- Lancelot Andrewes -

So glorious are your works that skies full of pearl, globes of gold, spheres of silver larger than the earth are dross and poverty in comparison to your treasures, all of which you offer me to partake of.

- Thomas Traherne -

And he showed me the robe, just as a bridegroom shows it to the bride whom he has loved a long time. It was neither of purple nor of scarlet, nor of silk, nor of woven gold, but it was a certain marvelous light that clothed the soul.

- Angela Of Foligno -

I have been reading Isaiah the Optimist. What an inspiring challenge he issues to Israel on Jehovah’s behalf: “Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thy habitations; spare not; lengthen thy cords and strengthen thy stakes. For thou shalt spread abroad on the right and on the left.” … Let us, like Carey, “Expect great things from God.”

- David De Forest Burrell -

O son, now I know why  you are so pleasing in the eyes of God. Early have you learned the love which gives all and asks nothing, which suffers long and is ever kind, and this I have not learned. A small thing and too common it seemed to me, but now I see that it is holier than austerities and avails more than fasting and is the prayer of prayers.

- Simeon The Stylite -

And you, as long as you are pilgrim travelers in this mortal life, cannot walk without suffering, for because of sin the earth has produced thorns ….

- St. Catherine Of Siena -

A blow well given now would not merely disperse the mob and set the Nazarene free; it would be a trumpet call to Israel and precipitate the long-dreamt-of war for freedom …. The sovereign moment of his life was upon Ben-Hur. Could he have taken the offer and said the word, history might have been other than it is; but then it would have been history ordered by men, not God-something that never was and never will be.

- Lewis Wallace -

The weather, however, was so mild on the preceding day that it might have been spring, and I no longer dared hope for a fall of snow…. Then, turning toward the quadrangle, I saw that everything was covered with snow! What a delicate attention on the part of Jesus!… Where is the creature with power enough to make even one flake fall to please his beloved?

- St. Therese Of Lisieux -

I saw at once the way to salvation…. There and then the cloud was gone, the darkness had rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun; and I could have risen that instant and sung with the most enthusiastic of them, of the precious blood of Christ and the simple faith which looks alone to Him.

- Charles Haddon Spurgeon -

On that bright and cloudless morning when the dead in Christ shall rise, And the glory of His resurrection share; When His chosen ones shall gather to their home beyond the skies, And the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there.

- James Milton Black -

…. amid the solemn silence which reigned-silence the more solemn and impressive because of the rage and fury of the tempest around-Mr. Draper stood up, the tears streaming down his face, but with a firm clear voice, said, “The captain tells us there is no hope, that we must all perish. But I tell you there is hope, hope for all.”

- Daniel J. Draper -

…. while we are called on to use all proper means and precautions of safety, God will sometimes show us our absolute and immediate dependence on Him by making the very means which we employ the occasion of bringing us to the very borders of the grave.

- Rev. Richard Cecil -

He who upholds the universe, with whom and through whom are all things, was brought forth by common childbirth. He at whose voice archangels and angels tremble, and heaven and earth and all the elements of this world are melted, was heard in childish wailing. The invisible and incomprehensible, whom sight and feeling and touch cannot gauge, was wrapped in a cradle….

- St. Hilary Of Poitiers -

Read the psalm of David and you’ll see there how all the contemplation and practice of the most holy prophet was to think on the commandments and the Law of God…. Consider as certain, then that this is the true contemplation, because from here the soul receives knowledge of the infinite goodness, greatness, and mercy of God; from here it comes to knowledge of its own smallness and wretchedness.

- Juan De Valdes -

… all saints of all the ages, whose faces in the flesh we never saw, whom we shall there both know and comfortably enjoy…. Those who now are willing ministering spirits for our good will willingly then be our companions in joy for the perfecting of our good…. I think, Christian, this will be a more honorable assembly than ever you beheld, and a more happy society than you were ever of before….

- Richard Baxter -

O Lord, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. Thou hast beset me behind and before, laid thine hand upon me.

- Psalm 139:1-5 -

In the Fellowship [of true believers], cultural and educational and national and racial differences are leveled…. The scholar listens with joy and openness to the precious experiences of God’s dealing with the workingman…. The final grounds of holy fellowship are in God. Lives immersed and drowned in God are drowned in love, and know one another in Him, and know one another in love.

- Thomas R. Kelly -

There is one that passes all others and is the most diligent prelate and preacher…. And will you know who he is? I will tell you-it is the devil…. He is ever applying his business; you shall never find him idle, I warrant you…. Oh that our prelates would be as diligent to sow the corn of good doctrine as Satan is to sow cockle and darnel!

- Hugh Latimer -

Question 120: Why has Christ commanded us to address God thus: Our Father?
Answer: To awaken in us, at the very beginning of our prayer, that childlike reverence and trust toward God which are to be the ground of our prayer, namely, that God has become our Father through Christ and will much less deny us what we ask of Him in faith than our parents refuse earthly things….

- The Heidelberg Catechism -

For know that from the beginning of the world, life has betrayed those who have built upon it, it fopped those who sought it, and derided those who trusted in it. And there is so little security in it that one may well say one is completely deceived by it.

- St. Sebastian -

Human words fail when it comes to describing what he saw and heard…. His heart simultaneously hungry and appeased; his wishes were stilled and every desire found its fulfillment…. “If that was not a foretaste of heaven, then I do not know what heaven is. Now I am fully convinced that every suffering that can possibly come my way is a cheap price to pay for such gain….”

- Henry Suso -

…on reading the account as recorded in Mark, I was struck to see that [the colt]…could not possibly get free of itself, that the Lord had reserved it for His own special use, and that He had but to speak and then no cords or chains could bing it any longer. A little faith was raised up in my heart to believe that He was able to do the same for me….

- Mary Grace Banfeild -

For he that never doubted, never believed; for whosoever believes in truth, feels sometimes doubtings ans waverings. Even as the sound body feels many grudging of diseases, which if he had not health, he could not feel; so the sound soul feels some doubtings, which if it were not sound, it could not so easily feel.

- Arthur Dent -

Be praised, my Lord, for those who pardon others for Your love and endure it in peace, for by You, Most High, they will be crowned.

- Brother Leo -

No man’s sight is so strong that he can read in the dark; neither can reason without revelation guide us to heaven.

- Rev. William Scott Downey -

For this cause, yea, and for all things, I praise You, I bless You, I glorify You, through the eternal and heavenly High-priest Jesus Christ, Your beloved Son, through whom with Him and the Holy Spirit be glory to You both now and for the ages to come. Amen.

- St. Polycarp -

… morning, when as arising by little and little it goes changing and investing the horizon with the horizon with the light of the sun: so does the love of God change the just man that perseveres therein, giving him every day more and more light, until he is wholly transformed.

- Achilles Galliardi -

The weakest and the lowest, the roughest and the hardest, the most selfishly absorbed man and woman among us has lying in him or her dormant capacities for flaming up into such a splendor of devotion and magnificence of heroic self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice as is represented in many words on the Bible.

- Rev. Alexander Maclaren -

Tell me the same old story, when you have cause to fear that this world’s empty glory is costing me too dear…..

- Katherine Hankey -

The next comparison was a spider. I didn’t like this at all, but [the speaker] said if we went into a gilded palace filled with luxury, we might see a spider holding onto something, oblivious to all the luxury below. It was laying hold of things above.

- Dwight L. Moody -

One must hold fast to the World of God, so that if I should behold all the angels and hear them telling me not to believe some verse of Scripture, not only ought I not to be moved by them, but I ought to close my eyes and ears, for they would be unworthy of being looked upon or listened to.

- Martin Luther -

I should like a great lake of the finest ale for the King of Kings. I should like a table of the choicest food for the family of heaven. Let the ale be made from the fruits of faith, and the food be forgiving love.

- “Brigid’s Feast” -

…. with eyes uplifted to heaven, [Simeon] says, “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all people, a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.” Joseph and Mary stand lost in wonder. How has this stranger come to see anything uncommon in this child?

- Willian Hanna -

If one reads the book of Psalms straight through, no matter how familiar many passages may be, the glory and splendor of the majestic poetry will come like a fresh revelation; and if one read the last three psalms aloud, one will feel how all the hymns of sorrow, delight, repentance, and adoration unite in one grand universal chorus of praise.

- William Lyon Phelps -

Take my feet and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee; take my voice and let me sing always, only, for my King.

- Frances Ridley Havergal -

We are going, we are going to a home beyond the skies, where the fields are robed in beauty, and the sunlight never dies.

- Fanny Crosby -

It was not good for men to see too many miracles. They would feast their eyes and then cease to wonder or think.

- George MacDonald -

What should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes and stealing other men’s money?… Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured…. as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offenses.

- C. S. Lewis -

It was for this that the persecutors sought after the Saints-that there might be no one to teach [the Word]. For this cause the Saints endured all things, that the Gospel might be preached. Behold, while they were thus engaged in conflict with their enemies, they passed not the time of their flight unprofitably; not while they were persecuted, did they forget the welfare of others.

- Athanasius -

God forbid that we should bury anything. There is no earth that can touch my companion. There is no earth that can touch my child. The jewel is not in the ground. The jewel is gone from the casket, and I have buried the casket, not the jewel.

- Henry Ward Beecher -

All things for the good of the soul and body are promised to him that believes. O that the Lord may increase your faith and mine! In an hour of need may you find Him very, very near to your heart, and filling you with joy and peace in believing.

- William Romaine -

We are now to praise the Maker of the heavenly kingdom; the power of the Creator ad his counsel, the deeds of the Father of glory. How He, being the eternal God, become the author of all miracles, who first, as almighty preserver of the human race, created heaven for the sons of men as the roof of the house, and next the earth.

- Caedmon -

Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us. Face the rising sun of our new day begun…God of our weary year, God of our silent tears, thou who hast brought us thus far on the way….

- James Weldon Johnson -

I say, this good old man was as dear a lover and constant practicer of angling as any age can produce; and his custom was to spend, beside his fixed hours of prayer,… a tenth part of his time in angling; and also (for I have conversed with those which have conversed with him) to bestow a tenth part of his revenue-and usually all his fish-amongst the poor…

- Izaak Walton About Dr. Alexander Nowel -

[Love's power] spreads because the beams of its goodness spread not only to friends and neighbors but to enemies and strangers as well. It binds because it unites the lover in action and will with Christ and other holy saints….And it transforms because it turns the lover into the beloved and bears one to the other.

