The Easel

Archives: William Van Meter

28th October 2025

Meet the Gods and Goddesses in the Met’s ‘Divine Egypt’

A major New York show spotlights Egyptian deities that carry stories just as wonderful as Tut or Cleopatra. Amun-Re, king of the gods, governed creation, life and re-birth. Falcon-headed Horus was god of the sky. The sky goddess Nut swallowed the sun each night and gave birth to it each dawn. And then there was Osiris, the chief god of the underworld. His domain wasn’t really about death, but about transition to the afterlife, about: “overcoming death [and] living forever”.