The King Gods of Ancient Egypt
The Ancient Egyptians were powerful people. They became very famous
because of their building skills. All their buildings had at least a little to do with religion.
Religion is very important when trying to make a permanent settlement. There are more
gods in this polytheistic religion than any other religion. The Egyptian Mythology is no
longer practiced today but is still very interesting. There were many gods and
goddesses. None of the stories in Ancient Egyptian mythology is real. Like all religions
monotheistic or polytheistic there is one king god.
Ra was called the first deity of Ancient Egyptian mythology he was also called
the first king god of Ancient Egyptian mythology. Deity means a divine being. Historians
are not sure of his name because there are no vowels in the Ancient Egyptian language
(which is called hieroglyphics). Ra came from a hill on a small part of the earth. Later he
created the rest of the earth. Ra was a deity who was loved by many of the other gods.
Ra was the sun god. He rode in the sky on a boat. Without him it would have been a
black hole. While riding the boat he went from being young to old as the day went on.
While he was in the east, he was young. When he was at the highest point in the sky,
he was middle-aged. When he was in the west, he was at his oldest. After he was at his
oldest he died as the sun set. After the sun set many people would escort him in a boat
that would take him back across the otherworld to a place for the sun to rise into the
sky. The reason he was guarded so heavily was because if there were no sun everyone
would die. His biggest enemy was Apep did not like the sun. Therefore every day he
tried to kill Ra. That is why he ages so fast over the period of twelve hours. The
Egyptians believed that when the day was sunny and there were not any storm clouds
Ra had the upper hand in that battle. When there was a storm or an eclipse Apep had
the upper hand in that battle.
The first time Ra was ever worshiped was around the second dynasty. He was
important from the beginning but was not worshiped by everybody at first. When the fifth
dynasty came around he was worshiped by almost everyone. He was so popular by that
time that the pharaohs used to call themselves the son of Ra. His son and daughter
were Shu and Tefnut. They married. Their kids were Geb and Nut who also married.
Their kids were Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephtys, and Horus the elder. The stories say that
when Re found out Nut and Geb were going to have children who would throw him off
the throne, Ra said that Geb and Nut would not be able to give birth on any calendar
date. Thoth was nice. So Thoth added five days to the year. And since it was the end of
the year no one was making calendars for that year. Technically that means that it was
not a calendar date. On those five days Nut gave birth to Nephtys, Isis, Osiris, Set, and
Horus the Elder. Since Geb wanted the children to be king she started swallowing Ra
every time he died. Geb just let him have enough power to fight Apep and win
sometimes. Geb than chose a child to be a successor of Ra. Geb chose Osiris. Ra is
often showed as a disk shining directly above his great-great grandchild Horus. Ra had
a temple in Heliopolis. That is a Greek name. It has a Greek name because later the
Greeks attacked. Alexander the Great destroyed them. Although the odd thing is they
kept the same gods. Egypt is also a Greek name. Those temples were solar temples. It
is solar because there are windows that every hour on the hour sunlight shone through
the openings. In the solar temples they had no statues. The priests thought that the
sunlight from the god Ra himself. Ra was the most popular sun god in Ancient Egyptian
mythology.
Osiris was the most famous of all the Ancient Egyptian deities. Osiris was greatly loved
by the people and was a very good king. He made many great choices. He was known
throughout the Mediterranean. He was known throughout the Mediterranean, because
he was very much like other gods in other religions and Egypt was a powerful empire.
Sometimes Osiris was shown with a green face. It was the same shade as plants. He
had the green face because he was the god of vegetables, fertility, and since he was
the king god he was the god of the other gods, but this did not give him the power of all
the gods. That just meant that he could order the other gods and goddesses, but he
was still very powerful. His wife was Isis. Isis was the goddess of magic and life. She
was incredibly powerful. Osiris and Isis had a son. Their son was named Horus. Set
was the older brother of Osiris. Set was the god of violence. Set had a temple in
Naquada. Set was very mean. Set thought that he should have been the king god. Set
thought that because he was older. Most times being older often means that you get to
be king. Set was also very jealous. Set was jealous because he also knew that Osiris
was a better leader than he would ever be. Even though Set knew that the people would
not like him. He started scheming on how he could get the throne. He had an idea.
People thought of him as mean not evil. So he could invite people to a party or
something like that. That is what he did. He invited every single god. Every single god
came, Osiris included. Even though Osiris was smart he made the one mistake that
changed his life there in the room. Most of the gods and goddesses would not have
gone, but all gods have to go to parties that another god invites you to. After dinner Set
clapped his hands and made an announcement as his servants scrambled to go into a
closet to get something. What he said was, “I hope you enjoyed the meal. Now this
coffin,” for the servant was getting a coffin from the closet. Set continued, “I think it looks
nice. Whoever can fit in it you will get it as a gift!” He said that all in Egyptian of course.