– Richard Rolle Of Hampole -

You must stay perseveringly with him who I have made a bridge for you. Let neither thorn nor contrary wind, neither prosperity nor adversity nor any other suffering you might have to bear, make you turn back. You must persevere until you find me and I give you living water though the mediation of this gentle loving Word, my only-begotten Son.

– St. Catherine Of Siena -

Jesus, give the weary calm and sweet repose; with thy tenderest blessing may our eyelids close.

– Sabine Baring Gould -

No one can read God’s Holy Word but he will see that the greatest saints have been the greatest mourners. David “wept whole rivers”… St. Paul was humbled, and bewailed and wept for the sins of others; and our Lord himself when he “beheld the city wept over it.” Learn then of these great saints, learn of our most compassionate Savior to weep for the public and, weeping, to pray….

– Thomas Ken -

In that place you must wear crowns of gold and enjoy the perpetual sight and vision of the Holy One, for “there you shall see him as he is.” There also you shall serve him continually with praise, with shouting and thanksgiving, whom you desired to serve in the world, through with much difficulty because of the infirmity of your flesh.

- John Bunyan -

People who love themselves rightly, even as they ought to love their neighbor…. know what needs correction at home as well as elsewhere; they strive heartily and vigorously to correct it, but they deal with self as they would deal with someone else they wished to bring to God. They set to work patiently,….not being disheartened because perfection is not attainable in a day….

- Francois Fenelon -

And Winter may not pass a weary while, but when it passes Spring shall flower again; and in that Spring who weepeth now shall smile. Yea, they shall wax who now are on the wane, yea, they shall sing for love when Christ shall come.

- Christine Rossetti -

O Lord, ever, ever, and again did you deliver [your people] and send provision for them by your own covenant…. “This God is our God; we will make mention of his righteousness, and his only.” By his own providing, he will revive us. Amen.

- Isabella Graham -

But let us turn our attention to more important matters. The bride is in love with her husband and his bride is in love with Christ. I am a member of that mystical body and share her ecstasy.

- Eric Gill -

… Christ opened, little by little, Durtal’s closed house and gave it air; light entered into Durtal in a flood. From the windows of his senses, which had looked till then into he knew not what cesspool, into that enclosure, dank and steeped in shadow; he now looked suddenly, through a burst of light, on a vista which lost itself in heaven.

- Joris-Karl Huysmans -

… we ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed

- Brother Lawrence -

You make us sorry for the lepers, who had only a coarse old peasant for their friend and father…. Or may I remind you that we have some reason to doubt if John the Baptist were genteel; and … Peter, on whose career you doubtless dwell approvingly in the pulpit, no doubt at all that he was a “coarse, headstrong” fisherman! Yet even in our Protestant Bibles, Peter is called a saint.

- Robert Louis Stevenson -

Nothing causes a man to sin so often as his tongue….

- St. Tikhon Of Zadonsk -

When he shall come with sound of trumphet in the clouds, as upon the wind, you shall come with him; and when he shall sit upon the throne of judgement, you shall sit by him; yea, and when he shall pass sentence upon all the workers of iniquity, let them be angels or men, you also shall have a voice in that judgement, because they were his and your enemies.

- John Bunyan -

Every “Thou shalt not” [in the Ten Commandments] is a disclosure of what men have done, and are prone to do, and would like to do again if they dared. The commandments sound like a shouting from the mountaintop of the secrets of many hearts. After each divine word which says, “Thou shalt not,” follows a human murmur which says, “But I will.”

- Henry Van Dyke -

And, therefore, if we want our prayers to reach not only the sky, but what is beyond the sky, let us be careful to reduce our soul, purged from all earthly faults and purified from every stain, to its natural lightness, so that our prayer may rise to God unchecked by the weight of any sin….

- St. John Cassian -

Now that the Daystar doth arise, beg we of God with humble cries hurtful things to keep away while we duly spend the day. Our tongues to guide so that no strife may breed disquiet in our life….

- John Cosin -

A divine, suffering, self-sacrificing Personality was then shown as the sacred heart of a living, striving universe: and for once the Absolute was exhibited in terms of finite human existence.

- Evelyn Underhill -

I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms, and having past that general visitation of God, who saw that all he had made was good, that is, conformable to His will, which abhors deformity and is the rule of order and beauty….

- Sir Thomas Browne -

In a more narrow sense, Ancient Egyptian art refers to the canonical 2nd and 3rd Dynasty art developed in Egypt from 3000 BC and used until the 3rd century. Most elements of Egyptian art remained remarkably stable over that 3000 year period without strong outside influence. The same basic conventions and quality of observation started at a high level and remained near that level over the period.

Symbolism

Symbolism also played an important role in establishing a sense of order. Symbolism, ranging from the pharaoh’s regalia (symbolizing his power to maintain order) to the individual symbols of Egyptian gods and goddesses, is omnipresent in Egyptian art. Animals were usually also highly symbolic figures in Egyptian art. Colors were more expressive rather than natural: red skin implied vigorous tanned youth, whereas yellow skin was used for women or middle-aged men who worked indoors; blue or gold indicated divinity because of its unnatural appearance and association with precious materials; the use of black for royal figures expressed the fertility of the Nile from which Egypt was born. Stereotypes were employed to indicate the geographical origins of foreigners.

Art forms

Ancient Egyptian art forms are characterized by regularity and detailed depiction of human beings and nature, and were intended to provide company to the deceased in the other world. Artists endeavored to preserve everything of the present time as clearly and permanently as possible. Completion took precedence over style. Some art forms present an extraordinarily vivid representation of their time and the life, as the ancient Egyptian life was lived thousand of years before.

Egyptian art in all forms obeyed one law: the mode of representing man, nature and the environment remained almost the same for thousands of years and the most admired artists were those who replicated most admired styles of the past.

Architecture

Ancient Egyptian architects used sun-dried and kiln-baked bricks, fine sandstone, limestone and granite. Architects carefully planned all their work. The stones had to fit precisely together. Ramps were used to allow workmen to move up as the height of the construction grew. When the top of the structure was completed, the artists decorated from the top down, removing ramp sand as they went down. Exterior walls contained only a few small openings. Hieroglyphic and pictorial carvings in brilliant covers were abundantly used to decorate the structures, including many motifs, like the scarab, sacred beetle, the solar disk, and the vulture

Paper

The word paper is derived from “papyrus”, a plant which was cultivated in the Nile delta. Papyrus sheets were derived after processing the papyrus plant. Some rolls of papyrus discovered are lengthy, up to 10 meters. The technique for crafting papyrus was lost over time, but was rediscovered by an Egyptologist in the 1940s. Papyrus was used by ancient Egyptians for writing and painting.

Papyrus texts illustrate all dimensions of ancient Egyptian life and include literary, religious, historical and administrative documents. The pictorial script used in these texts ultimately provided the model for two most common alphabets in the world, the Roman and the Arabic.

Pottery

Ancient Egyptians used steatite (some varieties were called soapstone) and carved small pieces of vases, amulets, images of deities, of animals and several other objects. Ancient Egyptian artists also discovered the art of covering pottery with enamel. Covering by enamel was also applied to some stone works.

Different types of pottery items were deposited in tombs of the dead. Some such pottery items represented interior parts of the body, like the heart and the lungs, the liver and smaller intestines, which were removed before embalming. A large number of smaller objects in enamel pottery were also deposited with the dead. It was customary to craft on the walls of the tombs cones of pottery, about six to ten inches tall, on which were engraved or impressed legends relating to the dead occupants of the tombs. These cones usually contained the names of the deceased, their titles, offices which they held, and some expressions appropriate to funeral purposes.

Sculpture

The ancient art of Egyptian sculpture evolved to represent the ancient Egyptian gods, Pharaohs, and the kings and queens, in physical form. Whether there was real portraiture in Ancient Egypt or not is still debated till now. Massive statues were built to represent gods and famous kings and queens. These statues were supposed to give eternal life to the kings and queens, and to enable the subjects to see them in physical forms.

Very strict conventions were followed while crafting statues: male statues were darker than the female ones; in seated statues, hands were required to be placed on knees and specific rules governed appearance of every Egyptian god. For example, the sky god (Horus) was essentially to be represented with a falcon’s head, the god of funeral rites (Anubis) was to be always shown with a jackal’s head. Artistic works were ranked according to exact compliance with all the conventions, and the conventions were followed so strictly that over three thousand years, very little changed in the appearance of statues. These conventions were intended to convey a timelessness and non aging representation of the figure’s ka, or life for an eternal afterlife. And once the Egyptians entered the afterlife, thus began a long afterlife.

Hieroglyphs

Hieroglyphics are the ancient Egyptian writing system in which pictures and symbols stand for sounds and words. Jean-Francois Champollion first decoded hieroglyphics from Rosetta Stone, which was found in 1799. Hieroglyphics have more than 700 symbols.

Literature

Ancient Egyptian literature, most often written on papyrus, also contains elements of ancient Egyptian art, as the texts and connected pictures were recorded on papyrus or on wall paintings and so on. They date from the Old Kingdom to the Greco-Roman period.

The subject matter of such literature-related art forms include hymns to the gods, mythological and magical texts, mortuary texts. Other subject matters were biographical and historical texts, scientific premises, including mathematical and medical texts, wisdom texts dealing with instructive literature, fables and stories.

Paintings

Many ancient Egyptian paintings have survived due to Egypt’s extremely dry climate. The paintings were often made with the intent of making a pleasant afterlife for the deceased. The themes included journey through the afterworld or protective deities introducing the deceased to the gods of the underworld (such as Osiris). Some tomb paintings show activities that the deceased were involved in when they were alive and wished to carry on doing for eternity.

In the New Kingdom and later, the Book of the Dead was buried with the entombed person. It was considered important for an introduction to the afterlife.

Egyptian paintings are painted in such a way to show a profile view and a side view of the animal or person. For example, the painting to the right shows the head from a profile view and the body from a frontal view. Their main colors were red, blue, black, gold, and green.

Evolution

The Ancient Egyptian art style known as Amarna art was a style of art that was adopted in the Amarna Period (i.e. during and just after the reign of Akhenaten in the late Eighteenth Dynasty), and is noticeably different from more conventional Egyptian art styles.

