Ra & the Sun
The sun as the supreme god of the solar tradition, dying into the underworld each night and reborn each dawn.
Also: Ra · Re · Pre · sun god · Atum-Ra · Amun-Ra · Amun-Re
Egyptians regarded the sun, the god Ra (or Re), as a great creator and the engine of the world's renewal — supreme above all within the solar tradition centered on Heliopolis, though Egyptian theology was polycentric and other cities exalted other creators. Each day he crossed the sky in his barque; each night he travelled through the underworld, battling chaos, to be reborn at dawn. From the Old Kingdom on, Ra was fused with other gods — most famously Amun-Ra of Thebes — making the sun a hub of Egyptian theology for millennia.
In short
The sun god Ra (Re) of Heliopolis, in the solar/Heliopolitan tradition the supreme creator and sustainer, whose daily and nightly journey across sky and underworld renews the cosmos.
Where it’s found
Pyramid Texts; Heliopolitan solar tradition; New Kingdom solar hymns and Netherworld Books
Read it in the Egyptian texts
The passages in our corpus where this idea is discussed — each opens in our reader with the Egyptian transliteration and the English translation side by side.
How the idea developed across Egypt
Solar theology is prominent from the Old Kingdom (the king as 'Son of Ra' by Dyn. V; the Heliopolitan priesthood); fused into 'Amun-Ra' in the New Kingdom; pushed to a near-exclusive solar focus under Akhenaten's Aten; elaborated in New Kingdom Netherworld Books (Amduat, Book of Gates).
Ra is treated here as a theological/cosmological concept (the sun and its god), not as a person; the deity is never in the sage roster. 'Supreme creator' is scoped to the solar/Heliopolitan tradition — Egyptian theology is polycentric (Memphis exalted Ptah, Thebes Amun, etc.).