Ra (Re)

rah

egyptian: Rꜥ

Definition

Ra — also spelled Re; Egyptian Rꜥ — is the Egyptian sun god, a great deity of pharaonic religion, shown as a falcon-headed man crowned with the solar disk. By day he crosses the sky in a solar barque (boat) called the mꜥnḏt; by night he travels in the mskt through the Duat, the underworld, where he fights the serpent Apep before rising again at dawn. From the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts onward Ra is the supreme solar god, and later periods merge him with others as Ra-Horakhty, Atum-Ra, and Amun-Ra.

In Tradition

Egyptologists — Faulkner, Wilkinson (*Complete Gods and Goddesses*, 2003), Hornung (*Books of the Afterlife*, 1999) — treat Ra as the foundational sun god of pharaonic religion. He is not the visible sun-disk itself, but the divine power working through it. The pharaoh was held to be the son of Ra, and from the 5th Dynasty onward royal ideology made the solar cult of Ra at Heliopolis (Egyptian Iunu) the central cult of the state.

In Practice

The priests of Ra at Heliopolis (Iunu) kept up his daily solar cult, and Ra had a place in the daily temple ritual across the whole country. In the funerary texts — Pyramid Texts, Coffin Texts, Book of the Dead, Amduat, Book of Gates — the dead person hopes to board Ra's solar barque, or to share in his daily renewal. Ra's passage through the twelve hours of night in the Duat is the backbone of the New Kingdom Books of the Afterlife (Hornung 1999): each hour is its own underworld region, with its own gods, demons, and gates that the dead must cross alongside Ra.

Historical Origin

Ra is attested from the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts (Dynasties 5-6, c. 2400-2300 BCE), where the dead king rises to join Ra in his solar barque. He is treated in detail in Faulkner's translation of the Pyramid Texts (Oxford 1969) and in Wilkinson, *The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt* (2003).

Definition

In Tradition

In Practice

Historical Origin

Further Reading