Who is Amun (Amun-Ra), the Egyptian king of the gods?

Amun (Egyptian Imen, “the hidden one”) was the god of Thebes who became king of the gods in ancient Egypt. Joined with the sun god Ra as Amun-Ra, he was worshipped as the unseen power behind creation. He is shown as a man wearing a crown of two tall plumes, and the ram and the goose were his sacred animals. His great temple, Karnak, stands at Luxor.

Who he was in Egypt: In the creation teaching of Hermopolis, Amun and Amaunet were one of four pairs of gods of the first waters: the pair that stood for what is hidden. He rose with the rulers of Thebes, and after Theban kings drove out the foreign Hyksos and built an empire, Amun-Ra became the god of the state. At Thebes he formed a family with the goddess Mut and their son Khonsu, the moon god.
His signs and animals: In paintings his skin is often blue. His ram has horns that curl down round its ears, and an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes leads to his temple at Karnak, with its hall of 134 giant columns. The Greeks matched him with Zeus, as Zeus Ammon, and Alexander the Great travelled to the desert oasis of Siwa to consult his oracle.
How Gerald Massey read him in 1907: Massey spells the name Amen, and Amen-Ra. He reads it, as scholars do, as “the hidden”, but he argues that Amen was a later title of Atum, the old creator god of Heliopolis, as the hidden god of Amenta, his name for the world below, which he takes to mean “the hidden earth”. He also matches the ram-headed Amen with Aries in the zodiac.
What scholars say now: Today Amun is treated as a god in his own right, not a title of Atum, though hymns do join Amun-Ra with Atum and other creators, as Massey noticed. That Amun rose late, with the rulers of Thebes, agrees with his reading. Egyptologists translate the name of the land of the dead, Amentet, as “the West”, where the sun sets, not “the hidden earth”. And the signs of the zodiac reached Egypt from Babylonia only under the Greek kings, long after Amun’s rise.
Where you meet him today: His name stands in Tutankhamun’s, “living image of Amun”: the boy king took it in place of Tutankhaten when Amun’s worship returned after Akhenaten, who had Amun’s name cut out of monuments. Ammonite fossils are named after his ram’s horns. The amen at the end of a prayer is a different word, Hebrew for “so be it”.
In Massey’s words: “In the hymns to Amen-Ra he is adored as one and the same with Atum; hence we infer that “Amen” is a later title of Atum as the hidden god of Amenta, the secret earth” (Gerald Massey, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World (1907), Book VII, p. 442b)
In the app: Trainer › Word Trainer. In the app, the Word Trainer sets Massey’s Amen and Amen-Ra beside Amun and Amun-Ra, and the Guide answers questions in Massey’s own words, quoted and cited.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

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