Primary Deities

Ennead of Iunu (Helioplois)

The Ennead

The Ennead (derived from the Greek word for nine) are the nine ancient Egyptian Gods and Godesses associated with the creation myths of Heliopolis (Iunu) in Lower Egypt.

Ptah

Ptah, in Egyptian religion, creator-god and maker of things, a patron of craftsmen, especially sculptors; his high priest was called “chief controller of craftsmen.”

Amun

Amun was the most important deity in the Egyptian pantheon. His name means "The Hidden One" and prior to the Middle Kingdom (ca. 2055-1650 BCE).

Atum

Atum was the great primeval deity of Heliopolis, and his cult rose to importance as early as the Old Kingdom. His most essential nature is that of the "self-engendered one".

Tefnut

Tefnut was the ancient Egyptian goddess of water and fertility. She and her brother and husband, Shu, were created by Atum, Ra or Amun. Tefnut was the mother of Nut and Geb also she is associated with the lion.

Shu

Shu, in Egyptian religion, god of the air and supporter of the sky, created by Atum by his own power. Shu and his sister Tefnut, were the first couple of the group of nine gods called the Ennead of Heliopolis.

Geb

Geb is the Egyptian god of the Earth, farming and fertility, the son of Shu and Tefnut, and the brother/husband of the sky goddess Nut.

Nut

Nut, in Egyptian religion, a goddess of the sky, vault of the heavens, often depicted as a woman arched over the earth god Geb.

Osiris

Osiris is the Egyptian Lord of the Underworld and Judge of the Dead, brother-husband to Isis, and one of the most important gods of ancient Egypt.

Isis

Isis, revered as the Egyptian goddess of love, healing, fertility, magic, and the moon, held immense significance in ancient Egyptian religious beliefs. She is the sister and wife to Osiris.

Seth

The name Seth, or Satet means strength, but also chaos, destruction, confusion, evil, anger, and storms. He killed his brother Osiris to assume the throne, only to be challenged by Horus.

Nephthys

Nephthys, or “Mistress of the House,” was the goddess of the air. She also sometimes represented Lower Egypt along with Ptah-Tanen. In Egyptian mythology, Nephthys was the daughter of Geb (Earth) and Nut (sky) and the sister of Isis.

Horus

Horus was the Egyptian god of the Sky, Sun , Weather, Storms , Health , Healing, Kingship, Loyalty, War and Protection of mankind. He was the son of Isis and Osiris. After fighting his uncle, Seth (Osiris and Isis' brother) he became the king of Egypt.

Sekhmet

Sekhmet is the daughter of the sun god, Ra, and is among the more important of the goddesses in the Egyptian Pantheon. Sekhmet acted as the vengeful manifestation of Ra's power, the Eye of Ra.

Hathor

Hathor was primarily associated with love, beauty, and feminine attributes. She was considered the embodiment of femininity and was often invoked for matters of love, marriage, and childbirth.

Ogdoad

The Ogdoad of Hermopolis (Khmunu) consisted of four pairs of male and female deities. The names of the Ogdoad gods were Amun and Amaunet, Heh and Hehet, Kek and Keket, and Nun and Naunet.

Bastet

Bastet, ancient Egyptian goddess worshiped in the form of a lioness and later a cat. The daughter of Re, the sun god, Bastet was an ancient deity whose ferocious nature was ameliorated after the domestication of the cat around 1500 BCE.

Mut

Mut is a sky goddess and great divine mother. Mut is thought to have originated in the Nile River delta or in Middle Egypt. She is the companion of the god Amon at Thebes, forming the Theban triad with him and with the youthful god Khons, Mut’s son.

Sobek

Sobek is the lord of the crocodiles and was depicted with a crocodile head. Some ancient Egyptian sects believed that Sobek created order in the universe and the world when he arose from the “Dark Water” and that he was the creator of the Nile River.

