Message #70853

[Bianca]

p. 57

was depicted in the form of a man wearing the Crowns of the South and North, and holding in his right hand ankh ("life") and in his left a sceptre. He was king of heaven and also of Egypt. He was a solar god and, like every other ancient god in Egypt, had absorbed the attributes of several indigenous gods whose names even






Shu, son of Ra,
source of heat and light.





Tefnut,
daughter of Ra,
source of moisture and water.
She was a female counterpart of Shu.
 



are now not known.

The Pyramid Texts show that he was all-powerful in heaven, and that his priests proclaimed him to be the greatest of all the gods. The supremacy of Tem is asserted in the various versions of the Book of the Dead,
and all the other solar gods are regarded as forms of him in the various recensions of this work. Thus