Deity · Egyptian · c. 2600 BCE
Sobek
Also called Sebek, Suchos · also recorded as Djedi, Sebak, Souchos (per Wikidata)
The crocodile as a god — feared as a killer and honoured as the power of the river that made Egypt possible.
Well sourced
The crocodile, and the corpus's clearest architectural statement that a dangerous god is housed rather than driven out. At Kom Ombo he shares a double temple with Horus the Elder — two sanctuaries, two axes, one building — and in the Faiyum he had a lake, a cult and, according to later visitors, a fed and jewelled animal. The Book of the Dead has him among the powers of the water the dead must get past. Both readings are correct at once: this is the same religion that mummified crocodiles by the thousand and wrote spells against them, and the corpus keeps the pairing rather than choosing the friendlier half.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
Where it was actually worshipped
Crocodilopolis in the Faiyum and Kom Ombo, where he shared a double temple with Horus the Elder.
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 Egyptian Book of the Dead · c. 1550 BCE onward
- Named there as
- Sebek
- Rank
- Lord of the Waters
- Pantheon
- Egyptian
- Order
- Egyptian pantheon
- Base of operations
- Crocodilopolis in the Faiyum and Kom Ombo, where he shared a double temple with Horus the Elder.
- Era
- c. 2600 BCE
- Traditions
- Egyptian
- Placed in
- The Great Gods of Egypt
Traits
- Domain
- The Nile, crocodiles, military prowess, fertility of the floodplain
- Traditional form
- A crocodile, or a crocodile-headed man
Stats
Known connections
Identified with
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 Medinet el-Fayyum
Sobek's Faiyum capital, where the sacred crocodile was kept and fed by hand.
29.315, 30.840 · Pleiades 736948
4 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 4 offices attributed to Sobek, 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
- malefic1
- material1
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 Sobek, 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 350 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as Sebek, Sobek
Master of the waters and the crocodiles in them; both the danger of the river and its fertility.
Hymned in the temple material of the Faiyum and at Kom Ombo, where the crocodile shares a double sanctuary with Horus the Elder — two gods, two axes, one building. The arrangement is the clearest architectural statement in Egypt that a dangerous god is housed rather than driven out.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Sobek?
Is Sobek the same as Yam?
What rank is Sobek?
How else is Sobek spelled?
What is Sobek said to do?
How old is Sobek?
Nearest in the corpus
If Sobek 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 Sobek
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 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
Egyptian Hymns, Stelae & Temple Inscriptions
Various; tr. E. A. Wallis Budge and others · c. 2000 BCE - 300 BCE · Egyptian
Read Egyptian Hymns, Stelae & Temple Inscriptions in full ↗Cover: Public domain · Jean-Pierre Dalbéra from Paris, France · 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.