Resheph is known by a multitude of names, including Rahshaf, Rasap, Rashap, Resep, Reshef, Reshpu, Rapha, Repheth, and others that are not standardized.
The name is found in third millennium tablets from Ebla, as Rašap, listed as divinity of the cities of Atanni, Gunu, Tunip, and Shechem. Rasap was one of the chief deities of Ebla, with one of the four city gates named in his honor. References to ršp gn have been found at Ebla and Ugarit. These have been variously interpreted as associating Resheph with the shield and protection, or the city Gunu, or gardens, or the cemetery.
Ugarit
Ršp was an important Ugaritic deity. He had the byname of tġr špš "door-warden of the Sun". Sacrifices to Ršp were performed in gardens. Ugaritic Ršp was equated with the Mesopotamian deityNergal. Fauth argued that ršp in the later Canaanite period no longer referred to a specific god and could be used as a byname, as in Rešep-Mikal at Kition. Teixidor based on an epithet ḥṣ in Kition, identifies Ršp as a plague god who strikes his victims with arrows as Homeric Apollo, and argues for an interpretatio graeca of Ršp with Apollo in Idalium. Resheph is mentioned in Ugaritic mythological texts such as the epic of Kirta and The Mare and Horon. Although the iconography of Resheph shares the gazelle with that of the Egyptian-Canaanite Shed, Cornelius writes that "the rest of the attributes are totally different".
Probably introduced in Egypt by the Hyksos, Resheph was not assimilated into the Egyptian pantheon until the New Kingdom's Eighteenth Dynasty along with other Near Eastern deities. His consort was Itum. He was frequently associated with Seth and Montu, other deities related to war and plague, but he also formed a triad with Min and Qetesh. Qetesh was connected with Hathor, but not synonymous with her. He was usually depicted anthropomorphically, as a man brandishing a weapon, sporting a typical Syrian beard, and wearing the white crown of Egypt and/or a gazelle’s head on his own. A temple dedicated to him is attested in Memphis, but he was likely worshipped in many Nile Delta regions. His cult survived well into the Ptolemaic Period. As a war deity, he was related to kingship as shown by a stele erected by Amenhotep II near the Great Sphinx. For the same reason, his bellicose nature became associated with fighting diseases such as abdominal pain, believed to be caused by a demon called Akha. The theonym is usually written as hieroglyphic ršpw, where the final -w is added in analogy to other Egyptiandivine names.
Hebrew Bible
In Biblical Hebrew, resheph means "flame, firebolt", derived from "to burn". Resheph as a personal name, a grandson of Ephraim, occurs in . The Latin Vulgate renders his name as Rapha. In Habakkuk 3:5, describing the procession of Eloah from Teman and Mount Paran, mention deber and resheph as going before him, in the King James Version translated as "pestilence" and "burning coals". Due to the discovery of both deber and resheph as theonyms in Ebla, this passage has been reinterpreted as describing a procession of the retinue of El going to war with Yam. In Job 5:7, there is mention of the "sons of resheph", translated in the Septuagint as νεοσσοὶ δὲ γυπὸς, "the young of the vulture", and in the King James Version as "sparks".
In the 1998 animated historical film, Prince of Egypt, the Egyptian high priests Hotep and Huy invoke the name of Resheph during their song "Playing with the Big Boys now", as part of a pseudo-magical show to trick Moses. In the book saga Lords of Deliverance from Larissa Ione, the fourth horseman is called Reseph, the personification of Sickness and Plagues and the brother of the first horseman Ares, personification of war, of the second horseman Limos, personification of Hunger, and of the third horseman Thanatos, personification of Death.
