The first thing you need to know about Egyptian mythology is: no, aliens did not build the pyramids. Please stop taking the TV show Ancient Aliens seriously. And please stop jokingly asking every anthropologist or archaeologist you meet if aliens built different monuments. They will say no and then walk away before you raise their blood pressure further. It’s not funny or original. The second thing you need to know is that the civilization of Ancient Egypt spanned nearly 3,000 years, from about 3100 BCE to 332 BCE (depending on who you ask). That’s a lot of history, and a lot of mythology. For reference, there is less time between Cleopatra and the first iPhone (2,049 years) than there is between Cleopatra and the building of the pyramids (2,421 years). Wilkinson presents all of this in very clear, simple, and jargon-free prose that should be perfectly comprehensible to any layperson. It’s extremely newbie-friendly.

O'Rourke, Paul F. (2001). "Drama". In Redford, Donald B. (ed.). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt. Vol.1. Oxford University Press. pp.407–410. ISBN 978-0-19-510234-5.

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Baines, John (April 1991). "Egyptian Myth and Discourse: Myth, Gods, and the Early Written and Iconographic Record". Journal of Near Eastern Studies. 50 (2): 81–105. doi: 10.1086/373483. JSTOR 545669. S2CID 162233011. Anthes, Rudolf (1961). "Mythology in Ancient Egypt". In Kramer, Samuel Noah (ed.). Mythologies of the Ancient World. Anchor Books. pp.16–92. The Egyptians also performed rituals for personal goals such as protection from or healing of illness. These rituals are often called "magical" rather than religious, but they were believed to work on the same principles as temple ceremonies, evoking mythical events as the basis for the ritual. [48] This book analyzes hundreds of gods and goddesses that helped to make Egypt the most theocratic society in ancient history, according to their evolution, worship, and final demise. The deities range from household names like Bes and Taweret to supreme beings like Amun and Re. There are so many books available on ancient Egyptian mythology and religion, especially introductions written for beginners, that it can sometimes seem that they’re more numerous than grains of sand in the Egyptian desert. Trying to sift through them all to determine which ones are the most worthy of spending your hard-earned money on can be a daunting task. In the hopes of helping people to skip over the bad, mediocre, unreliable, or outdated books on the subject and get right to the good stuff, I’ve compiled this list of the 10 best books on ancient Egyptian mythology and religion (last updated April 2015).

If you’re already familiar with the seemingly bizarre and fantastic gods and goddesses worshiped by the ancient Egyptians and want to understand how the ancient Egyptians themselves viewed divinity as such, or if you’re coming to the study of ancient Egyptian religion from a chiefly theological perspective from the outset, then this is the book to read.Each article in The Ancient Gods Speak is written by an expert on that particular aspect of ancient Egyptian mythology and religion. Covered topics range from gods and goddesses to concepts (“afterlife,” “akh,” “paradise,” etc.) to elements of religious practice – in short, virtually the whole scope of the field. The fertile lands of the Nile Valley ( Upper Egypt) and Delta ( Lower Egypt) lie at the center of the world in Egyptian cosmology. Outside them are the infertile deserts, which are associated with the chaos that lies beyond the world. [58] Somewhere beyond them is the horizon, the akhet. There, two mountains, in the east and the west, mark the places where the sun enters and exits the Duat. [59] Quirke, Stephen (2001). The Cult of Ra: Sun Worship in Ancient Egypt. Thames and Hudson. ISBN 0-500-05107-0.