Thoth
The Egyptian god of writing, wisdom and the moon, drawn with the head of an ibis, often holding a scribe’s palette and pen, or shown as an ibis or a baboon. The Greeks identified him with Hermes.
Meaning
Thoth, Tehuti in Budge’s spelling, was the scribe of the gods, the judge in heaven who gave speech and writing, and a moon god (Erman, 1907). Budge (1904) lists his titles: lord of Khemennu, “self-created”, “he who reckons in heaven, the counter of the stars”, “lord of books” and “scribe of the gods”. Artists usually drew him as a man with an ibis’s head, often holding a scribe’s palette and a pen, with the moon on his head as a crescent and a full disc (Global Egyptian Museum). He also appears as an ibis, and often as a baboon. His chief city was Khemennu, which the Greeks called Hermopolis; two huge baboons set up there by Amenhotep III are still standing. In the judgement of the dead in the Book of the Dead, where the heart is weighed against Maat, Thoth writes down the result, and he wrote the king’s names on the leaves of the persea tree.
Origin and history
Thoth stands beside the sun god. The hymns to Ra in the Book of the Dead, Budge writes, place Thoth and Maat one on each side of the god in his boat. In a legend Erman translates, Ra, going down to give light to the dead, tells Thoth, “Be thou in heaven in my place”, and makes him “the representative of Re”: the moon. Erman explains the moon god’s other offices from this. The moon regulated time, so its god kept all reckonings and records.
In the myths he is the gods’ arbiter and the one whose words work. Budge calls him the arbiter in the fights between the gods of light and of darkness, and says that when Horus, fighting Set to avenge his father, cut off his mother’s head, Thoth gave Isis a cow’s head in its place. He also taught Isis the words that let her revive the dead body of Osiris. Greek writers told stories of him too. Plato’s Socrates says there was an Egyptian god at Naucratis “whose sacred bird is called the ibis”, named Theuth, who invented numbers, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, draughts and dice and, “most important of all, letters”. Plutarch tells how Hermes, whom Budge glosses as Thoth, played draughts with the moon and won enough of her light to add five days to the year (the story is on the Nut page).
Why is Thoth an ibis?
The ibis was his sacred bird, and Budge (1904) thought his name came from the oldest Egyptian name for the ibis. The Greek writer Horapollo, Budge notes, says the Egyptians drew an ibis to write “heart”, because the bird was dedicated to Hermes, lord of all knowledge and understanding. Plutarch saw the moon in the bird: the mix of black and white in its feathers, he wrote, pictures the moon in its first quarter. Herodotus says ibises were taken “to the city of Hermes” for burial, and the Global Egyptian Museum records thousands of ibis mummies in the galleries near Hermopolis and ibis cemeteries all over Egypt.
The baboon
His other common form is the dog-headed ape, the baboon. In the judgement scene of the Book of the Dead, Budge writes, the ape sits on top of the balance in which the heart is weighed, watches the pointer, and tells the ibis-headed Thoth when the beam is level. The ape often wears the moon’s crescent and disc, and Budge cites a scene where it holds Thoth’s palette and writing reeds.
Thoth and Hermes
The Greeks identified Thoth with their messenger god Hermes, and his city took the name Hermopolis from it (Global Egyptian Museum). When that began is less clear. The museum’s entry on Thoth dates the association to the Ptolemaic period, yet Herodotus already calls the city where ibises were buried “the city of Hermes”. Budge traces the Greek epithet Trismegistos to Egyptian titles that call Thoth “twice great” and “thrice great”.
Read next
- Next in Egyptian gods and their symbolsMa’atThe Egyptian goddess of truth, justice and the right order of the world, drawn as a woman with a single ostrich feather upright on her head. The feather alone could stand for her.
- The Greeks identified Thoth with Hermes and named his city Hermopolis (Global Egyptian Museum; Herodotus)HermesThe Greek messenger god, herald of Zeus and guide of the dead to the underworld. Greek artists give him a broad-brimmed traveller’s hat, winged sandals and a herald’s staff, the kerykeion, which the Romans called the caduceus.
See also
Osiris, Isis, Horus, Set, Anubis, Geb.
Sources
- The Gods of the Egyptians, Volume I, E. A. Wallis Budge, 1904, Methuen, London (Internet Archive), ch. XIII, pp. 400–415
- A Handbook of Egyptian Religion, Adolf Erman, translated by A. S. Griffith, 1907, Archibald Constable, London (Internet Archive), pp. 11–12, 31
- Thoth, Global Egyptian Museum glossary, The Global Egyptian Museum, entry
- Hermopolis, Global Egyptian Museum glossary, The Global Egyptian Museum, entry
- Herodotus, Histories 2.67, Herodotus, The Histories, translated by A. D. Godley (Loeb Classical Library, 1920), Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, Book 2, chapter 67
- Plato, Phaedrus, Plato in Twelve Volumes, vol. 9, translated by Harold N. Fowler (1925), Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, 274c–275b
- Isis and Osiris, Plutarch, Moralia vol. V, translated by Frank Cole Babbitt (Loeb Classical Library, 1936), LacusCurtius (Bill Thayer, University of Chicago), section 12
- The Gods of the Egyptians, Volume II, E. A. Wallis Budge, 1904, Methuen, London (Internet Archive), ch. VI (Osiris), summary of Plutarch
- Isis and Osiris, sections 50–80, Plutarch, Moralia vol. V, translated by Frank Cole Babbitt (Loeb Classical Library, 1936), LacusCurtius (Bill Thayer, University of Chicago), section 75
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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