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| The lion-headed goddess personifies the most common type of "hybrid" or bimorphic deity in which the head of an animal is fused with an anthropom- orphic body. Graeco-Roman Period. Dakka Temple, Nubia. |
Generally, the so-called "cosmic" Egyptian gods and goddesses of the heavens and earth such as Shu, god of the air, and Nut, goddess of the sky, were anthropomorphic in form, as were "geographic" deities or those representing specific areas such as rivera mountains, cities and estates. Certain others, not fitting these categories - some of them very ancient such as the fertility god Min - also took human form, as did deified humans such as deceased kings and other notables.
Zoomorphic deities were also common through out Egyptian history. Perhaps the most ancient deity known in Egypt took the form of the falcon and the worship of animals as representative of deities was specially prevalent in the latest periods. Egyptian Gods associated with specific animal species were viewed as male or female according to their apparent or preceived characteristics. Male deities often took the form of the bull, ram, falcon or lion, and female deities were often associated with the cow, vulture, cobra or lioness.
"Hybrid" or more accurately "bimorphic" had half human and half animal deities existed in two forms - having the head of either a human or an animal and the body of the other type. Evidence for the former dates to at least
the 4th Dynasty with the sphinx as a human-headed animal (though not exactly a god), and on the 3rd Dynasty stela of Qahedjet (now in Louvre) a hawk-headed anthropomorphic god is the earliest known example of the latter type. The head is consistently the original and essential element of these deities, with the body representing the secondary aspect. Thus, as Henry Fischer pointed out, "a lion-headed goddess is a lion-goddess in a human form, while a royal sphinx, conversely, is a man who has assumed the form of a lion".
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| Ram-headed scarab beetle and four-headed ram "wind deities" provide examples of the kaleidoscopic manner in which the Egyptians produced composite deities. Ptolemaic Period, temple of Deir el-Medina. |
Composite deities differ from the hybrid forms by combining different deities or characteristics rather than representing an individual god in a particular guise. They may be made up of numerous zoomorphic or anthropomorphic deities, and range from baboon-hawks or hippopotamus-serpents to multiple-headed and armed deities combining as many as a dozen different Egyptian gods. Despite their bizarre appearances, there remains a certain logic to many of these polymorphic deities as seen, or example, by comparing the fearsome Ammut and the more benign taweret; both are part hippopotemus, crocodile and lioness, but fused to very different effect.
A fixed iconography for a given god was uncommon, and some appear in several guises - Thoth was represented by both the baboon and the ibis and Amun by the ram of the goose. However it is rare for a deity to be found in human, animals and hybrid forms, for example the sun god Ra was depicted as a falcon or a human with the head of a falcon but not usually in purely human form. There are some exceptions - the goddess Hathor could be represented in fully human form, as a cow, as a woman with the head of a cow, or as a woman with a face of mixed human and bovine features.
