Heliopolitans
fictional group of characters in Marvel Comics
Heliopolitans are a fictional group of gods, based on Ancient Egyptian deities, appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics.
Publication history
Characters based on ancient Egyptian deities were first mentioned in Captain America Comics #20 (November 1942), published by Marvel Comics' predecessor Timely Comics, in which Captain America and Bucky investigate the murder of Colonel Fitzpatrick, who was studying the Book of Thoth while stationed in Egypt. The Heliopolitans' first full Golden Age appearance was in the story "The Terror That Creeps" by Stan Lee and Werner Roth, published in Marvel Tales #96 (June 1950), and involves a man that fails to convince the public that the Great Sphinx of Giza is slowly moving to the edge of the desert, where it will be empowered by Set and destroy mankind. The goddess Bast would later make her first appearance (as a totem) with the Black Panther in Fantastic Four #52 (July 1966), being called only Panther God, in Black Panther vol. 3 # 21 by Christopher Priest and Sal Velutto, it was revealed that the Panther God is Bast. Many of the other deities, including Horus, Isis and Osiris, were introduced in Thor #239 (September 1975). Khonshu, who became associated with Moon Knight, first appeared in Moon Knight #1 (November 1980). Joseph Muszynski argued in his book Everything I Needed to Know About Life I Learned from Marvel Comics that the introduction of Egyptian deities "excited our tendency to enjoy variety" as the pantheon contained multiple gods and personalities as opposed to the Judeo-Christian religions. Ed Strauss contended that Marvel was able to dive into ancient Egyptian religion because it "had long been retired into the realm of mythology" unlike Christianity.
Fictional history
The Heliopolitans were worshipped as deities by the inhabitants of the Nile River Valley from as early as 10,000 BC. According to Heliopolitan legend, the first of these were Gaea (as Neith), the Demiurge (as Nun), and Set (as Apep/Apophis).
The public source identifies “Heliopolitans” as fictional group of characters in Marvel Comics. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Heliopolitans, fictional and group.
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This entry incorporates text from “Heliopolitans” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.