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Ancient Egyptian religion encompasses the beliefs and rituals of Ancient Egypt. It was followed in Egypt for over three thousand years until the establishment of Coptic Christianity and Islam. Throughout the vast and complex history of Egypt, the dominant beliefs of the ancient Egyptians merged and developed as leaders of different groups gained power. This process continued even after the end of the ancient Egyptian civilization as we know it today. As an example, during the New Kingdom Ra and Amun became Amun-Ra. This "merging" into a single deity is typically referred to as syncretism.[1] In addition, there has been a resurgence over the past 20-30 years of various reemergences of the Ancient Egyptian religion. The variety of forms are collectively known as Kemetism.
Syncretism should be distinguished from mere groupings, also referred to as "families" such as Amun, Mut, and Khonsu, where no "merging" takes place. Over time, deities took part in multiple syncretic relationships, for instance, the combination of Ra and Horus into Ra-Herakty. However, even when taking part in such a syncretic relationship, the original deities did not become completely "absorbed" into the combined deity, although the individuality of the one was often greatly weakened. Also, these syncretic relationships sometimes involved more than just two deities, for instance, Ptah, Seker, and Osiris, becoming Ptah-Seker-Osiris.
Also important to keep in mind is that sometimes the attributes of one deity got closely associated with another, without any "formal" syncretism taking place. For instance, the loose association of Hathor with Isis.
Gods
- Further information: List of Egyptian gods
Early beliefs can be split into five distinct localized groups:
- the Ennead of Heliopolis, whose chief god was Atum or Atum-Ra[2]
- the Ogdoad of Hermopolis,[3] where the chief god was Thoth
- the Khnum-Satis-Anuket triad of Elephantine, whose chief god was Chnum
- the Amun-Mut-Chons triad of Thebes, whose chief god was Amun[4]
- the Ptah-Sekhmet-Nefertem triad of Memphis, unusual in that the gods were unconnected before the triad was formalized, where the chief god was Ptah[2]
One aspect of ancient Egyptian religion is that deities from the Egyptian pantheon sometimes played different, and at times conflicting, roles. As an example, the lioness Sekhmet being sent out by Ra to devour the humans for having rebelled against him, but later on becoming a fierce protector of the kingdom, life in general, and the sick. Even more complex is the roles of Set. Judging the mythology of Set from a modern perspective, especially the mythology surrounding Set's relationship with Osiris, it is easy to cast Set as the arch villain and source of evil. This is wrong, however, as Set was earlier playing the role of destroyer of Apep, in the service of Ra on his barge, and thus serving to uphold Ma'at (Truth, Justice, and Harmony).
Origin myths
One Ancient Egyptian origin myth relates that in the beginning, the universe was filled with the primeval waters of chaos, which was the god Nun. The god, Re-Atum, also Ra-Atum appeared from the Water as the land of Egypt appears every year out of the flood waters of the Nile. Re-Atum spat and out of the spittle came out the deities Shu (air) and Tefnut (moisture). The world was created when Shu and Tefnut gave birth to two children: Nut (Sky) and Geb (the Earth). Humans were created when Shu and Tefnut went wandering in the dark wastes and got lost. Re-Atum sent his eye to find them. On reuniting, his tears of joy turned into people.
Geb and Nut copulated, and upon Shu's learning of his children's fornication, he separated the two, effectively becoming the air between the sky and ground. He also decreed that the pregnant Nut should not give birth any day of the year. Nut pleaded with Thoth, who on her behalf gambled with the moon-god Yah and won five more days to be added onto the then 360-day year. Nut had one child on each of these days: Osiris, Isis, Set, Nephthys, and Horus-the-Elder.
Osiris, by different accounts, was either the son of Re-Atum or Geb, and king of Egypt. His brother Seth represented chaos in the universe. He murdered Osiris by tricking him to fit inside of a box, which was the nailed shut and thrown into the Nile. After killing Osiris, Seth tore his body into pieces, but Isis rescued most of the pieces for burial beneath the temple, but first Isis resurrected Osiris so she could copulate with him to create their child Horus . Seth made himself king, but was challenged by Osiris's son - Horus. Seth lost and was sent to the desert. Osiris was mummified by Isis and became god of the dead. Horus became the king and from him descended the pharaohs.
