Egyptian gods and their Greek names: Herodotus's equivalence table, sentence by sentence
The table of Egyptian–Greek equivalences as the ancient witnesses made them — Amun as Zeus, Osiris as Dionysus, Isis as Demeter, Horus as Apollo, Bubastis as Artemis, the goddess of Sais as Athena, Buto as Leto, Mendes as Pan, Papremis as Ares, Ptah as Hephaestus, Set as Typhon, Thoth as Hermes, Serapis as Pluto — each row bound to the passage of Herodotus, Plutarch or Budge that states it.
Why this wins its question: Equivalence tables online are anonymous. This one gives the sentence that made each equivalence, and marks the rows where the ancient witness named a town rather than an Egyptian god.
Key takeaways
- Herodotus's table — Amun = Zeus, Osiris = Dionysus, Isis = Demeter, Horus = Apollo, Bubastis = Artemis, Sais's goddess = Athena, Buto = Leto, Mendes = Pan, Papremis = Ares, Memphis's god = Hephaestus — is a set of sentences in Book 2, each with a section number.
- Herodotus often gives the Greek name and the town but not the Egyptian name; Neith, Wadjet, Ptah are modern completions.
- Plutarch supplies Set for Typhon (Plut. Is. 62), Hermes for Thoth (Plut. Is. 3, 12, 19) and Serapis for Pluto (Plut. Is. 27–28).
- Every cross-pantheon `equivalent_of` between Egyptian and Greek objects in this corpus traces to one of these rows.
Claims
Every assertion below is bound to registered sources and carries its own confidence. Weight them; do not treat the page as uniformly authoritative.
Amun = Zeus. "The Egyptians call Zeus 'Amon'" (Hdt. 2.42.5); the "temple of Zeus of Thebes" sacrifices goats and not sheep, and the god's images have a ram's head because Zeus showed himself to Heracles in a ram's fleece (Hdt. 2.42.1–4). The oracle of Ammon in Libya "is sacred to Zeus" (Hdt. 2.55.3).
Osiris = Dionysus. "Isis and Osiris, who they say is Dionysus" (Hdt. 2.42.2); "Osiris is, in the Greek language, Dionysus" (Hdt. 2.144.2). Plutarch gives the reason: Osiris civilised the world "by the charm of his persuasive discourse combined with song and all manner of music. Hence the Greeks came to identify him with Dionysus" (Plut. Is. 13).
Isis = Demeter, and more. "A very great temple of Isis, who is Demeter in the Greek language" (Hdt. 2.59.2); "Demeter [is] Isis" (Hdt. 2.156.5). Plutarch adds two other Greek names: "Persephone is Isis" in the Serapis cult (Plut. Is. 27), and the Egyptians "oftentimes call Isis by the name of Athena" (Plut. Is. 62).
Horus = Apollo. "Osiris' son Horus, whom the Greeks call Apollo" (Hdt. 2.144.2); "in Egyptian, Apollo is Horus" (Hdt. 2.156.5), where Apollo and Artemis are "children of Dionysus and Isis" hidden by Leto from Typhon. Plutarch distinguishes "Arueris … whom they call Apollo, and some call him also the elder Horus" (Plut. Is. 12).
Bubastis (Bastet) = Artemis. The greatest festival is "in honor of Artemis at the town of Bubastis" (Hdt. 2.59.1); "Artemis [is] Bubastis" (Hdt. 2.156.5); dead cats go "to sacred buildings in the town of Bubastis, where they are embalmed and buried" (Hdt. 2.67.1).
The goddess of Sais = Athena. Herodotus speaks of "the sacred treasures of Athena in the Egyptian city of Saïs" (Hdt. 2.28.1), the festival "at Saïs in honor of Athena" (Hdt. 2.59.3), and the royal burial "in the temple of Athena" at Sais (Hdt. 2.170.1). He never gives her Egyptian name; the identification with Neith is modern and is stated in the body, not here.