It is characterized by a sense of movement and activity in images, with figures having raised heads, many figures overlapping and many scenes busy and crowded. Also, the human body is portrayed differently in Amarna style artwork than Egyptian art on the whole. For instance, many depictions of Akhenaten’s body give him distinctly feminine qualities, such as large hips, prominent breasts, and a larger stomach and thighs. This is a divergence from the earlier Egyptian art which shows men with perfectly chiseled bodies. Faces are still shown exclusively in profile. Not many buildings from this period have survived the ravages of later kings, partially as they were constructed out of standard size blocks, known as Talatat, which were very easy to remove and reuse. Temples in Amarna, following the trend, did not follow traditional Egyptian customs and were open, without ceilings, and had no closing doors.

In the generation after Akhenaten’s death, artists reverted to their old styles. There were still traces of this period’s style in later art.

Article Source: Wikipedia.org

This was the region through which the sun god Ra traveled from west to east during the night, and where he battled Apep. It also was the place where people’s souls went after death for judgment. The structure of Duat, and the dangers faced there by the souls of the dead, are detailed in texts such as the Book of Gates and the Book of the Dead. The Duat was located beneath the earth where Osiris presided over the dead. It was believed that the sun on its journey through the Duat, brought light and revitalization to the deceased, including Osiris, and with whom they were to arise in the morning.

In Egyptian Underworld, the hearts of the dead ones were judged by weighing one’s heart against the feather of Ma’at, the goddess of truth, justice and harmony.

The heart was thought to be the location of the mind, will and character by the ancient Egyptians. The heart would become out of balance because of failure to follow Ma’at and any hearts heavier or lighter than her feather were rejected and eaten by the goddess Ammit (also known as the Devourer of Souls). Those souls that would be allowed to travel toward the paradise of Aaru had to have hearts that weighed exactly the same as Ma’at’s feather.

Gods and goddesses in Duat are Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Anubis, Four Sons of Horus, Ammit, Hathor, Amunet and Neith.

Formal religious practice centered on the pharaoh, the king of Egypt. Although he was a human, the pharaoh was believed to possess a divine power by virtue of his kingship. He acted as the intermediary between his people and the gods, and was obligated to sustain the gods through rituals and offerings so that they could maintain order in the universe. Therefore, the state dedicated enormous resources to the performance of these rituals and to the construction of the temples where they were carried out. Individuals could also interact with the gods for their own purposes, appealing for their help through prayer or compelling them to act through magic. These popular religious practices were distinct from, but closely linked with, the formal rituals and institutions. The popular religious tradition grew more prominent in the course of Egyptian history as the status of the pharaoh declined. Another important aspect of the religion was its elaborate afterlife beliefs and funerary practices. The Egyptians made great efforts to ensure the survival of their souls after death, providing tombs, grave goods, and offerings to preserve the bodies and spirits of the deceased.

The religion had its roots in Egypt’s prehistory, and lasted for more than 3,000 years. The details of religious belief changed over time as the importance of particular gods rose and declined, and their intricate relationships shifted. At various times certain gods became preeminent over the others, including the sun god Ra, the mysterious god Amun, and the mother goddess Isis. For a brief period, in the aberrant theology promulgated by the pharaoh Akhenaten, a single god, the Aten, replaced the traditional pantheon. Yet the overall system endured, even through several periods of foreign rule, until the coming of Christianity in the early centuries AD. It left behind numerous religious writings and monuments, along with significant influences on cultures both ancient and modern.

Theology

The Egyptians had no separate term for “religion”, even though religion affected every aspect of their culture. Their religion was not a monolithic institution, but consisted of a wide variety of different beliefs and practices, linked by their common focus on the interaction between humans and the divine realm. The gods who populated this realm were integral to the Egyptian understanding of the world.

Deities

The Egyptians believed that the phenomena of nature were divine forces in themselves. These deified forces included inanimate elements such as air, animal characteristics such as the ferocity of lions, or abstract forces like the authority of kingship. The Egyptians thus believed in a multitude of gods, which were involved in all aspects of nature and human society. Their religious practices were efforts to sustain and placate these phenomena and turn them to human advantage. This polytheistic system was very complex, as some deities were believed to exist in many different manifestations, and some had multiple mythological roles. Conversely, many natural forces, such as the sun, were associated with multiple deities. The diverse pantheon ranged from gods with vital roles in the universe to minor deities or “demons” with very limited or localized functions. It could include gods adopted from foreign cultures, and sometimes even humans: deceased pharaohs were believed to be divine, and occasionally, distinguished commoners such as Imhotep also became deified.

The depictions of the gods in art were not meant as literal representations of how the gods might appear if they were visible, as the gods’ true natures were believed to be mysterious. Instead, these depictions gave recognizable forms to the abstract deities by using symbolic imagery to indicate each god’s role in nature. Thus, for example, the funerary god Anubis was portrayed as a jackal, a creature whose scavenging habits threatened the preservation of the body, in an effort to counter this threat and employ it for protection. His black skin was symbolic of the color of mummified flesh and the fertile black soil that Egyptians saw as a symbol of resurrection. However, this iconography was not fixed, and many of the gods could be depicted in more than one form.

Many gods were associated with particular regions in Egypt where their cults were most important. However, these associations changed over time, and they did not necessarily mean that the god associated with a place had originated there. For instance, the god Monthu was the original patron of the city of Thebes. Over the course of the Middle Kingdom, however, he was displaced in that role by Amun, who may have arisen elsewhere. The national popularity and importance of individual gods fluctuated in a similar way.

Associations Between Deities

The Egyptian gods had complex interrelationships, which partly reflected the interaction of the forces they represented. The Egyptians often grouped gods together to reflect these relationships. Some groups of deities were of indeterminate size, and were linked by their similar functions. These often consisted of minor deities with little individual identity. Other combinations linked independent deities based on the symbolic meaning of numbers in Egyptian mythology; for instance, pairs of deities usually represent the duality of opposite phenomena. One of the more common combinations was a family triad consisting of a father, mother, and child, who were worshipped together. Some groups had wide-ranging importance. One such group, the Ennead, assembled nine deities into a theological system that was involved in the mythological areas of creation, kingship, and the afterlife.

The relationships between deities could also be expressed in the process of syncretism, in which two or more different gods were linked to form a composite deity. This process was a recognition of the presence of one god “in” another when the second god took on a role belonging to the first. These links between deities were fluid, and did not represent the permanent merging of two gods into one; therefore, some gods could develop multiple syncretic connections. Sometimes syncretism combined deities with very similar characteristics. At other times it joined gods with very different natures, as when Amun, the god of hidden power, was linked with Ra, the god of the sun. The resulting god, Amun-Ra, thus united the power that lay behind all things with the greatest and most visible force in nature.

Unifying Tendencies

Many deities could be given epithets that seem to indicate that they were greater than any other god, suggesting some kind of unity beyond the multitude of natural forces. In particular, this is true of a few gods who, at various times in history, rose to supreme importance in Egyptian religion. These included the royal patron Horus, the sun god Ra, and the mother goddess Isis. During the New Kingdom, Amun held this position. The theology of the period described in particular detail Amun’s presence in and rule over all things, so that he, more than any other deity, embodied the all-encompassing power of the divine.

Because of theological statements like this, many past Egyptologists, such as Siegfried Morenz, believed that beneath the polytheistic traditions of Egyptian religion there was an increasing belief in a unity of the divine, moving toward monotheism. Instances in Egyptian literature where “god” is mentioned without reference to any specific deity would seem to give this view added weight. However, in 1971 Erik Hornung pointed out that the traits of an apparently supreme being could be attributed to many different gods, even in periods when other gods were preeminent, and further argued that references to an unspecified “god” are meant to refer flexibly to any deity. He therefore argued that, while some individuals may have henotheistically chosen one god to worship, Egyptian religion as a whole had no notion of a divine being beyond the immediate multitude of deities. Yet the debate did not end there; Jan Assmann and James P. Allen have since asserted that the Egyptians did to some degree recognize a single divine force. In Allen’s view, the notion of an underlying unity of the divine coexisted inclusively with the polytheistic tradition. It is possible that only the Egyptian theologians fully recognized this underlying unity, but it is also possible that ordinary Egyptians identified the single divine force with a single god in particular situations.

Atenism

The Egyptians did have an aberrant period of true monotheism during the New Kingdom, in which the pharaoh Akhenaten abolished the official worship of other gods in favor of the sun-disk Aten. This is often seen as the first instance of true monotheism in history, although the details of Atenist theology are still unclear. The exclusion of all but one god was a radical departure from Egyptian tradition, and the Aten’s impersonal nature did not appeal to the Egyptian people. Thus, under Akhenaten’s successors Egypt reverted to its traditional religion, and Akhenaten himself came to be reviled as a heretic.

Other important concepts

Cosmology

The Egyptian conception of the universe centered on maat, a word that encompasses several concepts in English, including “truth,” “justice,” and “order.” It was the fixed, eternal order of the universe, both in the cosmos and in human society. It had existed since the creation of the world, and without it the world would lose its cohesion. In Egyptian belief, maat was constantly under threat from the forces of disorder, so all of society was required to maintain it. On the human level this meant that all members of society should cooperate and coexist; on the cosmic level it meant that all of the forces of nature—the gods—should continue to function in balance. This latter goal was central to Egyptian religion. The Egyptians sought to maintain maat in the cosmos by sustaining the gods through offerings and by performing rituals which staved off disorder and perpetuated the cycles of nature.

The most important part of the Egyptian view of the cosmos was the conception of time, which was greatly concerned with the maintenance of maat. Throughout the linear passage of time, a cyclical pattern recurred, in which maat was renewed by periodic events which echoed the original creation. Among these events were the annual Nile flood and the succession from one king to another, but the most important was the daily journey of the sun god Ra.

When envisioning the shape of the cosmos, the Egyptians saw the earth as a flat expanse of land, personified by the god Geb, over which arched the sky goddess Nut. The two were separated by Shu, the god of air. Beneath the earth lay a parallel underworld and undersky, and beyond the skies lay the infinite expanse of Nu, the chaos that had existed before creation. The Egyptians also believed in a place called the Duat, a mysterious region associated with death and rebirth, that may have lain in the underworld or in the sky. Each day, Ra traveled over the earth across the underside of the sky, and at night he passed through the Duat to be reborn at dawn.

