Ra

Ra is the sun made god and the first source of existence. According to the Heliopolitan cosmogony, recorded in the Pyramid Texts and the Coffin Texts, he arose by himself from Nun, the primordial and inert ocean that preceded creation. As the earth did not yet exist, he rose upon the primeval mound (the benben), and some traditions have him spring from a lotus flower or from an egg laid upon the waters of chaos. Self-begotten by his will alone, he had neither father nor mother: he named himself and, in doing so, gave rise to order (Maat) against chaos. The Memphite theology, attested on the Shabaka Stone, offers a different and complementary vision: there it is Ptah, the craftsman god of Memphis, who conceives the world with the heart (thought) and brings it into existence through the tongue (the word), so that Atum-Ra is born from Ptah's design. Far from being a contradiction, both versions reflect Egyptian syncretism, in which each great cult center placed its own god at the origin: Heliopolis proclaimed Ra self-created, and Memphis, Ptah as the creative thought prior to all things.

Each day Ra travels through the cosmos in his solar barque. At dawn he sails the daytime sky in the Mandjet, the barque of the morning, showing himself in three successive forms: Khepri, the scarab that pushes the rising sun; falcon-headed Ra at the zenith; and Atum, the old man, at sunset. At nightfall he transfers to the Mesektet, the barque of the night, and descends into the Duat, the underworld, which he crosses hour after hour accompanied by a retinue of gods. On this crossing his great enemy is Apophis (Apep), the serpent of chaos that lurks in the darkness to devour the sun and halt the course of time. Protected by Set and other deities, Ra defeats Apophis night after night, as the Book of the Dead and the books of the underworld recount, and is reborn victorious at dawn. This eternal cycle of death and rebirth makes the sun the guarantor of the cosmic order and the model of resurrection for the dead.

Ra reigns as king of the gods and first sovereign of the world, and from him descend the pharaohs, called sons of Ra. His active power is personified in the Eye of Ra, a solar and often wrathful force that punishes the god's enemies and is identified with goddesses such as Hathor, Sekhmet or Bastet. A myth preserved in the Book of the Heavenly Cow tells how Ra, grown old and offended by the rebellion of mankind, sent his Eye (Sekhmet) to exterminate them, before withdrawing to the sky on the back of the celestial cow. His main cult center was Heliopolis (Iunu), seat of the Ennead. Over time he merged with other deities: as Ra-Atum he embodied the creator of the Ennead, as Ra-Horakhty he united with Horus of the horizon, and in Thebes, as Amun-Ra, he became the supreme god of the empire. His iconography depicts him as a man with the head of a falcon crowned by the solar disk, girded by the uraeus, the rearing cobra that spits fire against his enemies.