Thoth and the Gods of Wisdom and Writing

The ancient Egyptians were obsessed with order. The desert surrounding the Nile Valley was the realm of chaos, and the riverbank, with its fields, its towns, its calendars and tax registers, was the realm of order, or ma’at. To maintain that order, the gods of wisdom and writing kept the records of the world, invented the calendar, and ensured that truth prevailed even after death.

The chief of these gods was Thoth, the ibis-headed patron of scribes, who invented hieroglyphs, recorded the verdict in the judgement of the dead, and kept the divine library. Beside him stood Seshat, the goddess of writing and the stars, and Ma’at, the goddess of truth and cosmic order, whose feather weighed the hearts of the dead.

This page introduces these deities. For a deeper look at Thoth himself, see Thoth: The Ibis-Headed God of Knowledge.

Thoth: The Divine Scribe

Thoth (Djehuty) was one of the most important gods in the Egyptian pantheon. He was the god of writing, magic, wisdom, and the moon. According to myth, he invented hieroglyphs, created the 365-day calendar, and kept the records of the gods. For the social role of writing in Egyptian society, the foundational article is still John Baines, “Literacy and Ancient Egyptian Society,” Man (n.s.) 18 (1983), pp. 572-599. It is forty years old and it has not been improved upon.

Thoth was usually shown as:

A man with the head of an ibis, a long-beaked wading bird associated with the moon and the scribal arts
A baboon, another animal considered sacred to him
An ibis standing on a standard

He was said to have invented writing as a gift to the people, and from that gift the entire Egyptian administrative system grew. To read more about Thoth and his myths, see Thoth: The Ibis-Headed God of Knowledge.

Thoth in the Afterlife

Thoth played a central role in the judgement of the dead. In the Hall of Two Truths, the heart of the deceased was weighed against the feather of Ma’at, and Thoth stood ready to record the verdict. He also acted as a defender of Osiris, reciting spells on his behalf during the court.

In the Book of the Dead, Thoth is the “scribe of the gods,” and many of the spells are addressed directly to him, asking him to record the deceased’s name among the blessed. The full scene of Thoth at the judgement is described in our guide to Anubis and the Weighing of the Heart.

Thoth and the Moon

Thoth was associated with the moon in the same way that Ra was associated with the sun. The Egyptians believed that the moon was a lesser light, just as the ibis was a lesser scribe. The phases of the moon were explained by Thoth playing a game of senet with the moon, winning and losing days, so that the lunar cycle slowly drifted out of step with the solar calendar.

Thoth’s name, Djehuty, may mean “he who measures,” referring both to his role as a measurer of time and to his role as a measurer of the world.

Seshat: The Goddess of Writing and the Stars

Seshat was the goddess of writing, the stars, and the records of the king. She was the head of the Seshta, the divine library in which the deeds of the king and the records of the gods were kept. Her name means “she who scrivens” or “she who extends the scribe’s palette,” and she was the patron of every record made for the king.

Seshat was usually shown as a woman wearing a leopard-skin dress and a headdress made of a seven-pointed star on a standard, with a bow-shaped hieroglyph (sesh) suspended beneath it. She was present at the Stretching of the Cord ceremony, in which the king laid out the foundations of a new temple, marking the corners with a mallet and a stake and invoking the goddess to measure the angles correctly.

In late periods, Seshat was sometimes merged with Isis as Isis-Seshat or identified with the Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne.

Ma’at: The Goddess of Truth and Cosmic Order

Ma’at was not a goddess in the usual sense. She was a goddess who was the principle of cosmic order, the truth, justice, and balance on which the world depended. Her name, Ma’at, referred both to the goddess and to the abstract concept she embodied.

Ma’at was usually shown as a woman wearing a single ostrich feather on her head, sometimes alone, sometimes sitting on a throne, sometimes with her wings spread across the world. The feather was the most important symbol in her cult, because the feather of Ma’at was the standard against which the heart of the deceased was weighed in the judgement of the dead.

To understand Ma’at is to understand the entire framework of Egyptian religion. The king’s job was to maintain Ma’at on earth. The gods’ job was to maintain Ma’at in the cosmos. The dead were judged by how well they had upheld Ma’at in life. When the order of Ma’at was broken, by lying, by violence, by the failure of the inundation, the world tilted toward chaos, and the king had to set it right.

Ma’at’s cult was centered at Heliopolis, where her image stood in the temple of Ra. From the New Kingdom onward, the Ma’at-kheru, “true of voice”, formula was the standard way to describe a deceased person who had passed the judgement of the dead. For the full ritual, see Anubis and the Weighing of the Heart.

Other Gods of Wisdom and Knowledge

A handful of lesser deities were associated with wisdom, knowledge, and the scribal arts:

Heh, a frog-headed god of eternity and infinite time
Sia, the god of perception and insight, who stood beside Ra in the solar barque
Hu, the god of authoritative utterance, who enabled the spoken word to create reality
Safekh, a rarely-mentioned goddess of writing and the divine library
Shesmu, a god of the wine press and oil press, who pressed the wicked in the underworld

These gods are all obscure compared to Thoth, Seshat, and Ma’at, but they appear regularly in religious texts, particularly in the Coffin Texts and the Amduat.

The Scribes and the Gods

The earthly counterparts of the divine scribes were the scribes, the small but powerful class of literate Egyptians who ran the bureaucracy of the country. Scribes often painted a small image of Thoth on their writing boards, and they began their work with an offering to him: “Praise to Thoth, lord of writing, who teaches the people to speak.”

To be a scribe was to participate in the divine order. The Satire of the Trades, an ancient school text, reminds students that the scribal profession is the only one that does not break the back, the only one in which a man might rise to the highest ranks of the state. To read more, see our guide to the life of a scribe.

The Books of the Dead

The gods of wisdom presided over the great funerary texts of ancient Egypt. These include:

The Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom, the oldest religious literature in the world, carved on the walls of the pyramids
The Coffin Texts of the Middle Kingdom, painted on the coffins of officials
The Book of the Dead of the New Kingdom, written on papyrus and placed in tombs
The Amduat and Book of Gates, painted on the walls of royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, describing the journey of the sun through the underworld

All of these texts were considered the work of Thoth, the divine scribe who knew all the spells and the proper order of the world. For more on the role of writing in Egyptian religion, see our guide to Egyptian hieroglyphs and writing.

The Gods of Wisdom and the King

The king’s relationship to the gods of wisdom was unique. He was the keeper of Ma’at on earth, and his first duty was to defend truth and order against the forces of chaos. In the Temple of Karnak, the Festival Hall of Thutmose III records the king’s military victories in the language of the scribal arts, and the Temple of Luxor is decorated with reliefs of the king offering Ma’at to Amun-Ra, presenting the goddess as a small seated figure.

In the Ptolemaic period, the Council of Ten (Greek Dekaprotoi) was a prominent body of priests and officials. Members of this council advised the king on matters of state and religion, and their decisions were believed to reflect the will of Thoth himself. The gods of wisdom stood at the heart of the Egyptian project of maintaining ma’at through written and ritual order.