In Egyptian belief, this cosmos was inhabited by three types of sentient beings. One was the gods; another was the spirits of deceased humans, who existed in the divine realm and possessed many of the gods’ abilities. Living humans were the third category, and the most important among them was the pharaoh, who bridged the human and divine realms.

Divine Pharaoh

Egyptologists have long debated the degree to which the pharaoh was considered a god. It seems most likely that the Egyptians viewed royal authority itself as a divine force. Therefore, although the Egyptians recognized that the pharaoh was human and subject to human weakness, they simultaneously viewed him as a god, because the divine power of kingship was incarnate in him. He therefore acted as intermediary between Egypt’s people and the gods. He was key to upholding maat, both by maintaining justice and harmony in human society and by sustaining the gods with temples and offerings. For these reasons, he oversaw all state religious activity. However, the pharaoh’s real-life influence and prestige could differ from that depicted in official writings and depictions, and beginning in the late New Kingdom his religious importance declined drastically.

The king was also associated with many specific deities. He was identified directly with Horus, who represented kingship itself, and he was seen as the son of Ra, who ruled and regulated nature as the pharaoh ruled and regulated society. By the New Kingdom he was also associated with Amun, the supreme force in the cosmos. Upon his death, the king became fully deified. In this state, he was directly identified with Ra, and was also associated with Osiris, god of death and rebirth and the mythological father of Horus. Many mortuary temples were dedicated to the worship of deceased pharaohs as gods.

Afterlife

The Egyptians had elaborate beliefs about death and the afterlife. They believed that humans possessed a ka, or life-force, which left the body at the point of death. In life, the ka received its sustenance from food and drink, so it was believed that, to endure after death, the ka must continue to receive offerings of food, whose spiritual essence it could still consume. Each person also had a ba, the set of spiritual characteristics unique to each individual. Unlike the ka, the ba remained attached to the body after death. Egyptian funeral rituals were intended to release the ba from the body so that it could move freely, and to rejoin it with the ka so that it could live on as an akh. However, it was also important that the body of the deceased be preserved, as the Egyptians believed that the ba returned to its body each night to receive new life, before emerging in the morning as an akh.

Originally, however, the Egyptians believed that only the pharaoh had a ba, and only he could become one with the gods; dead commoners passed into a dark, bleak realm that represented the opposite of life. The nobles received tombs and the resources for their upkeep as gifts from the king, and their ability to enter the afterlife was believed to be dependent on these royal favors. In early times the deceased pharaoh was believed to ascend to the sky and dwell among the stars. Over the course of the Old Kingdom, however, he came to be more closely associated with the daily rebirth of the sun god Ra and with the underworld ruler Osiris as those deities grew more important.

During the late Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period, the Egyptians gradually came to believe that possession of a ba and the possibility of a paradisiacal afterlife extended to everyone. In the fully developed afterlife beliefs of the New Kingdom, the soul had to avoid a variety of supernatural dangers in the Duat, before undergoing a final judgment known as the “Weighing of the Heart”. In this judgment, the gods compared the actions of the deceased while alive (symbolized by the heart) to maat, to determine whether he or she had behaved in accordance with maat. If the deceased was judged worthy, his or her ka and ba were united into an akh. Several beliefs coexisted about the akh’s destination. Often the dead were said to dwell in the realm of Osiris, a lush and pleasant land in the underworld. The solar vision of the afterlife, in which the deceased soul traveled with Ra on his daily journey, was still primarily associated with royalty, but could extend to other people as well. Over the course of the Middle and New Kingdoms, the notion that the akh could also travel in the world of the living, and to some degree magically affect events there, became increasingly prevalent.

Writings

While the Egyptians had no unified religious scripture, they produced many religious writings of various types. Together the disparate texts provide a very extensive, but still incomplete, understanding of Egyptian religious practices and beliefs.

Mythology

Egyptian myths were metaphorical stories intended to illustrate and explain the gods’ actions and roles in nature. The details of the events they recounted could change as long as they conveyed the same symbolic meaning, so many myths exist in different and conflicting versions. Mythical narratives were rarely written in full, and more often texts only contain episodes from or allusions to a larger myth. Knowledge of Egyptian mythology, therefore, is derived mostly from hymns that detail the roles of specific deities, from ritual and magical texts which describe actions related to mythic events, and from funerary texts which mention the roles of many deities in the afterlife. Some information is also provided by allusions in secular texts. Finally, Greeks and Romans such as Plutarch recorded some of the extant myths late in Egyptian history.

Among the significant Egyptian myths were the creation myths. According to these stories, the world emerged as a dry space in the primordial ocean of chaos. Because the sun is essential to life on earth, the first rising of Ra marked the moment of this emergence. Different forms of the myth describe the process of creation in various ways: a transformation of the primordial god Atum into the elements that form the world, as the creative speech of the intellectual god Ptah, and as an act of the hidden power of Amun. Regardless of these variations, the act of creation represented the initial establishment of maat and the pattern for the subsequent cycles of time.

The most important of all Egyptian myths was the myth of Osiris and Isis. It tells of the divine ruler Osiris, who was murdered by his jealous brother Set, a god often associated with chaos. Osiris’ sister and wife Isis resurrected him so that he could conceive an heir, Horus. Osiris then entered the underworld and became the ruler of the dead. Once grown, Horus fought and defeated Set to become king himself. Set’s association with chaos, and the identification of Osiris and Horus as the rightful rulers, provided a rationale for pharaonic succession and portrayed the pharaohs as the upholders of order. At the same time, Osiris’ death and rebirth were related to the Egyptian agricultural cycle, in which crops grew in the wake of the Nile inundation, and provided a template for the resurrection of human souls after death.

Another important mythic motif was the journey of Ra through the Duat each night. In the course of this journey, Ra met with Osiris, who again acted as an agent of regeneration, so that his life was renewed. He also fought each night with Apep, a serpentine god representing chaos. The defeat of Apep and the meeting with Osiris ensured the rising of the sun the next morning, an event that represented rebirth and the victory of order over chaos.

Ritual and Magical Texts

The procedures for religious rituals were frequently written on papyri, which were used as instructions for those performing the ritual. These ritual texts were kept mainly in the temple libraries. Temples themselves are also inscribed with such texts, often accompanied by illustrations. Unlike the ritual papyri, the texts in temples were not intended as instructions, but were meant to symbolically perpetuated the rituals even if, in reality, people ceased to perform them. Magical texts likewise describe rituals, although these rituals were part of the spells used for specific goals in everyday life. Despite their mundane purpose, many of these texts also originated in temple libraries and later became disseminated among the general populace.

Hymns and Prayers

The Egyptians produced numerous prayers and hymns, written in the form of poetry. Hymns and prayers follow a similar structure and are distinguished mainly by the purposes they serve. Hymns were written to praise particular deities. Like ritual texts, they were written on papyri and on temple walls, and they were probably recited as part of the rituals they accompany in temple inscriptions. Most are structured according to a set literary formula, designed to expound on the nature, aspects, and mythological functions of a given deity. They tend to speak more explicitly about fundamental theology than other Egyptian religious writings, and became particularly important in the New Kingdom, a period of particularly active theological discourse. Prayers follow the same general pattern as hymns, but address the relevant god in a more personal way, asking for blessings, help, or forgiveness for wrongdoing. Such prayers are rare before the New Kingdom, indicating that in earlier periods such direct personal interaction with a deity was not believed possible, or at least was less likely to be expressed in writing. They are known mainly from inscriptions on statues and stelae left in sacred sites as votive offerings.

Funerary Texts

Among the most significant and extensively preserved Egyptian writings are funerary texts designed to insure that deceased souls reached a pleasant afterlife. The earliest of these are the Pyramid Texts, the oldest religious writings in the world. They are a loose collection of hundreds of spells inscribed on the walls of royal pyramids during the Old Kingdom, intended to magically provide the king with the means to join the company of the gods in the afterlife. The spells appear in differing arrangements and combinations, and few of them appear in all of the pyramids.

At the end of the Old Kingdom a new body of funerary spells, which included material from the Pyramid Texts, began appearing in tombs, inscribed primarily on coffins. This collection of writings is known as the Coffin Texts, and was not reserved for royalty, but appeared in the tombs of nonroyal officials. In the New Kingdom, several new funerary texts emerged, of which the best-known is the Book of the Dead. Unlike the earlier books, it often contains extensive illustrations, or vignettes. The book was copied on papyrus and sold to commoners to be placed in their tombs.

The Coffin Texts included sections with detailed descriptions of the underworld and instructions on how to overcome its hazards. In the New Kingdom, this material gave rise to several “books of the netherworld”, including the Book of Gates, the Book of Caverns, and the Amduat. Unlike the loose collections of spells, these netherworld books are structured depictions of Ra’s passage through the Duat, and by analogy, the journey of the deceased person’s soul through the realm of the dead. They were originally restricted to pharaonic tombs, but in the Third Intermediate Period they came to be used more widely.

Practices

Temples

Temples existed from the beginning of Egyptian history, and at the height of the civilization were present in most of its towns. They included both mortuary temples to serve the spirits of deceased pharaohs and temples dedicated to patron gods, although the distinction was blurred because divinity and kingship were so closely intertwined. The temples were not primarily intended as places for worship by the general populace, and the common people had a complex set of religious practices of their own. Instead, the state-run temples served as houses for the gods, in which physical images which served as their intermediaries were cared for and provided with offerings. This service was believed to be necessary to sustain the gods, so that they could in turn maintain the universe itself. Thus, temples were central to Egyptian society, and vast resources were devoted to their upkeep, including both donations from the monarchy and large estates of their own. Pharaohs often expanded them as part of their obligation to honor the gods, so that many temples grew to enormous size. However, not all gods had temples dedicated to them, as many gods who were important in official theology received only minimal worship, and many household gods were the focus of popular veneration rather than temple ritual.

The earliest Egyptian temples were small, impermanent structures, but through the Old and Middle Kingdoms their designs grew more elaborate, and they were increasingly built out of stone. In the New Kingdom, a basic temple layout emerged, which had evolved from common elements in Old and Middle Kingdom temples. With variations, this plan was used for most of the temples built from then on, and most of those that survive today adhere to it. In this standard plan, the temple was built along a central processional way that led through a series of courts and halls to the sanctuary, which held a statue of the temple’s god. Access to this most sacred part of the temple was restricted to the pharaoh and the highest-ranking priests. The journey from the temple entrance to the sanctuary was seen as a journey from the human world to the divine realm, a point emphasized by the complex mythological symbolism present in temple architecture. Well beyond the temple building proper was the outermost wall. In the space between the two lay many subsidiary buildings, including workshops and storage areas to supply the temple’s needs, and the library where the temple’s sacred writings and mundane records were kept, and which also served as a center of learning on a multitude of subjects.