Another version, this one by Plutarch[5]
, states that Set made a chest that only Osiris could fit into. He then invited Osiris to a feast. Set made a bet that no one could fit into the chest. Osiris was the last one to step into the chest, but before he did, Set asked if he could hold Osiris's crown. Osiris agreed and stepped into the chest. As he lay down, Set slammed the lid shut and put the crown on his own head. He then set the chest afloat on the Nile. Isis did not know of her husband's death until the Wind told her. She then placed her son in a safe place and cast a spell so no one could find him. When she searched for her husband, a child told her a chest had washed up on the bank and a tree had grown up. The tree was so straight the king had used it for the central pillar of his new palace. Isis went and asked for her husband's body and it was given to her. The god of the underworld told her that Osiris would be a king, but only in the underworld.
The ancient Greeks believed that their gods and goddesses were the origins of the Egyptian deities. According to ancient Greek Mythology, during the period of time when the titan Typhon was free to roam the earth, all of the Greek gods except for Hermes and Zeus fled from Greece to Egypt. While in Egypt many of the deities took on the shape or form of animals as a means to hide themselves from the wrath of Typhon.[6] Thus they related, the Egyptian deities were born.
Death
Egypt had a highly developed view of the afterlife with elaborate rituals for preparing the body and soul for an eternal life after death. Beliefs about the soul and afterlife focused heavily on preservation of the body. This was because they believed that the vitality or double, the ka, was still associated with the body after death and it was necessary for the ka to be reunited with the ba, the spirit or soul, to support the akh, the part of each being which ascends to the heavens to take its place among the stars.[7] This meant that embalming and mummification were practised, in order to preserve the individual's identity in the afterlife. Originally the dead were buried in shallow pits in the searing hot sand, at times wrapped in reed mats, which caused the remains to dry quickly, preventing decomposition. Later, they started constructing subterranean tombs with wood or sun-baked bricks, and a process of mummification was developed around the Fourth Dynasty, mostly for the benefit of the pharaohs and their relatives. Most inner organs were removed through an incision in the abdomen, while the brain was scooped out through a nostril after breaking the thin bone encasing it. The cavities were washed and packed with natron, then the whole body was covered in natron and left to dry. Since it was a stoneable offense to harm the body of the Pharaoh, even after death, the person who made the incision in the abdomen with a rock knife was ceremonially chased away and had rocks thrown at him.
After removing the natron, the bodies were coated inside and out with resin to preserve them, then wrapped with linen bandages, embedded with religious amulets and talismans. In the case of royalty, the mummy was usually placed inside a series of nested coffins, the outermost of which was a stone sarcophagus. The intestines, lungs, liver, and the stomach were preserved separately and stored in canopic jars protected by the four sons of Horus.[8] Sometimes, though, the organs would be wrapped in linen, and placed back inside the mummy. The heart was left in place because it was thought to be the home of the soul. The standard length of the mummification process was seventy days.[9]
If during the Old Kingdom embalmment was reserved for a selected few, it became available to wider sections of society as time went by. Animals were also mummified, sometimes thought to have been pets of Egyptian families, but more frequently or more likely, they were the representations of deities. The ibis, crocodile, cat, Nile perch, falcon, and baboon can be found in perfect mummified forms. During the Ptolemaic Period, animals were especially bred for the purpose.
