The Goddesses of Egypt

If you are expecting a description of Isis or Hathor, you’re about to be disappointed. But if you’re ready to have your mind blown, read on! I am about to change your perception not only of Egypt but all of the ancient cultures of the Near East.

Before we can really consider the individual goddesses of the Near East we need to grapple with new evidence that our timelines for prehistoric civilisations is way off…and that the gods and goddesses of Egypt might be something entirely different to what we have been told.

In my twenties, I lived in Cairo for four months, working for an English language magazine, the Cairo Times, in an office just off Tahrir Square, where the Cairo Museum was. This Museum had one of those imposing Greek inspired great columned facades, but inside it was all ancient Egypt.

I remember the exhibits being poorly labelled with a film of dust covering the glass displays. I remember standing face to face with a statue of Nefertiti and seeing many of Tutankhamen’s tomb treasures. But I also remember being in total awe of the treasures contained inside this vast space. I saw so many incredible things. I found myself there time after time, exploring all the glass cases.

I had already taken a felucca, sailing with two friends from Aswan to Luxor. We stopped along the way at the temple ruins of Com Ombo, Esna, and Edfu before arriving in Luxor and going to the Valley of the Kings and Queens and the massive temple complex, Karnak.

Back then, as a twenty year old I had more enthusiasm than education. I was flying blind in Egypt with very little understanding of the places I was visiting and the hieroglyphs, reliefs and statues I was staring at.

It is impossible to truly understand these temple complexes without study. Just having a picture or a statue of a goddess will do no good unless we are ready and willing to research and learn all we can.

I returned to Egypt in 2024 to be part of sacred ceremonies in the Kings Chamber in the Great Pyramid, between the paws of the Great Sphinx, in the Siwa desert (30km from the Libyan border) and met Sekhmet for the first time in a temple at Karnak in Luxor.

In 2025 I will return to Egypt to revisit the ancient temples along the Nile with fresh eyes. I finally understand enough to truly appreciate the sacred temples and the gods and goddesses of Egypt.

In 2024 also revisited sites in Türkiye I had been to in my twenties and others that I had been oblivious to, including Çatalhöyük and Kaymakli underground city in Cappadocia.

How Old is Egypt?

Standing amongst the pyramids and the Great Sphinx, it is easy to believe that these are much older than we have been led to believe.

‘Keeper of Genesis’ by Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock convincingly demonstrates that the easterly orientation of the Great Sphinx points towards the sunrise for equinox. This leonine monument connects the ancient Egyptians with knowledge of the gentle wobble of the Earth around its polar axis known as the precession.

This causes the firmament to shift its position relative to the path of the sun. This astronomical cycle was observed by noting which constellation rises just before the sun each spring equinox and recorded. Each of the zodiac guide us for around 2,160 years.

Bauval and Hancock proved that the orientation of the Great Sphinx made it purposely face the eastern horizon where the current precession sign would appear, suggesting that the Sphinx was constructed during the age of Leo, between 10,970-8810 BCE.

This monument was constructed by a highly advanced people who had the ability to wield colossal stone blocks to build the Sphinx and Valley Temples (known as the Temple of the Sphinx and the Valley Temple). Some of the stones used in the Valley Temple are 200 tons each.

This incredible skill was also displayed at Abydos in Upper Egypt, where I have also seen for myself. Deep beneath the surface of the land, the Osireion was constructed using undressed huge granite blocks with enormous stone lintels.

A spring was designed into the architecture of the central hall, flooding the lower levels, presumably to use the Osireion for the celebration of the mysteries of Osiris, who is probably the oldest Egyptian deity.

John Anthony West took several expeditions with geologists to study the erosion on the sphinx. In his book ‘Serpent in the Sky: The High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt’ he reports that the findings that suggest that the erosion was caused by water, not wind.

The implication is that this erosion occurred during the last Ice Age when the Nile River flooded with the ice melt, beginning around 15,000 BCE and continuing until around 10,000 BCE. There is evidence that around 13,500 years ago the dry Nile River suddenly flooded dramatically. The whole Giza Plateau did not flood enough to cause the erosion, but the massive rainfall event that came with the flood caused damage.

The Sphinx, the adjacent temple, a temple further up the hill and a causeway leading between the temples all show identical erosion, meaning they all must have been constructed during the period of the Nile River floods (15,000-10,000 BCE).

Astronomer/astrologers have consulted the ancient Egyptian texts and believe the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx were constructed about 13,000 years ago. While in Egypt there was talk the civilisation beginning about 12,000 BCE.

