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:
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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