Egypt’s Beginnings
Of all the ancient cultures and mythologies, Egypt’s is one that presents a most interesting puzzle. While there are remnants of many other religions and lifestyles still to be found today in either actual practice, or in derivatives of the original source, there is very little clear evidence of ancient Egypt culture to be found in the modern world. The only sources of information we have to point us are the archaeological remains–the temples, the pyramids and the contents of the many unearthed tombs.
For whatever reason unknown to us, the Egyptians put a lot of effort into building structures that would last. What may have simply started with the realization that burial in the hot sand would naturally preserve a body developed into the idea of mummification and the building of the pyramids that would hold the bodies. It is these monuments that give us our only record–albeit and incomplete one– of the way they lived and believed.
The nature of these sources leads us to three, however possibly inaccurate, discoveries: first, the the Egyptians constantly thought about death; second, that many clues to our world and universe can be found through the study of their beliefs and rituals; and thirdly, that the Egyptians worshiped animals. The last two conclusions may seem contradictory to us, but further study will show that while the ancient Egyptian mythology is filled with animals, animal worship is the wrong thing to call it (at least as far as Egyptian theologians and the educated upper class were concerned).
What the Egyptians were truly occupied with was life. Ancient Egypt was really only the land that surrounded the Nile River; the portions that were made fertile by its yearly flooding. The areas that were livable made a sharp contrast to the surrounding desert. The livable part of Egypt was as blessed as the surrounding area was and is cursed; the agricultural value of the land was so immense that it formed the basis of the Egyptian civilization for close to 6 millennia. As such, the natural forces of the earth were the objects of Egyptian worship. Water and fertile earth were the first elements to be turned to in a religious aspect–the sun was not originally seen to be beneficial in any way and while its power was clear, it was feared for far longer than it was adored.
The Nile and its banks unified Egypt, as well as attracting and allowing settlers from separate communities to come together. Each community tended to have its own set of beliefs and its own god or gods, taking inspiration from local surroundings or other parts of Africa, Asia or the Mediterranean regions. Other influences might have also been commercial or military contacts with other peoples. Each community found itself led by its god and a victory in war was seen as a victory over the opposing people and their god. In ancient Egypt, might was right: one’s victory proved one’s moral superiority over another.
But victory did not signify the destruction of the conquered god. Instead, the conquering god assimilated the beaten god into itself. The vanquished deity was then said to be an aspect of the victor, incorporated into the family or other divine group, creating a triad. This uncharacteristic tolerance of the Egyptians makes it easy to see how the elaborate mythological explanations of the flow and development of this belief grew. Their living conditions made them more tolerant and poetical in the way they thought; contradictory myths coexisted happily because they were simply viewed as different aspects of one reality: the search for ‘truth’ in the modern sense would have seemed irrelevant.
As an agricultural people, the Egyptians divine rites were re-enactments of natural processes, agriculture and natural order. These rites in their original forms were meant to ensure that nature would be benevolent. In Egypt’s case, where the fertile land lay along the banks of the Nile, such rites might have been more a celebration than performed on the basis of fear. The rituals changed slowly and reluctantly over time, but the condition of the worshipers may have changed rapidly, especially dependant on the social order of the time. Egyptians used myth to relate traditional ritual to their actual circumstances.
Learning more of Egyptian religion, we see that artistic representation (most of which becomes fixed at an early stage, around the time of the Second Dynasty) are generally associated more with cult or ritual than of mythological stories. The emphasis on ritual creates some of the difficulty in understanding Egypt’s religion and their earlier, more primitive beliefs. Although the Egyptian culture and mythos was all dominating in every aspect of a person’s life, the religion was not a strict dogma. It was static and ever-changing; a creative religion where every individual was asked to use their imagination. Each re-enactment was not only considered to be a reminder of some godly myth, but it also was the event in question. Then again, any change from the usual ritual could entail a revision in the myth. This, in addition to the many centuries of change during which the religion prevailed, allowed for the inconsistencies found between carvings, mural paintings, papyri and various texts. It is possible that ancient Egyptians would have considered then the differences as what we would now call the differences between two works interpreting the same theme: each has its own justification based on the imagining of the author. Egyptians came to view their gods as symbols of cosmic or ethical forces. Accordingly, modern scholars reject the idea that they actually worshiped the animals. Instead, they venerated the qualities that they imagined a particular animal to be endowed with–strength, wisdom, beauty, virility.
Birth of the Gods
Early mythology tends to associate gods with agriculture, originally seen as earth, water, rain and sky. Since one of the earlymost tribal obsessions was with the hawk, it soon became associated with the sky, possibly for such simple reasons as the height to which it was able to soar. The most powerful of these falcon-deities was Horus, most probably originating in Libya before going on to conquer large parts of Upper and Lower Egypt. Despite the natural belief that the sun was a force of destruction and an enemy, the people of Horus also lived in peace with the followers of Ra, the sun-god who originated in either the islands of the Mediterranean or Caucasus.