Andrew Collins in ‘From the Ashes of Angels: The Forbidden Legacy of a Fallen Race’ believes Egypt is the remnant of an elder culture who declined during the Age of Leo, around 10,500-9500 BCE. Geological and climactic disasters occurred as the last Ice Age ended, around 9500-9000 BCE, causing widespread volcanic activity and flooding.

Some members of the elder culture migrated to modern day Türkiye and Kurdistan. They built underground cities in Cappadocia to survive and eventually built new settlements when it was safe to live on the surface.

The totems of the Watchers were the goat, serpent, and vulture, which becomes recognisable iconography in many cultures including Shanidar on the Greater Zab (9000-8500 BCE), Çatalhöyük (7400-5000 BCE), the Jarmo (c.5000 BCE) of Upper Iraq and the Ubaid culture (c.5500-3700 BCE) of Upper and Lower Iraq.

The elder culture wisdom was lost as the centuries passed, their memory retained in stories of the Watchers of Judaic and Kurdish tradition, the ahuras of Iran, and the Anannage (Anunnaki) of Mesopotamia in Sumerian and Akkadian myth.

The collective term Anannage (Anunnaki) is first attested during the reign of Gudea (c. 2144-2124 BCE) and the Third Dynasty of Ur. This term usually referred to the major deities of heaven and earth, endowed with immense powers, who were believed to “decree the fates of humankind”. Gudea described them as “Lamma (tutelary deities) of all the countries”.

Ultimately around 5500-5500 BCE the Watchers become the Nephilim of Enochian and Dead Sea Scrolls, daevas in Iranian mythology and Edimmu in Assyrian and Babylonian legends.

The elder culture may have been the inspiration for the angels and Watchers of the Book of Enoch, the gods and goddesses of gods, goddesses and demons of Mesopotamia, the Shining Ones of Iran, the giants and Titans of Greek and Armenian mythology and the fire djinn and Cabirir of Türkiye.

Egypt did not develop to be great, but rather was great from its earliest beginnings. Egyptologists concede that the ancients of Egypt already had hieroglyphs, myths, mathematics and a sophisticated measuring system.

Egypt erupted as an organised, highly evolved society. Egypt was a legacy of a much older civilisation (Atlantis) that had been destroyed and its survivors had gone to different places in the world (South America, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Türkiye) and introduced their technologies. These Atlantean refugees taught integrated knowledge of science and art, philosophy and religion.

Ancient Technologies

We think of ancient civilisations as being less advanced than us, but this is patently not the cased. We know they were more advanced than us. The evidence is everywhere. Off the top of my head I can think of obsidian glass at Çatalhöyük polished without a scratch and beads made from stones with holes too small for modern steel needles to make.

Black granite statues of Sekhmet at Karnak, Egypt with the fine details of her face and whiskers carved with tools we do not have today. Building the pyramids of Giza and the Osireion at Abydos using blocks so massive modern machinery would struggle.

Just pause for a moment and consider what this means. We have been viewing ancient civilisations as simple and un-evolved, while modern civilisation in the West as good as it has ever been. Instead, we are seeing the surviving remains of a highly advanced civilisation, far more advanced than us.

What has survived the test of time is etched into stone or made to last for millennia. Imagine how much we have lost. If Western civilisation was destroyed what would be left to demonstrate who we were and what we believed in?

If anything, the civilisation who built these structures were far more advanced than we are today. A Mesopotamian Star Map that has puzzled scientists for more than two hundred years. This Star Map has a super detailed disk-shaped chart with angle measurements that really shows just how advanced the Sumerians were with their understanding of the stars.

Ancient Astronomers

The theory that the ancient elder culture used astronomy to place their Great Sphinx is not even farfetched.

Incredibly, Dendera, Esneh and E’Dayr all have zodiacs recording the firmament when the equator at 180 degrees to the present position, indicating that these zodiacs represent a time when the equator crossed the ecliptic at this longitude, which occurred around 12,500 years ago in the last age of Leo.

This technology was known in nearby Mesopotamia also.

A Star Map was found in the late 1800s in an underground library belonging to King Ashurbanipal in Nineveh, Iraq dating to around 3300 BCE in Mesopotamia. Called an Astrolabe, it is the oldest known astronomical tool.

The movements of stars and planets and the unpredictable natural phenomena were often used as a way of trying to predict and avoid negative events. Thanks to their love of writing, we are left with extensive cuneiform records that preserve descriptions of their practises.

