Deity · Egyptian · c. 2600 BCE
Thoth
Also called Djehuty, Hermes Trismegistus (syncretic) · also recorded as Toth, Thot, Djehouty, Zehuti (per Wikidata)
Scribe of the gods, who records the weighing of the heart — an office matching Metatron's almost exactly, and the seed of the whole Hermetic tradition.
Well sourced
The scribe, and therefore the one who records, reckons and adjudicates — the moon, the calendar, the count of years, the writing itself, and the notes taken at the judgment of the dead. Egyptian texts credit him with the invention of writing, which makes him the god of the profession that wrote the texts, and a certain amount of what survives is scribes praising their own patron. His afterlife is the largest of any Egyptian god outside Isis: identified with Hermes by the Greeks, he becomes Hermes Trismegistus, and the whole hermetic literature of late antiquity and the Renaissance is written under that borrowed name.
Identity
Where does the name come from?
What the name means
Greek from Egyptian *Djehuty*, of uncertain derivation, possibly from *djehu*, 'ibis'.
Where it was actually worshipped
Hermopolis Magna (Khemenu), where the ibis catacombs hold hundreds of thousands of mummified birds.
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
- Rank
- God of Writing and Judgment
- Pantheon
- Egyptian
- Order
- Egyptian pantheon
- Base of operations
- Hermopolis Magna (Khemenu), where the ibis catacombs hold hundreds of thousands of mummified birds.
- Era
- c. 2600 BCE
- Traditions
- Egyptian, Greek
- Placed in
- The Hall of Two Truths
Traits
- Domain
- Writing, measurement, magic, the record of judgment
- Traditional form
- Ibis-headed with palette and reed, or a baboon
- Metal of its planet (Agrippa, 1533)
- Quicksilver — “Things under Mercury are these; amongst Elements, Water… amongst Metals, Quick-silver.” (I.29)
- Planet
- Mercury
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 Ashmunein
Thoth's city, whose catacombs hold hundreds of thousands of mummified ibises.
27.781, 30.804 · Pleiades 756574
4 attributed
What is it said to do?
Where these powers cluster
The 4 offices attributed to Thoth, 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.
- knowledge2
- divination1
- martial1
2 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.
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 Thoth, 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 1,650 years
Where the texts differ
- Name: given as Thoth, Hermes
Records the verdict at the weighing of the heart against the feather of Ma'at.
Filed under the Greek name throughout, which is where the identification that later produces Hermes Trismegistus becomes routine. Plutarch's Hermes wins the five extra days of the year from the moon at draughts so that Nut can give birth on them, and reckons the calendar afterwards.
Connections
What is it connected to?
Identified with Hermes
Merged as Hermes Trismegistus, the founding fiction of the Hermetic corpus.
Identified with Metatron
Both are the scribe who keeps the record of judgment.
Identified with Quetzalcoatl
Bringers of the calendar, writing and priestly learning.
Identified with Odin
Gods who obtain writing — runes and hieroglyphs — and keep the knowledge of the dead.
Served by Heka
Magic as a force, and the god who writes its formulae.
Identified with Khonsu
Both lunar, and both reckoners of time.
Placement
Where does it sit in the hierarchies?
Afterwards
What did later readers make of it?
Fused with Hermes as Hermes Trismegistus, and so stands behind the entire Hermetic tradition, alchemy and much of Renaissance occultism — a body of work that believed itself to be recovering Egyptian wisdom and was in fact Hellenistic.
Kept in its own section on purpose. Everything above is what the cited texts say; this is what was built on top of them afterwards, and blending the two is how most popular demonology goes wrong.
Answered from the sources
Common questions
Which texts mention Thoth?
Is Thoth the same as Hermes?
What rank is Thoth?
How else is Thoth spelled?
What is Thoth said to do?
How old is Thoth?
Nearest in the corpus
If Thoth 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 Thoth
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
On Isis and Osiris (De Iside et Osiride)
Plutarch of Chaeronea; tr. from the Moralia · c. 100 CE · Ancient Greek
Read On Isis and Osiris (De Iside et Osiride) in full ↗
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.