The cult of the sun in Ancient Egypt

Egyptology studies first started after Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, when Jean François Champollion solved the trilingual Rosetta stone. Following this, Egyptology chairs were established in Germany, England and America, and great progress was made in research on Ancient Egyptian language and archeology in this period. The first study on Egyptology in Turkey can be accepted as Mehmet Muhsin's Hieroglyphic Alphabet and Translation in 1893. Around this time, Egyptology books were translated into Turkish, especially with translations from French, in the Republican period. Since the beginning of the 2000s, Turkish academy has started to take an interest in this field, and textbooks, translated works and postgraduate theses have begun to be written about Ancient Egypt. However, most of the works prepared in the field are on the religion of Ancient Egypt. Considering these issues, very few studies have been made about the chief and secondary gods, especially the Solar Deity Ra, in the world and in our country, and these studies have remained only at the level of articles. The subject of this study; The Sun gods, the most important element of the ancient Egyptian religion, constitute literary texts and symbols of the Solar Deity Ra. The study is based on the translation of Eric Hornung's Altaagyptische Jenseitsbücher on tomb texts and Heiko Owsu's Symbole Agyptens on the symbols of the Solar deities. The study has been prepared by referring to translated works and secondary sources, as it is not possible to read the texts on tombs, temple inscriptions, papyrus and votive steles, which are the main sources of Egyptology, because Egyptology has not yet received the necessary attention and infrastructure in Turkey. Keywords: Solar Deity, Egypt, Literary Texts, Ra, Aton.