Gods of Ancient Egypt E-Book

Barbara Watterson

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 395

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2003

Beschreibung

Illustrated in colour, this is an introduction for the general reader to Egyptian mythology and its mysteries. It includes a concise introduction to general aspects of Egyptian religion, followed by specific sections devoted to the most important of the gods. With sections on personal religion and temple ceremony, there are also accounts of mythological stories associated with the gods, and a map of the principle cult centres.

Leseprobe

GODS OF ANCIENT EGYPT

For Alice and Lily

GODS OF ANCIENT EGYPT

BARBARA WATTERSON

First published in 1984 by Batsford Academic and Educational a division of B.T. Batsford Ltd

First published by Sutton Publishing Limited in 1996

This edition first published in 2003

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Barbara Watterson, 1984, 1996, 2003 2013

The right of Barbara Watterson to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 9502 6

Original typesetting by The History Press

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Note on Transliteration

Chronological Table

Egyptian Place-names

Map

Principal Cult-centres

Part One

Introduction

One The Land of Egypt and its Influence upon the Religion of the Ancient Egyptians

Two Forms of Religion in Ancient Egypt

Part Two

The Major Gods of Egypt

The Sun God

Atum

Shu

Tefnut

Geb

Nut

Re

Khepri

Osris

Isis

Horus

Seth

Nephthys

Hathor

Wadjet

Nekhbet

Amun

Mut

Khonsu

Aten

Ptah

Sokar

Sekhmet

Anubis

Neit

Thoth

Khnum

Min

Montu

Bastet

Part Three

Personal Piety and Popular Religion

Glossary

Notes

Bibliography and Further Reading

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I should like to thank my husband, Juan, for his constant support and encouragement in the production of this book.

PREFACE

The artefacts of the ancient Egyptian civilization, from the largest temples to the smallest amulets, have been much admired for their beauty and workmanship. Admiration soon leads to curiosity about the purpose or significance of certain themes and designs, many of which consist of ever-recurring religious symbols and images of gods in different guises. A knowledge of the more commonly represented deities allows the admirer to understand something of the purpose and motives which directed the skills of ancient Egyptian artisans.

In assembling this ‘gazetteer’ of the gods of ancient Egypt, I have aimed at introducing only the thirty or so more important members of a tribe numbered in hundreds, and in addition to more factual details of form, time and place have related the sometimes elaborate mythology pertaining to each. These mythologies are the ancient Egyptian version of the folklore and fairy stories which all societies produce. Throughout the book, references have been given to sources in which translations of the various myths and stories can be found; however, excerpts quoted in the book are from my own translations.

This book is not a study of ancient Egyptian religion as such, and the only purpose of the brief introductory chapters is to allow the reader to appreciate the theological context in which the gods were worshipped. No attempt has been made to make comparisons with the gods or beliefs of other cultures, although any description of a culture different from our own, especially one so far removed from us in time, inevitably incorporates implicit and sometimes very subjective comparisons with our own twenty-first century European tribal customs and beliefs.

The origins and chief places of worship of certain ancient Egyptian deities, and the beliefs associated with them, are set out in the following chapters, which are arranged more or less according to the importance of the gods discussed in them rather than in any historical or geographical order. The glossary found on pages 199–202 includes explanations of specialized words in the text; and an explanation of the way in which ancient Egyptian words (proper nouns, place-names, kings’ names, etc.) have been written is given on page XII.

A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

From about 3100 BC, the Egyptian language was written in hieroglyphic script, a decorative and complex picture-writing that remained in use for over 3,000 years. In 30 BC, Egypt came under Roman rule. The Romans abolished the institution of monarchy in Egypt; and the dissolution of what had been the linchpin of Egyptian society, combined with the advent of Christianity, to which most of Egypt had been converted by the fourth century AD, meant that the use of hieroglyphs, and the alternative scripts, hieratic and demotic (see Glossary), fast deteriorated, to be replaced by Greek, and by Coptic, the last stage of the native language of Egypt, which employed the Greek alphabet as the basis of its written script.

The language of ancient Egypt, as expressed in hieroglyphs, hieratic and demotic, was lost for centuries until, in AD 1822, Jean-François Champollion became the first man of modern times to decipher hieroglyphs correctly. However, the pronunciation of ancient Egyptian is not known with a sufficient degree of certainty.

In order for an English-speaker, for example, to be able to read hieroglyphic script, the pictographs used in it have to be turned into an approximation of the English alphabet, that is, transliterated. Unfortunately, the Egyptians only used consonants in their written script; their language must have had vowels in it, but the position of these vowels in Egyptian-language words is not made clear in hieroglyphic script. It should perhaps be mentioned here that the official language of Egypt today is Arabic, and has been since the Arab Conquest of AD 640; and that Arabic is not the same language as ancient Egyptian, although the script of both has one thing in common: in neither language are the vowels written.

