Ancient Egypt

Egyptian Gods and Goddesses

Thoth: The Ibis-Headed God of Knowledge

Thoth, the ibis-headed god of writing, magic, and wisdom. His myths, his temples, his sacred animals, and his role in the Egyptian afterlife.

Thoth: The Ibis-Headed God of Knowledge

Of all the gods of ancient Egypt, Thoth (in Egyptian, Djehuty) was the one most closely associated with the human mind. 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. He was the divine scribe, the lord of all knowledge, and the patron of every scribe in Egypt. The standard scholarly treatment is Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (2003, pp. 215-220), and the social context of writing in Egypt is still best treated in John Baines, “Literacy and Ancient Egyptian Society,” Man (n.s.) 18 (1983), pp. 572-599.

This page tells the story of Thoth, his myths, his appearance, his temples, and his role in Egyptian religion. For a broader view, see the cluster page on Thoth and the Gods of Wisdom and Writing.

The Name and Origins of Thoth

The Egyptian name for Thoth, Djehuty, may mean “he who measures” or “he who balances.” The name is written with the hieroglyph of an ibis holding a wedjat eye and a lunar disk, a clear reference to his role as a measurer of time and a recorder of events.

Thoth was originally a moon god, and the moon was associated with him in his earliest appearances in the Old Kingdom. The moon was a “lesser light” (compared to the sun), and so Thoth was a “lesser light” of wisdom, the assistant, the recorder, the god who stood at the side of Ra rather than in his place.

As the cult of Ra rose, Thoth’s role as a scribe of the gods was emphasized. By the Middle Kingdom, Thoth had become the patron of scribes and the inventor of writing. By the New Kingdom, he was the god of all knowledge, including magic and medicine.

The Forms of Thoth

Thoth was shown in three main forms:

  • A man with the head of an ibis, the most common form, with the long curving beak of the bird and sometimes a lunar disk on his head
  • A baboon, the sacred animal of Thoth, often shown seated on a standard or holding a lunar disk
  • An ibis on a standard, the hieroglyph of his name

The ibis was associated with Thoth because the bird, in real life, was a common wader of the Egyptian marshes. The Egyptians noticed that the ibis had a long, curved beak, and they imagined that it was a kind of “writing instrument” of the natural world. The baboon was associated with Thoth because the baboon was observed to chatter at the rising sun, as if greeting it.

Both animals were sacred to Thoth and were mummified in their millions. The catacombs of Tuna el-Gebel, near Hermopolis, hold the remains of an estimated 4 million ibises and baboons, sacrificed to Thoth over more than a thousand years (Emily Teeter, Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt, 2011, pp. 30-33).

Thoth as the Inventor of Writing

The most famous of Thoth’s inventions was writing. According to myth, Thoth appeared before the king of Upper and Lower Egypt and presented him with the hieroglyphs, along with the knowledge of how to use them. The gift of writing was the gift of civilization itself, the means by which the king could keep records, make laws, and organize the world.

This tradition is preserved in classical sources (Plato, Phaedrus 274c-275b; Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride). The Shabaka Stone, often cited in this context, actually contains the Memphite Theology (in which creation is the work of Ptah through heart and tongue), not a Thoth-writing myth. The conflation is a common one, and a useful reminder that the surviving mythological sources are not always internally consistent.

To see how the writing system was actually used, see our guide to the Egyptian hieroglyphic system and the three types of Egyptian writing.

Thoth and the Calendar

Thoth was also credited with creating the Egyptian calendar. According to myth, he played a game of senet with the moon and won a seventy-second part of every day, which he used to add five extra days to the original 360-day year.

This myth is recorded in Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris 12 and in the late-period Book of Nut. It is an elegant story, though it has nothing to do with how the Egyptian civil calendar actually came about, the 365-day year was almost certainly a more mundane product of heliacal observation and bureaucratic tidying, not a senet match.

To learn more about the Egyptian calendar, see the cluster page on Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Writing, which explains how the calendar was tied to the rising of Sirius and the annual flood of the Nile.

