Existing comment:
The Gods and Goddesses and Egypt:
The ancient Egyptian religion, a complex assortment of cult, ritual, and magic, included hundreds of major and minor deities. Major gods such as Osiris, Isis, and Anubis were universal deities, worshipped throughout Egypt. Local gods such as Bastet, Thoth, and Hathor were from earliest times closely connected with specific places. Some of these local gods eventually became state deities, while other faded into obscurity and were replaced or combined with other gods.
To show the powers of their gods, the Egyptians represented them in human form, as human-animal combinations (usually with a human body and the head of an animal) or as animals sacred to the gods.
Small statuettes of the gods (often of bronze) were common, especially in the Late Period, and were probably intended as votive offerings dedicated in a temple or as tomb furnishings to invoke a [sic] the god's protection in the afterlife. |