Thus, there are schools of transliteration for both languages with different traditions for inserting vowels: some write Idfu where we write Edfu (Arabic place-name); some write Ra where we write Re (name of ancient Egyptian Sun God), and so on. As a general rule of thumb, English-speaking readers of Gods of Ancient Egypt will find it convenient for pronunciation purposes to put an ‘e’ into ancient Egyptian words wherever it would otherwise be difficult to pronounce a string of consonants. Where this simple expedient of inserting an ‘e’ between consonants does not work, for example in sýn (see Glossary), the word has been rendered into an approximation of English, sýn being written shen.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

It is customary to arrange ancient Egyptian history into dynasties, or groups, of kings, following the system first used by the third-century BC scholar-priest, Manetho, in his history of Egypt, written in Greek and entitled the Aegyptiaca. To the end of Manetho’s original list have been added two dynasties to cover the years after his death. The thirty-two dynasties thus arrived at are divided into periods known as ‘Old Kingdom’, ‘Middle Kingdom’ and ‘New Kingdom’, interspersed with so-called ‘Intermediate Periods’. The term ‘Kingdom’ is not a geographical description but is historical and refers to the times in ancient Egyptian history when the country was a unified state ruled by one king. The Intermediate Periods were times when there was no strong central government.

Since we are not certain of how ancient Egyptian was pronounced, many scholars prefer to use the Greek forms of royal names taken from Manetho. In the following table, both Greek and Egyptian forms are given where appropriate; in the book, the Egyptian form is used, so that it can be seen clearly which kings are named after gods.

prehistory: i.e. Predynastic Egypt c. 5500–c. 3150 bc

Lower Egypt:

5500–4000 BC: Fayum and Merimde cultures

Upper Egypt:

5500–4000 BC: Badarian culture

Upper Egypt:

4000–3500 BC: Naqada I culture

Upper Egypt:

3500–3150 BC: Naqada II culture

protodynastic period: c. 3200–c. 3050 bc

Naqada III culture

history: i.e. Dynastic Egypt

SELECTED KINGS

DEVELOPMENTS IN

NAMED IN BOOK

RELIGION AND HISTORY

Archaic Period: c. 3100–c. 2686 bc

Dynasty Ic. 3100–2890

Scorpion (predynastic?)

Menes/Narmer

Hor-aha

Union of Upper and Lower Egypt

Capital city: Memphis

Dynasty IIc. 2890–2686

Sekhemib/Peribsen

Khasekemwy

Sendji

Kings buried in mastabas at Sakkara

Beginning of writing

Major gods: Horus and Seth

Old Kingdom: c. 2886–c. 2181 bc

Dynasty III

Djoser

Development of step pyramids

c. 2686–2613

Major god: Atum

Dynasty IVc. 2613–2494

Khufu (Cheops)

Khafre (Chephren)

Menkaure (Mycerinus)

Peak of Old Kingdom achievements in art and architecture

Kings buried in first true pyramids at Giza

Royal power at peak

Major gods: Atum and Re

Dynasty Vc. 2494–2345

Unas

Decline of royal power

Increase in power of Heliopolitan priesthood

Dynasty VIc. 2345–2181

Pepi I

Pepi II

Spread of Osiris cult

Kings buried in small pyramids at Sakkara and Abusir

Pyramid Texts

First Intermediate Period: c. 2181–c. 2040 bc

Dynasties VII, VIIIc. 2181–2160

Early Coffin Texts

Dynasties IX, Xc. 2160–2040

Middle Kingdom: 2106–1633(?) bc

Dynasty XI 2106–1963

Mentuhotep II (2033–1982)

State reunited

Mentuhotep IV (1970–1963)

Capital city: Thebes

Dynasty XII 1963–1786

Amenemhat I (Amenemmes) (1963–1934)

Senwosret III (Sesostris) (1862–1843)

Capital city: Lisht

Kings buried in pyramids at Lisht, Lahun, Dahshur

Major god: Amun

Dynasty XIII 1786–1633(?)

Second Intermediate Period: 1786–1550 bc

Dynasties XIV–XVI

Hyksos Occupation

New Kingdom: 1550–1069 bc

Dynasty XVIII 1550–1295

Ahmose (Amosis) (1550–1525)

Thutmose II (Tuthmosis) (1492–1479)

Thutmose III (1479–1425)

Hatshepsut (1479–1457)

Thuthmose IV (1393–1383)

Amenhotep III (Amenophis) (1383–1345)

Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten) (1353–1337)

Smenkare (1338–1336)

Tutankhamun (1336–1327)

Ay (1327–1323)

Horemheb (1323–1295)

Expulsion of Hyksos

State reunited

Capital city: Thebes

Kings of Dynasties XVIII–XX buried in rock-cut tombs at Thebes. Egypt becomes Imperial power and richest state in world

Amun at height of power

Amarna Period

Restoration of Amun

Dynasty XIX 1295–1186

Ramesses I (1295–1294)

Sety I (Sethos) (1294–1279)

Ramesses II (1279–1213)

Renewed interest in Empire

Dynasty XX 1186–1069 in

Ramesses III (1184–1153)

Invasion of Sea Peoples

From Ramesses III, decline

Ramesses IV (1153–1147)

Ramesses V (1147–1143)

Ramesses XI (1099–1069)

Egyptian power

Third Intermediate Period: 1069–525 bc

Dynasty XXI (at Tanis: 1069–945) (at Thebes: 1080–945)

Psusennes II (959–945)

Capital city: Tanis

Kings buried in sunken tombs at Tanis

High Priests of Amun rule Upper Egypt from Thebes

Dynasty XXII 945–715

Sheshonq I (945–924)

