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An outline of ancient Egyptian religion
The philosophical foundation
The religion of the ancient Egyptians
was based on a world view that differed considerably from ours. It was
essentially a primitive world view - "primitive" in the sense of
"original", or "early". As such, it had much in common with the
perspective or outlook of other (also contemporary) peoples that live
closer to nature then we do. Its main points of departure are:
-
Everything that exists – gods, men, the spirits of the deceased,
animals, plants and minerals, thoughts and emotions, dreams and
memories – they all share the same attributes of realness,
effectiveness and vulnerability. In other words: all is material.
-
All that
is partakes in the same, interrelated existence. Whatever happens
to one element of nature, will to some extent influence everything
else. In other words: all is connected.
In the case of ancient Egypt, this general
framework
was supplemented with the following beliefs:
-
Before creation, all that existed was the primeval
water, called Nun. Out of Nun emerged the world, including the gods:
this was creation proper. But Nun did not cease to exist: it remained as the frame in which creation
was set.
-
When the process of creation was finished, all that
was – nature and culture, including the state and its institutions –
existed in a beneficial equilibrium, in harmony. This equilibrium, this
harmony was called Maat.
Maat
Maat
was harmony, but also order and justice. In the mind of the ancient Egyptians,
one was the other: order equaled justice equaled harmony. To advance order,
was to advance justice and harmony, but also - because everything was
connected - nature’s response:
fertility and prosperity. So, to ensure wellbeing and happiness for all,
nothing more was required then to keep things (all of society) the way
it was once created. For the Egyptians, paradise not only once existed,
but it remained always within reach.
Maat was however not unthreatened. Within creation, strife and falsehood
were also active. So were all sorts of demons. Therefore, Maat needed
active protection. To safeguard Maat was the joint
responsibility of men, gods and the king – with the king taking the
lead.
The way the king must shore Maat was, to act
in concord with her. If he acted justly, this supported Maat, and
then there would be fertility for land, beasts and men, and wellbeing for
all.
The acts of a criminal contravened Maat. Dishonesty and greed were not
unnatural: these matters belonged to the nature of the
world as much as love and peace. But one could not allow them to
prosper: "falsehood" was to be eradicated like a cancer, lest it threaten the equilibrium
without which man could not even live.
Consequently, to punish the criminal meant much more then simple
retribution: it was a holy duty for the king and his administration.
Likewise with foreign invaders: they threatened the stability of the
Egyptian state, and therefore Maat. So the king must slay all
foreigners. In countless reliefs on the walls of temples, he is seen
doing just this, with the gods as his witnesses. By performing this act
before the gods, he showed them his worthiness as Maat's defender.
The gods
The Egyptians were a very religious people in the sense that their gods
meant a great deal to them. This can e.g. be seen in the large number of
theophoric names (personal names in which the name of a god is a part),
such as Amenhotep: "Amun is content" or Amenemhat: "Amun leads the
way". The gods were their banner, their national anthem and their
national soccer team, all in one. The gods were their champions, their
pride, and they reveled in their glory. Religious festivals dominated
the calendar, and were celebrated with zeal. As the hymns say: "The
whole land is in jubilation, when you [the god] appear in glory".
But when we study these gods, we find we have a hard time trying to
grasp what exactly made them so inspiring for their followers. In fact, the
more we learn, the less distinct the picture gets - until we find
ourselves lost in blurred contours and an ever deepening vagueness.
These gods were not so much personalities, as they were sets of
attributes and epithets – and these attributes and epithets were to an
unsettling degree interchangeable.
Our confusion comes from looking the wrong way. As the
Egyptians had a highly developed culture, we expect their gods to
resemble those of other sophisticated ancient cultures, like the
Greeks. (Although, if we get a little deeper into the nature of the gods
of classic Greece, we will encounter pretty much the same vagueness.
Those crisp outlines of the great Greek gods were mostly the work of
literary authors, such as Homer, who needed developed personalities for
their plots.)
Since the gods are part of creation, rather then existing independently
outside creation, they are immanent, not transcendent. They are the
powers inside the natural phenomena. And as the Egyptians
experienced nature primarily as a series of separate, discrete
phenomena, their gods also remained essentially discrete and separate.
As powers, each had
a specific domain of expression. These domains varied
considerably. Some were rooted in a clear-cut natural phenomenon, such as
Re who was immanent in the sun, or Hapi who was in the overflowing Nile.
