The leader of a triad of gods venerated at Memphis was Ptah. The lion-headed goddess Sekhmet, Ptah’s wife, and the god Nefertem, who might have been the couple’s son, made up the other two members of the triad.
The craftsmen and builders appear to have been Ptah’s first connections. Imhotep, an architect from the fourth dynasty and a son of Ptah, was made god after his passing.
According to some scholars, the Greek word Aiguptos, which is the origin of the name Egypt, may have originated as a misspelling of the name of one of Ptah’s sanctuaries, Hwt-Ka-Ptah.
The creator who spoke the world into being
Ptah was the god of Memphis, Egypt’s first capital. According to a text known as the Memphite Theology, preserved on the Shabaka Stone (now in the British Museum), Ptah created the world by thinking it in his heart and speaking it with his tongue, making him one of the earliest “creation by the word” gods. He was also the patron of craftsmen, sculptors and builders, which made him popular with the artisans who decorated temples and royal tombs.
Appearance and the Apis bull
Ptah is shown as a man wrapped like a mummy, with a close-fitting skullcap and a straight beard, holding a sceptre that combines the was, ankh and djed signs: power, life and stability. His living image on earth was the Apis bull, kept in a temple at Memphis. When an Apis died it was mummified and buried in the Serapeum at Saqqara, a gallery of huge granite sarcophagi that can still be visited.
Where to see Ptah
Little remains of his great temple at Memphis, but the open-air museum there holds a colossal statue of Ramesses II and an alabaster sphinx; visit Memphis and Saqqara on our Saqqara and Memphis tour from Cairo. At Abu Simbel, Ptah sits in the sanctuary beside Amun-Re, Re-Horakhty and Ramesses II; during the sun alignment the light reaches the other three statues while Ptah, a god linked with the underworld, stays in shadow. A small Temple of Ptah also stands within Karnak.
Quick facts
- Domain: creation, crafts, building
- Symbols: mummiform body, skullcap, was-ankh-djed sceptre, Apis bull
- Cult centre: Memphis
- Related deities: Sekhmet (wife), Nefertem (son), Imhotep (deified architect)
More gods in our guide to ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses.