Sokar

Sokar is the falcon god of the necropolis of Memphis, lord of the silent depths of the underworld, later fused with Ptah and Osiris. Patron of craftsmen and of the dead, he embodies the dark, motionless interval of death before new life stirs.

Sokar is one of Egypt's oldest gods: the Palermo Stone, which preserves the annals of the earliest kings, records a festival of Sokar every six years from the First Dynasty. He was worshipped in the great cemetery of Memphis, whose modern name, Saqqara, is often linked with his, and as lord of Rosetau, the gateway to the underworld. He appears as a mummified falcon or a falcon-headed man, and through his closeness to Ptah, the craftsman god of Memphis, he became a patron of metalworkers and artisans.

In the New Kingdom Book of the Amduat, the fourth and fifth hours of the night are the land of Sokar, 'who is upon his sand'. The region is a waterless desert where the sun boat cannot sail: it turns into a serpent and must be dragged across the sand. At its heart lies his hidden cavern, the Shetyt, guarded by the double sphinx Aker, where Sokar holds up the wings of a great serpent, an image of the sun's renewal, while nearby the damned are punished in a lake of fire.

His great festival, one of the chief funerary celebrations of Egypt, fell on the 26th day of Khoiak, at the end of the flood season. His barque, the Henu, with a prow shaped like an oryx head and the falcon head of the god rising from its shrine, was carried in procession around the walls of Memphis, and the reliefs of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu show the ceremony. From the Middle Kingdom onward Sokar was increasingly merged with Osiris, whose mysteries absorbed the festival, and as Ptah-Sokar-Osiris he bound together the craftsman's making, the stillness of the grave and the promise of resurrection. Wooden statuettes of this triple god became common grave goods in the Late Period.