The domain of Ptah however was the mineral world (for which he was the patron god
of craftsmen), and Heqet was a goddess associated with birth. Hathor was
connected to music and love, and perhaps Isis was originally the power
in the throne (AER,
6). But about the origin of some other important gods, like Osiris or
Nephthys, we know next to nothing.
Over time, as a result of several processes of splitting up and merging,
the domain of a god could become manifold. Thoth for instance was a god
of writing and learning, but also of healing, and of the moon. Horus was
a royal god (incarnate in the king), but also a god of the sky, of
both the sun and the moon, and he typified the Good Son.
The outward appearance of the gods could be equally manifold. The
goddess Hathor for instance could be depicted as a cow, as a woman with
the head of a cow, a woman with a human head but the ears of a cow,
as a woman with cow-horns and the sun disk on her head, or as the Lady
of the Sycamore: a genie, bending over from a tree offering water to the
deceased. But far stranger
forms did also occur: a god in the form of a beetle, a snake or a
centipede, gods that are depicted as humans but with an ostrich feather
or a vase in place of a head: the variety was quite staggering.
Many gods displayed a firm link with a geographical entity, mostly a
city. This was recognized in the Egyptian language with the common
expression "city gods". But there were also Nome-gods ("province-gods"),
and gods that were associated with either Upper or Lower Egypt.
The association with a locality could be so close, that this locality
may seem to be the "domain" of the god. Examples are Amentet, the goddess of the West, and
Meretseger, the goddess of the mountain that dominates the Valley of the
Kings.
(Possibly we should regard those gods that do not seem to possess a
distinct geographical connection, such as Geb, Shu, Tefnut and many
more, as being linked to, and immanent in, the land of Egypt as a whole.)
Gods and places could also get mixed up in interactive jumbles:
through the association of Amun (god of Thebes) with Re (god of
Heliopolis), Thebes became know as "Southern Heliopolis". Sometimes, the
fog gets so dense that there's simply no way out again. Horus was
worshipped in two cities that were both called Behdet: one in Lower, and
one in Upper Egypt. Which (if any) of the two is the "original" Behdet
just can no longer be discerned.
With the very apparent exception of the Amarna-period,
Egyptian religion
was characterized by a remarkable tolerance. In some periods, some gods
would be held in higher regard then others, but persecution, or even
neglect, of other gods never occurred. Even more, gods could
peacefully take over the attributes of other gods, as a token of
respect, but also to benefit from the other god’s prestige. This
so-called syncretism (a rather inappropriate term) leads to the
formation of composite gods such as Min-Horus, Amun-Re or Re-Harachte.
Yet within these compound gods, the constituent parts remain forever
distinct. No matter how much attention Amun-Re received, both Amun and
Re stayed very much alive as the originals, the founding-fathers of
Amun-Re.
The various aspects of the Egyptian gods we have described so far, all add
to the vagueness already mentioned: the multiple domains, the many
shapes and names, the interchangeable epithets, the compound and
split-up gods. But for the Egyptians, all of this
was just the icing on the cake: a multi-colored, multi-faceted further
decoration of their magnificent, awesome gods. We see only this
decoration, but they experienced the gods directly from their sources:
the powers of nature.
All those weird and confusing pictures of gods with animal heads were
not what the Egyptians considered to be their
actual shape. These depictions were just convenient identification tags, to show what god was being
referred to in the accompanying texts. The true shape of the gods was
that of the phenomenon that they were immanent in. In the final
analysis, that shape equaled the phenomenon, which could, in its
entirety, be experienced, but not depicted.
All gods
had one thing in common though, and this was
the thing that really mattered: they were the Gods of Egypt. And Egypt was
the best land in the world, with the best king, and the best
people. These gods were as awesome as this king, as mighty as this
people, and as beautiful and inspiring as this land. These gods were
Egypt - and that is, why they meant so much to the Egyptians.
Ethics
With respect to ethics, primitive religions are very different from
contemporary religions such as Christianity or Islam. Although early man
certainly was aware of moral standards, he derived these standards not
from the gods, but from nature
(Magic, 72-75).
In the case of ancient Egypt, the ethical framework of society was
further shored by the principle of Maat, or justice. Living a just and
righteous life was important as a means of staying in concord with Maat
- and he who was in concord with Maat could count on a good and
prosperous life. (In this respect, the principle of Maat has some
similarity with the Hindu concept of Karma.)
Ritual
The Egyptians
knew two types of ritual:
-
Accompanying
rituals: rituals to accompany a natural phenomenon, such as sowing or
harvesting, or childbirth.
-
And magical
rituals: rituals with the explicit goal of achieving or preventing
something.
