Tutu appears relatively late in the long history of Egyptian religion. The Metropolitan Museum dates the first appearance of his name to the 6th century BCE and describes his great flourishing in Ptolemaic and Roman times. Unlike Osiris or Horus, he has no ancient narrative cycle extending back through the earliest royal texts. His identity is built from titles, temple scenes, votive monuments and protective images.

His best-known form is a striding royal sphinx. A lion's body gives him power, a human head confronts the viewer directly, and a snake often replaces the ordinary tail. Later examples can add wings or further animal heads. The Metropolitan Museum emphasises that frontal presentation of his human face helped communicate his accessibility to worshippers.

The Brooklyn Museum preserves a Roman-period figure in which Tutu's mastery of danger becomes physical. The sphinx strides with a cobra tail while a lion head, a crocodile and serpents appear around or beneath him. These animals are not attackers defeating the god. They are dangerous forces brought under his authority and converted into protection.

Tutu is called the son of Neith, the ancient creator and warrior goddess of Sais. Other divine powers connected with disease or wandering spirits, including Sekhmet and Bastet, also enter the religious world surrounding his demons. Tutu's title Master of Demons describes control rather than simple extermination: dangerous forces can be restrained, redirected or made to serve protection.

The richest evidence for his organised cult comes from Kellis in the Dakhla Oasis. There Tutu was worshipped with Neith and the local goddess Tapsais. Temple decoration gives him titles of strength and kingship and depicts demons under his command. The sanctuary demonstrates that Tutu was not merely a figure on private amulets but a deity with formal cult, priests and processional ritual.

Greek and Egyptian religious vocabulary also met around Tutu. Greek texts call him Tithoes, and at Kellis he could be linked with ideas of good fortune and fate without becoming a Greek god with a replacement biography. The mixed religious environment of Roman Egypt expanded his titles while keeping his central protective identity.

Tutu's cult was especially suited to direct petition. A title from Shenhur describes him as the one who comes to the person calling him. That promise of response helps explain the appeal of a deity whose imagery is crowded with threats but whose purpose is reassuring. He stands close to the scale of household fear, illness, nightmares and personal misfortune.