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Ra (sometimes spelled Re) is the
sun-god of Heliopolis in ancient
Egypt. Ra originally meant "mouth"
in the Egyptian language, and was
a reference to his creation of the
deities of the Ogdoad
system, excluding the 8 concepts
which created him, by the power
of speech (compare how Yahweh was
said to have created the world).
In later Egyptian dynastic times,
Ra was subsumed into the god Horus,
as Re-Horakhty (and many variant
spellings).The sun is either the
entire body of Ra, or just his eye.
The symbols of Ra are the solar
symbols of a golden disk or the
symbol 
(circle with a point at its centre).
He was also associated with the
Phoenix, as he rose again each night
in flames.
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Deity Status
From the fifth dynasty (ca. 2400 BC) onward
he was elevated to the status of a national
deity, and much later was combined with
the Theban god Amun
to become Amun-Ra, the foremost deity
of the Egyptian pantheon. In later times,
when the earth god Atum
evolved into a god of the setting sun,
Atum became considered
an aspect of Ra. Khepri,
the less important god who pushed the
sun across the sky each day, eventually
was also absorbed into Ra, as the centuries
wore on, becoming the aspect of Ra that
is the rising sun. Also in later times,
Ra was associated with Heryshaf.
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Eventually, as another sun-god,
Horus, gained
more importance, Ra himself was
subsumed into just being an aspect
of Horus,
as Re-Harakhty, which means Ra,
Horus of
the two horizons.
Amon-Ra's identity with Zeus or
Jupiter was acknowledged by the
Greeks and Romans. The Greeks even
gave the name Diospolis, City of
Zeus, to Thebes. He remained paramount
for centuries except for a brief
suspension during the time of Akhenaten
(1350-1334 BC) when monotheistic
worship of Aten,
the sun disk itself, was imposed
on the kingdom of Egypt. He also
was worshiped along with Queenstephofk
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Solar Barge
In order to pass through Duat (the underworld)
each night, so that he might rise in the morning, the fiery
Ra was compelled to use a boat to avoid being extinguished
by the waters. It was Maat, i.e. order, the antithesis of
chaos, that guided the course of the boat. At the helm of
the boat stood Thoth, representative of the moon, who symbolically
stood next to Horus, who, in early egyptian myth, represented
the sky, and whose dark eye was the moon. It was Horus who
steered.
Many of the other gods travelled in the boat with them, and
one of them, possibly with the assistant
Mehen (who may
instead simply be nothing more than a
boardgame), defended the boat from attack
by the monster of darkness, who wished
to devour Ra.
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In early mythology, it was Set
who was the hero defending the boat,
and Apep
who was the attacker, but in later
myth, after Set became regarded
as evil, it was Thoth
who defended and Set who was the
demon. Temporary failure to protect
Ra was said to be the cause of solar
eclipses, and mere difficulty in
doing so was said to cause bad weather.
Hathor and Ra
In a varying myth, Hathor and Ra
(or Tefnut
and Shu) once
argued, and she left Egypt. Ra (or
Shu) quickly
decided he missed her, but she changed
into a cat that destroyed any man
or god that approached. Thoth,
disguised, eventually succeeds in
convincing her to return.
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Gods
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