Sun gods

Helios, in Britannica’s summary, drove a chariot from east to west every day and sailed back round the stream of Ocean each night in a huge cup; the Homeric Hymn to Helios says that “piercingly he gazes with his eyes from his golden helmet”. Rhodes made him its chief god from at least the early fifth century BCE. From the same century Apollo was more and more read as a sun god, and under the Roman Empire the sun was worshipped as the Unconquered Sun.

Egypt’s sun travelled by water. E. A. Wallis Budge explains that the Egyptians believed the sun passed the first half of its course in one boat and the second half in another, the morning boat Matet, “becoming strong”, and the evening boat Semktet, “becoming weak”. Re (Ra) was joined at Heliopolis to the older creator Atum, Bram writes, and under Amenhotep III the disc of the sun itself, the Aton, began to be worshipped as a symbol. The sun was also “the eye of Re”: see the Eye of Ra and the winged sun disk. Ra’s own page is Ra.

Shamash, called Utu in Sumerian, came out of his underground chamber each morning, Ruth Horry writes for the Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses project, and since he saw everything that happened by day he became the god of truth and justice. According to legend Hammurabi received his laws from him, and at night he judged the underworld (Britannica). Bram adds that he was invoked to heal the sick, free captives and help women in labour.

Surya has ten hymns of the Rigveda, Bram writes, where he “seems to represent the actual disk of the sun”. Only the small Saura sect worships him as the supreme god, but the Puranas tell that the gods’ weapons were forged from pieces trimmed from him, because his full light was too bright to bear (Britannica).

The Aztecs saw Tonatiuh, sun of the fifth and present era, as a god always under threat: born each sunrise, dying each sunset, labouring across the sky in between (Britannica). He is the face at the centre of the Aztec sun stone. Bram distinguishes him as the physical disc of the sun from Huitzilopochtli, the sun god who led the Aztecs by day on their migration.