are triads consisting of a husband and two wives… etc.

What is the triad of Egypt?

Examples of these triads include the Memphis triad consisting of (Ptah, God Sekhmet and God Nefertem), the Theban triad consisting of Amun, God Mut and God Khonsu, the Elephantine triad of Khnum, God Anuket and God Satis, and the Trinity of Dendera formed by Hathor, Horus Sema Tawi and Ihyi.

The oldest triad of the Egyptian gods is that of the God Atum or God Khepri, who created from his own body God Shu by sneezing and God Tefnut spitting. This complex of two gods and gods is the oldest Trinity.

The Quadrade is rare in Egyptian divine groups and is often in larger groups such as Shu and Tefnut, air and humidity, and their two sons, God Geb and God Nut, which are earth and sky.

The lords of the earthly gods (Osiris, Isis, God Nephthys and God Set) who witnessed a long conflict. These two are part of the Heliopolis Eneade.

The Octad, perhaps the most famous, is the Octad of the Ashmonien, composed of the first gods from which the universe emerged. Ancient Egypt had two famous Eneades, the first is that of Heliopolis and the second is that of Memphis.

The cosmic gods of Egypt were the universal gods that walked all over the world, but they have a national specificity that emanates from the bedridden center of the God the Sun, that this God (Ra) and his different solar forms or (poplar) and his various solar forms, where the sun is the center of the cosmic gods around which these gods orbit.

The legends of creation in the Pharaonic civilization: Egyptian Mythology.

The sun god Ra was the father god of gods, kings, and human beings, and the God (Horus) was the Son God, who corresponded to the king’s personality as the sun on Earth and took his attributes from the sun. Her wife was Hathor, who assumed the attractive female role of love, sex, and beauty, which explains the uniqueness of the goddess Isis and her devotion to the principles of motherhood, sacrifice, and redemption.

Egyptian Mythology. The many symbols of Hathor were the most important animal, the cow and the plant represented by the sycamore, and “there is a sycamore near the city of Memphis, which was supposed to be stable for a good female goddess who benefits people with her blessing and has united such idols associated with such trees with the goddess Hathor since the Old Kingdom who received the title of ‘Lady of Sycamore”.

It was believed that the spirits of the dead coming from nearby cemeteries in the form of birds found in the shade of trembling sycamore needed food and drink, provided by the good goddess who inhabited this tree.

Indeed, there are plants associated with the name of a particular god or goddess that have followed this consideration, although they are not considered a symbol or appearance of this associated goddess.

The regional gods of the ancient Egyptian civilization:

When the ancient Egyptian cities were formed, each city had a god, and that god had its own temple, rituals, and festivals, and “the gods of the cities remained, at the same level of their holiness, even when they were overwhelmed by the gods of the region that included several cities and even when the cosmic gods worshipped them.”

The god of the city was considered greater among its inhabitants than the gods of other cities, he created everything and he gave goodness and graces and the god of the city until the end of Egyptian civilization remained closely linked to his city, his loyalty was himself the flag of the city in which his cult originated, and was often called by name and nicknamed as his master, as the city itself was called his home.

Some cities have given their names to the gods as The city of Nokhb (north of Edfu).; The same goes for the city of Tell-Basta, which gave its name to the God Bastet, the cat goddess.

Egyptian Mythology. The God Thoth was nicknamed the Lord of the Ashmonien and was named by the Greeks Hermopolis (the city of Hermes, which is Thot) … etc.

When the territories were formed, the city that became the capital of the territory rose, so that the god of this city became a god of the whole territory, and in this case, the priests took one of the following two options:

either they neglected the God of their own cities and flattered the God of the territory, either they approached the characteristics of the special God of the territory, they dissolved the differences between them and claimed that he was an image of the God of the territory, thus transforming his function or becoming a new one.

The legends of creation in the Pharaonic civilization: Egyptian Mythology

The approach applied by French Egyptologist and archaeologist Dr François Dauma in the investigation of the gods of Egyptian cities as in Geography of ancient Egypt and territories is an ancient quantitative doctrine that counted and followed the Egyptian gods from the far south to the far north, and his book devoted to this purpose did not reveal to us the rhythm with which the land of Egypt pulsated spiritually but was only a geminitic and theological account.

Egyptian territories were codified and taken over by the ancient Egyptians themselves and lists of the 22 regions of Upper Egypt were reached on the walls of structures and Egyptian Temples. The 20 regions of Lower Egypt. It has been preserved throughout its pharaonic era.

It should be noted. Each region has a special signal that has been depicted on the flags and installed above the hieroglyphic mark symbolizing the territory.

At a later stage, these signs and names were imaged above the head of a woman with what symbolized the differences of the territory. In late times, in Greek and Roman times and Ptolemaic Kingdom, territories were usually depicted as the god of the Nile with the emblem of the territory above his head.

The signal of the territory was mainly its local god and may have represented totems from which the ancient Egyptian tribes settled in this region had an insignia or emblem.

Secondary gods of the Pharaonic civilization:

The gods, who were apart from the cosmic gods and their families in their tree, specialize in many details and matters of good life. It is difficult to develop a precise glossary of its many, diverse, and transformed… Many of them were related to the nature of Egypt, especially its animals, although every Egyptian god has animal roots, origins, or symbols.

