Thoth (deity)

Symbols: Moon disk; ibis; baboon; writing palette; palm leaf

Country: Egypt

Father: Ra

Children: Hornub; Nefer Hor

Thoth was one of the main gods in the ancient Egyptian pantheon. He was the supreme moon god and also the god of wisdom, inventions, writing, literature, and science. In addition, he would judge the dead in the underworld. Myths also show him to be the spokesperson of the gods as well as the pantheon’s scribe, divine mediator, and advisor.

He was considered the repository of all knowledge and wisdom in the world. Thoth invented all of the arts and sciences—from arithmetic to medicine, astronomy, music, drawing, and most important, writing. It was through writing that the ancient Egyptians preserved all of his knowledge and discoveries. In their capacity as scribes, a few select Egyptians were considered to be followers of Thoth and were a privileged group in this ancient land. Scribes were the only ones who could access the so-called house of life, which they said contained all of the written knowledge of the world.

Ancient Egyptians also believed that in his role as the moon god, Thoth was the one who had measured time and broken it up into months, seasons, and years. There was even a month in the Egyptian calendar called Thoth.

Thoth was often shown as an ibis or an ibis-headed man, with a crescent moon resting on top. The long, curved beak of this wading bird represented the crescent new moon, and the animal’s black and white feathers represented the waxing and waning of the moon. The god was also often depicted as a baboon, which, as a nocturnal, intelligent creature, would signal the appearance of the rising sun with its chattering sounds.

The little known goddess Nehmetawy ("she who uproots evil") was considered Thoth’s consort, although he is most often associated with Seshat, goddess of writing and history, and Ma’at, the goddess of truth and justice.

In Mythology

Although his birth and parentage were both shrouded in mystery, most sources called Thoth the son of the sun god Ra. Thoth was a powerful, central figure in his own right in many major Egyptian myths. When the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut married in secret without Ra’s permission, Ra became very angry. Ra separated the couple and said that Nut couldn’t give birth to children in any month of the year. Thoth took pity on the couple and helped them. Thoth gambled with the moon and won a seventy-second part of its light, and from that part, he created five new days in the year. Nut was thus able to give birth to five children—Osiris, Horus the Elder, Seth, Isis, and Nephthys.

When the god Osiris became king of Egypt, Thoth was his faithful vizier. (A vizier was a very senior Egyptian civil official.) In his role as vizier, Thoth remained faithful even after Osiris was murdered by his brother Seth. Thoth was one of the key deities who helped Osiris’s sister-consort Isis in her successful effort to resurrect Osiris and give him eternal life. Later, Thoth also protected and defended Isis and her son Horus when they were hiding from Seth.

During the battle that pitted Horus against Seth, Thoth was one of Horus’s most loyal supporters and advocates, and when Horus injured his eye in the fight, Thoth was the one who healed him. Thoth was also part of the divine tribunal that decided which one of the two contenders—Seth and Horus—would be awarded the throne of Egypt. Some stories even have him making the final decision at the tribunal.

Thoth was a central figure during the judgment of the dead in the underworld. He recorded the names of all those who entered this realm and weighed each person’s heart against the so-called feather of truth. If the heart had led a blameless life, then Thoth would proclaim his not-guilty verdict to Osiris, king of the underworld. Then the name would be recorded on Thoth’s tablet. Thoth was therefore considered the chief judge on the divine plane as well as on Earth in Egypt.

As the divine scribe or keeper of the divine archives, Thoth also wrote down the succession of the kings on the leaves of the sacred Ished tree in Heliopolis, inscribed the name of the future king that the queen had conceived, and noted down the length of the reign Ra had allotted the king. Thoth was assisted in this task by one of his wives, the goddess Seshat.

Thoth was known to extend his support to other gods as well. When Ra’s daughter, the goddess Tefnut, ran away to Nubia after a fight, Ra sent Thoth to reason with her and convince her to return to her father and to Egypt.

Origins and Cults

One of the earliest Egyptian gods, Thoth was worshipped all over Egypt beginning in prehistoric times. He was a major god and is mentioned frequently in the Pyramid Texts, a collection of religious texts that date back to the twenty-fifth century BCE. In the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries BCE, Thoth appears in the names of many pharaohs, showing that his cult enjoyed royal patronage. Four kings were named Thutmose, meaning "born of Thoth."

Khemnu in Upper Egypt was a major center for the worship of Thoth. The Greeks called this area Hermopolis after their god Hermes because they thought that their own god closely resembled the Egyptian one.

In the fourteenth century BCE, king Amenhotep III honored Thoth by installing many huge, thirty-ton statues of Thoth at Khemnu; these statues depicted Thoth as a baboon. Later, in the fourth century BCE, Petosiris, the high priest of Thoth, refurbished the temple monuments and renovated the park where the sacred baboons and ibises had one roamed before the Persians had invaded Egypt. During this time, the cult of Thoth was particularly popular, and thousands of ibises were raised on farms, sacrificed, elaborately mummified, and presented as offerings at his cult centers at Tuna el-Gebel and Saqqara. Petosiris’s tomb was found in an ancient cemetery on the west bank of the Nile at Tuna el-Gebel. Here, archaeologists have also found an extensive maze of underground roads and catacombs associated with the worship of Thoth.

Thoth also had temples dedicated to him in several locations—in Nubia, at the Dakhla oasis in the western desert, and at el-Baqliya in the delta area. In Sinai, he was considered an important god who controlled the turquoise mines of the region.

Bibliography

Bleeker, Class Jouco. Hathor and Thoth: Two Key Figures of the Ancient Egyptian Religion. Leiden: EJ Brill, 1973. Print.

Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Thoth." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2015. Web. 24 Nov. 2015. <http://www.britannica.com/topic/Thoth>.

Hart, George. The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. New York: Routledge, 2005. Print.

"Hermopolis Magna." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2015. Web. 24 Nov. 2015. <http://www.britannica.com/place/Hermopolis-Magna>.

The New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology. Trans. Richard Aldington and Delano Ames. London: Hamlyn, 1959. Print.

Wilkinson, Richard. The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2003. Print.