There is much mention made of ‘The Two Lands’ that made up Egypt–the Upper and the Lower. The two sections had a natural tendency to deviate from one another, but all times of civilized Egyptian advancement within Egypt came when both regions were united. The first unification seems to have been arranged by the followers of Ra, who made their capital in Heliopolis, which then remained the theological and academic center for many dynasties. Though this original supremacy was shortlived, the fact that their ruler was a follower of Ra had a marked effect: it permanently associated supreme rule with the sun cults. Tradition following then required every major god (in particular, those of the pharaohs) be in some way connected or otherwise identified with the sun.
As the gods were like kings on earth, so to the pharaohs came to be seen as godlike. They had both the earthly power over their subjects and, as priests, had apparent control over nature. The early Horus-kings may have been associated with the sky-god as rainmakers, but they were also judges. In this aspect, they could easily be connected with the cosmic gods–especially Ra–whose regular courses were viewed to be symbolic of divine order and justice, personified by the goddess Mayet.
But there weren’t always benefits to the Nile and the sun: the Nile floods often failed to come when needed and the sun was easily as destructive as it was beneficial. The surrounding desert which gave Egypt its unity and protected it from invasion likewise remained a reminder that the inhabitants of the valleys that they were dependent on the good will of nature. Citizens had to see that the king, as nature’s representative, remained placated. It was his job to uphold divine order: what he wanted was considered to be good and just; what was unforeseen and unwillingly accepted was evil. Prosperous times and favorable conditions led to the insistence of maintaining the status quo–an ideal that they wished to carry into death, furthering the prementioned preoccupation with death.
Just as the Egyptians viewed the difference between between cult and theology to be small, so to the boundaries between religion and politics (though it was not called by that name until much more recent and modern times) were indistinct. Even to the degree that we can separate Church and State in ancient Egypt, it is nonetheless clear that that each supported the other. The king, in his ruling position (state) was seen to be divine (religion) and therefor ruled over both.
As such, a large part of the mythology that we know of was concerned with setting up a hierarchy on earth, including a system of land tenure and ritual forms. Egyptian mythology can even be seen as an attempt to bolster the king’s authority. Certainly, some of the changes in their religious belief can be traced to the beginnings of a new dynasty or a shift in power from one part of the country to another. But the ancient Egyptian truly believed that his king had divine right and authority, not only that he claimed it to justify his rule. The king was seen as a direct middle-man between the Great Gods and man (the king himself was viewed to be a ‘good god’) as someone whom without no divine benefits could be granted to the rest of the population. The king’s actions and health, then, were the primary concern of every single one of his subjects. In his own turn, the king then owed tremendous devotion to the gods, fulfilling daily rituals to constantly renew his own divine nature.
Pharaohs and Priests
As previously mentioned, the cult devotion to the gods was, officially, the sole responsibility of pharaoh alone. However, while the king might be in a position to officiate the large and more important ceremonies throughout the year, he could not do so every single day of the year in every single temple. Therefor, each sanctuary maintained a high priest to represent him and act his part.
Originally, these high priests were individuals with high standing within the cult, especially honored by the king with the position, land and wealth. In Thebes, the cult center of Amon-Ra, it soon became the custom to make the office hereditary, so that the priest acquired independent standing and power. Priestesses also performed in the temples, usually by dancing and making music for the amusement of their god. They were considered to be concubines of the god, associated with fertility–particularly those who served Amon-Ra, where the Divine Consort was more often than not a royal princess.
The position of the high priest then came to be seen in many ways as a parallel to that of the king and, like other monarchs or provincial governor, he gained power whenever the royal authority weakened–at times of military defeat, or when the royal, pharaonic blood was mixed with that of commoners/mortals. This trend reached its height when the god Amon-Ra rose in power. Wealth gained through conquest poured into the money-chests of the priesthood and further money was spent on the cult. The economy was weakened during this time, as was the royal house, while the priests of Amon-Ra brought together their power and endowments. The high priest of the cult ruled the priests of all others and became a kingmaker himself in the Eighteenth Dynasty, supporting Hatshepsut, the first woman in Egypt’s history to rule as pharaoh, as well as her successor Thuthmosis III. Though soon overthrown by Akhenathen, Amon-Ra made a swift recovery after the heretical king’s death and three centuries later the high priest of the time claimed lordship over Upper Egypt for Amon-Ra himself, that rule to be exercised by himself and through the priesthood.
The Twenty First Dynasty, which had a tight rule over the North, though a minor one in the South, was for all purposes ineffective in Upper Egypt almost completely, beginning ancient Egypt’s long decline.
By and large though, during the time that Egypt was a unified country, all the important gods that had once been nothing more than local deities were worshiped throughout. Special attention may have been given to a particular god in the city or province in which that god had originated, but that god still would have been generally related in some mythological scheme to the other gods worshiped in the rest of Egypt.
Basically, the most prominent gods represented in Egypt, no matter what the political or economic climate, were those that signified creation, fertility, or sought in some way to personify the sun. Even the cult of Osiris which came to dominate Egypt in later years, was slowly changing from a cult obsessed with death to one that was a cult of fertility and life–even if that ‘life’ was perceived to be life after death. Osiris gradually came to be identified with the sun, eventually entering the realm of the living as well.
