Egyptian goddesses are also creator deities, and the protectors of the pharaohs in the form of the cobra, vulture, or linoness. In ancient Egyptian mythology, Egypt was created from the Watery Waste of Nun, a chaos god from whose body all things were born. The continuous mission of the daily temple services and strictly followed religious codes was to keep ordered Egyptian society from returning to the state of chaos in which it was born. Ma'at, the goddess in charge of law, balance and order, was one of the principal deities. The cobra and the vulture were chosen by the Egyptians as the royal symbols because they were thought to be self-producing and therefore creators, or divine.
Egyptian mythology is something of a tangled web.
This is partly because the culture is so ancient, and partly because each city had its own set of deities, whose personalities often merge as their cults age. Just as, before unification, each city vied for supreme power, the cities each tried to establish their gods as supreme. Even after unification, each time the capital moved, the supreme god of the new city rose to be the supreme god of the nation. Below, a table listing some of the many gods and goddesses of Egyptian mythology. The deities are listed as closely as possible to the order of their appearance in the myths, from oldest to newest.