Categorizing the Egyptian Gods

New Kingdom jar representing the god
Bes by means of his characteristic facial
features.
18th Dynasty.
Egyptian Museum, Berlin.

While excellent short surveys of Egyptian deities have been produced in the past which simply list the various Egyptian gods and goddesses by name according to alphabetical order, such an arragement is problematic for many readers. This is due to large number of diverse spellings of Egyptian deities' names (such as Shed/Pashed, Mehit/Hatmehyt, etc..), often making it difficult to locate them and impossible when a deity is known only from its representation. More fundamentally such, such listings may be limited because alphabetical arrangement obscures to some degree the very nature of the Egyptian pantheon. The various deities existed not in isolation but in dynamic relationship to one another by reason of their particular forms, characters, and roles and by means of the mythological groups which they formed. On the other hand, while many attempts have been made to organize the Egyptian pantheon by means of mythologically-based classificatory systems, no such scheme can be completely successful because of the fluid nature of the deities themselves. A god or goddess who might well be described as a "cosmic" or "ancestral" or "underworld" deity could at the same time also be a deity associated closely with creation or kingship or any number of aspects of existence.

Here, rather than simply utilizing an alphabetic listing, or attempting an arrangement of deities by their mythological roles, the many gods and goddesses included have been grouped by their appearance. This is to aid identification for the general reader and also to facilitate comparison and contrast of deities of similar types, such as leonine, bovine or serpentine gods. Even here it is impossible to create a classificatory scheme without some overlapping or ambiguity, but the system used minimizes redundancy and maximizes the reader's ability to view deities in useful contexts. The categories follow (with some modifications) those of the list of hieroglyphic signs printed in Sir Alan Gardiner's Middle Egyptian Grammar, which will be familiar to some readers. The categories are:

Generic star gods depicted in the seated pose of the "deity" hieroglyph.
19th Dynasty. Tomb of Irynefer, western Thebes. Egypt.

• Groups of Deities
• Male Anthropomorphic Deities
• Female Anthropomorphic Deities
• Mammalian Deities (which are divided into several subcategories to aid identification)
• Avian Deities (Divided into falcon deities and those represented by other avian species)
• Reptile, Amphibian and Fish Deities
• Invertebrate and Insect Deities
• Inanimate Object Deities

While many Egyptian deities could appear under several guises, almost all may be found more frequently in one particular (usually the oldest) form, and that has been the category to which the deity has been assigned. To avoid repetition and to allow full study of all aspects of a given deity, the various forms of any god or goddess are discussed under the single heading of the most characteristic form. Usually, the head of a given deity represents its characteristic nature and reflects its most frequently depicted form. Thus, if a deity appears as an animal it can be found in the catalogue under its relevant category. If it appears as a human with the head of an animal (such as the falcon-headed Horus or Re) it will, again, appear under that animal's category. Where a deity appears as a fully human male or female it will be listed in its respective anthropomorphic section unless the fully human form is a variant of a more common zoomorphic deity. Later Egyptian representations sometimes show all deities in purely human forms, but in any event, deities are cross-referenced within the catalogue where any confusion of forms might occur, and an alphabetic listing is provided for use where that is preferred.

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