Egyptian Gods
Ancient Egyptian Gods, Goddesses and Religion
While the number six does not seem to have held great
symbolic significance for the Egyptians, the number seven
is frequently found and, as the sum of three and four, may
have been believed to embody the combined significance of
these two numbers - plurality and totality. The number
seven is therefore, not surprisingly, associated with
deities in different ways. The sun god Ra was said to have
seven bau or souls, and several other deities were
considered to be "sevenfold" or to have seven forms.
The many different manifestations of Hathor were frequently consolidated into a more manageable and comprehensible group of seven, but the fact that different groups of Hathors existed - comprised of different goddesses - shows that the sevenfold grouping was symbolically more important than the specific deities included. The number also appears in groups of different deities which were brought together. The company of gods revered at Abydos comprised seven gods, for example, and it is also probably not coincidental that the number of the 42 judges who sat in the tribunal of the afterlife to judge the deceased was a multiple of seven. The seven cows found in Chapter 148 of the Book of the Dead also provide a good example of this kind of group. While these bovines were sometimes identified as aspects of the goddess Hathor as the so-called "seven Hathors" and individually named as "Manion of Kas", "Silent One", "She whose name has power", and "Storm in the sky", they usually bear no clear association other than that of their own grouping and the fact that they fulfilled a cosmic role as goddess of fate. 
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