Sun God

Sobek’s solar associations illuminate his role as a force of life and creation and renewal. From the Middle Kingdom onward, he was increasingly intertwined with the sun and merged with other solar gods (mainly Ra and Horus). Sobek Ra may be his most powerful and well-known syncretization, a fusion that elevated the crocodile deity to celestial status.

It is theorized that the crocodile’s association with the sun may have begun with their morning habit of emerging from the waters and basking, and return to the water (the Underworld) as the sun set. By the time of the Middle Kingdom, we see a hymn from the Papyrus Ramesseum VI invoke him as “who arises from the Nun, the great light maker, who comes forth from the flood water”, his emergence from the water mirroring the sun’s daily rising.

Sobek Ra ascended to power and became prominent during the New Kingdom, “Sobek Ra, living sun, crocodile of the lake, shine upon us with your rays” (prayer from Tebtunis), and he is the sun incarnate. In Kom Ombo, he is crowned with the sun’s emblem in reliefs, and in a painting from the Fayum he is depicted with an oval solar disk with a uraeus on his head, surrounded by a pale pink nimbus with six rays. By the Ptolemaic period, his status as a sun god was deeply embedded, he “rises in the East and sets in the West”. His attributes regularly include a solar disk on his crown. His title “Lord of Bakhu” links him to the horizon, Bakhu is a mythical mountain sitting in the East where the sun rises.

Sobek’s solar association was customarily celebrated in cult practices, emphasizing renewal and light. Sobek as a sun god is one of celestial, kingly power and cyclical regeneration.