Foreign (imported) gods: Egyptian Mythology

These are the gods who came to the Nile River Valley from neighboring countries through war, peace, or spiritual and cultural influences. These are many gods, some of whom are fully integrated with the Egyptian gods and have taken on a complete Egyptian character, some of which are very ancient and associated with fertility and the sun; most of them have been associated with war, desert, and power.

Some of these incoming gods, especially those presented early, had a large place in the Pantheon of Egyptian gods such as the gods Thot, Osiris, Amun and Aton… etc. But then it took on an authentic Egyptian character, as the depth of Egypt’s spiritual heritage was enough to dissolve it into its enormous fabric and paint it in its local colors.

Here is the rain of these gods of the Mesopotamian Valley, Syria, the Hittites, Libya and Sudan. We neglected the Greek and Roman gods because they were only associated gods or mixed Greek/Egyptian or Roman/Egyptian phenomena or nature represented by these gods… In practice, they did not enter the fabric of the Egyptian gods, but the opposite happened, as the Egyptian gods defeated their counterparts in Greece and Rome and became surprising to the nations that were also subject to them.

Sudanese Gods – Deities in ancient Nubia

  1. Ahu
  2. Bes
  3. Teton
  4. Meri

The legends of creation in the Pharaonic civilization – the emergence of the universe (Cosmogony): Egyptian Mythology

The whole mythology of Egyptian creation gives us an idea of the stages of the development of creation, which we can put into four stages or compositions:

The first composition (Octade): Egyptian Mythology

The legends of creation in the Pharaonic civilization of the Egyptian formation are characterized by the fact that they place the universe, gods, and man in a level of creation and make no difference between them, so we will talk about the creation of the universe, gods, and man, at the same time, in four stages.

The first composition in the legends of creation in the Egyptian Pharaonic civilization is the emergence of the divine Octad, before the creation of the universe and the Solar God who created the universe. This myth comes from Khemenu (Ashmonien in Coptic, Hermopolis in Greek) and claims that, originally, eight primary gods were found on a hill that appeared in Khemenu  of the eternal ocean, four divine pairs, each composed of a male and a female, male in the form of  frogs symbolizing the aquatic ocean. And females in the form of snakes that symbolize a renewed life.

These gods are the following (male first, then female) and what they represent by analyzing the meaning of their names:
  1. Noun and Nounet:   They represent the eternal heliophilist.
  2. Heh and Hefet:  They represent the eternity of time and space.
  3. Kikuy and Kikwet:  They represent darkness.
  4. Kira and Kiret:  They represent the night.

In some texts, it has been found that the fourth couple was Amun and God Amunet, a later intervention in which I wanted to consecrate the existence of God Amun before the creation of the world.

He controlled the sight of the frogs and the calm of divine life.

Egyptian Mythology. he facts of the legends of the God Osiris and the patronage of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs.

the history and secrets about the most important gods and religious beliefs and the myth of the division of the earth between Osiris  and Seth  and more about the civilization of Ancient Egyptians.

We have conclusive evidence that the oldest moral principles of the ancient Egyptians took their role in growth and are associated with the Sun God, and not with the God Osiris, because the words of wisdom of Ptah Hetep clearly indicate that the Sun God is his creator (i.e.  the creator of justice).

Egyptian Mythology. This is important evidence of the outbreak of religious warfare that was fueled by the followers of Osiris at that time, and it is regrettable in this regard that the first God imagined by the Egyptian to be the supreme judge in the world of the afterlife was not mentioned in the text but described as the ” great God “, only without being mentioned in a name.  “The great God is the Lord of Heaven,” so there is virtually no way that this phrase is supposed to be a god other than the God of the Sun.

This conclusion is led by all the writings we have found in the Pyramid Texts, where he repeatedly expresses the Sun God as “the Lord of the order in the hereafter” and there is no doubt that this God is the one who was in the head of “Ani”one of the dignitaries and  famous  of  “dashasha” in his saying:  “On the one hand, all the people who  will    do evil against this (his  grave) and who do everything that causes the destruction of this Egyptian Tombs and destroys  its texts, they will be held accountable before the great God, the lord of the court in the place  in  which people  are judged.

Egyptian Mythology – Legends of Aging

The emergence of the myths of aging does not mean that the legends of youth, which express the periodic law of Ra, are over. But a new indicator of Ra’s life came when he became an elder, and his powers became weak and the signs of the end of the Golden Age (where gods and humans were in harmony) seemed to have disappeared. Thus, people, sons of weakness and even gods (like Isis) even The God Ra  try to undermine Him or steal the secret of his hidden power, including these myths:

  • The rebellion of human beings… And the gods will be transformed
  • The rebellion of human beings… And the gods do not.
  • The rebellion of human beings… And the gods.
  • Ra and Isis
  • The Legend of Isis and the Seven Scorpions
  • The legend of Horus and the seven scorpions.

References Egyptian Mythology: The Book of Egyptian Civilization, Egypt

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The legends of creation in the Pharaonic civilization | The facts of the tree of the genealogy of the Egyptian gods among the pharaohs
The legends of creation in the Pharaonic civilization | The facts of the tree of the genealogy of the Egyptian gods among the pharaohs

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Tamer Ahmed
Eng. Tamer Ahmed | Author & Researcher in History of Ancient Egypt Pharaohs. Booking Your Tours Online Whatsapp: +201112596434