Theoretically it was the duty of the pharaoh to carry out temple rituals, as he was Egypt’s official representative to the gods. In reality, ritual duties were almost always carried out by priests. During the Old and Middle Kingdoms, there was no separate class of priests; instead, many government officials served in this capacity for several months out of the year before returning to their secular duties. Only in the New Kingdom did professional priesthood become widespread, although most lower-ranking priests were still part-time. All were still employed by the state, and the pharaoh had final say in their appointments. However, as the wealth of the temples grew, the influence of their priesthoods increased, until it rivaled that of the pharaoh. In the political fragmentation of the Third Intermediate Period, the high priests of Amun at Karnak even became the effective rulers of Upper Egypt. The temple staff also included many people other than priests, such as musicians and chanters in temple ceremonies. Outside the temple were artisans and other laborers who helped supply the temple’s needs, as well as farmers who worked on temple estates. All were paid with portions of the temple’s income. Large temples were therefore very important centers of economic activity, sometimes employing thousands of people.

Official Rituals and Festivals

State religious practice included both temple rituals involved in the cult of a deity, and ceremonies related to divine kingship. Among the latter were coronation ceremonies and the sed festival, a ritual renewal of the pharaoh’s strength which took place periodically during his reign. There were numerous temple rituals, including rites that took place across the country and rites limited to single temples or to the temples of a single god. Some were performed daily, while others took place annually or on rarer occasions. The most common temple ritual was the morning offering ceremony, performed daily in temples across Egypt. In it, a high-ranking priest, or occasionally the pharaoh, washed, anointed, and elaborately dressed the god’s statue before presenting it with food offerings. Afterward, when the god had consumed the spiritual essence of the offerings, the items themselves were taken to be distributed among the priests.

The less frequent temple rituals, or festivals, were still numerous, with dozens occurring every year. These festivals often entailed actions beyond simple offerings to the gods, such as reenactments of particular myths or the symbolic destruction of the forces of disorder. Most of these events were probably celebrated only by the priests and took place only inside the temple. However, the most important temple festivals, like the Opet Festival celebrated at Karnak, usually involved a procession carrying the god’s image out of the sanctuary in a model barque to visit other significant sites, such as the temple of a related deity. Commoners gathered to watch the procession and sometimes received portions of the unusually large offerings given to the gods on these occasions.

Animal Cults

At many sacred sites, the Egyptians worshipped individual animals which they believed to be manifestations of particular deities. These animals were selected based on specific sacred markings which were believed to indicate their fitness for the role. Some of these cult animals retained their positions for the rest of their lives, as with the Apis bull worshipped in Memphis as a manifestation of Ptah. Other animals were selected for much shorter periods. These cults grew more popular in later times, and many temples began raising stocks of such animals from which to choose a new divine manifestation. A separate practice developed in the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, when people began mummifying any member of a particular animal species as an offering to the god whom the species represented. Worshippers paid the priests of a particular deity to obtain and mummify an animal associated with that deity, and the mummy was placed in a cemetery near the god’s cult center. Some such crypts contain millions of animal mummies.

Oracles

The Egyptians used oracles to ask the gods for knowledge or guidance. Egyptian oracles are known mainly from the New Kingdom and afterward, though they probably appeared much earlier. People of all classes, including the king, asked questions of oracles, and, especially in the late New Kingdom their answers could be used to settle legal disputes or inform royal decisions. The most common means of consulting an oracle was to pose a question to the divine image while it was being carried in a festival procession, and interpret an answer from the barque’s movements. Other methods included interpreting the behavior of cult animals, drawing lots, or consulting statues through which a priest apparently spoke. The means of discerning the god’s will gave great influence to the priests who spoke and interpreted the god’s message.

Popular Religion

While the state cults were meant to preserve the stability of the Egyptian world, lay individuals had their own religious practices that related more directly to daily life. This popular religion left less evidence than the official cults, and because this evidence was mostly produced by the wealthiest portion of the Egyptian population, it is uncertain to what degree it reflects the practices of the populace as a whole.

Popular religious practice included ceremonies marking important transitions in life. These included birth, because of the danger involved in the process, and naming, because the name was held to be a crucial part of a person’s identity. The most important of these ceremonies were those surrounding death (see “Funerary practices” below), because they ensured the soul’s survival beyond it. Other religious practices sought to discern the gods’ will or seek their knowledge. These included the interpretation of dreams, which could be seen as messages from the divine realm, and the consultation of oracles. People also sought to affect the gods’ behavior to their own benefit through magical rituals (see “Magic” below).

Individual Egyptians also prayed to gods and gave them private offerings. Evidence of this type of personal piety is sparse before the New Kingdom. This is probably due to cultural restrictions on depiction of non royal religious activity, which relaxed during the Middle and New Kingdoms. Personal piety became still more prominent in the late New Kingdom, when it was believed that the gods intervened directly in individual lives, punishing wrongdoers and saving the pious from disaster. Official temples were important venues for private prayer and offering, even though their central activities were closed to laypeople. Egyptians frequently donated goods to be offered to the temple deity and objects inscribed with prayers to be placed in temple courts. Often they prayed in person before temple statues or in shrines set aside for their use. Yet in addition to temples, the populace also used separate local chapels, smaller but more accessible than the formal temples. These chapels were very numerous, and probably staffed by members of the community. Households, too, often had their own small shrines for offering to gods or deceased relatives.

The deities invoked in these situations differed somewhat from those at the center of state cults. Many of the important popular deities, such as the fertility goddess Taweret and the household protector Bes, had no temples of their own. However, many other gods, including Amun and Osiris, were very important in both popular and official religion. Some individuals might be particularly devoted to a single god. Often they favored deities affiliated with their own region, or with their role in life. The god Ptah, for instance, was particularly important in his cult center of Memphis, but as the patron of craftsmen he received the nationwide veneration of many in that occupation.

Magic

The word “magic” is used to translate the Egyptian term heka, which meant, as James P. Allen puts it, “the ability to make things happen by indirect means”. Heka was believed to be a natural phenomenon, the force which was used to create the universe and which the gods employed to work their will. Humans could also use it, however, and magical practices were closely intertwined with religion. In fact, even the regular rituals performed in temples were counted as magic. Individuals also frequently employed magical techniques for personal purposes. Although these ends could be harmful to other people, no form of magic was considered inimical in itself. Instead, magic was seen primarily as a way for humans to prevent or overcome negative events.

Magic was closely associated with the priesthood. Because temple libraries contained numerous magical texts, great magical knowledge was ascribed to the lector priests who studied these texts. These priests often worked outside their temples, hiring out their magical services to laymen. Other professions also commonly employed magic as part of their work, including doctors, scorpion-charmers, and makers of magical amulets. It is also likely that the peasantry used simple magic for their own purposes, but because this magical knowledge would have been passed down orally, there is limited evidence of it.

Language was closely linked with heka, to such a degree that Thoth, the god of writing, was sometimes said to be the inventor of heka. Therefore, magic frequently involved written or spoken incantations, although these were usually accompanied by ritual actions. Often these rituals invoked the power of an appropriate deity to perform the desired action, using the power of heka to compel it to act. Sometimes this entailed casting the practitioner or subject of a ritual in the role of a character in mythology, thus inducing the god to act toward that person as it had in the myth. Rituals also employed sympathetic magic, using objects believed to have a magically significant resemblance to the subject of the rite. The Egyptians also commonly used objects believed to be imbued with heka of their own, such as the magically protective amulets worn in great numbers by ordinary Egyptians.

Funerary Practices

Because it was considered necessary for the survival of the soul, preservation of the body was a central part of Egyptian funerary practices. Originally the Egyptians buried their dead in the desert, where the arid conditions mummified the body naturally. In the Early Dynastic Period, however, they began using tombs for greater protection, and the body was insulated from the desiccating effect of the sand and was subject to natural decay. Thus the Egyptians developed their elaborate embalming practices, in which the corpse was artificially desiccated and wrapped to be placed in its coffin. The quality of the process varied according to cost, however, and those who could not afford it were still buried in desert graves.

Once the mummification process was complete, the mummy was carried from the deceased person’s house to the tomb in a funeral procession that included his or her friends and relatives, along with a variety of priests. Before the burial, these priests performed several rituals, including the Opening of the Mouth ceremony intended to restore the dead person’s senses and give him or her the ability to receive offerings. Then the mummy was buried and the tomb sealed. Afterward, relatives or hired sem-priests gave food offerings to the deceased in a nearby mortuary chapel at regular intervals. Over time, families inevitably neglected offerings to long-dead relatives, so most mortuary cults only lasted one or two generations. However, while the cult lasted, the living sometimes wrote letters asking deceased relatives for help, in the belief that the dead could affect the world of the living as the gods did.

The first Egyptian tombs were mastabas, rectangular brick structures where kings and nobles were entombed. Each of them contained a subterranean burial chamber and a separate, above ground chapel for mortuary rituals. In the Old Kingdom the mastaba developed into the pyramid, which symbolized the primeval mound of Egyptian myth. Pyramids were reserved for royalty, and were accompanied by large mortuary temples sitting at their base. Middle Kingdom pharaohs continued to build pyramids, but the popularity of mastabas waned. Increasingly, commoners with sufficient means were buried in rock-cut tombs with separate mortuary chapels nearby, an approach which was less vulnerable to tomb robbery. By the beginning of the New Kingdom even the pharaohs were buried in such tombs, and they continued to be used until the decline of the religion itself.

Tombs could contain a great variety of other items, including statues of the deceased to serve as substitutes for the body in case it was damaged. Because it was believed that the deceased would have to do work in the afterlife, just as in life, burials often included small models of humans to do work in place of the deceased. The tombs of wealthier individuals could also contain furniture, clothing, and other everyday objects intended for use in the afterlife, along with amulets and other items intended to provide magical protection against the hazards of the spirit world. Further protection was provided by funerary texts included in the burial. The tomb walls also bore artwork, including images of the deceased eating food which were believed to allow him or her to magically receive sustenance even after the mortuary offerings had ceased.