The gods were all clambering around trying to try it first. Later they made a line. Once
everybody but Osiris and Isis had tried it Set asked them to go in. So Isis said, “Fine, I
shall try it but I doubt it will fit.” Isis went to try it. When she did it was too big. Osiris
finally tried it after his wife. When he tried it was a perfect fit. Osiris said, “It is perfect!”
Then Set suddenly said, “Bye.” Then Set closed the lid very hard. The gods were
outraged. They attacked Set. But being the god of violence he managed to get enough
time to melt metal around the crack. Then he threw it into the Nile. Set became the king
of the gods. Later in secret Isis and Nephtys searched and searched for him. Then they
felt his presence. They traced it to a tamarisk tree. They took him out of the tree and the
coffin. When Set found out that Osiris was back he surprised him and cut him into
fourteen pieces. Isis started looking again. This time she searched for Osiris by herself.
She found thirteen pieces. Although there was a certain body part that she could not
find. She gave the pieces to Anubis the jackal headed god. She, Anubis, and Thoth did
the ritual of life. They could not fully bring him to life because the rules of death stated
that no god other than Ra could be reborn. So he became the god of the underworld.
Anubis became the god of mummies. This was because he was the person who
physically put Osiris back together. Osiris became the god of rebirth. Rebirth was
important. This was because when people die they did not want to be dead forever.
Therefore they could be reborn because of how boring and sometimes good and
sometimes bad but mostly boring the otherworld or afterworld was. It was sometimes
bad because like every single being on earth. Osiris had a bad side about him. That
was the reason why most Egyptians did not want to die. When pharaohs died they
became one with Osiris. Except they had to go through a series of tests and then they
would have to offer liberations or a drink to become one with Osiris. One of the tests
taken was when you would weigh your heart against the feather of justices. If your heart
was to heavy Ammit the devourer would eat your heart. That always happened right in
front of him in his own court. The only way to get to the otherworld was if they went by
boat. Osiris would meet every single boat. Osiris is still a loved god. Even if this is only
should through the process of embalming or mummifying a person. Some
sarcophaguses had the image of Osiris where the head is for good luck. He was so
lucky that they carved barley seeds into small statuettes of Osiris. These would only go
to either his temple or where someone was buried. Osiris probably has the biggest story
of all the deities and gods or goddesses of Ancient Egypt.
Horus was the strongest and smartest of all the deities that archeologists now of
today. The parents of Horus were Isis and Osiris. Huroeris or Horus the Elder was born
as the brother of Isis and Osiris but he died. He somehow actually managed to be
reborn into Horus the son of Isis and Osiris. The Egyptians did not know how he
managed to do that. While Horus was a baby he was often called Harpokrates. Which
means infant Horus since he was a baby then you might as well call him infant Horus.
When people asked for a blessing Horus sometimes used the light from the solar disk of
Ra that was used to watch over him to bless those people. Horus had many symbols.
Here they are: Bull, Falcons, the Double Crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, a Winged
Disk, Sphinxes, Weapons, Iron, and Blacksmiths. Horus had many signs. He was most
often showed as a human with a falcon head. Since the falcon was his main animal he
was sometimes shown as a falcon and only a falcon. He is sometimes shown holding a
scorpion in one hand. In the other hand he held a snake. Both the scorpion and the
snake were biting or stinging him, but nothing was happening. Horus learned to fight on
a secret isle away from Set. Set was an evil person, and would have killed Horus if he
had not have been hiding. Horus was mad at Set. Set killed Horus’s dad: Osiris. He
rounded up some allies to fight against the many minions of Set. These included: Ra,
Thoth, and Isis. Set did not want to fight Horus even though he was the god of violence.
He did not want to fight Horus because he knew that one day Horus would overthrow
him. He did eventually beat him in the end. It took him seven years! The version Horus
was in when he defeated Set was Horus Behdety. During the fight Set had cut out
Horus’ eye and that is known as the eye of Horus. Later Horus went to Thoth and got a
new eye. The eye was silver for the moon and his original gold eye representing the
sun. The eye that was cut out originally, means good health or restored health. Horus
can control the health of humans. On the bottom of a page that a doctor is working on,
there is an Rx. That is supposed to symbolize the eye of Horus. The eye of Horus was
sometimes used to represent fractions. Supposedly the pharaoh could make you feel
better when you get sick. This is because in the stories the pharaoh was one with
Horus, the living Horus. Once they died they became one with Osiris. The sons of Horus
are Duamutef, Isety, Hapi, and Qebehsenuf. These sons guarded the four cardinal
points: North, South, East, and West. Horus was not as well known as his father but
was definitely the strongest.
Religion was very complicated when it came to Egyptian mythology. Many
people find the mythology interesting, but the people who used to follow this mythology
no longer practice it. If it were not for the eye of Horus we never would have found out
about fractions. Surprisingly when the Greek had come to Egypt lead by Alexander the
Great the Egyptian mythology was upheld. This most likely happened to the Egyptians
because it was very much like the mythology of the Greeks. When the ruthless Romans
came the Egyptian mythology was stopped. Egypt was a strong empire that revolved
around mythology, specifically the king gods who were told to have created the
Egyptian empire.