Ra

To the ancient Egyptians the sun was not a fixed fact but a daily achievement, and Ra (also written Re) was the god who accomplished it. He is the creator and sustainer, self-generated at the first moment on the primeval mound, whose light brings the ordered world into being each dawn. Egyptian theology gave the sun distinct forms across the day: Khepri, the scarab, at the morning rising; Ra at the full noon; and Atum, the aged god, at the setting, one deity in three phases of a single journey.

That journey was the heart of the cult. Ra sails across the sky by day in the solar barque, then passes at night through the Duat, the underworld, where he must be renewed. Each night he confronts Apep (Apophis), the serpent of chaos, who tries to swallow the sun and halt creation; the god's victory before dawn is not guaranteed but won, again, every night. Egyptians understood the ritual maintenance of the temples as their share in keeping that victory possible.

His principal cult centre was Heliopolis (Egyptian Iunu), whose priesthood placed Ra at the head of a group of nine creator-gods, the Ennead.

Because Ra stood at the summit of creation, Egyptian religion repeatedly fused other great gods with him rather than replacing him. The most important fusion was Amun-Ra: Amun, the hidden god of Thebes, was joined to Ra the visible sun to make a supreme national deity whose priesthood at Karnak became one of the wealthiest institutions in the ancient world. This is a characteristic Egyptian move, syncretism that adds a god's power to Ra's without either losing identity, so that a worshipper could address Ra, Amun, or Amun-Ra as the theology required.

The exception proves the rule. In the fourteenth century BCE the pharaoh Akhenaten elevated the Aten, the visible sun-disc itself, and suppressed Amun and the other gods in a short-lived move toward the worship of one solar deity. Scholars debate how far this was true monotheism, but its target was the Amun priesthood, and after Akhenaten's death the old cults were restored and his monuments defaced. Even this upheaval was fought out in the language of the sun.

Kingship, too, ran through Ra. From the Old Kingdom the pharaoh was titled Son of Ra, and the daily temple ritual re-enacted the king serving the sun-god on behalf of Egypt.