This page groups deities by the earliest year a surviving written or inscribed source places them, sorting gods by how far back their documented worship can actually be traced. Archaeologists call this kind of earliest possible date a terminus post quem, which Wikipedia defines as "the earliest date the event may have happened or the item was in existence." Browsing by first attestation separates deities known from the oldest surviving records from ones who only appear in much later texts.
Facts
Attestation
Era of AttestationDivine names appear on First Dynasty monuments from about 3100 BCE, and the first substantial theological corpus is the Pyramid Texts of about 2350 BCE. The last hieroglyphic inscription was cut at Philae in 394 CE and the temple was closed in the sixth century. 2 Veneration TodayThe temple cult ended in late antiquity; no continuous worship survives. 2 Overview
What Defines This GroupingThe gods of ancient Egyptian religion across more than three millennia of one continuous tradition. Egyptian deities merge, split and change rank with the fortunes of their cities, so the grouping is a set of forms rather than a fixed roll, and each entry marks the period a form belongs to. 2 Learn More
The gods of ancient Egypt
This group holds the deities of ancient Egyptian religion, worshipped along the Nile for more than three thousand years. Egyptian gods are marked by their fluid, composite forms (human bodies with animal heads, gods who merge and split, local deities who rise to national importance), and by a theology bound tightly to kingship, the sun and the afterlife.
The browser will find the sun-god Ra in his many forms, the Osiris myth cycle (Osiris, Isis, Horus, Set, Nephthys) that structured beliefs about death and rulership, the creator Atum and the ordering goddess Maat, and figures such as Thoth, Anubis, Hathor, Ptah and Amun who dominated particular eras and cities.
Sun, Kingship and the Dead
Egyptian religion changed across its long history (the brief monotheism of Akhenaten's Aten, the rise of Amun-Ra at Thebes, the late syncretism that carried Isis across the Roman world), and the entries flag which period a form belongs to.
Much of what survives concerns the passage of the dead and the divine role of the pharaoh, recorded in temple reliefs and funerary texts such as the Book of the Dead. The atlas describes each god's domains, cult centres and iconography as the sources present them.
Era Attested Start Year
Sources
1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Tree
2. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt
Donald B. Redford (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2001s.v. Gods and GoddessesView the Source Divinity Atlas Directory Prose, First Edition Category Descriptions
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