Maat was the goddess of truth. She is always of human form, and shown as seated holding the ankh, emblem of life, in her hands. She was never worshipped, and had no temples or shrines, but was represented as being offered by the kings to the gods. She also occurs in the names of several kings, and appears in the judgment scene of the weighing of the heart. She was the only idea of the older religion which was preserved by Akhenaten in his reformation; he always names himself as 'living in truth,' but as an abstraction and without the notion of any actual goddess. She is linked with Ptah, Thōth, and Ra, on different occasions.
Nefertum is a god of late times, in human form, as a youth with a lotus flower on his head. He appears to have represented growth and vegetation; and is systematised as a son of Ptah and Sekhet. No temple of his remains; but his figures, usually of bronze, are common.
Safekh was the goddess of writing. She is named in the pyramid times, and appears in scenes of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. Four pairs of elemental gods were worshipped at Hermopolis, each pair male and female; Heh, Eternity; Kek, Darkness; Nu, the heavenly ocean; Nenu, the Inundation. They are shown as human figures with the heads of frogs and serpents. There were also personifications of Seeing, Hearing, Taste, Perception, Strength, and the 'true voice' necessary to intone the magic formulae.
CHAPTER IX
THE FOREIGN GODS
Besides the incorporation into purely Egyptian usage of all the gods that we have noticed, there were others who always retained a foreign character. It is true that Bast, Neit, and Taurt are counted by some as foreign; but deities who are found from the pyramid times to the Roman age, and who were the patrons of capitals and of dynasties, must be counted as Egyptian; and of Taurt we do not know of any foreign source, nor should we look for any, as the hippopotamus abounded in Egypt itself.
Bēs, though figured from the eighteenth dynasty to Roman times, yet retained a foreign character. He is a dwarfish, clumsy figure, wearing a feline skin on his back, with the tail hanging down to his heels. A female figure wearing the feline skin similarly is known from the twelfth dynasty. Rarely female forms of Bēs occur in late times. The source of this type is the Sudany dancer, such as may still be seen performing in Egypt, and we know that even in the fifth dynasty dancers called Denga (=Dinka tribe?) were brought as curiosities to Egypt. Bēs was often figured as dancing with a tambourine; he was the god of the dance, and protected infants from evil and witchcraft; hence he appears on the imposts of the capitals of the birth-house at Dendereh. The animal whose skin he wears is the cynaelurus guttatus, whose name is bes. Possibly Bastet, the feline goddess, was originally a female form of Bēs.
Dedun was a Nubian god, who appears to have been a creative earth-god. He was unified with Ptah, and is often named in the nineteenth dynasty.