Image:Maat.svg
The goddess Ma'at, showing her feather in her headdress
The Book of the Dead was a series of almost two hundred spells represented as sectional texts, songs, and pictures written on papyrus, individually customized for the deceased, which were buried along with the dead in order to ease their passage into the underworld. In some tombs, the Book of the Dead has also been found painted on the walls, although the practice of painting on the tomb walls appears to predate the formalization of the Book of the Dead as a bound text. One of the best examples of the Book of the Dead is The Papyrus of Ani, created around 1240 BC, which, in addition to the texts themselves, also contains many pictures of Ani and his wife on their journey through the land of the dead. After a person dies their soul is led into a hall of judgment in Duat by Anubis (god of mummification) and the deceased's heart, which was the record of the morality of the owner, is weighed against a single feather representing Ma'at (the concept of truth and order). If the outcome is favorable, the deceased is taken to Osiris, god of the afterlife, in Aaru, but the demon Ammit (Eater of Hearts) – part crocodile, part lion, and part hippopotamus – destroys those hearts whom the verdict is against, leaving the owner to remain in Duat. A heart that weighed less than the feather was considered a pure heart, not weighed down by the guilt or sins of one's actions in life, resulting in a favorable verdict; a heart heavy with guilt and sin from one's life weighed more than the feather, and so the heart would be eaten by Ammit. An individual without a heart in the afterlife in essence, did not exist as Egyptians believed the heart to be the center of reason and emotion as opposed to the brain which was removed and discarded during mummification. Many times a person would be buried with a "surrogate" heart to replace their own for the weighing of the heart ceremony.
The monotheistic period
A short interval of monotheism (Atenism) occurred under the reign of Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), focused on the Egyptian sun deity Aten. The Aten is typically shown as a sun disk with rays coming out of all sides. Akhenaten built a new capital at Amarna with temples for the Aten. This was a symbolic act as Akhenaten wanted a place of worship for the Aten that was not tainted by the visage of other deities. The religious change survived only until the death of Akhenaten, and the old religion was quickly restored during the reign of Tutankhamun, Akhenaten's son by his wife, Kiya. Tutankhamun and several other post-restoration pharaohs were erased from the history, because they were regarded as heretics.
John Tuthill, a professor at the University of Guam, believes that Akhenaten's reasons for religious reform were political. By the time of Akhenaten's reign, the god Amun had risen to such a high status that the priests of Amun had become even more wealthy and powerful than the pharaohs. However, it may be that Akhenaten was influenced by his family members, particularly his wife or mother (Dunham, 1963, p. 4; Mertz, 1966, p. 269). There was a certain trend in Akhenaten's family toward sun-worship. Toward the end of the reign of Akhenaten's father, Amenhotep III, Aten was depicted increasingly often. Some historians have suggested that the same religious revolution would have happened even if Akhenaten had never become pharaoh at all. This seems unlikely given the violent reaction that followed Akhenaten's death. Many details of Akhenaten's revolution remain a mystery. After the death of Akhenaten, his son, the famous Tutankhamun reinstated the polytheistic (pantheon) religion that was in place before the time of the Aten.
After the fall of the Amarna dynasty, the original Egyptian pantheon survived more or less as the dominant religion, until the establishment of Coptic Christianity and later Islam, even though the Egyptians continued to have relations with the other monotheistic cultures (e.g. Hebrews). Egyptian mythology put up surprisingly little resistance to the spread of Christianity, sometimes explained by claiming that Jesus was originally a syncretism based predominantly on Horus, with Isis and her worship becoming Mary and veneration (see Jesus as myth).
Temples
Although many temples are still standing today, others are in ruins while some have disappeared entirely. Pharaoh Ramses II was a particularly prolific builder of temples.
Some known temples include:
- Abu Simbel – Complex of two massive rock temples in southern Egypt on the western bank of the Nile.
- Abydos (Great Temple of Abydos) – Adoration of the early kings, whose cemetery, to which it forms a great funerary chapel, lies behind it.
- Ain el-Muftella (Bahariya Oasis) – Could have served as the city center of El Qasr. It was probably built around the 26th Dynasty.
- Karnak – Once part of the ancient capital of Egypt, Thebes.
- Bani Hasan al Shurruq – Located in Middle Egypt near to Al-Minya and survived the reconstruction of the New Kingdom.
- Edfu – Ptolemaic temple that is located between Aswan and Luxor.
- Temple of Kom Ombo – Controlled the trade routes from Nubia to the Nile Valley.
- Luxor – Built largely by Amenhotep III and Ramesses II, it was the centre of the Opet Festival.
- Medinet Habu (Memorial Temple of Ramesses III)– Temple and a complex of temples dating from the New Kingdom.