Capital cities: Tanis and Bubastis

Kings buried at Tanis

Dynasty XXIII 818–715

Capital city: Leontopolis

Dynasty XXIV 728–715

Tefnakhte (727–720)

Capital city: Sais

Dynasty XXV 716–664

Shabaka (716–702)

Egypt under Kushite (Sudanese) rule

Capitals at Memphis, Thebes and Napata (Sudan)

Kings buried at Kurru (Sudan)

Dynasty XXVI 664–525

Psammeticus I (664–610)

Saite Period: Renaissance in Egyptian culture

Capital city: Sais

Kings buried in Temple of

Neit at Sais

The Late Period: 525–332 bc

Dynasty XXVII 525–404

Egypt under Persian rule

Capital city: Susa or Babylon

Dynasty XXVIII 404–399

Native kings

Capital city: Sais

Dynasty XXIX 399–380

Native kings

Capital city: Memphis

Dynasty XXX 380–343

Last native kings

Nectanebo I (380–362)

Nectanebo II (360–343)

Capital city: Sebennytos

Dynasty XXXI 343–332 332

Egypt once more under Persian rule

Alexander the Great conquers Egypt

Capital city: Susa or Babylon

macedonian period: 332–304 bc

Alexander (332–323)

Dynasty XXXII 304–30 BC

Ptolemy V Epiphanes (205–180)

The Ptolemaic era: Egypt ruled by the descendants of Ptolemy

Cleopatra VII

Lagides, one of (51–30) Alexander’s

generals

Caesarion (44–30)

Capital city: Alexandria

roman era: 30 bc–ad 395

Egypt under Roman rule

Roman Emperors: Augustus (30 BC-AD 14) Tiberius (14–37) Claudius (41–54) Vespasian (69–79) Domitian (81–96) Caracalla (198–217) Decius (249–251) Diocletian (284–305)

Capital city: Alexandria

byzantine and coptic era: ad 395–641

Byzantine Emperors

Capital city: Alexandria

State religion of Egypt: Christianity (Orthodox), believing Christ has both divine and human nature

Native (Coptic) church Monophysite, believing Christ has one, divine, nature

islamic era: ad 641 to present

Arab Conquest AD 640

Capital city: Cairo

State religion of Egypt: Islam

Khalifs (641–1258)

Mamelukes (1258–1517)

Ottomans (1517–1882)

Mohammed Ali (c. 1769–1849)

British Occupation (1882–1914)

British Protectorate (1914–1922)

Independent Kingdom (1922–1953)

Republic: 1953 to present

EGYPTIAN PLACE-NAMES

On the map on p. xxii the place-names are those most commonly used today. It has become the custom for scholars to refer to many places by their Graeco-Roman names, following the practice of the early Egyptologists whose interest in Egypt was stimulated by the classical writers; however, this practice is not followed consistently. In the text of this book, the ancient Egyptian name has been used, except for particularly well-known places which have become familiar under their Greek or Arabic names: for example, Edfu, for which it would be perverse to use anything other than the name derived from Arabic.

In the following table, place-names are listed, roughly in geographical order from north to south, under 1) the modern Arabic name; 2) the name by which the place was known during the period of Graeco-Roman rule; 3) the ancient Egyptian name. Names used on the map are marked with an asterisk.

Modern name name

Classical name

Ancient

EL-ISKANDARIYA

Alexandria*

Raqote

ABUQIR

Kanopus*

RASHID

Rosetta*

DAMANHÛR*

Hermopolis Parva

Demit-en-Hor

SA EL-HAGAR

Sais*

Sau

TELL EL-FARA’UN

Buto*

Pe and Dep

BEHBEIT EL-HAGAR*

Iseum

Hebyt

ABUSIR

Busiris*

Djedu

SAMANNUD

Sebennytos*

Tjebnutjer

SAN EL-HAGAR

Tanis*

Dja’net

TELL ED-DAB’A

Avaris*

wt w‘rt

QANTIR

Pi-Ramessu*

FAQUS

Phakussa*

TELL ABU SEFAH*

Sile

Tjel

WADI EL-NATRUN*

TELL ATRIB

Athribis*

Kem-wer

TELL BASTA

Bubastis*

Bast

WADI TUMILAT*

SAFT EL-HINNA*

Per-Soped

ISMAILIA*

SERÂBIT EL-KHÂDIM

TELL EL-YAHUDIYA*

Leontopolis

Nay-ta-hut

AUSIM

Letopolis*

Khem

CAIRO (EL-QAHIRA)*

MIT RAHINA

Memphis*

Ineb-hedj

GIZA*

Rasetau

ABUSIR*

SAKKARA*

DAHSHUR*

FAYUM OASIS*

Moeris

She-resy

(later Mer-wer)

MEDINET EL-FAYUM*

Krocodilopolis

LISHT*

Itje-tawy

ATFIH

Aphroditopolis*

IHNASYA EL-MEDINA

Herakleopolis*

Henen-nesut

BENI SUEF*

EL-BAHNASA

Oxyrhynchus*

Per-medjed

EL-QEIS

Cynopolis*

EL-MINYA*

ZAWYET EL-AMWAT*

Hebenu

BENI HASAN*

EL-AMARNA*

Akhetaten

EL-ESHMUNEIN*

Hermopolis Magna

Khemenu

EL-QUSIYA

Cusae*

Qis

ASSIUT*

Lykopolis

Zawty

SHUTB

Hypselis*

Sha-sehetep

QAW EL-KEBIR*

Antaeopolis

Djew-Qa (later Tjebu)

