In Egyptian society, the highest position was occupied by the pharaoh who was believed to be semi-divine and who was credited with mediating between humans and the gods. Isis, goddess of magic and motherhood, for instance, was often shown holding an ankh or a lotus. Many Egyptian gods were also associated with attributes, or objects with which they perform their divine duties. For instance, Osiris, who judges the dead in the afterlife, was portrayed as a man with a face that is either black (referring to the rich Nile soil) or green (representing new life).
Horus, god of the sky, war, and protection often appears with the body of a man and the head of a falcon. Many were portrayed in Egyptian art with both human and animal features. Gods and goddesses in Egypt took many different forms. Each god or goddess was linked to one or more places where monumental temples were built to house their images. They also had different forms of the language for. The Egyptian pantheon was composed of many gods and goddesses often arranged in family groups of three consisting of a mother, father, and child. In both modern and ancient Egyptian cultures, they had more then one form of a language that was used. Extensive rituals and preparation of the body for death, which included tomb building, mummification, and funerary ceremonies, was meant to protect the body and the soul for the afterlife. An individual's ka could not exist without his or her body. The soul, known as ka, accompanies an individual throughout life, and then after death it leaves the body to enter into the realm of the dead. To maintain maat, the living had to constantly worship and make sacrifices to the gods to pacify the deities and spirits of the afterlife.Īncient Egyptians believed that if a person were properly prepared for the afterlife, his/her soul was immortal. In traditional Egyptian belief, the fundamental governing principle was the abstract concept of maat (represented by the goddess Maat) which is often translated as truth, justice, and cosmic order. The ancient Egyptians were a polytheistic people who believed that gods and goddesses controlled the forces of the human, natural, and supernatural world.