In Egypt, magic was mostly based on a perceived power of the
word: either spoken or written.
Over time, accompanying rituals could be further
developed by including magical elements. In this way, a ritual that originally
was designed to accompany (in this case: to celebrate) the rising of the Nile at the
beginning of the new year, could be supplemented with magical elements to
ensure that nothing would threaten the process.
The origin of both accompanying and magical rituals lies before that of
gods and myths (Magic
33-41). Later however, most rituals were supplemented with allusions to myths,
to further enhance their effectiveness.
The king
The king played a key role in
the Egyptian religion. The king was himself a god: he was the earthly
incarnation of Horus. He was "Horus in the Palace" - as opposed to Horus
in the sky. Therefore he was the only person who could
approach the gods. He could even mingle with them. This is pictured
over and over again in every temple of Egypt: the king offering to the
gods, receiving life, health and dominion from them, and being embraced
by them.
Priests
Although the
gods were primarily immanent - i.e. alive inside natural phenomena -
they did have some transcendent features too. They were not totally confined to their domains: they could move about, change shape,
act and interact. They used this freedom a/o to descend into images that
man had made to this end. These images were housed in temples, where
they were
accessible to man.
In theory, only the king could approach the gods. In practice
though, the task of the daily ritual in the temples was mostly delegated to
priests. On important occasions however, the king would no doubt perform the
rites himself.
Although Egyptian culture was infused with religion, priesthood
remained essentially a part time profession. Even high priests
usually held other offices as well. The main body of priests - referred
to as "the pure ones"- was split up into four groups (later
five), called "phyles" by the Greek (Reallexikon
603). These phyles served one month in turn. So most of the time, most
priests lived as lay persons.
There were also priestesses,
although not as much as priests.
For the most part, their function in the temple was that of singer or
dancer, to brighten the god's
meals. Other priestesses were part of the god's harem, although the
practical consequences of this remain indistinct (Reallexikon
607). In the service of goddesses,
more priestesses were present, also in leading positions. The foremost
priestess of the country was the "Divine
Consort of Amun".
State religion
In the large, stone temples that the state commissioned, the emphasis
was on the relationship between king and gods: the warm relationship of
close relatives that constantly take care of each others needs. The
relentless fervor of this constantly repeated theme amounts to veritable
propaganda. One should remember though, that the temples were not
accessible to the general public. This propaganda was therefore not
aimed at them. It was meant for the gods themselves, as an emphatic
confirmation of "things as they are and should be". This would help to
keep the gods content, who then would help the king to support Maat, for
the wellbeing of all.
Folk religion
The common people could not enter the state temples: those grandiose,
overwhelming buildings were not meant to house their religious feelings.
Perhaps that is why
they had recourse to other, less solemn gods, such as the dwarf god Bes, or Tawert, a
strange looking hippopotamus goddess with various parts of other
animals in her body. Besides these, they approached some more
unassuming variants of the state gods, such as "Horus on the corner of
the southern door" (of a state temple in Memphis).
On the other hand, from the later part of the New Kingdom, commoners
have left us some
intimate and truly touching prayers (see especially
AEL-II, 104-110). Remarkably enough, quite a few of these were
addressed to "state gods" such as Amun-Re. Apparently, at least
part of the populace could actually relate to these "high" gods - in
anticipation it seems, of modern, more personal religions.
Myths
The
appearance of myths in ancient Egypt was a relatively late development. Originally,
religious feelings were spurred by the perception of huge and tremendous
powers inside natural phenomena. Only gradually, these immanent powers
acquired some transcendent features, as a result of which they could move
about, and change shape. The different shapes subsequently gave rise to
the birth of different myths (Magic
51-55).
Unfortunately, the Egyptians didn't leave us any complete accounts of
their myths. With the exception of one late variant of the Osiris-myth
(recorded by the Greek author Plutarch), and one rather burlesque story
about an aging Re, we have to make do with assorted bits and pieces,
strewn around in funerary literature and magical texts. Some of the more
explicit and unambiguous references to myths come from vignettes in the
Book of the Dead and other funerary texts, such as the tableau of Nut,
Geb and Shu, or that of the sunrise in the eastern sky.
Some myths did have a profound impact on both religion and ritual. Those
around Horus and Seth on the one hand, and around Horus and Osiris on
the other hand, are present everywhere in the realms of both kingship
and funerary practices.
(For a more in-depth treatment of ancient Egyptian
religion, see "Magic
and Religion in Ancient Egypt. Part I:
The Roots." )
Back to: Introduction to ancient Egypt
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