AKHMIM*

Panopolis

Khent-Min

MESHEIKH

This*

Tjeny

Abydos*

Aabdju

DENDERAH*

Tentyris

Iunet

HIW*

Diopolis Parva

Hoot-sekhem

TUKH

Ombos*

Nebet

QIFT

Koptos*

Gebtu

WADI HAMMAMAT*

NAQADA*

LUXOR*

Diospolis Magna (Thebes)

Waset

NAG EL-MEDAMUD*

Madu

ARMANT*

Hermonthis

Iuny

TOD*

Tuphium

Djerty

GEBELEIN*

Aphroditopolis

Per-Hathor

ESNA*

Latopolis

Ta-sny

EL-KAB*

Eleithiapolis

Nekheb

KOM EL-AHMAR

Hierakonpolis*

Nekhen

EDFU*

Apollinopolis Magna

Wetjeset-Hor

WADI MIA*

WADI ABBAD*

KOM OMBO*

Ombos

Nebet

ASWAN*

Syene

Elephantine*

Abu

Philae*

Pi-lak

For information on archaeological excavations at many of these sites see the Bibliography on page 231 of the Atlas of Ancient Egypt (Baines and Malek).

PRINCIPAL CULT-CENTRES

The list below gives the principal cult-centres of the major deities discussed in this book, using the names by which they are most likely to be referred to in other books. Modern Arabic place-names are in capital letters, Graeco-Roman names in lower case.

Abydos:

Osiris

AMARNA:

Aten

ARMANT:

Montu

Bubastis:

Bastet

Busiris:

Osiris

Buto:

Wadjet (Edjo)

Cynopolis:

Anubis

DENDERAH:

Hathor

EDFU:

Horus

Elephantine:

Khnum

EL-KAB:

Nekhbet

ESNA:

Khnum

Heliopolis:

Atum, Re, Geb, Nut, Khepri

Hermopolis:

Thoth

Hierakonpolis:

Horus the Elder

Koptos:

Min

Leontopolis:

Shu, Tefnut

Memphis:

Ptah

Ombos:

Seth

Philae:

Isis

Sais:

Neit

Sebennytos:

Onuris

Tanis:

Seth

Thebes:

Amun, Mut, Khonsu

PART ONE

INTRODUCTION

Religion can be thought of as the recognition by human beings of a superhuman power that controls the universe and everything that is, was or shall be in it. Each individual human being can consider that the superhuman controlling power is a deity worthy of being loved; or capable of inspiring awe, obedience, and even fear. The effect of these feelings on individuals can lead to the setting-up of a system of worship of the deity, and to a drawing-up of a code of beliefs and conduct inspired by their religious faith. Three of the major religions of the modern world, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, recognize a single god. Each is a revelation of one basic truth; its message, which in the case of Christianity and Islam, must be preached to the unconverted, is contained in a holy book, and the Torah, the Koran and the Gospels can all be used to teach the dogma of their faith. In ancient Egypt, religion was not like this. The Egyptians recognized many gods; they did not have one universal system of religious belief. They had no sacred books analogous to the Bible or the Koran, there were no theological commentaries or treatises, neither was there any dogma.

The polytheism of the ancient Egyptians led to tolerance. Apart from two brief periods in their history when there was an attempt to promote a solar monotheism, the Egyptians never suffered from persecutions carried out in the name of religion: there were no Egyptian saints, no martyrs. The Egyptians were a gentle people for whom the family was important. Hence, their religion was based on family life. The gods were given wives, goddesses given husbands; both had children.

Temples continued the domestic theme, being called ‘mansions’ of the gods (wt nr), and architecturally they were based on the house form, with rooms in them for eating and sleeping. The innermost sanctuary was regarded as the bedroom of the god; and it was surrounded by ‘guest bedrooms’ for visiting deities. The daily ritual of the temple was domestic in form: the morning ritual gave the god his breakfast; the evening ritual gave him his dinner. Egyptian religion did not indulge in bloodbaths with animal or human sacrifices. Instead, each god lived in peace in his home, the temple, very often as part of a trinity of deities, a holy family consisting of father, mother and child.

For much of their history, the Egyptians were accommodating of other people’s gods and always ready to receive additions to their own pantheon. They received but they did not feel any great need to give: hence there was no real attempt to persuade non-Egyptians to worship Egyptian gods. In ancient Egypt the basis of religion was not belief but cult, particularly the local cult which meant more to the individual. Thus, many deities flourished simultaneously and the Egyptians were seemingly ever-ready to adopt a new god or to change their views about the old.

The predominant characteristics of much of Egyptian religion were animism, fetishism and magic. There was also the belief that certain animals possessed divine powers – the cow, for example, represented fertility, the bull virility – which led to the cult of sacred animals, birds and reptiles, each of which was considered to be the manifestation on earth of a divine being. It was this aspect of Egyptian religion more than any other that the Greeks found curious and the Romans horrifying. Both Greeks and Romans were happy about the polytheism, being polytheistic themselves. However, their own gods, although they were celestial, immortal beings, were nevertheless recognizably human: they had human shapes, and were possessed of human emotions and frailties. But the Egyptian gods! The most cursory look at reliefs carved on temple walls showing representations of gods revealed one with the body of a man and the head of a hawk; another with the body of a man and the head of a jackal. Yet another man seemed to have a beetle in place of a head, while the woman standing next to him had the head of a lioness. They were all gods; and so were the vultures and cobras hovering in attendance on them.