But the association of the Osiris cult between death and fertility was not an odd one, or even unique to Egypt alone. It occurs throughout many of the ancient civilizations, most notably in the myth of Hades and Persephone. The Greek myth recounts the tale of Hades, Lord of the Underworld, falling deeply in love with Demeter’s daughter, Persephone. Demeter was identified primarily as the Greek goddess of fertility and growth. When it was discovered that her daughter would be forced to stay in the Underworld for four months a year, due to eating four seeds of a pomegranate given to her by Hades, Demeter blighted the earth, forbidding anything from growing and prospering in the wake of her own devastation. Even today, the world still bears the mark of this story. The earth begins to hibernate in the fall, when Demeter knows that her daughter is soon to leave her and all but dies in the winter. When Persephone returns in spring, the earth begins to awaken and reaches its full glory in summer, when mother and daughter have already been reunited for some time and winter is furthest away.
It was the god Horus, though, that became the first exception to the rule that all major gods at the time were identified in some way with fertility and life. Symbolized by a falcon, he was originally the god of a hunting tribe and may have originally been a war-god. However, after the unification of Egypt by Menes, he began to be identified with the sun cult of the king who had unified the Two Lands. In no short order, the falcon had become the symbol of all majesty. Attempts to incorporate worship of the sun into the Horus cult soon saw him as a sky-god, with the sun and the moon as his eyes.
As a sky-god, then, Horus could then take his part in agricultural myth. Water was the source of fertility, as far as Egyptians were concerned, and the sky was considered to be an ocean mirroring the one on earth from which the Nile originated. The heavenly bodies in their turn also played their part in the agricultural myth; the Dog-star, for example, called Septet or Sothis, and late identified with Isis, rose with the eastern sun at the same time of year that the Nile flooded. These floods began the new agricultural year and, as such, Septet was venerated accordingly as having a part in them. Astronomy was studied intensely in Heliopolis and in due time, the connections between the phases of the sky and agriculture were made.
The identification of Horus with the sun grew in the Fifth Dynasty, when Heliopolis and the cult of the sun-god Ra regained its religious supremacy and Horus was then viewed to the be the son of Ra. In later times, though, the falcon-god Horus becomes confused with the son of Isis and Osiris (sometimes said to be the son of Geb and Nut) who was also called Horus, and was the falcon-god’s grandson. This composite god that then emerged retained the falcon symbol, not only gaining the associations with majesty and power, but also receiving a role in the afterlife myths of Osiris. The new connection helps to understand the rise of Osiris from the dead to the living. Additionally, both gods had important roles in the ways that myth and the rituals concerning life and death interplayed with one another. It would not seem likely that Osiris and the death-cult would have grown to such importance if the two Horus gods had not been combined.
It would seem then, that there was a sense of continuity and a cyclic pattern in the creation of Egyptian beliefs. Despite this, religious beliefs were by means left to evolve solely in the minds of the people. It would be wrong to give the impression that the deliberate changes made by kings or priests were to suit their own purposes, but it is impossible to understand the slight knowledge that we have about their religion and myths without taking into consideration the basic system of the great cult centers.
Current evidence is contained in the religious documents that these centers produced. The texts were formulated in the symbolic language of ritual based on mythological events, as understood by each center. Through these documents, we are able to guess at the underlying systems; can examine the implications of each ritual embodied by the texts themselves. Before we discuss the major gods, then, it is important for us to consider the different doctrines held by the four great cult centers: Heliopolis, Hermopolis, Memphis and Thebes. The cult of Osiris, whose earlier forms pre-dated these systems and, in its later forms, supplanted them, will be discussed on its own.
The complete myths, many of which are common to all of Egypt in all ages, and not just to particular regions, covers the history of Egypt from the creation of the very world and down to the rise of Horus as king. From that time on, Horus was ritually represented on earth by each pharaoh that followed the line; the king’s rise of power was seen as Horus’s rise to power as well. We have a fairly good record of the trials Horus faced before finally becoming king, due to the fact that his own cult was closely tied with that of Osiris, and was so seen to be of considerable importance once Egypt started coming into contact with the outside world, documented by Herodotus and Plutarch. Of the earlier myth, there is considerably less known. But the basic differences between the four cult centers seem to center on their varying opinions as to the creation of the world. Just as the pharaoh used his power by virtue of hereditary and godly birth, so too the gods owed their position to mythological origins. Their power was seen to be justified by their origin and function in the cosmogony. Here, then, is where we see the importance of the cosmogonies attaching to the different centers, as well as the fusion of one to the other for mythological development.
It seems to be more correct to call the varying systems ‘different interpretations’ instead of ‘different beliefs’ since the cults were seen to be some aspect of truth, certainly by the educated. Apparently, except for the exception of a brief time of Atenism, the only priests who were in any way dogmatic were those of Helipolis–and it is their cult that is most known to us. The other centers than were essentially variations on on the Heliopolitan doctrine, and made hardly any attempt to reconcile any irregularities and differences that resulted from imposing one cult on another. The Egyptians may have very well thought that a succession of quick and fleeting images, a symbolic language or notation for spiritual ideas, gave a better picture of what they felt was essentially unknowable.