Egyptian religion was the daily work of keeping the world in order. Ma'at, at once truth, justice and cosmic balance, had to be maintained against chaos, and that maintenance was the pharaoh's office: in every temple, in the king's name, priests woke, washed, clothed and fed the god's image so that the sun would rise and the Nile would flood. Creation was told several ways, from the sun god rising on the first mound at Heliopolis to Ptah of Memphis speaking the world into being, and the traditions coexisted without contradiction, each temple honoring its own account.
The pantheon Richard Wilkinson catalogues is vast: Ra the sun, with whom Amun of Thebes fused as the imperial god Amun-Ra; Osiris, murdered by his brother and restored by his sister-wife Isis to reign over the dead; their son Horus, whose living embodiment was the king; Thoth of writing and reckoning; Hathor of love and music; jackal-headed Anubis, embalmer and guide. The Osiris myth carried the tradition's deepest promise, that death can be passed through.
That promise organized an elaborate funerary religion. The dead traveled the Duat by night among gates and dangers, guided by texts that evolved from the royal Pyramid Texts through the Coffin Texts to the Book of the Dead placed with commoners; at journey's end the heart was weighed against the feather of ma'at in the Hall of Two Truths, and the justified entered Aaru, the Field of Reeds, a perfected Egypt of plenty. Mummification, tomb art and offering cults all served that crossing.