Buto = Leto, Mendes = Pan, Papremis = Ares. The oracle at Buto "is sacred to Leto", "one of the eight gods who first came to be" (Hdt. 2.155.1–2, 2.156.4); "in the Egyptian language Mendes is the name both for the he-goat and for Pan", reckoned "among the eight gods who … were before the twelve" (Hdt. 2.46.1, 2.46.4); at Papremis the festival is "of Ares", whose worshippers fight with clubs (Hdt. 2.59.3, 2.63.1–4). For all three Herodotus gives the Greek name and the town, not the Egyptian name.
Ptah = Hephaestus. Herodotus takes his Egyptian history from "the priests of Hephaestus' temple at Memphis" (Hdt. 2.2.5, 2.3.1) and dates the kings by their additions to "the temple of Hephaestus" (Hdt. 2.101.2, 2.121.1, 2.136.1); Budge names the Memphite creator "Ptah" (Budge Lit. ch. VI). Herodotus never writes the name Ptah.
Set = Typhon. Herodotus: Horus "deposed Typhon" (Hdt. 2.144.2); Typhon "came hunting through the world, keen to find the son of Osiris" (Hdt. 2.156.4). Plutarch's villain is Typhon throughout (Plut. Is. 13–19) and he supplies the Egyptian name: "Typhon, as has been said, is named Seth and Bebon and Smu" (Plut. Is. 62). Budge's texts call him Set, "the god of evil" (Budge Lit. ch. I).
Thoth = Hermes, on Plutarch's authority. Plutarch's "Hermes" invents "grammar and music", and "the first of the Muses at Hermopolis" is Isis (Plut. Is. 3); Hermes wins the five days from the moon at draughts (Plut. Is. 12) and pleads for Horus before the gods (Plut. Is. 19). Budge's Thoth is the inventor of writing, "the scribe of the gods", and the Hermopolitans' creator (Budge Lit. ch. I, ch. VI) — the same god under the two names.
Serapis = Pluto, a Ptolemaic identification: "men assert that Pluto is none other than Serapis and that Persephonê is Isis" (Plut. Is. 27); Ptolemy Soter's dream-statue from Sinope was judged to be Pluto "basing their conjecture on the Cerberus and the serpent with it", and took "the name which Pluto bears among the Egyptians, that of Serapis" (Plut. Is. 28). Pausanias saw Serapis's sanctuary in Athens, "whose worship the Athenians introduced from Ptolemy" (Paus. 1.18.4).
Anubis has no single Greek name: Plutarch compares his double nature to "that which Hecatê is thought to possess among the Greeks, for Anubis is a deity of the lower world as well as a god of Olympus", and adds that "some are of the opinion that Anubis is Cronus" (Plut. Is. 44).
Egyptian gods and their Greek names
When Herodotus visited Egypt in the fifth century BC he did what every Greek traveller did: he called the local gods by the names of the Greek gods he took them to be. Because he wrote it down with towns, festivals and reasons, his second book is the oldest equivalence table there is. Plutarch, six centuries later, added rows and sometimes the Egyptian names. Here is the table with the witness for each row.