- Temple of Hatshepsut – Her mortuary temple complex at Deir el-Bahri with a colonnaded structure of perfect harmony, was built nearly one thousand years before the Parthenon.
- Philae – Island of Philae with Temple of Hathor which was constructed in the 30th Dynasty and expanded into a complex to include Isis (Aset) and Osiris under Greek and Roman rule.
- Ramesseum (Memorial Temple of Ramesses II) – The main building, dedicated to the funerary cult, comprised two stone pylons (gateways, some 60 m wide), one after the other, each leading into a courtyard. Beyond the second courtyard, at the centre of the complex, was a covered 48-column hypostyle hall, surrounding the inner sanctuary.
- Dendera Temple complex – Several temples but the all overshadowing building in the complex is the main temple, the Hathor temple.
Deir El Bahire; Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, also Chapel Dedicated to the worship of Hathor.
See also
References
- ^ Sarah Iles Johnston, Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide, Harvard University Press 2004, p.9
- ^ a b Sarah Iles Johnston, Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide, Harvard University Press 2004, p.417
- ^ John Gwyn Griffiths, The Origins of Osiris and His Cult, Brill 1980, pp.194ff.
- ^ Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen Edwards, The Cambridge Ancient History, Cambridge University Press 1973, p.649
- ^ Fergus, Fleming; Alan Lothian (1997). The Way to Eternity. Amsterdam: Duncan Baird Publishers, p.82. ISBN 0-7054-3503-2.
- ^ Francis Celoria Antoninus, The Metamorphoses of Antoninus Liberalis, Routledge 1002, p.87
- ^ Henri A. Frankfort, Kingship and the Gods, University of Chicago Press 1978, p.64
- ^ Arthur C. Aufderheide, The Scientific Study of Mummies, Cambridge University Press 2003, pp.258f
- ^ Herodotus, Euterpe, 2.86
Further reading
- Schulz, R. and M. Seidel, "Egypt: The World of the Pharaohs". Könemann, Cologne 1998. ISBN 3-89508-913-3
- Budge, E. A. Wallis, "Egyptian Religion: Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life (Library of the Mystic Arts)". Citadel Press. August 1, 1991. ISBN 0-8065-1229-6
- Harris, Geraldine, John Sibbick, and David O'Connor, "Gods and Pharaohs from Egyptian Mythology". Bedrick, 1992. ISBN 0-87226-907-8
- Hart, George, "Egyptian Myths (Legendary Past Series)". University of Texas Press (1st edition), 1997. ISBN 0-292-72076-9
- Osman, Ahmed, Moses and Akhenaten. The Secret History of Egypt at the Time of the Exodus, (December 2002, Inner Traditions International, Limited) ISBN 1-59143-004-6
- Bilolo, Mubabinge, Les cosmo-théologies philosophiques d'Héliopolis et d'Hermopolis. Essai de thématisation et de systématisation, (Academy of African Thought, Sect. I, vol. 2), Kinshasa-Munich 1987; new ed., Munich-Paris, 2004.
- Bilolo, Mubabinge, "Les cosmo-théologies philosophiques de l’Égypte Antique. Problématique, prémisses herméneutiques et problèmes majeurs, (Academy of African Thought, Sect. I, vol. 1)", Kinshasa-Munich 1986; new ed., Munich-Paris, 2003.
- Bilolo, Mubabinge, "Métaphysique Pharaonique IIIème millénaire av. J.-C. (Academy of African Thought & C.A. Diop-Center for Egyptological Studies-INADEP, Sect. I, vol. 4)", Kinshasa-Munich 1995 ; new ed., Munich-Paris, 2003.
- Bilolo, Mubabinge, "Le Créateur et la Création dans la pensée memphite et amarnienne. Approche synoptique du Document Philosophique de Memphis et du Grand Hymne Théologique d'Echnaton, (Academy of African Thought, Sect. I, vol. 2)", Kinshasa-Munich 1988; new ed., Munich-Paris, 2004.
- Pinch, Geraldine, "Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of ancient Egypt". Oxford University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-19-517024-5
External links
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