“Divine Egypt,” a major exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is now open, offering a comprehensive look at Ancient Egypt’s principal deities.
The exhibition delves into how these gods and their imagery were encountered within temples, shrines, and tombs. It also highlights the methods by which people animated the gods for daily veneration, establishing a crucial link between the human and divine realms.
Ancient Egyptian civilization, spanning over 3,000 years, developed a polytheistic belief system focused on a pantheon of gods and goddesses, including Anubis, Horus, and Isis.
“The divine landscape of ancient Egypt is full of gods, actually some 1,500 if you count all of them. This exhibition focuses on 25 of the main deities,” said Diana Craig Patch, Ancient Egypt art curator at the museum, according to the Associated Press.
The Met Museum’s first major Egyptian exhibition in over a decade showcases more than 200 remarkable art pieces, from delicate figurines to grand limestone statues. Featuring 140 items from the Met’s collection and others on loan from museums across the world, the show explores the connection between both royalty and common people and their gods, spanning all historical periods.
“When they leave this exhibition, I hope they realize that all of these images that they’ve been looking at are how people, how ancient Egyptians, related to their world,” said Craig Patch.
“Those gods were how they solved problems of life, death, and meaning, because they related to those images that house the god.”
She noted that these are ongoing human issues.
“We’re still trying to answer these questions, we do it differently. But this was how the ancient Egyptians did it.”
The sun god Ra, depicted as a colossal scarab beetle, holds a prominent position as the most important deity in the exhibition, with an entire gallery dedicated to his display.
“That is his morning aspect. He is seen as a beetle who takes the sun out from the underworld and pushes it up into the sky. So Ra rules the world. He’s the source of light and warmth,” Craig Patch said.
Horus, the falcon god, stands as one of the most imposing statues.
“Horus is always a falcon with a double crown, which signifies he is the king of Egypt. And he is always linked to the living king of Egypt,” said Craig Patch.
There is also a painted relief of the goddess Maat, from the Valley of the Kings in Thebes (modern Luxor). She represents truth and justice. “The best way we translate it today is rightness. She stands for the world in rightness, the way it should work,” Craig Patch said.
The Egyptians did not differentiate between life and death; instead, they viewed them as a continuum of existence, encompassing both life and the afterlife.
“Most of the exhibition is about life. And that is what all of these deities were about. Even in overcoming death, it was about living forever; it was not about death.”
“Divine Egypt” runs at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art until January 19, 2026.
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