History

Predynastic and Early Dynastic Periods

The beginnings of Egyptian religion extend into prehistory, and evidence for them comes only from the sparse and ambiguous archaeological record. Careful burials during the Predynastic period imply that the people of this time believed in some form of an afterlife. At the same time, animals were ritually buried, a practice which may reflect the development of zoomorphic deities like those found in the later religion. The evidence is less clear for gods in human form, and this type of deity may have emerged more slowly than those in animal shape. Each region of Egypt originally had its own patron deity, but it is likely that as these small communities conquered or absorbed each other, the god of the defeated area was either incorporated into the other god’s mythology or entirely subsumed by it. This resulted in a complex pantheon in which some deities remained only locally important while others developed more universal significance.

The Early Dynastic period began with the unification of Egypt around 3000 BC. This event transformed Egyptian religion, as some deities rose to national importance and the cult of the divine pharaoh became the central focus of religious activity. Horus was identified with the king, and his cult center in the Upper Egyptian city of Nekhen was among the most important religious sites of the period. Another important center was Abydos, where the early rulers built large funerary complexes.

Old and Middle Kingdoms

During the Old Kingdom the priesthoods of the major deities attempted to organize the complicated national pantheon into groups linked by their mythology and worshipped in a single cult center, such as the Ennead of Heliopolis which linked important deities such as Atum, Ra, Osiris, and Set in a single creation myth. Meanwhile, pyramids, accompanied by large mortuary temple complexes, replaced mastabas as the tombs of pharaohs. In contrast with the great size of the pyramid complexes, temples to gods remained comparatively small, suggesting that official religion in this period emphasized the cult of the divine king more than the direct worship of deities. The funerary rituals and architecture of this time greatly influenced the more elaborate temples and rituals used in worshipping the gods in later periods.

Early in the Old Kingdom, Ra grew in influence, and his cult center at Heliopolis became the nation’s most important religious site. By the Fifth Dynasty Ra was the most prominent god in Egypt, and had developed the close links with kingship and the afterlife that he retained for the rest of Egyptian history. Around the same time, Osiris became an important afterlife deity. The Pyramid Texts, first written at this time, reflect the prominence of the solar and Osirian concepts of the afterlife, although they also contain remnants of much older traditions. Therefore the texts are an extremely important source for understanding early Egyptian theology.

In the 22nd century BC, the Old Kingdom collapsed into the disorder of the First Intermediate Period, with important consequences for Egyptian religion. Old Kingdom officials had already begun to adopt the funerary rites originally reserved for royalty, but now, less rigid barriers between social classes meant that these practices and the accompanying beliefs gradually extended to all Egyptians, a process called the “democratization of the afterlife”. The Osirian view of the afterlife had the greatest appeal to commoners, and thus Osiris became one of the most important gods.

Eventually rulers from Thebes reunified the Egyptian nation in the Middle Kingdom. These Theban pharaohs initially promoted their patron god Monthu to national importance, but during the Middle Kingdom he was eclipsed by the rising popularity of Amun. In this new Egyptian state, personal piety grew more important and was expressed more freely in writing, a trend which continued in the New Kingdom.

New Kingdom

The Middle Kingdom crumbled in the Second Intermediate Period, but the country was again reunited by Theban rulers, who became the first pharaohs of the New Kingdom. Under the new regime, Amun became the supreme state god. He was syncretized with Ra, the long-established patron of kingship, and his temple at Karnak in Thebes became Egypt’s most important religious center. Amun’s elevation was partly due to the great importance of Thebes, but it was also due to the increasingly professional priesthood. Their sophisticated theological discussion produced detailed descriptions of Amun’s universal power.

Increased contact with outside peoples in this period led to the adoption of many Near Eastern deities into the pantheon. At the same time, the subjugated Nubians absorbed Egyptian religious beliefs, and in particular, adopted Amun as their own.

The New Kingdom religious order was disrupted when Akhenaten acceded, and replaced Amun with the Aten as the state god. Eventually he eliminated the official worship of most other gods, and moved Egypt’s capital to a new city at Amarna, for which this part of Egyptian history, the Amarna period, is named. In doing so Akhenaten claimed unprecedented status for himself: only he could worship the Aten, and the populace directed their worship toward him. The Atenist system lacked well-developed mythology and afterlife beliefs, and the Aten itself seemed distant and impersonal, so the new order did not appeal to ordinary Egyptians. Thus, many of them probably continued to worship the traditional gods in private. Nevertheless, the withdrawal of state support for the other deities severely disrupted Egyptian society. Akhenaten’s successors therefore restored the traditional religious system, and eventually they dismantled all Atenist monuments.

Before the Amarna period, popular religion had trended toward more personal relationships between the gods and their worshippers. Akhenaten’s changes had reversed this trend, but once the traditional religion was restored, there was a backlash. The populace began to believe that the gods were much more directly involved in daily life. Amun, the supreme god, was increasingly seen as the final arbiter of human destiny, the true ruler of Egypt. The pharaoh was correspondingly more human and less divine. The importance of oracles as a means of decision-making grew, as did the wealth and influence of the oracles’ interpreters, the priesthood. These trends undermined the traditional structure of society and contributed to the breakdown of the New Kingdom.

Later Periods

In the first millennium BC, Egypt was significantly weaker than in earlier times, and in several periods foreigners seized the country and assumed the position of pharaoh. The importance of the pharaoh continued to decline, and the emphasis on popular piety continued to increase. Animal cults, a characteristically Egyptian form of worship, became increasingly popular in this period, possibly as a response to the uncertainty and foreign influence of the time. Isis grew more popular as a goddess of protection, magic, and personal salvation, and became the most important goddess in Egypt.

In the fourth century BC, Egypt became a Hellenistic kingdom under the Ptolemaic dynasty, which assumed the pharaonic role, maintaining the traditional religion and building or rebuilding many temples. The kingdom’s Greek ruling class identified the Egyptian deities with their own. From this cross-cultural syncretism emerged Serapis, a god who combined Osiris and Apis with characteristics of Greek deities, and who became very popular among the Greek population. Nevertheless, for the most part the two belief systems remained separate, and the Egyptian deities remained Egyptian.

Ptolemaic-era beliefs changed little after Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire, with the Ptolemaic kings replaced by distant emperors. The cult of Isis appealed even to Greeks and Romans outside Egypt, and in Hellenized form it spread across the empire. In Egypt itself, as the empire weakened, official temples fell into decay, and without their centralizing influence religious practice became fragmented and localized. Meanwhile, Christianity spread across Egypt, and in the third and fourth centuries AD, edicts by Christian emperors and iconoclasm by local Christians slowly eroded traditional beliefs. While it persisted among the populace for some time, Egyptian religion slowly faded away.

Legacy

Egyptian religion produced the temples and tombs which are ancient Egypt’s most enduring monuments, but it also left many influences on other cultures. In pharaonic times many of its symbols, such as the sphinx and winged solar disk, spread widely across the Mediterranean and Near East, as did some of its deities, such as Bes. Some of these connections are difficult to trace. The Greek concept of Elysium may have derived from the Egyptian vision of the afterlife, and scholars and laymen, beginning with Sigmund Freud, have speculated that Hebrew monotheism might have an Atenist origin. In late antiquity, the Christian conception of Hell was likely influenced by some of the imagery of the Duat, and the iconography of Mary may have been influenced by that of Isis. Egyptian beliefs also influenced or gave rise to several esoteric belief systems developed by Greeks and Romans who saw Egypt as a source of mystic wisdom. Hermeticism, for instance, derived from the tradition of secret magical knowledge associated with Thoth.

Traces of ancient beliefs remained in Egyptian folk traditions into modern times, but its impact on modern societies greatly increased with the French Campaign in Egypt and Syria in 1798. As a result of it, Westerners began to study Egyptian beliefs firsthand, and Egyptian religious motifs were adopted into Western art. Egyptian religion has since had a significant impact on popular culture. Due to continued interest in Egyptian belief, in the late 20th century several new religious groups formed based on different reconstructions of ancient Egyptian religion.

Article Source: Wikipedia.org

Reverse and obverse sides of Narmer Palette

Narmer Palette, also known as the Great Hierakonpolis Palette or the Palette of Narmer, is a significant Egyptian archeological find, dating from about the 31st century BC, containing some of the earliest hieroglyphic inscriptions ever found. It is thought by some to depict the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the king Narmer. On one side the king is depicted with the White crown of Upper (southern) Egypt and the other side depicts the king wearing the Red Crown of Lower (northern) Egypt. Along with the Scorpion Macehead and the Narmer Maceheads, also found together in the “Main Deposit” at Hierakonpolis, the Narmer palette provides one of the earliest known depictions of an Egyptian king, who is shown using many of the classic conventions of Egyptian art that must already have been formalized by the time of the palette’s creation. The Egyptologist Bob Brier has referred to the Narmer Palette as “the first historical document in the world”.

The palette, which has survived five millennia in almost perfect condition, was discovered by British archeologists James E. Quibell and Frederick W. Green in what they called the main deposit in the temple of Horus at Hierakonpolis during the dig season of 1897–1898. Also found at this dig were the Narmer Macehead and the Scorpion Macehead. The exact place and circumstances of these finds were not recorded very clearly by Quibell and Green. In fact, Green’s report placed the palette in a different layer one or two yards away from the deposit, which is considered to be more accurate on the basis of the original excavation notes. It has been suggested that these objects were royal donations made to the temple. Hierakonpolis was the ancient capital of Upper Egypt during the pre-dynastic Naqada III phase of Egyptian history.

Palettes were typically used for grinding cosmetics, but this palette is too large and heavy (and elaborate) to have been created for personal use, and was likely a ritual or votive object, specifically made for donation to, or use in, a temple. One theory put forward was that it was used to grind cosmetics to adorn the statues of the gods.

The Narmer Palette is part of the permanent collection of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Description

It is a large (63 cm), shield-shaped, ceremonial palette, carved from a single piece of flat, soft green siltstone. The stone has often been wrongly identified in the past as being slate or schist. Slate is layered and prone to flaking, and schist is a metamorphic rock containing large, randomly-distributed mineral grains. Both are unlike the finely-grained, hard, flake-resistant siltstone, whose source is from a well-attested quarry that has been used since pre-dynastic times at Wadi Hammamat. This material was used extensively during the pre-dynastic period for creating such palettes, and also was used as a source for Old Kingdom statuary. A statue of the 2nd dynasty pharaoh Khasekhemwy, found in the same complex as the Narmer Palette at Hierakonopolis, also was made of this material.

