Egyptian Mythology/Characters

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Egyptian Mythology is incredibly ancient and complex. It lacked a central authority, with major cities and areas having their own important gods. Myths often got mixed up, with gods having different roles, being combined with others to form new composite gods, and different family relationships as old gods fell into obscurity and new gods rose to prominence.

Re/Ra

Ra was the primary Egyptian sun god and sometimes creator god. Ra was the king of the deities. During Egypt's brief flirtation with monotheism, Aten (Aton) was raised as the only deity during the Amarna period, to the woe of the Amon-Ra clergy. The pharaoh Akhenaton sought to enhance his own power and depower the clergy. After his death, worship of Ra was made central again. As the most important deity for thousands of years, Ra was often combined with other deities, including the most famous Atum-Ra and Amon-Ra. He had many other names, with each part of the sun or time of day of the sun often having its own name. One of the most common myths about him was that he sailed across the sky in a solar barge during the day and through the underworld at night. He would bring warmth to the day, but faced the dangers of the Eldritch Abomination, Apep (Apophis), in the form of a giant serpent. Due to his important duties, Ra rarely involved himself in the squabbles of his children gods. Overall, Ra was seen as a benevolent deity who embodied the positive traits of the sun, though he was rather aloof, preferring to withdraw from the squabbles of the other gods, except when it came to Apophis.

  • Big Good
  • King of the Gods
  • Light'Em Up
  • The Power of the Sun: He was thought to embody its positive, life-giving qualities and traveled on a solar barge.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: He tried to avert a prophecy that a child of the sky goddess, Nut, would be evil, by forbidding her from having children on any day of the year. Thoth gambled with the moon and won moonlight to create five extra days so Nut could give birth anyway(hence why the Egyptian calendar had twelve months of 30 days even, and an extra thirteenth month of just five days).

Hathor/Hut-hor

Hathor was the goddess of love, music, motherhood, beauty, and joy. She was an important goddess to women and one of Egypt's most important sky deities. Cows were sacred to her. In different stories she is stated to be a wife or daughter of Ra and sometimes the wife or mother of Horus. She had a dark side embodied by the goddess of war, Sekhmet.

Set/Sutekh

Set was a god associated with chaos, storms and the desert. Originally, he served as a powerful protector deity of Upper Egypt. He guarded Ra on his nightly trips to the underworld and was the only god who could defeat the serpent Apophis and resist his hypnotic gaze. When Egypt was unified and the worship of Horus became dominant, Set was increasingly villainized, particularly after Egypt was invaded by a people who identified him with their own chief god. The most famous story about him is his killing of his brother Osiris for the throne of Egypt and his contests with Horus over it.

Bast/Bastet

Bast was a cat goddess associated with the sun, fertility, music, and lionesses. She was very popular with children and the common folk because she protected them and kept their fields safe from crop-destroying pests. Bast had a whole city (Bubastis) devoted to her cult. Later re-appropriated by Robert Bloch into H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. She also appears in Neil Gaiman's Sandman.

Sekhmet/Sakhmet

Sekhmet, Bastet and Hathor's darker counterpart, a lioness goddess who specialized in war, poisons, and plagues. She was an Omnicidal Maniac and literal Blood Knight, until she was tricked into getting drunk with blood-colored beer. She may or may not be an alternate form of Hathor. Sekhmet was often a protector of the pharaohs and a personification of the darker side of the sun (drought, all-consuming fire etc...).

Nephthys/Nebet-hut

Nephthys was a funerary goddess, mother of Anubis (in some stories), and wife of Set. She feared her husband deeply, and as such, abandoned Anubis when Set discovered Anubis' real father was Osiris. She eventually became associated with death and the afterlife after Osiris' cult took prominence, but her original nature is unknown. She was one of several goddesses who welcomed the dead into the afterlife.

Anubis/Inepu

Anubis, the jackal god of mummification, judge of souls, and lesser god of the dead is the most recognizable of all Egyptian gods. His parentage is disputed depending on the source, but he is usually considered the son of Osiris and Nephthys through an affair, and raised to believe he was Set's son. However unlike Set, Anubis had great compassion for humanity and their differences went so far as to lead to Set abandoning him. Isis took pity on him and revealed that her husband was his true father. He later became one of Horus's chief allies against Set. He weighs every dead person's heart against the feather of Ma'et (Justice); if it's too heavy from wicked deeds, the heart gets eaten by a nearby monster, Ammut the Devourer of the Dead. Otherwise, the righteous dead person may proceed to the Afterlife.

  • Ascended Extra: Depicted as the Egyptian god of death in popular media instead of Osiris. Originally he was one of the most important gods of the dead, but Osiris eventually surpassed him. One interpretation is that he stepped down from the position when Osiris entered the afterlife. What likely happened was some areas of Egypt worshiped Anubis as God of Death while others worshiped Osiris, and when the kingdom united rather than get rid of one or the other they made a compromise.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Despite being a god of the dead, he is a just god and a pretty cool guy.
  • Everybody Hates Hades: Often depicted as a villain when he was far from it.
  • Furry Fandom: Particularly popular, with plenty of Rule 34. Malaysian furry artist Lim Guo Liang lampooned this by showing Anubis lamenting his modern sex symbol status.