The table
| Egyptian god (modern name) | Herodotus's / Plutarch's name | Greek god | Passage | What the witness actually wrote |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Amun | "Amon", Zeus of Thebes | Zeus | Hdt. 2.42.5; 2.42.1–4 | "the Egyptians call Zeus 'Amon'" |
| Osiris | Osiris | Dionysus | Hdt. 2.42.2; 2.144.2; Plut. Is. 13 | "Osiris is, in the Greek language, Dionysus" |
| Isis | Isis | Demeter (Hdt.); Persephone, Athena (Plut.) | Hdt. 2.59.2; 2.156.5; Plut. Is. 27, 62 | "Isis, who is Demeter in the Greek language" |
| Horus | Horus | Apollo | Hdt. 2.144.2; 2.156.5; Plut. Is. 12 | "Horus, whom the Greeks call Apollo" |
| Bastet | Bubastis | Artemis | Hdt. 2.59.1; 2.156.5; 2.67.1 | "Artemis Bubastis" |
| Neith (modern) | "Athena" of Sais | Athena | Hdt. 2.28.1; 2.59.3; 2.170.1 | the town only; no Egyptian name |
| Wadjet (modern) | "Leto" of Buto | Leto | Hdt. 2.155.1–2; 2.156.4 | the town only; "one of the eight gods" |
| Banebdjedet (modern) | Mendes | Pan | Hdt. 2.46.1, 2.46.4 | "Mendes is the name both for the he-goat and for Pan" |
| (unknown) | "Ares" of Papremis | Ares | Hdt. 2.59.3; 2.63.1–4 | the town and the club-fight only |
| Ptah | "Hephaestus" of Memphis | Hephaestus | Hdt. 2.3.1; 2.101.2; Budge Lit. ch. VI | the temple only; Budge supplies "Ptah" |
| Set | Typhon | Typhon | Hdt. 2.144.2; Plut. Is. 13, 62 | "Typhon … is named Seth and Bebon and Smu" |
| Thoth | Hermes | Hermes | Plut. Is. 3, 12, 19; Budge Lit. ch. I, VI | Hermes of Hermopolis, inventor of letters |
| Osiris-Apis (Serapis) | Serapis | Pluto (Hades) | Plut. Is. 27–28; Paus. 1.18.4 | "Pluto is none other than Serapis" |
| Anubis | Anubis | (like Hecate; "some say Cronus") | Plut. Is. 44 | no fixed Greek name |
| Nephthys | Nephthys | "Finality" | Plut. Is. 38 | a translation, not a Greek god |
What Herodotus was doing
He was not translating. He believed the names had travelled: "the names of nearly all the gods came to Greece from Egypt", with a short list of exceptions (Hdt. 2.50.1–2), and that the Egyptians "first used the names of twelve gods (which the Greeks afterwards borrowed from them)" (Hdt. 2.4.2). So for him "Amon" and "Zeus" were the same god under his Egyptian and Greek names, not two gods compared. That is why the rows read as identities and not as analogies, and why the modern term for the practice — interpretatio graeca — is a description of Herodotus's habit before it is a theory.
The rows that are towns
For Sais, Buto, Mendes and Papremis, Herodotus gives the Greek god and the town where the festival is held (Hdt. 2.59.1–3) and nothing else. The Egyptian names in the first column of those rows — Neith, Wadjet, Banebdjedet — are modern completions from the Egyptian evidence for those towns; they are given here for orientation and are not claims of this corpus, because none of the ancient witnesses read here writes them. The same holds for Ptah, whom Herodotus knows only as the Hephaestus of Memphis; the Egyptian name comes from Budge.
The rows that are Plutarch's
Herodotus never names Set; his Typhon is simply the god Horus deposed (Hdt. 2.144.2). Plutarch, who tells the whole story with Typhon as the villain (Plut. Is. 13–19), is the one who writes "Seth" (Plut. Is. 62). Thoth likewise appears in Plutarch only as Hermes — but at Hermopolis, as inventor of grammar, playing draughts with the moon, pleading before the gods (Plut. Is. 3, 12, 19) — every trait Budge's texts give to Thoth (Budge Lit. ch. I). Serapis is a late, Ptolemaic case: a Greek-looking Pluto with Cerberus, imported to Alexandria and given "the name which Pluto bears among the Egyptians" (Plut. Is. 28).
How to use the table
An agent asked "what did the Greeks call Amun?" should answer "Zeus — Herodotus 2.42.5" and stop. An agent asked "is Isis Demeter?" should answer "for Herodotus, yes (2.59.2); Plutarch also calls her Persephone and Athena (Plut. Is. 27, 62)". The table is a set of statements by named witnesses, and it is only as good as the sentence behind each row.