Who is Ra, the Egyptian sun god?

Ra (also written Re) was the sun god of ancient Egypt, a creator and, in many myths, king of the gods. By day he crossed the sky in a boat; by night he sailed through the world below, where the serpent Apep tried to stop him, and at dawn he was born again. His great cult centre was Heliopolis. He is most often shown as a falcon-headed man crowned with a sun disk and a cobra.

Who he was in Egypt: At Heliopolis (Egyptian Iunu, the On of the Bible), now part of Cairo, his priests taught that the creator, Atum-Ra, rose from the dark waters and made the other gods. From the Old Kingdom on, kings took the title “son of Ra”. Ra was joined with Amun of Thebes as Amun-Ra, king of the gods, and with Horus as Ra-Horakhty.
His signs and his journey: His sign is the sun disk with a cobra, the uraeus, coiled around it. At dawn he was Khepri, the scarab beetle rolling the sun into the sky; at evening he was Atum, the setting sun. He sailed in a day boat and a night boat, and on his journey through the twelve hours of the night the gods on board fought off Apep, the serpent of chaos. Apep was never destroyed for good: the battle came again every night.
How Gerald Massey read him in 1907: Massey writes often of Atum-Ra, the god of Annu, his name for Heliopolis, and uses Har-Khuti for Horakhty, Horus of the two horizons. In his scheme the myths of the stars came first, then those of the moon, and the sun’s last. In the later teaching he reads Ra as the god in spirit, the holy spirit of a trinity in which Osiris stands for matter and Horus for the soul. He ties a title of Ra, Huhi, “the eternal”, to the Hebrew name of God.
What scholars say now: Ra’s two boats and his nightly battle with Apep are as the Egyptian texts describe them, and here Massey follows the texts closely. Egyptologists do not accept his order of star, moon and sun myths: Egypt’s oldest religious writings, the Pyramid Texts, already set star, sun and Osiris beliefs side by side. Ra as the holy spirit is Massey’s own reading, made in Christian terms, and linguists do not accept his tie between Huhi and the Hebrew name of God.
Where you meet him today: The night journey of the sun is painted on the walls of royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. One obelisk still stands at Heliopolis, and the two called Cleopatra’s Needles, now in London and New York, first stood there.
In Massey’s words: “The conflict betwixt Ra and the Apap is identified as being fought for the water as well as for the light; the mortal enemy of man being drought as well as darkness.” (Gerald Massey, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World (1907), Book VII, p. 417)
In the app: Trainer › Symbol Trainer › Boat of the sun. In the app, the Symbol Trainer explains the sun disk, the boat of the sun and Apep, the serpent of darkness, and the Word Trainer sets Massey’s Apap and Annu beside Apep and Heliopolis.

Last updated October 25, 2026.

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