Talk:List of Egyptian deities

Why and how I separated this list again
After discussion at Talk:Ancient Egyptian deities petered out, I separated this list from ancient Egyptian deities itself again, given that one editor opposed the separation, and two, besides me, supported. To sum up my reasons for separation again:


 * Although there is obviously an overlap in topic between an article describing Egyptian deities as a class and one that lists them individually, there is also a certain amount of distinction between the two. I mentioned the example of castle and list of castles.
 * Egyptian deities number in the thousands, so if the list ever came close to being complete, incorporating it into the main article would violate WP:Manual of Style/Embedded lists.
 * If, however, the list were trimmed to a size where it could fit in the main article, it would probably have to be limited to the deities we have articles on, which would make the list rather redundant—we already have the category system, the list of deities at Template:Ancient Egyptian religion (a version of which already sits at the bottom of the main deities article), index of ancient Egypt-related articles, and index of Egyptian mythology articles.

The list was also very flawed. It left out several gods who we already have articles on and may well meet the notability criteria, such as Werethekau, Unut, Shezmu, Mehet-Weret, Kherty, Ihy, Hesat, Banebdjedet, and Baal. It included deities that we do not have articles on, such as Apesh (apparently an underworld turtle demon) and Swenet (a personification of Aswan). Its descriptions of the deities were inadequately sourced (somebody recently introduced references that said nothing more than "Kane Chronicles") and incorporated a lot of dubious claims.

While doing the split, therefore, I rewrote the list using the two major English-language reference works on Egyptian deities, now listed at the bottom of this page. The entries in each of these books extend to pretty minor gods like Ba-Pef, Khefthernebes, and Fetket. They cover most of the same gods, although some minor deities appear in one source but not the other. If a deity doesn't appear in either source, it's pretty unlikely to rate a separate article. So as to have no unreferenced entries on the list and no links to articles that don't exist, I used these inclusion criteria in rewriting the list:


 * If a god isn't listed in Wilkinson 2003 or Hart 2005, I don't include it.
 * If a god doesn't have a Wikipedia article, I don't include it.

I devised these as temporary criteria, just to have something reasonably orderly in place. If we can use more extensive sources—the big one is Lexikon der ägyptischen Götter und Götterbezeichnungen—we can create a more extensive list with broader inclusion criteria. A. Parrot (talk) 03:43, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Goals for future improvement
If the list does expand beyond these narrow limits, so as to become a catalogue of deities too minor to merit their own articles, it should still have some restraint. I doubt we want to be as inclusive as the Lexikon; it consists of eight volumes! Obviously, any additional entries must be supported by reliable sources. I can contribute some entries to that effort; I've collected a list of deities I've found mentioned in RSes other than Wilkinson and Hart, which numbers more than 60 at the moment.

Another problem is internal organization. I've discussed this problem before, at Template talk:Ancient Egyptian religion. Thematic organization is difficult because the gods' roles were not confined to neat categories. Alphabetical organization (which the list now uses) is also problematic, because there are so many variant spellings. Wilkinson 2003 uses a third system, based on the most common appearance of the deity (male anthropomorphic, female anthropomorphic, mammalian, avian, etc.), though that is probably less useful for most people than thematic or alphabetical. I've previously suggested sections for male and female, which is a less flexible division than most others and reflects the subdivision of Category:Egyptian deities into Category:Egyptian gods and Category:Egyptian goddesses, but so many entries would belong in each section that such a system would not be much improvement over a purely alphabetical one. A. Parrot (talk) 03:43, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

The usage and primary topic of "Gods of Egypt" is under discussion, see talk:Gods of Egypt (film) -- 65.94.43.89 (talk) 04:39, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Gonna work on this as well.
There are a good amount of sources on a lot of the gods on this list. So I’m gonna work on as many of them as I can.

CycoMa (talk) 02:46, 1 October 2020 (UTC)


 * I was wondering, Could Apep/Apophis be moved to the 'A' section of the Major Deities instead of Minor? Or is there a reason (minimal sources, lack of papyri mention, etc.) to keep it in the Minor section? Deathbysushi12 (talk) 15:46, 24 July 2023 (UTC)