Inside the temples, the Egyptians kept real live cats, bulls, ibises or hawks, and worshipped them as gods; and when they died, mummified and buried them as they did their kings. The Roman satirist, Juvenal, exclaimed:

Who does not know, Volusius, what monsters are revered by demented Egyptians? One lot worships the crocodile; another goes in awe of the ibis that feeds on serpents. Elsewhere there shines the golden effigy of the sacred long-tailed monkey.1

Juvenal would perhaps have been even more scornful had he realized the number and diversity of the gods worshipped by Egyptians, who had created hundreds of deities, probably more than any people before or since.

If the Greeks and Romans found Egyptian religion difficult to comprehend, many modern Europeans have found it impossible. In the nineteenth century, several Egyptologists, themselves brought up in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, sought to prove that although the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians were complex, their religion was essentially monotheistic. Two great French Egyptologists, Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832) and Emmanuel de Rougé (1811–72), without whose work we would not know as much as we do, insufficient as that is, about Egyptian religion, subscribed to that belief. Champollion, the founder of Egyptology who deciphered the hieroglyphic script, and de Rougé, the founder of Egyptian Philology, the first man to lay down the correct rules for reading and translating hieroglyphic texts, were lauded by another great French Egyptologist, Gaston Maspero (1846–1916), who declared that Champollion had deciphered the texts, and de Rougé given the method which allowed them to be utilized, thus bringing to perfection Champollion’s discovery. The two men, however, read Egyptian texts and came to the conclusion that the Egyptians were monotheists. Champollion maintained that Egyptian religion was a pure monotheism which ‘manifested itself externally by a symbolic polytheism’. And de Rougé, in the introduction to his edition of a hieratic text of the Book of the Dead, seemed to indicate that, in his opinion, the Egyptians believed in one supreme, eternal, almighty God, who had much in common with the God of both Hebrews and Christians.

A few years later, Wallis Budge, the doyen of British Egyptology, enlarged on the theories of the two Frenchmen, explaining that the Egyptians were monotheists, but different from Christian monotheists. The Egyptians had one god – the Sun God – and all other gods were but forms of the Sun God. Thus it can be seen that in modern times there has been reluctance to accept that the Egyptians, regarded as being advanced, intelligent and much to be admired in many ways, could yet be primitive enough to worship so many gods let alone so many peculiar gods.

Yet the desire to imagine the object of worship in tangible form is common to most people: god tends to be visualized in mankind’s image. The Christian God, as depicted, for example, by Michelangelo, is a venerable old man with a beard; and Christian iconography reflects the conventions of the time in which a work was painted or sculpted. One supposes that the ancient Egyptians looked to their own surroundings for manifestations of divinity, as did other peoples in the early stages of development in their societies. Seen objectively, the Egyptians’ worship of a falcon god, for example, is surely no more strange a manifestation of religious belief than was the image of the Angel Gabriel with his halo and enormous wings. And the Egyptians could daily watch the sweep of a falcon across the sky, whereas the number of people who have beheld the Angel Gabriel is not large!

ONE

THE LAND OF EGYPT AND ITS INFLUENCE UPON THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT EGYPTIANS

It is a truism to say that the activities of people everywhere are influenced by the conditions under which they live, and religious thought is no exception to this. Before the days of mass communication, an Eskimo, living in a cold climate, had no experience of any great heat generated by the sun. His idea of hell, therefore, was of a place of extreme cold. Conversely, a man who had lived all his life in a hot climate could only visualize hell as an even hotter place than any with which he had ever had acquaintance.

Most ancient Egyptians lived in a river valley, 1,250 km long from ancient Egypt’s southern border at Aswan to its northern boundary on the Mediterranean coast. For much of its length the Nile valley is hemmed in by ancient river terraces. The only naturally verdant land was that watered by the great river which flowed through the valley, the Nile; the rest was desert. In some places, the green strip of land was just over 1 km wide; in others, its width stretched up to 21 km. For the final 160 km or so, the Nile fanned out into the Delta, a triangular, flat area of tributaries, marshes and fields measuring some 240 km across at its widest point.

The land in which the Egyptians lived was ‘the gift of the River’,1 according to the Greek traveller Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the middle of the fifth century BC. Every year, the Nile, swollen by the torrential rain that fell in Uganda and Ethiopia, where the river had its twin sources, and by melting snow from the Ethiopian mountains, flooded its banks. Herodotus noted that when the Nile inundated the land, ‘the whole country is converted into a sea and the towns, which alone remain above water, look like the islands in the Aegean’.2 The Inundation which came annually to Egypt was only halted at the end of the nineteenth century AD with the building of a dam at Aswan. After completion of this, the Old Aswan Dam, in 1902, the flood waters which had caused the Inundation were held back in a great 230 km long reservoir behind the dam and only allowed through its 180 sluices in a regulated flow.