A lot of the surviving inscriptions are very detailed attempts to list omens and help evade disaster. Scholars have successfully deciphered 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablets from Mesopotamia. These four clay tablets are the oldest known compendia of lunar-eclipse omens.

Their authors used the time of night, shadow movements, and the date and duration of lunar eclipses to predict omens of death, destruction, and pestilence. For instance, one omen states that if “an eclipse becomes obscured from its centre all at once [and] clear all at once: a king will die, destruction of Elam”. Elam was a region in Mesopotamia, now part of modern-day Iran.

According to the ‘Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa’ Babylonian astronomers were recording Venus cycles around the sixteenth century BCE. Venus is the only planet in our solar system with an orbit that creates a perfect geometric pattern. Venus is vital in regulating harmony throughout our realm. Venus repeatedly returns to the same extreme, rising and setting points in the horizon.

These cycles were related to rituals ensuring fertility of the land, deities, and maintaining harmony and wellbeing in the community.  From the Earth, every eight years Venus makes thirteen orbits, forming a perfect pentagram, a five-pointed star, consisting of golden mean angles that signify perfection, harmony and beauty.

Ancient Mathematicians

With its monumental architecture, Kanak really is a wonder. But there is so much more going on than we could possibly imagine without doing the research to learn why it feels so incredible.

The numbers 5,8 and 13 are part of the Fibonacci sequence that describe the Golden Ratio found in nature’s growth patterns such as pinecones, seashells, sunflowers, spiral galaxies, and proportions of our body.

The Fibonacci sequence is used in music to produce harmonic patterns that sound beautiful to our ears and create coherence in our mind, body and spirit.

A Pythagorean Theorem has been found on a clay tablet 1,000 years older than Pythagoras. This proves that Pythagoras was not responsible for figuring out the equation most associated with him (a2 + b2 = c2). In fact, the ancient Babylonian tablet (IM 67118) uses the Pythagorean theorem to solve the length of a diagonal inside a rectangle.

The tablet, likely used for teaching, dates from 1770 BCE – centuries before Pythagoras was born in around 570 BCE. Another tablet from around 1800-1600 BCE has a square with labelled triangles inside. Translating the markings from base 60 the counting system used by ancient Babylonians showed that these ancient mathematicians were aware of the Pythagorean theorem as well as other advanced mathematical concepts.

So, what does this mean for the gods and goddesses of Egypt?

The gods and goddesses of Egypt, therefore, came out of the elder culture (who came from Atlantis or some far older civilisation that was at its height long before predynastic Egypt and went into decline from around 10,000 BCE. Those who chose to remain created the Egyptian civilisation we know today but it is a legacy rather than the actual high civilisation, watered down over the millennia until the ancient wisdom of the elder culture was forgotten and the myths lost their original meaning.

Andrew Collins tells us that in the Turin King’s List, Egypt is described as the domain of the ntr (usually spelled neter), meaning gods. Divine beings called the Urshu, or Watchers, acted as intermediaries between the neter and the mortals.

Ancient Egyptians spoke of Zep Tepi, or the First Time, as a golden age that began at the point of the first creation and was ruled by ntr-gods, such as Osiris and Horus. This time before death, disease or disaster was called the time of Re (Ra), or Osiris or Horus.

Osiris did not lose popularity, and nor did his beloved Isis and her sister Nephthys. In a tomb in the catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa in the ancient city of Alexandria from the second century to the fourth century CE, a rich patron had Osiris with Anubis (the jackal or dog headed god of funerary rites, death and the afterlife), Isis and Nephthys painted on the walls of the tomb. This scene is one of mourning with Isis, the grief stricken widow shown hovering over her beloved in the form of a bird above the frieze.

The ancient land of Egypt was once known as Kemet, meaning the black land after the soil surrounding the Nile River. Their gods and goddesses were known as neteru. The gods were neter (masculine) and goddesses were netert (feminine). The word neter became netcher for Coptic Christians and eventually nature in the English language.

Whether these neteru began as the Watchers of the elder culture is impossible to prove. All we have are inscriptions and the art on the walls of temples and tombs, often based on the texts and the written records.

Ancient Egyptian Mythology 

Our modern thinking sees mythologies as nonsensical stories for the childlike, simplistic ancients, but studying these myths we discover how wrong we are.

From predynastic Egypt (4425–3200 BCE) into thirty-one dynasties of Egypt (3100-332 BCE), the neteru changed over time. The Pyramid Texts from ancient Egypt are some of the world’s oldest known religious texts, dating between 2400–2300 BCE.

