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The Sun is the giver of life, controlling the ripening of crops that were worked by man. Because of the life-giving qualities of the Sun, the Egyptians worshipped the Sun as a god. The creator of the universe and the giver of life, the Sun or Ra represented life, warmth and growth.
Ancient Egyptian deities were an integral part of ancient Egyptian religion and were worshiped for millennia. Many of them ruled over natural and social phenomena , as well as abstract concepts [ 1 ] These gods and goddesses appear in virtually every aspect of ancient Egyptian civilization, and more than 1,500 of them are known by name.
Init-init: the Itneg god of the Sun married to the mortal Aponibolinayen; during the day, he leaves his house to shine light on the world [7] Chal-chal: the Bontok god of the Sun whose son's head was cut off by Kabigat; [8] aided the god Lumawig in finding a spouse [9] Mapatar: the Ifugao sun deity of the sky in charge of daylight [10]
The Ancient Egyptians regarded the sun as a powerful life force. The sun god Ra had been worshipped from the Early Dynastic period (3100–2686 BCE), but it was not until the Old Kingdom (2686–2181 BCE), when Ra became the dominant figure in the Egyptian pantheon, that the Sun Cult took power. [121]
Sun worship was prevalent in ancient Egyptian religion. The earliest deities associated with the Sun are all goddesses: Wadjet, Sekhmet, Hathor, Nut, Bast, Bat, and Menhit. First Hathor, and then Isis, give birth to and nurse Horus and Ra, respectively. Hathor the horned-cow is one of the 12 daughters of Ra, gifted with joy and is a wet-nurse ...
Atum is the god of pre-existence and post-existence. In the binary solar cycle, the serpentine Atum is contrasted with the scarab-headed god Khepri—the young sun god, whose name is derived from the Egyptian ḫpr "to come into existence". Khepri-Atum encompassed sunrise and sunset, thus reflecting the entire cycle of morning and evening.
An Egyptian could worship any deity at a particular time and credit it with supreme power in that moment, without denying the other gods or merging them all with the god that he or she focused on. Hornung concludes that the gods were fully unified only in myth, at the time before creation, after which the multitude of deities emerged from a ...
Amenhotep IV initially introduced Atenism in the fifth year of his reign (1348/1346 BC), raising Aten to the status of supreme god, initially permitting continued worship of the traditional gods. [8] Later, during the reign of Akhenaten, he forbade the worship of other gods, a radical departure from the centuries of Egyptian religious practice.