heket

Heket, also spelled Heqet, is an ancient Egyptian goddess associated with fertility, childbirth, and frogs. The name is commonly translated as "the Frog Goddess," reflecting her emblematic frog form. In art she is depicted as a frog or as a woman with the head of a frog, and she is connected with water, the Nile, and the renewal of life. As a birth goddess, Heket was believed to assist women in labor and to protect newborns, and her image appears in spells and offerings related to fertility and safe delivery.

In the Egyptian pantheon she is sometimes linked with other birth and creation deities and can be found in various inscriptions, reliefs, and funerary texts from different periods. Her frog symbolism made her a recognizable emblem of fertility across households and temple complexes. In modern scholarship, Heket is studied as part of the broader category of Egyptian deities associated with birth, water, and renewal, illustrating how animal forms and myth were used to convey divine powers in daily life and afterlife beliefs.