Anubis

Anubis, ancient Egyptian god of funerary practices and care of the dead, represented by a jackal or the figure of a man with the head of a jackal.

Khonsu

Khonsu's name means 'traveller', and this may relate to the perceived nightly travel of the Moon across the sky. He is the son of Amun and Mut, together they constitute the Thebes Triad.

Ma'at

Ma'at is a comprehensive construct that existed throughout ancient Egyptian civilization. Cosmologically, Ma'at is the principle of order that informs the creation of the universe. Religiously, Ma'at is a goddess or neter representing order or balance.

Thoth

Thoth was the god of the moon, sacred texts, mathematics, the sciences, magic, messenger and recorder of the deities, master of knowledge, and patron of scribes. He was depicted as an ibis bird or a baboon.

Bes

Bes is god of childbirth, fertility, sexuality, humor, and war, but served primarily as a protector god of pregnant women and children. He is regularly depicted as a dwarf with large ears, long-haired and bearded, with prominent genitals, and bow-legged.

Hapi

Hapi is the god of the inundation of the Nile, usually depicted as a fat man with breasts, a sign of abundance & fertility. On his head are usually a number of water plants, his body is sometimes painted blue & sometimes has depictions of water lines.

Neith

Neith - One of the oldest and most enduring deities of ancient Egypt, worshipped from the Predynastic Period (c. 6000-3150 BCE) through the Ptolemaic Dynasty (323-30 BCE), the last to rule Egypt before it was taken by Rome. Neith was a war goddess, creator goddess, mother goddess, and funerary goddess in her time and patron of the city of Sais in the Nile Delta.

Nun and Naunet

Naunet is his female aspect and consort. Nu is commonly regarded as "Father of the Gods" while Naunet is only referenced regarding the Ogdoad, the grouping of eight primordial gods, four males matching four females.

Ra-Horakhty

Ra-Horakhty represented a doctrinal union between the heavenly kingship represented by the god Ra and the earthly kingship represented by the god Horus as an expression of the authority of the sun god.

Seshat

Seshat is the ancient Egyptian goddess of writing, wisdom, and knowledge. The daughter of Thoth, She was seen as a scribe and record keeper; her name means "female scribe". She is credited with inventing writing.

Four Sons of Horus

Canopic jars were made to contain the organs that were removed from the body in the process of mummification. Each organ was protected by one of the Four Sons of Horus: Hapy (lungs), Imsety (liver), Duamutef (stomach), and Qebehsenuef (intestines).

Taweret

Taweret is the benevolent protectress of fertility & childbirth, She is depicted as having the head of a hippopotamus standing upright (sometimes with the breasts of a woman), the tail of a crocodile, & the claws of a lion.

Wadjet

Wadjet, cobra goddess of ancient Egypt. Depicted as a cobra twined around a papyrus stem, she was the tutelary goddess of Lower Egypt.

Amun-Ra

Amun was the most important deity in the Egyptian pantheon. To mark his new prominence, his identity merged with that of the ancient and prestigious sun god Re of Heliopolis in the north.

Amunet

One of the Ogdoad, the eight deities representing primeval chaos; minor consort, and the female counterpart, of Amun.

Amun-Min

Min is a god of fertility and harvest, embodiment of the masculine principle. His cult originated in predynastic times (4th millennium BCE). Min was represented with phallus erect, a flail in his raised right hand.

Apophis

Apophis (also known as Apep) is the Great Serpent, enemy of the sun god Ra, in ancient Egyptian religion. The sun was Ra's great barge which sailed through the sky from dawn to dusk and then descended into the underworld.

Aten

During the reign of Akhenaten, the Aten was installed as the principle god of ancient Egypt, and the worship of many of the traditional gods of ancient Egypt was rejected. The Aten was not a new god but an obscure aspect of the sun god.