Thoth as Scribe of the Gods

Thoth’s main role was as the scribe of the gods. He recorded:

  • The verdict of the judgement of the dead in the Hall of Two Truths
  • The events of the solar journey through the Duat
  • The deeds of the king in the Book of the Earth
  • The names of the dead in the akh-books

In the judgement scene from the Book of the Dead, Thoth is shown standing beside the scales, with his reed pen and palette, ready to record the result. He is sometimes shown as a baboon sitting atop the scales, an image of perfect balance.

The title “Scribe of the Gods” was used so often that it became one of Thoth’s most common epithets. The temple of Thoth at Hermopolis was the “House of the Scribe,” and the priests of Thoth were the most literate in Egypt.

Thoth as a God of Magic

In addition to being a god of writing, Thoth was a god of magic. He knew the secret names of the gods, and he had the power to call on those names to perform miracles. According to the Book of the Dead, Thoth used his knowledge to:

  • Heal the sick
  • Bring the dead back to life
  • Drive away the chaos serpent Apophis from the solar barque
  • Defend Osiris in the judgement of the dead

The Egyptians believed that magic (heka) was a real force in the world, and that Thoth’s knowledge gave him control over it. Spells in the Book of the Dead and in the Coffin Texts are often addressed to Thoth, asking him to use his magic to protect the deceased.

Thoth and the Moon

Thoth was the god of the moon, and the phases of the moon were explained by a myth in which Thoth played a game of senet with the moon. The myth appears in the Book of Nut and in several Middle Kingdom coffin texts.

According to the myth, Thoth and Khonsu, another moon god, played a game of senet. The game lasted for a day, and the winner could take a part of the loser’s light. Because the game went on for many days, the moon waxed and waned as the two gods won and lost.

In some versions, Thoth won a seventy-second part of every day. The light he took from the moon became the extra days of the calendar, the five epagomenal days at the end of the year.

Thoth and the King

Thoth had a special relationship with the king. He was the divine model for the royal scribe, and the king was believed to be a manifestation of Horus and the son of Ra. In the Dream of Nectanebo, a late period text, the god Thoth appears to the king in a dream and gives him magical instruction in defending Egypt against the Persians.

The image of Thoth offering the ankh (the symbol of life) to the king appears in many royal monuments, including the walls of the Temple of Karnak and the Temple of Luxor. In these scenes, Thoth is shown as the patron of the king and the guarantor of his rule.

The Cult of Thoth at Hermopolis

The main cult center of Thoth was at Hermopolis (modern el-Ashmunein) in Middle Egypt. The Greeks knew the city as Hermopolis Megale (Great Hermopolis), and they identified Thoth with their own god Hermes, the messenger of the gods, the patron of writing, and the guide of the dead.

The temple of Thoth at Hermopolis was one of the largest in Egypt, and the catacombs of Tuna el-Gebel, where the sacred ibises and baboons were buried, are among the largest animal necropolises in the country. Estimates suggest that more than four million ibises and baboons were mummified and buried in the catacombs over a thousand-year period.

Thoth in the Late and Greco-Roman Periods

In the Late Period, Thoth’s cult spread to the Mediterranean. The Greeks identified him with Hermes, and the new name Hermes Trismegistus, “Thrice-Greatest Hermes,” became the name of a famous legendary sage to whom dozens of mystical and alchemical texts were attributed.

The Hermetic texts, a body of Greek and Latin writings from the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, were said to be the work of Hermes Trismegistus. They include the Poimandres, the Asclepius, and a series of astrological and magical treatises. These texts were enormously influential on later Western thought, and they kept the figure of Thoth alive in European tradition long after the Egyptian temples had closed.

Thoth in Modern Times

The figure of Thoth has continued to capture the imagination. The name of the Disney character in the 1999 animated film Tarzan is a tribute to the god, and the name “Thoth” is a common reference in modern fiction, games, and fantasy.

But to the Egyptians, Thoth was no fiction. He was the god of knowledge, the divine scribe, the inventor of writing, and the patron of every Egyptian who ever held a reed pen. For more than three thousand years, every scribe in Egypt began his work with a prayer to Thoth. Thoth’s image on scribal palettes, statues, and amulets is the single most common divine attribute in the surviving record of the Egyptian administration.