Nun, the great primeval chaotic ocean, a goddess. From that ocean came a mound of dry land, a hill.
Ra, Atum, Amon, depending on where you hear about it -- ultimately all three merge into one god anyway. The Sun God. Ra, the sun god, is the first divine pharaoh. He creates Shu and Tefnut.
Ptah, a god, is in one city considered to be the god who created Nun. When gods create other gods, they masturbate, thereby creating the next god.
Shu, god of air, god of wisdom. In his headdress he wears a Ma'at feather, the feather of truth and wisdom. Shu was the second divine pharaoh. A cartouche appears beside the image of a person in Egyptian artwork or hieroglyphics to identify him or her. The Ma'at feather appears in Shu's name. Shu and Tefnut give birth to Geb and Nut.
Geb is the earth (male), and Nut is the sky (female). This is a reversal of the archetype. Geb becomes the third divine pharaoh. Geb is usually shown with a green upper and a brown lower body, symbolizing vegetation and soil. Nut is portrayed a as beautiful woman, or as a cow, or as a woman with a cow's head. She has a flower vase on her head (even when she is a cow) which also appears in her name cartouche.
Nut is inordinately gorgeous, and Ra is very attracted to her. Ra has aged and retired. He is a crotchety, whimsical, egocentric old man. Nut is true to her brother/husband and rejects Ra. Ra is furious. He sends his son Shu to separate Geb and Nut who splits them apart and holds them apart forever (a familiar archetype with roles shifted). Ra, in his anger, decrees that they may never have a child during any month of the year. Geb and Nut pray to an ancient god (Thoth) who decides to help them. He gambles with the moon and wins four intercalary days (days not on the calendar). Geb and Nut have four children, one on each day. Thoth becomes the god of the moon. Nut is shown stretched from horizon to horizon with stars on her belly and a vase on her head. Geb is shown lying beneath her, an arm and knee (representing mountains) reaching for her. Shu holds Nut up.
*Note: Most gods are shown ithnaphallic (with erect penis), and it was the Egyptians who invented circumcision.
Geb and Nut's children are Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys.
Set comes from a god of Upper Egypt. He becomes considered a god of sterility. He is only shown with an animal head on a human body. Archaeologists have called the animal "the Typhonian animal" because they couldn't recognize the animal. It could be an okapi or an aardvark (earth pig). Set is a scheming unpopular character. His face has been chipped away and replaced in bas-reliefs.
Nephthys is the goddess of mist, vapor, and fog. She is barren. One night she sneaks over to Osiris and seduces him in the dark. She has a son, Anubis, the jackal-headed god. He was abandoned at birth to be raised by Isis. He becomes the inventor of embalming and funeral ritual, the god of funerals. He dwells in the Underworld. In Egypt, bodies were eviscerated. The internal organs were placed in clay canopic jars whose lids were sealed with wax or paraffin. The jar of the heart and lungs bore the head of Anubis.
Osiris is the fertility god (primarily of vegetation). He becomes pharaoh after Geb. When he was born, a voice spoke in the universe proclaiming him universal lord. As he grew up, his wisdom and sincerity were so clear that his epithets were "The Good One" and "True of Voice." When he becomes pharaoh, he institutes great changes. He outlawed cannibalism. He taught how to worship the gods by building temples and therefore towns and cities. He taught law (considered the father of civilization) and agriculture (primarily grain), and how to make bread and beer.
Osiris decides to go out and conquer the world with gentleness (i.e., civilize). He leaves Isis on the throne to go out and achieve his goal. When he returns, he is murdered by his brother Set. Isis brings him back to life and feels he should retire to the Underworld and become king there. Osiris is almost always shown in a winding shroud with just his hands showing holding a shepherd's crook and a flail. Both are symbols of kingship. Osiris is green.
Isis is very beautiful. She bears the maternal aspect of a goddess who is beautiful and loving but also dangerous to cross. She can also be shown as a cow. She has a throne on her head. She taught women how to grind grain, spin flax, and how to weave cloth. She taught men medicine. She is the goddess of healing. After she brings Osiris back to life, they have a son Horus. She wanted for her husband and son the powers of Ra. She knew that each day Ra went for a long stroll. She waits by his path, picks up some of the mud made by Ra's drool and makes a poisonous snake. The next day, she places the snake in the same place. It bites him and slithers away and he begins to die. He is unable to cure himself (because he doesn't know the source of the curse). The gods go to Isis. She talks privately with Ra and tells him he must tell her his true name. He does and she cures him. She now has his power. (Archetypes: (1) The Curing of the Curse (2) The True Name)
Hathor, goddess of love, beauty, the arts. She is a terrifying warrior. A combination -- Isis and Hathor are two goddesses of the triple goddess. Hathor is patron goddess of single women, goddess of female graces (art, music, literature). She can also be shown as a cow. She has cow horns with a sistrum between them. She is very beautiful but can be unbelievably destructive.