The Coffin Texts, dated 2100 BCE, are a collection of funerary works consisting of 1,815 spells to help bring the deceased to the afterlife safely and to protect them from danger in their journey. No longer reserved for pharaohs, anyone who could afford to be buried in a coffin could have access to parts of the text.

The Book of the Dead, dated 1500 BCE, is a large compilation of texts. This funerary text describes a list of spells that can be used by individuals to make their journey from the underworld to the afterlife. There are some alternate translations of the title of this work, including the “Book of Coming Forth by Day” and the “Book of Emerging Forth into the Light”.

These texts give us clues as to how the ancient Egyptians perceived the neteru. Neteru exist in the subtle realm or causal dimension that is easily accessed but is separate from our dimension, our reality, hovering just beyond our conscious awareness. Neteru are dense concentrations of energy and awareness with their own unique intelligence, abilities, and qualities.

To the ancient scientists of Kemet, the Neteru represented more than just divinities or spirits. The neteru also represented the cosmic principles and laws of the universe. Rather than understanding neteru as gods and goddesses outside of us, the ancient Egyptians understood the neteru as divine principals that dwell within us.

Another Egyptian netert, Sekhmet, might be as old as the Sphinx and the cataclysmic natural disasters of the end of the last Ice Age. In ‘The Gods of the Egyptians’ E.A. Wallis Budge describes Sekhmet, the Mighty Lady, Mistress of Flame who “poured out of herself the blazing fire which scorched and consumed [Ra’s] enemies who came near, whilst at those who were some distance away she shot forth swift fiery darts which pierced through and through the fiends whom they struck.” Ra addresses Nu, leader of an assembly of gods, saying “O thou firstborn gods, from whom I came into being, O ye gods [my] ancestors”.

The slaughter continues, chasing the people who had fled into the mountain. But when he is satisfied, Ra discovers he cannot stop Sekhmet. Eventually Sekhmet is prevented from massacring the entire human race by filling a river with beer coloured to look like blood and crushed mandrakes. When Sekhmet drinks she becomes intoxicated and goes to sleep, stopping her bloodlust.

Andrew Collins believes this description of Sekhmet’s heavenly fire is similar to events recorded in Arab and Coptic (Egyptian followers of Jesus) of a great fire that came from the constellation Leo. Sekhmet’s myth might hold a record of a cataclysmic event in a highly symbolic way. The Coptic text Abou Hormeis describes a great deluge that occurred “when the heart of the Lion entered into the first minute of the head of Cancer”.

Later in the text, Ra asks the earth god Geb to watch over the snakes (or worms) living in his territory who have caused him strife, suggesting that Geb’s ‘light’ can find them in their ‘holes’.

Andrew Collins believes this is a reference to the elder cultures who migrated to Cappadocia to live in caves and underground caverns.

Ani Williams in ‘Guardians of the Dragon Path: Ancient Temples of the Pyrenees, The Way of the Stars Camino, A Magdalena Meridian’ describes the mythology of the netert Nut who is the goddess of the Egyptian Sky Mother.

Nut is portrayed often in tomb ceilings arching naked over the earth, her feet on one horizon and her fingers touching the other, her body festooned with stars. The Milky Way was Nut, also spelled Nwt, Nuit, meaning Sky.

Andrew Collins in ‘The Cygnus Key: The Denisovan Legacy, Göbekli Tepe, and the Birth of Egypt’ states that “Clearly this is meant to imply that her body is itself a stream of stars- a reference to the Milky Way as it arches across the sky… the Milky Way becomes a shining arch stretching from horizon to horizon.”

Ani Williams tells us Nut’s feet were planted in the Mediterranean with “her breasts pouring light from distant star nebulous over Finisterre (‘End of the Earth’) at the Western end of the Way of Stars pilgrimage route.”

Ani Williams explains “fascinating research has discovered harmonically organised magnetic filaments at the centre of the Milky Way.

Astronomers have described these strands as being like the strings of a harp, so we can now imagine the Milky Way is not just filled with magnificent shining lights that mark the starry path, but also with a myriad of harmonic chords ringing across the sky.”

The Dendera Temple inscription Hymn to Het-Heru (Hathor) states: “The sky and its stars make music in you.” Ani Williams realised that this is not purely poetic but that ancient Egyptians could see and hear music from the heavens.

The magestic Isis, her from from the tomb of Seti I (KV17) in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor, is portrayed absolutely everywhere.  As Mistress of Mediterranean navigation, Isis was protector of mariners, who used her star Sopdet or Sothis (Sirius) to guide them.

