Sheps
"wealth," the 7th of the fourteen doubles of Ra
Identified
Group: the fourteen doubles (kau) of Ra [budge-1904]. Budge is setting out the parts of a being — body, heart, shadow, name, soul — and notes that a god "might possess several souls and doubles," and that the souls of Ra were seven in number, and his doubles fourteen.
Each double is a named quality, and Budge translates all fourteen:
1. Heq "intelligence" · 2. Nekht "strength" · 3. Khu "splendour" · 4. Usr "power" · 5. Uatch "vigour" · 6. Tchefa "abundance" · 7. Sheps "wealth" · 8. Senem "interment" · 9. Sept "provision" · 10. Tet "stability" · 11. Maa "sight" · 12. Setem "hearing" · 13. Sa "intelligence" · 14. Hu "taste"
Sheps is number 7 — "wealth."
Why this matters more than a roster usually does
Two of the fourteen already have full entries in this corpus as gods in their own right. Number 13 is Sa (sia), perception personified. Number 14 is Hu (hu), the creative utterance — the pair who stand in the solar boat and through whom, in the Heliopolitan account, the world is spoken into being.
Here they are items 13 and 14 on a list of one god's attributes.
So the same names are, depending on the passage, independent deities of the first rank and components of Ra. The corpus does not resolve that — it is the central ambiguity of Egyptian theology and not a transcription problem. But it does mean this roster is not a bin of minor names: it is a list in which two entries are major gods, which is the same lesson the First Division's singing goddesses taught (C427).
And it is a warning about the rest. Nekht is "strength," Maa is "sight," Setem is "hearing." These are ordinary nouns. A census that harvests names from such a list will produce gods called Strength and Hearing — see the epithet trap. Sheps is a real name in a real text, and it is also just the word for wealth.
Under the companies rule (C246) this is a pointer rather than an entry.
The record
Every claim above traces to a row here. Source, exact place in that source, and what it actually supports.
| Source | Locus | Attests |
|---|---|---|
[budge-1904] | *Gods of the Egyptians* II, on the parts of a being, **p. 300** | the **fourteen doubles of Ra**, each a named quality, with **Sheps** as no. 7, "wealth" |
[budge-1904] | *ibid.*, index | "**Tchefa, ka of Ra, ii. 300**" — **Budge indexes these as kas, not as gods** |
[budge-1904] | *ibid.* | "**the souls of Ra were seven in number, and his doubles fourteen**" |
Sources
[budge-1904]— Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (1904), vol. II. Public domain, archived. He indexes the list under "ka of Ra", which is the clearest signal available that he did not regard these as independent deities.
Open questions
- The seven souls of Ra. Budge gives the number and not the names. **If they are listed
- Are Sa and Hu here the same beings as the gods? The corpus carries both at ● full on the
- How many of the fourteen are in the census?
huandsiaare. **The other twelve - Recover the hieroglyphs. Budge prints a sign for each; the transliterations are his.
Cite this entry
Research grade: ⇄duplicate — A second spelling or roster listing of a name entered elsewhere.
"Sheps", The Egyptian God Corpus,
graded duplicate, retrieved 2026-08-10.