Both sides of the palette are decorated, carved in raised relief. At the top of both sides of the palette are the central serekhs bearing the rebus symbols n’r (catfish) and mr (chisel) inside, being the phonetic representation of Narmer’s name. The serekh on each side are flanked by a pair of bovine heads with highly curved horns, thought to represent the cow goddess Bat, who was the patron deity of the seventh nome of Upper Egypt, and was also the deification of the cosmos and the Milky Way within Egyptian mythology during the pre-dynastic and Old Kingdom periods of Ancient Egyptian history.

Obverse side

Below the bovine heads thought to represent the cow goddess Bat, who was the patron deity of the seventh nome of Upper Egypt, flanking the serekh of Narmer. Below that is what appears to be a procession, with Narmer depicted at almost the full height of the register (a traditional artistic representation emphasizing his importance) shown wearing the Red Crown of Lower Egypt whose symbol was the papyrus. He holds a mace and a flail, two traditional symbols of kingship. To his right are the hieroglyphic symbols for his name, though not contained within a serekh. Behind him is his sandal bearer, whose name may be represented by the rosette appearing adjacent to his head, and a second rectangular symbol that has no clear interpretation but which has been suggested may represent a town or citadel. Immediately in front of the pharaoh is a long-haired man, accompanied by a pair of hieroglyphs that have been interpreted as his name: Tshet (this assumes that these symbols had the same phonetic value used in later hieroglyphic writing). Before this man are four standard bearers, holding aloft an animal skin, a dog, and two falcons. At the far-right of this scene are ten decapitated corpses, possibly the victims of Narmer’s conquest. Above them are the symbols for a ship, a falcon, and a harpoon, which has been interpreted as representing the names of the towns that were conquered.

Below the procession, two men are holding ropes tied to the outstretched, intertwining necks of two serpopards confronting each other, mythical felines with bodies of leopards—or more likely lionesses, given that there are no spots indicated—and snakelike necks. The circle formed by their exaggeratedly curving necks is the central part of the palette, which is where the cosmetics would be ground. These animals have been considered an additional symbol for the unification of Egypt, but it is a unique image in Egyptian art and there is nothing to suggest that either animal represents an identifiable part of Egypt, although each had lioness war goddesses as protectors and the intertwined necks may represent the unification of the state. Similar images of such mythical animals are known from other contemporaneous cultures, and there are other examples of late-predynastic objects (including other palettes and knife handles) which borrow similar elements from Mesopotamian iconography.

At the bottom of the palette a bovine image is seen knocking down the walls of a city while trampling on a fallen foe. Because of the lowered head in the image, this is interpreted as a presentation of the king vanquishing his foes, “Bull of his Mother” being a common epithet given to Egyptian kings as the son of the patron cow goddess. This posture of a bovine has the meaning of “force” in later hieroglyphics.

Reverse side

Repeating the format from the other side, two human-faced bovine heads, thought to represent the patron cow goddess Bat, flank the serekhs, uncharacteristically shown in full frontal view. This frontal display of the cows is atypical in ancient Egyptian art except for representations of this goddess and Hathor (who often appears in this view also). Some authors suggest that the images represent the vigor of the king as pair of bulls.

A large picture in the center of the palette depicts Narmer wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt whose symbol was the flowering lotus, and wielding a mace. To his left is a man bearing the king’s sandals, again flanked by a rosette symbol. To the right of the king is a kneeling prisoner, who is about to be struck by the king. A pair of symbols appear next to his head, perhaps indicating his name, or indicating the region where he was from. Above the prisoner is a falcon, representing Horus, perched above a set of papyrus flowers, the symbol of Lower Egypt. In his talons he holds a rope-like object which appears to be attached to the nose of a man’s head that also emerges from the papyrus flowers, perhaps indicating that he is drawing life from the head. The papyrus has often been interpreted as referring to the marshes of the Nile Delta region in Lower Egypt, or that the battle happened in a marshy area, or even that each papyrus flower represents the number 1,000, indicating that 6,000 enemies were subdued in the battle.

Below the king’s feet is a third section, depicting two naked, bearded men. They are either running, or are meant to be seen as sprawling dead upon the ground. Appearing to the left of the head of each man is a hieroglyphic sign, the first a walled town, the second a type of knot, likely indicating the name of a defeated town.

Scholarly debate on the palette

The palette has raised considerable scholarly debate over the years. In general the arguments fall into one of two camps: scholars who believe that the palette is a record of actual events, and other academics who argue that it is an object designed to establish the mythology of united rule over Upper and Lower Egypt by the king. It had been thought that the palette either depicted the unification of Lower Egypt by the king of Upper Egypt, or recorded a recent military success over the Libyans, or the last stronghold of a Lower Egyptian dynasty based in Buto. More recently scholars such as Nicholas Millet have argued that the palette does not represent a historical event (such as the unification of Egypt), but instead represents the events of the year in which the object was dedicated to the temple. Whitney Davis has suggested that the iconography on this and other pre-dynastic palettes has more to do with establishing the king as a visual metaphor of the conquering hunter, caught in the moment of delivering a mortal blow to his enemies. John Baines has suggested that the events portrayed are “tokens of royal achievement” from the past, and that “the chief purpose of the piece is not to record an event but to assert that the king dominates the ordered world in the name of the gods and has defeated internal, and especially external, forces of disorder.

Palette location-Egyptian Museum, Cairo

The Narmer Palette resides in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, and is one of the initial exhibits that visitors see when entering the museum. It has the Journal d’Entree number JE32169 and the Catalogue Génèral number CG14716.

Ib (heart)

The most important part of the Egyptian soul was thought to be the Ib (jb), or heart. The Ib  or metaphysical heart was believed to be a drop from the heart of the mother of a child at conception. Archaeological findings portrayed it as a person who is weighed by the goddess Maàt after death.

To Ancient Egyptians, it was the heart and not the brain that was the seat of emotion and thought, including the will and intentions. In Egyptian religion, the heart was the key to the afterlife. It was conceived as proceeding at death to the future world, where it gave evidence for, or against, its possessor. It was thought that the heart was examined by Anubis and the deities during the Weighing of the Heart ceremony. If the heart weighed more than the feather of Maat, it was immediately consumed by the monster Ammit. This is evidenced by the many expressions in the Egyptian language which incorporate the word ib, Awt-ib: happiness (literally, wideness of heart), Xak-ib: estranged (literally, truncated of heart). This word was transcribed by Wallis Budge as ‘Ab’.

Sheut (shadow)

A person’s shadow, Sheut (šwt in Egyptian), was always present. It was believed that a person could not exist without a shadow, nor a shadow without a person, therefore, Egyptians surmised that a shadow contained something of the person it represents. For this reason statues of people and deities were sometimes referred to as their shadows.

The shadow was represented graphically as a small human figure painted completely black as well, as a figure of death, or servant of Anubis.

Ren (name)

As a part of the soul, a person’s ren (rn ‘name’) was given to them at birth and the Egyptians believed that it would live for as long as that name was spoken, which explains why efforts were made to protect it and the practice of placing it in numerous writings. For example, part of the Book of Breathings, a derivative of the Book of the Dead, was a means to ensure the survival of the name. A cartouche (magical rope) often was used to surround the name and protect it. Conversely, the names of deceased enemies of the state, such as Akhenaten, were hacked out of monuments in a form of damnatio memoriae. Sometimes, however, they were removed in order to make room for the economical insertion of the name of a successor, without having to build another monument. The greater the number of places a name was used, the greater the possibility it would survive to be read and spoken.

Ba (individual personality)

The ‘Ba’ (b3) is in some regards the closest to the contemporary Western religious notion of a soul, but it also was everything that makes an individual unique, similar to the notion of ‘personality’. (In this sense, inanimate objects could also have a ‘Ba’, a unique character, and indeed Old Kingdom pyramids often were called the ‘Ba’ of their owner). Like a soul, the ‘Ba’ is an aspect of a person that the Egyptians believed would live after the body died, and it is sometimes depicted as a human-headed bird flying out of the tomb to join with the ‘Ka’ in the afterlife.

In the Coffin Texts one form of the Ba that comes into existence after death is corporeal, eating, drinking and copulating. Louis Zabkar argued that the Ba is not part of the person but the person himself unlike the soul in Greek, or late Judaic or Christian thought. The idea of a purely immaterial existence was so foreign to Egyptian thought that when Christianity spread in Egypt they borrowed the Greek word “psyche” to describe the concept of soul and not Ba. Zabkar concludes that so peculiar was the concept of Ba to Ancient Egyptian thought that it ought not to be translated but instead the concept be footnoted or parenthetically explained as one of the modes of existence for a person.

In another mode of existence the Ba of the deceased is depicted in the Book of Going Forth by Day returning to the mummy and participating in life outside the tomb in non-corporeal form, echoing the solar theology of Re uniting with Osiris each night.

The word ‘bau’ (b3w), plural of the word ba meant something similar to ‘impressiveness’, ‘power’, and ‘reputation’, particularly of a deity. When a deity intervened in human affairs, it was said that the ‘Bau’ of the deity were at work [Borghouts 1982]. In this regard, the ruler was regarded as a ‘Ba’ of a deity, or one deity was believed to be the ‘Ba’ of another.

Ka (life force)

The Ka (k3) was the Egyptian concept of spiritual essence, that which distinguishes the difference between a living and a dead person, with death occurring when the ka left the body. The Egyptians believed that Khnum created the bodies of children on a potter’s wheel and inserted them into their mothers’ bodies. Depending on the region, Egyptians believed that Heket or Meskhenet was the creator of each person’s Ka, breathing it into them at the instant of their birth as the part of their soul that made them be alive. This resembles the concept of spirit in other religions.

The Egyptians also believed that the ka was sustained through food and drink. For this reason food and drink offerings were presented to the dead, although it was the kau (k3w) within the offerings (also known as kau) that was consumed, not the physical aspect. The ka was often represented in Egyptian iconography as a second image of the king, leading earlier works to attempt to translate ka as double.