Khnum

Khnum is a god of fertility, associated with water and with procreation. Khnum was worshipped from the 1st dynasty (c. 2925–2775 BCE) into the early centuries CE. He was represented as a ram with horizontal twisting horns or as a man with a ram’s head.

Babi

Babi, also Baba, in ancient Egyptian religion, was the deification of the hamadryas baboon, one of the animals present in ancient Egypt. His name is usually translated as "bull of the baboons", roughly meaning "chief of the baboons".

Banebdjedet

Banebdjedet, also called Banebdjed, was a god with four ram heads. He represented the soul (Ba) and the four gods; Atum, Shu, Geb and Usir. His consort was Hatmehit, a fish goddess.

Tatenen

Tatenen is a chthonic deity who in many respects is comparable to the earth god Geb. His realm is the deep regions underneath the earth from which everything emerges, plants and vegetables, but also minerals, all of which belong to Tatenen.

Nefertum

Nefertum, the Egyptian lotus god of healing representing beauty, perfumes and fragrance. His attribute was the Lotus flower (water lily) which symbolized rebirth and regeneration. He was the son of Ptah, the powerful Egyptian creator god and Sekhmet.

Wepwawet

Wepwawet was a god of war, hunting, and the underworld. His name means "Opener of the Ways" and he was often depicted as a wolf or a jackal-headed man. His symbols were the mace, wolf, and arrows.

Serket

Serket, goddess of protection associated with the scorpion, was worshipped widely in Lower Egypt as a great Mother Goddess in the Predynastic Period (c. 6000- c. 3150 BCE) and so is among the older deities of Egypt.

Horus the Elder

The elder Horus is one of the oldest gods of Egypt, born of the union between Geb (earth) and Nut (sky) shortly after the creation of the world. His older brother Osiris was given the responsibility of governing the earth along with Isis.

In January of 2002, the Egyptian government announced a worldwide competition for the design of a new museum complex to house, display, and preserve some of the world’s greatest ancient treasures with which the modern country of Egypt has the privilege of being entrusted.

The following month, a ceremonial foundation stone was laid at the site selected for the new project, a site only two kilometers away from Egypt’s greatest monuments and the only remaining wonder of the ancient world – the Pyramids of Giza.

In 2003, the winner of the architectural design competition was announced at a press conference in Cairo, with the Irish firm Heneghan Peng Architects securing the contract to turn their ultra-modern concept into the new Grand Egyptian Museum.

Construction on the new museum began in earnest in 2005, but setbacks of environmental, financial, and political natures soon beset the ambitious project and monumental delays ensued.

As the outbreak of the Arab Spring reached Egypt in early 2011, work on the project ground to a halt as the country experienced several years of unfortunate political instability and uncertainty. Tourism to Egypt also dwindled during these years, drying up the government’s coffers and jeopardizing the grand new museum’s future.

But following the restabilization of the government in 2014 and the preservation of that stability ever since, the project soon got back on track and construction resumed with the help of international loans to cover the financial shortfalls caused by the lingering effects of the tourism downturn.

When the Grand Egyptian Museum fully opens to the public in mid-2024 (estimated), it will be the largest archaeological museum complex in the world and host to more than 100,000 artifacts. For the first time ever, King Tut’s entire treasure collection will be on display alongside artifacts from pre-historic times through Egypt’s many thousands of years of pharaonic civilization through the [comparatively] more modern ancient Greek and Roman periods of Egyptian history.

While the Egyptian government has previously announced that the GEM will open its doors to the general public in 2018 and again in 2019, we cautioned at the time that those opening dates were very likely to change. Now, however, we believe that the mid-2024 target is likely to be met.

About GrandEgyptianMuseum.org

This website is not the official website of the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) in Egypt. Rather it is an informational site about the GEM intended to provide much-needed updates for the public on the GEM’s status, progress, and anticipated opening. This site was created and is run by John Navarre, the editor of EgyptTravelBlog.com and the host of the Egypt Travel Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube.

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