The annual flood not only irrigated the narrow river valley of Egypt: it had another inestimable benefit. When the flood waters receded, they left behind them a rich alluvial silt, scoured from the soil of Uganda and Ethiopia as the White and Blue Niles flowed through their respective countries before joining together at Khartoum in the Sudan. This silt enabled the Egyptians to become a settled agricultural society rather than desert-dwelling nomads. The Nile brought prosperity to Egypt: the desert that bounded the area covered by the Inundation gave her security, for it was an effective barrier against attack from other countries.

The desert also isolated Egypt against outside influences. This and the narrowness of the land in which they lived, meant that the Egyptians had limited horizons both physically and metaphorically. They were an intensely inward-looking people, distrustful of foreigners. Indeed, they looked upon non-Egyptians as less than human: their word for mankind, remeth, was the same as that for Egyptians. Whenever they spoke of the inhabitants of other countries, they usually appended a derogatory epithet – ‘that vile Kushite’ or ‘the wretched Beduin’. The phenomenon is not unknown to other peoples isolated from outside contacts: the Eskimos call themselves Inuit, ‘the men’, meaning human beings; to the Chinese, the term for ‘foreign’ and ‘non-human’ is the same.

The regularity of the Inundation and the security afforded by the desert not only moulded the mental attitudes of the Egyptians, they also determined the way in which they lived. Life in Egypt depended upon the vagaries of the Nile. If the annual flood was too high, havoc ensued. If the flood was too low, a smaller area of land was rendered fit for the sowing of crops and less food could be grown. If a low flood was repeated over several consecutive years, shortage of food was the inevitable outcome, sometimes reaching famine proportions.

The early Egyptians soon learned how important the Nile was to them. Over 5,000 years ago, the many separate tribes which then inhabited Egypt began to cooperate with each other. They banded together to make the best use of the Nile by harnessing and conserving the water, by building dykes, irrigation ditches and canals. In so doing, they became a unified society ruled by a central authority which was responsible for directing the control of the water, building and maintaining dykes and canals and storing the agricultural produce of the nation. They became, in fact, one of the earliest civilizations; and their conservatism, allied with their isolation behind natural barriers, ensured that they were to enjoy that civilization for over 3,000 years.

Many aspects of life in ancient Egypt were influenced by the Nile. The seasons of the year were determined by the behaviour of the River; there were three of them: Inundation (akhet, which means ‘flooded’), the four months (July–October, provided the lunar and solar calendars were in step: see page 29) during which the land was covered by the flood waters of the Nile; Winter (peret, which means ‘coming forth’), the four months (November–February) during which the fields emerged from the water and seed was sown; and Summer (shomu, which perhaps means ‘deficiency of water’), the four months (March–June) during which the harvest was gathered.

The Nile determined property values. Land in Egypt was divided into three categories: first, that which always received the benefit of the Inundation, second, that which sometimes did, and third, that which never did; and taxes were assessed accordingly. Even Justice was influenced by the Nile. There were incessant wrangles over rights to use water, or over boundaries that had been blurred during the Inundation, and many of these cases came to court. The importance of the Nile and its water was reflected in the accounts men gave of themselves in the Afterlife; or left as their records for posterity. The declaration that a man had not ‘held up the water in its season’ or ‘built a dam against running water’ or ‘diverted his neighbour’s water for his own use’ was held to be of equal importance with the avowal of never having committed murder or robbery.

The Nile, which the Egyptians called the River (åtrw), came, or so they thought, from the place where the world began. Accordingly, they oriented themselves southwards towards the cavern at Aswan where the Nile had its mythological source (see page 63). The mythological cause of the Inundation was the goddess Isis, weeping copious tears into the Nile in commemoration of her dear, dead husband, Osiris; and every year the Egyptians celebrated the event on the Night of Clouds (Gerekh-en-Haty), the great festival that marked the beginning of the Inundation, an event that modern Egyptians celebrated before the building of the Aswan Dam as the Night of the Tear Drop (Leilet el-Nuktah: 18 June).

Considering that the Nile was so vital to the Egyptians, it is surprising to discover that this great river was not elevated to the position of most important god in the land. In fact, the Nile as such was not deified at all. Instead, it was represented by Hapy, the Spirit or Essence of the Nile. Many are the figures of Hapy that can be seen in temples, carved on the dadoes that run along the bases of walls within the temple; he is depicted as a man with a pendulous belly (always a sign of a prosperous and well-fed man to the ancient Egyptians, a man to be respected) and the breasts of a woman, wearing on his head clusters of Nile plants.

Thus, the characteristics peculiar to the land of Egypt – a long, narrow valley surrounded and protected by desert, a river which ensured a plentiful supply of water and fertile soil, a climate which had little rainfall and no snow or fog, a land on which the sun shone constantly but which was prevented from turning into an arid waste by that plentiful supply of water – made the ancient Egyptians into a highly conservative, parochial, even complacent, society. They lived in a land that was productive but nevertheless demanded constant hard work, and forced its inhabitants to be practical. The Egyptians, therefore, tended to be people of little imagination, who did not indulge in any great flights of fancy. They were parochial: their eyes were turned on their own neighbourhood no matter how confined that neighbourhood might be. The ancient Egyptians had no real sense of nationalism, and they certainly did not have a sense of internationalism.

In spite of their narrow, inward-looking way of life, many Egyptians must have posed the eternal, universal questions – who created the world? and the sun and the stars? who created life on earth, both animal and human? what happens when one dies? is there life after death? – and found acceptable answers to their questions by conceiving gods and a religion that were developed directly from their own experience of life as they lived it in the land of Egypt.

