Picture: 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 anthropomorphic body. Graeco-Roman
Period. Dakka Temple, Nubia.
Despite the fact that Egyptian panthence appears to the
outside observer to be filled with a veritable menagerie of
Egyptian gods, goddesses and other beings in an almost
mindless variety of manifiestations, for the most part Egyptian
deities were conceived in logical types consisting of human
(anthropomorphic), animal (zoomorphic), hybrid and composite
forms.
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".
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.
Picture: 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.
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