Ra became fed up with human beings so he sent Hathor to destroy humankind. So she came to Earth and began slaughtering. She went into a blood frenzy (battle hysteria). Ra changes his mind, but to stop her, he must destroy her or knock her out. She is shown with a sword in each hand (Anat), a smile on her face, and body parts flying about her. Ra plots her course and sees that she will eventually come to a gigantic field with a high wall surrounding it. So Ra fills the field with beer and turns the beer red. When she gets there, she thinks it is blood and drinks it all and passes out cold. When she awakens, the blood lust is gone -- replaced by a horrible headache.
Ra - Before rising and just at setting, he is called Atum ("to be complete" or "to not exist"). As he is rising, he becomes Kheper ("scarab" - a dung beetle which laid its egg and encased it in its own feces and then rolled it along in front of itself to protect it. In reality, the beetle gathered food and rolled it back to its nest.) representing the principle of rebirth - new life encased in refuse. At this point, Ra is either shown as a scarab or as a man whose head is a scarab. Kheper also means the concept of coming into existence or rebirth. They liked to show this because they could show the solar disk of the sun being pushed by the scarab. Once the sun is fully past rising, he becomes Ra. Ra rides in the Man Jet Boat. He is, at this point, either a falcon or a man with a falcon's head. He sits in the boat, at the stern, with the solar disk in the boat in front of him. At the very front of the boat are Shu and Thoth. They are sailing across the celestial Nile River - the heavenly Nile (the Milky Way). There is a deadly peril in the form of a gigantic dragon/serpent called Apep. He hates the gods and waits for them in ambush. They are great warriors and Apep is seldom successful in ambushing them. But once in a while there is a battle with crashing weapons. We see the sparks and hear the crashes and a lot of the river's water splashes and falls on us (a rainstorm). Once in a very great while, Apep surprises them completely and devours them, but they battle until they get out again (an eclipse). Then Ra becomes Atum again because he is complete and he sets. He goes to a new boat and his name changes after setting to Auf ("meat" or "corpse"). As he sails through the Underworld, he has to pass twelve deadly perils (one per hour). One time very early in the universe, Ra wept and his tears fell to the ground and humans were created (in Egyptian, "tear" and "human" are the same word). One time Ra had an enormously powerful weapon: his right eye, the deadliest weapon in the universe (Archetype: The Evil Eye). The eye has a will of its own. One day it was out and it didn't come back when it was supposed to. Ra created a new one to put in its place. The eye then came back and was furious. Ra placed it in the center of his forehead, a place of great honor. The eye goes on to be identified as the Uraeus (the cobra on the front of a king's crown, representing the pharaoh). All pharaohs are thought to be descended from Ra. Ra is always shown with the solar disk on his head.
Thoth is a very ancient god, dating back to the pre-dynastic period. The animals that represent him are the dog-headed ape (less common) or a human with the head of a dog-headed ape (baboon) or the ibis (more common) or as a man with an ibis's head, in which case he is shown wearing a necklace and headdress with the ibis's head in the headdress. This god was used to replace the face of Set. Thoth is a very wise and benevolent god. He is Osiris's counselor and that of the next pharaoh. Then Thoth becomes the last divine pharaoh. He is the god of magic and therefore the god of writing ("The Lord of the Holy Words"). He invented and taught hieroglyphics. When he retired from kingship, he became "The Heavenly Scribe," a very important position -- the recorder of all history. In heaven, he is the Arbiter of the Gods, a referee for minor squabbles. He is the Spokesman of the Gods and therefore the Ambassador as well.
Horus comes from a god of Lower Egypt. He is very often shown as a 7-8 year old Egyptian prince. A prince would have his head shaved except for a single sidelock. If he is shown as an adult, like Ra, he is shown as a falcon or as a falcon-headed man. Horus, later in life, got control of the Eye of Ra and it began to be called the Eye of Horus. Some images depict Horus and Set working together even before the merging of the two kingdoms.
Bast, also Bastet or Ubasti, in Egyptian mythology, cat goddess worshiped primarily in the ancient city of Bubastis on the Nile Delta. As the protector of cats, which the ancient Egyptians often kept in their homes as pets, Bast was also an important goddess of the hearth. During the New Kingdom (1539-1075 BC), she became equated with Sekhmet, the lioness deity of war. Bast was also worshiped as the spouse of the creator god, Ptah-seker-ausur, and possessed destructive powers attributed to the sun.
Images of Bast portray her with a sistrum (ancient Egyptian percussion instrument) in her right hand, and a small bag over her left arm, with figurines of kittens surrounding her feet. Such images are among the most naturalistic works of ancient Egyptian sculpture.
Herodotus, a Greek historian of the 5th century BC, described in his second book of his Histories the annual festival of Bast, whom he equated with the Greek goddess Artemis. He estimated that the festival attracted more than 700,000 people each year. Excavations in the area where Bubastis was located have uncovered cat cemeteries with large numbers of mummified cats and cat figurines, which were perhaps dedicated to Bast during her festival.