Details about God Sobek
Sobek is the son of the water goddess Neith and the twin gods Senwy (= the two brothers). His status as a god of water and fertility makes him worshiped everywhere in the Nile Delta, the Fayoum and in Kom Ombo. A crocodile god, Sobek symbolized the strength of the Egyptian pharaohs. Son of Neith. He is depicted as a crocodile or in human form with a crocodile head.
He is crowned either by a pair of feathers or sometimes by a combination of the sun disk and the uraeus.
In the Book of the Dead, Sobek helps in the birth of Horus; he fetches Isis and Nephthys to protect the deceased and he helped in the neutralization of Seth.
The presence of crocodiles in the Nile was for the Egyptians the announcement of a flood favorable to the crops: the crocodiles were therefore sacred animals at that time. Master of waters, he is the god who irrigates the fields. Towards the Low Age, the Egyptians seek to gain his favor in order to be less afraid by offering him figurines representing the animal bearing the sun disk adorned with the protective cobra. He will soon become an important god in the pantheon in the syncretic form of Sobek-Re.
He is sometimes depicted on the solar boat, beating the giant serpent Apophis, personification of chaos, a monster trying to swallow the sun. This role of protector of the solar boat is also attributed to the goddess Sekhmet or to the god Seth. He is locally considered a primordial god.
The names of Egyptians composed from the name Sobek are legion. From the 12th dynasty with the queen Sobeknéferourê (Sobek is the perfection of Re), then during the second intermediate period (13th dynasty), several kings will take the name Sobekhotep (Sobek is satisfied) in their title.
During the 17th dynasty two sovereigns named themselves Sobekemsaf (Sobek is his protection), as well as a princess, more curiously because it is a male name. Alone in all of Egypt to refuse to divinize a common reptile, the island of Elephantine commits the sacrilegious act in the eyes of the rest of the country to eat crocodiles, considered as simple staple food.