Sobek was venerated from at least Old Kingdom times, and while the name of the god means simply ‘crocodile’, he was regarded as a powerful deit-with several important associations. In the Pyramid Texts he is said to be the son of Neith and called the ‘raging one’ who ‘takes women from their husbands whenever he wishes according to his desire’ but who also makes green the herbage of the fields and river banks (PT 507-10) - tying him to both procreative and vegetative fertility. He was.
Raised relief of the god Sobek - the most undely worshipped of Egypt’s crocodile deities - from the joint temple of Horus the Elder and Sobek at Kom Ornbo. Graeco-Roman Period.
.uite naturally, a god of water (it was said that the Nile issued from his sweat) and of areas such as narshes and riverbanks, wherever crocodiles were mmonly found. Sobek was also said to be ‘Lord Bakhu', the mythological mountain of the hori-'H where it was asserted he had a temple made of urnelian. He was linked with the cults of certain
Other gods, such as Amun, Osiris and especially that of the sun god in the form of Sobek-Re. This association with the sun god led to his being identified by the Greeks with their own god Helios. Sobek was also associated with the Egyptian king and could act as a symbol of pharaonic potency and might.
Cult image of Sohek m fully zoomorphic form. 12th dynasty. Museum of Egyptian Art, Munich.
World History
