Deity

Ptah

Egyptian · Ptah of Memphis

Egyptiancreator

The creator-craftsman of Memphis, who made the world by the thought of his heart and the word of his tongue.

Ptah is the creator-god of Memphis, patron of craftsmen, sculptors, and builders, and himself the great artificer who fashioned the world. The remarkable 'Memphite Theology' teaches that he created all things not with his hands but by mind and speech — conceiving each thing in his heart, the seat of thought, and calling it into being by the utterance of his tongue.

This doctrine of creation by the creative word made Ptah strikingly close to the Greek Logos and to the Demiurge of Plato's Timaeus, the divine craftsman who shapes the cosmos by a rational plan. The Greeks accordingly identified Ptah with Hephaestus, their own god of the forge and of making.

See also

Open this entry in the reader · every entry