TWO

FORMS OF RELIGION IN ANCIENT EGYPT

The earliest Egyptians, in common with most primitive human beings, probably worshipped simple things such as oddly shaped stones and hills. This type of worship is called animism, that is, the attribution of a living soul to inanimate objects and natural phenomena. A ‘rational’ person might stub a toe against a stone and regard it as an accident. A primitive man is more likely to think that the stone has attacked him and consider it to be something unfriendly or even malevolent. If he were sufficiently in awe of it, he might turn the stone into an object of worship.

Animists believe that the souls attached to inanimate objects can detach themselves and become ‘spirits’. Such a spirit is able to take any form it chooses. It thus poses a threat to human beings, for it is always looking for an opportunity to enter their bodies and those of animals. Once it does so, it changes the behaviour of its host whose death it can bring about through disease. Animists also believe that spirits can be disembodied and cause disasters and calamities, although, on the other hand, some spirits are beneficial and kindly. They also believe that the dead possess souls and must be propitiated by the living in case they try to do harm; hence, animists are often practitioners of ancestor worship.

The early Egyptians, like other animists, identified certain animals, birds, trees or stones as homes of spirits, both good and bad. Even geographical features could be venerated; thus the highest peak in the Theban area was worshipped as Ta-Dehenet (The Mountain Top) and became the goddess of the Theban necropolis. Gradually, the good spirits became ‘gods’ and were served by magicians who claimed to have power to influence their actions on behalf of their fellow beings; and to be able to avert the malevolence of the evil spirits.

Mankind has always had two basic needs: food and sex. In Egypt these needs, combined with a fear of the unknown and the inexplicable, gave the magician whose actions seemed to guarantee their continuance great power. In less primitive times, theories were promulgated that turned magic into religion. However, the Egyptians never entirely lost their primitive instincts; they remained a very superstitious people, and magic always played an important part in their religious beliefs.

The animism of the early Egyptians led to fetishism and the worship of animals. Fetishism endows an object with magical and mystical power. In many places in Egypt, different fetishes were worshipped. There often seems to be no clear reason why any particular object should be venerated, unless it is obvious that it had a close association with the district in which it was worshipped. But among the fetishes of ancient Egypt can be numbered a fossil belemnite, a shield and arrows, and a sceptre.

Being an agricultural people, the Egyptians were brought into daily contact with animals and birds; it was not surprising that they should turn such creatures into objects of worship, a worship that was localized according to the kind of animal found in a particular district. Animals were venerated at first because of the qualities they possessed – for their strength, their beauty, their virility or their swiftness; or because they were feared. The belief that certain animals possessed divine powers eventually led to these animals being linked with individual deities: such animals were considered to be imbued with the spirit of the deity, and to be his or her manifestation upon earth.

The Egyptians of the prehistoric era eventually began to give human form to their sacred animals and objects. They had discovered that there were inherent difficulties in having purely inanimate or animal gods: animal gods, for instance, were unable to speak and make their wishes known. The priests seem to have solved the problem by wearing masks, fashioned in imitation of the heads of the animal gods, from within which they themselves gave voice to the gods’ wishes, a practice which resulted in the noted Egyptian custom of representing gods with human bodies and animal heads.

The third type of god worshipped by the ancient Egyptians was the cosmic god – moon, storm, wind, and, especially, the sun. This type of deity represents a higher order of divine being since it is difficult to personalize a cosmic god, with the result that this type of god is less easy to comprehend and therefore demands a greater degree of intellectual effort. Cosmic gods arrived on the scene much later than the fetish and local gods. It was not until the historic era that they were fully developed. At that time, the sun in particular became a universal god, worshipped throughout the land; and with the founding of the Egyptian state it was elevated to the status of state god.

The peculiar characteristics of the land in which the Egyptians lived influenced their religion by diversifying it. Until about 3000 BC, Egypt was divided into two distinct halves, each inhabited by tribes of different ethnic groups. The northern half, usually called Lower Egypt because the lower reaches of the Nile run through it, seems to have been inhabited by people of Semitic origins. It was cut up in all directions by arms of the Nile, marshes and canals. The southern half, or Upper Egypt, lay in the narrowest, least fertile part of the Nile valley, where the river often runs between high cliffs, thus denying the Inundation access to the land. It was inhabited by people of African origin.

Communication between the two halves of the country, and even within the two halves, was extremely difficult: the Nile was the only highway. Thus Egypt fell easily into provinces, each with differences in speech, ways of life, customs and religion. In the historic period, these provinces were called separt, later renamed nomes by the Greeks, the term that is now generally used. There were forty-two nomes, or administrative divisions, which were established early in Egyptian history: twenty-two in Upper Egypt and twenty in Lower Egypt. Their boundaries were shifted from time to time, but their number remained constant since forty-two was considered to be a magic number by the Egyptians.

Within each nome, towns and villages tended to be cut off from each other. The nomes themselves had characteristics of their own, since they were probably based on what had been tribal areas. Each nome had a capital city; a special deity which was given the name of the nome and could be impersonated by a human being during great national ceremonies in temples; and a nome standard which carried a representation of the chief deity or fetish worshipped in the nome. Thus in each province, town and village in Egypt, religion took on a special form peculiar to that particular place. Every locality had its own local deity, who was often worshipped in a way that was special to him or her, and who was often equipped with myths and legends of his or her own.

