RA

One of several deities associated with the sun, the god Ra was usually represented with a human body and the head of a hawk. It was believed that he sailed across the sky in a boat each day and then made a passage through the underworld each night, during which he would have to defeat the snake god Apopis in order to rise again. Ra was represented in a variety of forms. The most usual form was a man with the head of a falcon and a solar disk on top and a coiled serpent around the disk. Ra’s cult was centered in Heliopolis, now a suburb of Cairo. Over time, Ra came to be syncretized with other sun deities, especially Amon. By the Fifth Dynasty in the 25th and 24th centuries BC, he had becom...View all