This star would have meant the difference between life and death, especially in winter. These sailors watched the evening sky light up with the force of Sirius that provided a guiding light.

Ani Williams explains that the Egyptians “viewed the Earth and Sky as populated by their deities who were playing out this perpetual drama of the cycles of movement of light and time”.

In Egyptian cosmology, the stories of the neteru were seen in the movement of the stars. The distraught Isis searching for the dismembered parts of her beloved husband Osiris follows his trail him across the sky in the Milky Way. The rising of Osiris as Orion (Shah by the Egyptians) is followed by the rising Isis as Sirius (Sopdet/Sothis) as she tracks him through the night sky.

Pyramid Text utterance 509 “I ascend to the sky among the Imperishable Stars, my sister is Sothis [Sirius], my guide is the Morning Star, and they grasp my hand at the Field of Offerings…”

Pyramid Text utterance 511 “I traverse the sky… a third to Sothis [Sirius-Isis], pure of thrones. I have bathed in the pools of the morning, and the Cow [Hippo of Draco] who traverses the waters prepares my fair roads and guides me to the Great Throne which the gods made, which Horus made and which Thoth brought into being. Isis conceives me, Nephthys begets me, and I sit on the Great Throne [Cassiopeia] which the gods have made.”

Who Are the Neteru?

Long after the elder culture had declined, the Egyptians worshipped the neteru as their beloved guides, mentors and helpers.

The netert were approachable. Like the gods and goddesses of other cultures, the neteru embody and express the spectrum of human expression, aspects of human nature as archetypes or forces who have been assisting humanity since the very beginning. In this image inside his incredible temple at Abydos, young Seti I is seated on the lap of Isis! She looks deeply into his eyes, caring for him like a mother. Seti I is taking the role of Horus, Isis’ child.

Neteru are a force of nature, or an energetic manifestation, than a deity as we understand them to be. The closest we have here is what we understand as cosmic laws, a modern approximation of the expression of divine properties or qualities. Everything created in the entire universe is created in accordance with cosmic law, the neteru.

These cosmic laws are what keeps the universe continually expanding into ever greater dimensions of time, space and consciousness. These laws are readily available to be used once we know how.

By opening up to the neteru as the primary creative forces active throughout the universe, we learn that the neteru are the modes of expression of the Supreme Being, God, Source Energy, the Divine Presence, or whatever name you prefer to use.

Most of us have forgotten the power of nature or what nature is and how nature came to be. The neteru are the divine process that nature was first created. Everything in the natural world is created according to cosmic law, the neteru.

The Egyptians believed that nature was created by a unique all-powerful conscious energy, called Ra. Ra was the overriding principle of love that permeates all of creation – both manifest and un-manifest.

The use of these cosmic laws or principles is not limited to the Absolute Creator alone, but we can learn to use them, and begin creating in harmony with the rest of the universe. Ra created according to cosmic law and order, the neteru.

These laws allowed things to come in to being. The cosmic laws were the metaphysical processes of creation, not the things created. Temple priest/esses personified the Neteru, giving them a recognisable form, a gender, a name, and symbolic attributes to distinguish each neteru. Relationships were formed between the neteru, demonstrating which cosmic laws could be combined together and how.

Each of us is invited to connect with these benevolent forces who are willing to constellate within and through us. By working with the neteru we remember how to co-create with the natural cosmic forces to create a harmonious, magical world full of beauty and joy using the power of love.

This image is of Hathor with her cow ears, looming large in the Hathor Temple in the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, Luxor.

We stop seeking to dominate or wield power over the forces of nature.

The neteru ask for authentic firsthand experience that transcends who we think we are in this lifetime. The neteru do not need to be understood by the mind. They need to be recognised, affirmed, and lived through the heart.

The ancient sages created a symbolic language to describe these neteru to explain abstract concepts clearly, using it on the walls of temples. These inscriptions, reliefs and wall paintings described how things worked, and hint at the neteru where the cosmic laws are constantly in motion behind the scenes. This imagery sought to describe how things work in nature and in the universe.

I hope this helps to get a feel for the thousands of goddesses who are available for us to work with. This is the long lost her-story of goddess worship that was once integral to a feminine spiritual path.

Which place and period in her-story resonates for you?

Which goddess draws your curiosity?

Examples of Egyptian netert (goddesses): Neith, Isis, Hathor, Sekhmet, Bastet, Nut, Ma’at