During periods of unrest, or when there was a weak central government, religious differences were intensified. However, when the country was united, a strange process commenced. The principal deity of the town or city which was the seat of the official royal residence – this varied from time to time according to the vicissitudes of history – became the state god. His temple was visited from all parts of the country, its god recognized by all. The fame that providing the state god for the country brought to his home town caused other towns to wish for a god of such distinction. And so they either introduced his worship into their own temples, or they ‘discovered’ that he was in reality one and the same god as their own local deity; and the two deities would be blended into one – for example, Amen-Re (see page 134).

As a uniform way of life developed in Egypt, this process of merging deities, called syncretism, should logically have led to the blending of all the gods and goddesses of Egypt into one god with a very long name made up of the syllables of the names of all the other gods. However, the Egyptians were not the most logical of people, and this ‘happy’ state was never attained! Thus, throughout their history, there were great numbers of deities. How many is impossible to establish, since some are merely names mentioned in hieroglyphic texts, and with each discovery or translation of a new text, more may be revealed. The number is enlarged, some estimate to over two thousand, because many gods have female counterparts; and because the hieroglyph ‘god’, or, is often added to the name of any unusual creature. Many gods, therefore, have more in common with fairies, pixies, goblins, trolls, demons and similar creatures than with anything that is generally accepted as a true deity.

The myriad gods worshipped by the ancient Egyptians fell into three main categories:

1) Local gods, which were the inanimate objects (fetishes) or animals, birds and other living creatures associated with a particular locality: the earliest type of deity worshipped by the Egyptians.

2) Universal gods, the cosmic deities who represented the forces of nature – the sun, the moon, the stars, wind and storm.

3) Personal gods, the objects or creatures chosen by individuals to receive their allegiance (see page 194).

Religion pervaded every aspect of life in ancient Egypt, apparently making the Egyptians into a very religion-ridden society. However, this does not mean that they were more pious than other people, or more devout, humble, godly, spiritual, pure in heart or worthy of being described by any other adjective listed in Roget’s Thesaurus as synonymous with religion. It simply means that Egyptian history was the story of the interplay between gods and kings; that for much of that history the economy of Egypt was organized around the temples; that religious beliefs affected the way in which the Egyptians dealt with death.

At the same time, there was a private religion (see page 194). Because ordinary Egyptians had no admittance to the innermost areas of a temple, the only opportunity they were given to behold the deity to whom the temple was dedicated came when the cult statue, in which the spirit of the deity was thought to reside, and which was normally kept in his temple’s innermost sanctuary, was brought out of its shrine on the occasion of one of the great festivals that took place at certain times of the year, and carried in procession around the town for the edification of the populace. Whereas the Egyptians erected official temples for local and universal gods, private individuals had their own beliefs, their own private god or gods, and were happy to construct with their own hands small shrines near their houses for their personal gods to whom they could turn for aid and comfort.

Meanwhile, the official state religion of Egypt concerned itself with promoting the well-being of the gods, which they reciprocated by maintaining the established order of the world. The vehicle through which the gods received favour, and in turn dispensed it, was the king, aided by a hierarchy of priests. One of the most important aspects of Egyptian religion was the fact that the king was regarded as a god. Tradition stated that in the beginning, kingship came to earth in the person of the godking, Re, who brought his daughter, Maat, the embodiment of Truth and Justice, with him. Thus the beginning of the world was synchronous with the beginning of kingship and social order.

The kings of Egypt legitimized their claim to the throne in ways that were influenced by religious beliefs. The god-king Horus was the son of the god Osiris who had been king; and so every new king of Egypt became a Horus to his predecessor’s Osiris. By acting as Horus had towards Osiris, in other words, by burying his predecessor, each new king made legal his claim to the throne (see page 91). Theogamy was another means through which this was accomplished. Here, the principal god of the time was said to have assumed the form of the reigning king in order to beget a child on his queen; that child later claimed to be the offspring of both his earthly and his heavenly father; and the earthly father was quite content to have been cuckolded by the god (see pages 124 and 133).

The king was the unifying factor in Egyptian religious life. In theory, he was chief priest in every temple; the only person entitled to officiate in the temple rituals, the only person entitled to enter the holy of holies within the temple. Obviously, this was a fiction: the king could not be in every temple at once. However, the fiction was maintained in the reliefs carved on the walls of temples, which always show the king making offerings to the gods. The king was the embodiment of the connection between the world of men and the world of gods, the linchpin of Egyptian society. It was his task to make the world go on functioning; it was his task to make the sun rise and set, the Nile to flood and ebb, the grain to grow; all of which could only be achieved by the performance of the proper rituals within the temples.

It is perhaps appropriate here to point out the vast differences between what the term ‘temple’ meant to the Egyptians and what it means to people today. Egyptian temples symbolized the earth: thus they were made of the most enduring materials that the Egyptians were capable of handling at any given period. The earliest temples were built of reeds and mud; in the early dynastic period most were constructed of mud-brick, only the lintels of their doors and windows, and the bases of columns, being made of stone. By the time of the Old Kingdom, the Egyptians were building their temples almost entirely in stone, although not many of these structures can