The
great Egyptian empire prospered by and thus worshipped the
source of energy that gave life to their people.
Ra
was regarded as the creator of everything, the god of the sun.
Ra is usually represented with the body of a man and the head
of a hawk, holding an ankh & sceptre. The chief location
of Ra worship was Heliopolis (a Greek word meaning city of the
sun).
Horus:
The ancient Egyptian god of the sun, son of Osiris and Isis,
represented as having the head of a hawk or falcon.
Osiris: One of the principal divinities of Egypt, the brother
and husband of Isis. The god of the underworld and
judge of the dead.
Isis: The principal goddess worshiped by the Egyptians.
She was regarded as the mother of Horus, and the sister and
wife of Osiris. The Egyptians adored her as the goddess of
fecundity, and as the great benefactress of their country, who
instructed their ancestors in the art of agriculture.
Re
- (Ra)
Egyptian
sun god and creator god. He was usually depicted in human form
with a falcon head, crowned with the sun disc encircled by the
uraeus (a stylized representation of the sacred cobra). The
sun itself was taken to be either his body or his eye. He was
said to traverse the sky each day in a solar barque and pass
through the underworld each night on another solar barque to
reappear in the east each morning. His principal cult centre
was at Heliopolis ("sun city"), near modern Cairo.
Re was also considered to be an underworld god, closely
associated in this respect with Osiris. In this capacity he
was depicted as a ram-headed figure.
By
the third millennium B.C. Re's prominence had already become
such that the pharaohs took to styling themselves "sons
of Re". After death, the Egyptian monarch was said to
ascend into the sky to join the entourage of the sun god.
According to the Heliopolitan cosmology, Re was said to have
created himself, either out of a primordial lotus blossom, or
on the mound that emerged from the primeval waters. He then
created Shu (air) and Tefnut (moisture), who in turn
engendered the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut. Re was
said to have created humankind from his own tears and the gods
Hu (authority) and Sia (mind) from blood drawn from his own
penis. Re was often combined with other deities to enhance the
prestige of the latter, as in Re-Atum, Amun-Re, or in the
formula "Re in Osiris, Osiris in Re".
