Deity · Egyptian · c. 2600 BCE
Ra
Also called Re, Amun-Ra
The sun, who sails the sky by day and the underworld by night, fighting off Apep at every crossing.
Well sourced
The sun, and a working day rather than a symbol: he crosses the sky in the day boat, enters the west, passes through the hours of the night with the dead and the serpent Apep in the way, and is reborn at dawn. The whole apparatus of the Egyptian night — the barque, the crew, the repelling of the serpent — exists to describe that transit. He is also the god other gods are absorbed into, as Amun-Ra and Ra-Horakhty, which is Egyptian theology's normal way of handling a rival: not replacement but compounding. The Book of the Heavenly Cow shows the limit of his power, where an ageing king of the gods can stop a massacre only by trickery.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
Heliopolis (Iunu), the great solar city, whose obelisks and priesthood shaped every later theology of the sun.
A figure with temples and a figure that only ever existed on a page are different kinds of thing, and the difference is easy to lose once both are entries in a list.
At a glance
Vitals
Vitals
Also known as
- First attested
- The Pyramid Texts · c. 2350–2100 BCE
- Named there as
- Re
- Rank
- Sun God
- Pantheon
- Egyptian
- Order
- Egyptian pantheon
- Base of operations
- Heliopolis (Iunu), the great solar city, whose obelisks and priesthood shaped every later theology of the sun.
- Era
- c. 2600 BCE
- Traditions
- Egyptian
- Placed in
- The Great Gods of Egypt
Traits
- Domain
- The sun, creation, kingship
- Traditional form
- Falcon-headed, bearing the solar disc
1 site
Where was it worshipped?
Attested cult sites, located against the Pleiades gazetteer of the ancient world where it reaches and against Wikidata everywhere else. An absence here is not evidence that no cult existed: a good number of figures never had one, and the entry above says so where that is the case.
now Matariya
Iunu, the solar city. Not the Heliopolis at Baalbek, which is a different god entirely.
30.129, 31.307 · Pleiades 727117
3 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 3 offices attributed to Ra, grouped by kind. Segment width is the share of powers falling in each category.
A bar dominated by one colour means a specialist; an even spread means a figure the sources credit with almost anything.
- martial2
- material1
3 marks
Which marks is it attached to?
A mark a figure carries and a mark used against a figure are opposite claims, so each link says which it is.
The Ankh
Carried as an emblem
The sign for 'life', held to the nose of a king by a god. Not an amulet first — a hieroglyph that got carried into three dimensions.
The Ouroboros
Carried as an emblem
The sun the circle is drawn around.
The Uraeus
Carried as an emblem
The uraeus is identified with his Eye — his own power, detached and sent out.
2 texts
Which texts say so, and where do they disagree?
When these texts were written
Each dot is one of the 2 texts that names Ra, placed at that text's approximate date.
A wide spread means the figure was carried across many centuries and traditions; a tight cluster means a single period produced the whole record.
2 texts spanning roughly 800 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as Re, Ra
The sun the dead king joins, ferried across the sky and rowing in the day boat. The solar afterlife and the Osirian one are both here and are not reconciled — the same walls promise the king a place with Re and a place as Osiris, and Egyptian priests saw no need to choose.
Travels in the solar barque; his nightly passage through the underworld requires the repulsion of Apep.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Opposes Apep
Attacked nightly and never finally victorious.
Identified with Shamash
Solar sovereigns whose all-seeing passage makes them judges.
Identified with Amaterasu
Solar deities from whom a ruling house claims descent.
Identified with Atum
Fused as Atum-Ra; Atum is the sun at evening, Ra at noon.
Identified with Amun
Fused as Amun-Ra when Thebes became the capital.
Identified with Khepri
Morning and midday phases of the same sun; Atum is the third.
Identified with Aten
The Amarna reform promotes the visible disc of Ra to sole god, then is undone.
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Ra?
Is Ra the same as Shamash?
What rank is Ra?
How else is Ra spelled?
What is Ra said to do?
How old is Ra?
Nearest in the corpus
If Ra is what you came for, these are next
Chosen by proximity rather than by popularity: the same pantheon first, then the same rank, then the same kind of figure.
Khepri
The Morning Sun · Egyptian
The sun at dawn, in the form of a scarab beetle rolling it up over the horizon — one of the three daily aspects of the sun, and a pun on the word for coming into being.
Anubis
Guide of the Dead · Egyptian
Embalmer and psychopomp, who leads the dead to the scales — the office Western tradition eventually gives to Michael and to Azrael.
Horus
Falcon King · Egyptian
Son of Osiris, who contends eighty years with Set for the throne. Every living pharaoh was understood to be his incarnation.
Isis
Great of Magic · Egyptian
The great magician who reassembles Osiris and tricks Ra into surrendering his secret name. Her cult eventually reached as far as Roman Britain.
Nephthys
Lady of the House · Egyptian
Set's wife who sides with her sister Isis against him, and mourns Osiris at the head of the bier.
Osiris
Lord of the Dead · Egyptian
Murdered by Set, reassembled by Isis, and installed as judge of the dead. He is the earliest fully developed dying-and-rising sovereign we have.
The books behind Ra
Every claim on this profile is attributed to one of these. They are public domain, listed oldest first, and each links to a full text where one is freely available.
The Pyramid Texts
Anonymous; carved for the kings and queens of the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties · c. 2350–2100 BCE · Old Egyptian
Read The Pyramid Texts in full ↗The Egyptian Book of the Dead
Anonymous; tr. E. A. Wallis Budge · c. 1550 BCE onward · Egyptian
Read The Egyptian Book of the Dead in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Hunefer · Wikimedia file page
Corpus last revised 29 August 2026. A reference site’s credibility rests on being maintained, so this is the date the sourced records last changed — not the date the page was rebuilt.