Anubis: I was once a great God of Death... Now, I'm a bloody symbol of sodomy and lust. WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS?!

Osiris/Wesir

Osiris is the god of the afterlife, of the fertile vegetation of the Nile valley, and of ressurection and rebirth. He is the son of the primordial earth god Geb and sky goddess Nut, along with his siblings Isis, Nephthys, and Set. Along with his Isis and Anubis, he oversees the weighing of the heart and lets souls enter the afterlife if they pass the test. He is a very prominent example of a Life-Death-Rebirth god. He was the king of Egypt after his father Geb (or in other versions Ra) stepped down. Set tricked him into entering a coffin and killed him by throwing him into the Nile. When his wife Isis managed to find the body, Set tore it apart, scattering his pieces across Egypt. His pieces were found and he was eventually resurrected thanks to the efforts of Isis and Anubis. Yet, because he had died, he stayed in the land of the dead, becoming its ruler.

Isis/Aset

Isis was the goddess of magic, healing, and motherhood. Her struggles against her brother Set to rescue her murdered husband-brother Osiris and secure the throne of Egypt for her son Horus formed a hugely popular saga in ancient times. An annual festival of Osiris was held to commemorate the event, always including a re-enactment of the myth. One of Isis's titles was She Who Knows All Names (a fairly menacing moniker, as name-based cursing was considered lethal by the Egyptians), and indeed, she was said to be the only being who knew Ra's true name.

  • Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Even though she still is a benevolent goddess, Isis convinced Ra to tell her his secret name by poisoning him. She's also well known to be clever and deceptive.
  • Brother-Sister Incest: With Osiris.
  • Hot Witch: She is the goddess of magic.
  • I Love the Dead: With Osiris' corpse, though she also brought him back to life.
  • Lady of Black Magic: The only god who could compete with her based on sheer breadth and power of spells was Thoth.
  • Mama Bear: She went to great lengths to make Horus king and protect him from Set.
  • Necromantic

Horus/Haru/Hor

The name Horus can apply to any of a half a dozen gods in different roles and relationships. In some stories, he is a brother of Set, Isis, and Osiris. Most commonly, he is thought of as the child of Osiris and Isis. He contested with Set over the throne of Egypt, a struggle lasting decades, before winning. He became a god associated with the sun, moon, sky, war, and kingship. The Egyptians considered their pharaoh to be the avatar/personification of Horus on Earth.

  • Bi the Way/Foe Yay: Had what amounts to "hate sex" with Set. They were trying to humiliate each other, however.
  • Blow You Away: The god of the sky.
  • The Emperor: The Pharaohs were held to be his earthly incarnation.
  • Hijacked by Jesus: Often shoehorned into the Jesus role.
  • Lunacy: Although he was associated with the Sun, he was also associated with the Moon, and it was thought that both were his eyes, the moon being the less bright eye because he was blinded by Set in their battles.
  • The Messiah
  • The Power of the Sun: Another sun god.
  • You Killed My Father: The source of his feud with Set.

Bes

Bes, a capering dwarfish god who may have been imported from Nubia. He protected children from harm and, as an opponent of evil, symbolized the enjoyment of life. Unlike the other Egyptian gods, he was represented facing forward instead of in profile.

Thoth/Djehuty

Thoth is the god of the moon, wisdom, medicine, astronomy, magic, and writing. He can appear as an ibis, ibis-headed man, or baboon. In one myth he was the one responsible for tricking Sekhmet into drinking blood-colored wine and ending her rampage.

  • Bookworm: Thought to have invented writing and most if not all areas of knowledge.
  • Lunacy
  • Mediator: Mediated the struggles between Horus and Set to ensure neither became too powerful, and to bring their violent conflict to an end.
  • The Smart Guy

Sobek

Sobek, a crocodile-god of the Nile, water and fertility, and occasionally patron god of the army. Seen occasionally as a creator deity, and often associated with Ra.

  • Making a Splash
  • Never Smile At a Crocodile: Sometimes revered, sometimes reviled, he was rather ambiguous in terms of worship. He brought fertility, but his sacred animal is extremely dangerous, and he was said to take women from their husbands whenever he felt like it.

Ma'et/Maat

Ma'et, a personification of truth, balance, order, law, morality, and justice, the complete opposite of Apep/Apophis. The feather which symbolized her was used by Anubis to weigh and test the hearts of the dead. She was married to Thoth in some traditions. The order of the cosmos, which Ma'et embodied, was established by Ra at the dawn of time and had to be continually defended from the forces of chaos to prevent the universe from collapsing.

Apophis/Apep

He is the embodiment of chaos and god of darkness, storms, earthquakes, and basically anything harmful. He attacked Ra and his entourage every night as they traveled through the underworld, and had a hypnotic gaze he'd use before trying to swallow them (if he succeed, it was one explanation for a solar eclipse). After the Hyksos invaded Egypt and identified Set with their chief god, his characteristics were combined with Set, who then became known as the god of evil.

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