Akh

The Akh (3ḫ meaning ‘(magically) effective one’), was a concept of the dead that varied over the long history of ancient Egyptian belief.

It was associated with thought, but not as an action of the mind; rather, it was intellect as a living entity. The Akh also played a role in the afterlife. Following the death of the Khat, the Ba and Ka were reunited to reanimate the Akh. The reanimation of the Akh was only possible if the proper funeral rites were executed and followed by constant offerings. The ritual was termed: se-akh ‘to make (a dead person) into an (living) akh. In this sense, it even developed into a sort of ghost or roaming ‘dead being’ (when the tomb was not in order any more) during the Ramesside Period. An Akh could do either harm or well to persons still living, depending on the circumstances, causing e.g. nightmares, feelings of guilt, sickness, etc. It could be evoked by prayers or written letters left in the tomb’s offering chapel also in order to help living family members, e.g. by intervening in disputes, by making an appeal to other dead persons or deities with any authority to influence things on earth for the better, but also to inflict punishments.

The separation of Akh and the unification of Ka and Ba were brought about after death by having the proper offerings made and knowing the proper, efficacious spell, but there was an attendant risk of dying again. Egyptian funerary literature (such as the Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead) were intended to aid the deceased in “not dying a second time” and becoming an akh.

Relationships

Ancient Egyptians believed that death occurs when a person’s ka leaves the body. Ceremonies conducted by priests after death, including the “opening of the mouth (wp r)”, aimed not only to restore a person’s physical abilities in death, but also to release a Ba’s attachment to the body. This allowed the Ba to be united with the Ka in the afterlife, creating an entity known as an “Akh” (3ḫ, meaning “effective one”).

According to Friedrich Junge, Giacomo Borioni proposes in his work “Der Ka aus religionswissenschaftlicher Sicht” that the Ka was the self of a human being.

Egyptians conceived of an afterlife as quite similar to normal physical existence — but with a difference. The model for this new existence was the journey of the sun. At night the sun descended into the Duat (the underworld). Eventually the sun meets the body of the mummified Osiris. Osiris and the sun, re-energized by each other, rise to new life for another day. For the deceased, their body and their tomb were their personal Osiris and a personal Duat. For this reason they are often addressed as “Osiris”. For this process to work, some sort of bodily preservation was required, to allow the Ba to return during the night, and to rise to new life in the morning. However, the complete Akhu were also thought to appear as stars. Until the Late Period, non-royal Egyptians did not expect to unite with the sun deity, it being reserved for the royals.

The Book of the Dead, the collection of spells which aided a person in the afterlife existence, had the Egyptian name of the Book of going forth by day. They helped people avoid the perils of the afterlife and also aided their existence, containing spells to assure “not dying a second time in the underworld”, and to “grant memory always” to a person.

The tomb of Paheri, an Eighteenth dynasty nomarch of Nekhen, has an eloquent description of this existence, and is translated by James P. Allen as:

Your life happening again, without your ba being kept away from your divine corpse, with your ba being together with the akh … You shall emerge each day and return each evening. A lamp will be lit for you in the night until the sunlight shines forth on your breast. You shall be told: “Welcome, welcome, into this your house of the living!”

Article Source: Wikipedia.org

The earliest appearance of this work is in the left hand wall of the Osireion in Abydos. It first appears in the Valley of the Kings, in the tomb of Ramesses IV, in place of Amduat, where it was recorded by Champollion in his letters for Egypt.

The book has no ancient title, and is not divided in the hours of the night as other Ancient Egyptian funerary texts are.

The Book of Caverns originated in the Ramessid Period. The book is known to be an underworld book that speaks of the deceased who fail their judgment in the afterlife, and also the rewards of those who pass the judgments. The Book of Caverns is one of the best sources to date that gives us the best view of the Egyptian concept of Hell.  The Book of Caverns is divided into two halves, six sections, by the ram headed sun god, and each half is divided into three other parts. The first half explains how the sun god invokes beings and groups of gods. The other half is a descriptive text of the earlier books. The Book of Caverns is much more literary that other funerary books, such as The Book of Gates, from the New Kingdom. The books does not have as many pictures than the other books, but instead it is much more descriptive and lengthy. The book describes the journey and tasks Re must go through to eventually end up in the Light. Re, the ram headed sun god, must take souls through the after life journey through many caverns guarded by gods and goddesses. Each cavern has its own task and if the soul does not pass then is it sent to nonexistence. If the soul is condemned to nonexistence then they are beheaded and their hearts are ripped out of their chests.

Section 1

Section 1 of the book describes Re as the ram headed sun god and his mission is to enter the darkness in order to defend and care for Osiris. Then Re has to direct the entities; here the snakes of the first cavern guard the cavern entrance. Re must greet Osiris with his hand extended to him; Osiris is sitting on his shrine surrounded by the serpents. Osiris’s enemies are below him beheaded; this is the Egyptian concept of Hell, where the entities of humans go if they belong there. Osiris and Re then condemn them all to nonexistence.

Section 2

In Section 2 Re must reach various gods and goddesses who are guarded by various serpents. Then once he reaches Osiris they souls are once again sent to nonexistence. Nonexistence is known as the Place of Annihilation where the souls are punished by guards with knives.

Section 3 through 6

Section 3 through Section 6 is about the damned and their punishment. The damned are shown on ovals in the walls of the caverns, hence the book is called The Book of Caverns. In the caverns the gods lay also making sure each and every soul continues to serve their punishment. For the first time ever the book talks about women being in nonexistence. In all other books dealing with the afterlife of souls, none state anything about women in hell. Women were always thought to have been pure, and could never have the option of being damned to hell.

As all the souls are trapped for eternity in hell, Osiris is down there with him. However a sun disc protects him and serpents surround him. Since he is protected he is able to continue the process. Osiris has two sons’ names Anubis and Horus. Anubis is a god with the head of a jackal he is the god of mummification and the path of the dead. Horus is the falcon headed god who is in charge of the living Pharaoh and also law, war, young men, and light.

Ramessid Period

The Ramessid Period took place during 1295-1069BC (19th and 20th Dynasty), which is still part of the New Kingdom age. Pharaoh Rameses II is known for its length due to his many construction projects and confrontation with the Hittite Empire. During the 19th Dynasty Egypt’s power was threatened by the Hittite Empire from Syria aka Palestine and then later by the Libyan tribes, known as the “Sea People”. However in the 20th Dynasty it was a time of social unrest, due to the extremely powerful High Priests of Amun.

Origination

The first known almost complete version of The Book of Caverns that only has its upper register damaged was located in the Osireion. The Osireion was built at a considerably lower level than the foundations of temple Seti. It was first discovered by archaeologists Flinders Petrie and Margaret Murray who were excavating the site in 1902 through 1903. The Osireion was built with enormous 60-ton granite columns and is made up with a very different architectural style than to Seti’s temple being more like the Old Kingdom temples. The Book of Caverns was found directly across from the Book of Gates within the entrance passage on the left wall. The Book of Gates was located near the Book of Caverns because it also deals with death. The Book of Gates is an Ancient Egyptian sacred text that dates back to the New Kingdom Dynasty also. The book is about the journey of the deceased soul into the next world. The soul passes through a variety of ‘gates’ during different stages in their journey. If a soul does not make it through a gate it will suffer torment in the lake of fire, but if it makes it through them all it will pass unharmed. Both of the books are based upon funerary text of the New Kingdom, however they did not show up until the 19th Dynasty and were not in any of the tombs within the Valley of the Kings however except for Pharaoh Ramesses IV.

Ramesses IV was the first to use one of the earliest passages from the Book of Caverns, rather than the traditional Amduat passages. Ramesses VI was the first to use the entire version of the book in his tomb, in the Osireion, with the Book of Gates in the front of the tomb. The passages of the book were written all over the walls of the tomb completely covering it in text. Ramesses the VII went even further and had passages not only written on the walls but the ceilings also, and in the sarcophagus chamber. Ramesses the VII was the first to ever have a completed covered tomb in every room with The Book of Caverns. After his tomb, Ramesses the VII, every future tomb to be created had used The Book of Caverns completely also.

History

Jean Francios Champollion first wrote about the book from the tomb of Ramesses VI providing some translations. Scholars however were not interested in the book at the time, until about a century later, when the second complete version of the book was discovered in the Osireion. In 1933 Henri Frankfort tired to write the first complete translation of the book with the help of Adriaan de Buck. Unfortunately it was not translated completely into English until 1941. He also translated the text in the tomb of Ramesses VI in 1954.

Article Source: Wikipedia.org

It tells the story of Ra, the Egyptian sun god who travels through the underworld, from the time when the sun sets in the west and rises again in the east. It is said that the dead Pharaoh is taking this same journey, ultimately to become one with Ra and live forever.

The underworld is divided into twelve hours of the night, each representing different allies and enemies for the Pharaoh/sun god to encounter. The Amduat names all of these gods and monsters. The main Purpose of the Amduat is to give the names of these gods and monsters to the spirit of the dead Pharaoh, so he can call upon them for help or use their name to defeat them.

As well as enumerating and naming the inhabitants of the Duat (or Dwat) both good and bad, the illustrations of the ‘book’ show clearly the topography of the underworld. The earliest complete version of the Amduat is found in KV34, the tomb of Thutmose III in the Valley of the Kings.

The hours

In hour 1 the sun god enters the western horizon (akhet) which is a transition between day and night. In hours 2 and 3 he passes through an abundant watery world called ‘Wernes’ and the ‘Waters of Osiris’. In hour 4 he reaches the difficult sandy realm of Sokar, the underworld hawk deity, where he encounters dark zig zag pathways which he has to negotiate, being dragged on a snake-boat. In hour 5 he discovers the tomb of Osiris which is an enclosure beneath which is hidden a lake of fire, the tomb is covered by a pyramid like mound (identified with the goddess Isis) and on top of which Isis and Nephthys have alighted in the form of two kites (birds of prey).

In the sixth hour the most significant event in the underworld occurs. The ba (or soul) of Ra unites with his own body, or alternatively with the ba of Osiris within the circle formed by the mehen serpent. This event is the point at which the sun begins its regeneration, it is a moment of great significance, but also danger, as beyond it in hour 7 the adversary Apep (Apophis) lies in wait and has to be subdued by the magic of Isis, and the strength of Set assisted by Serqet. Once this has been done the sun god opens the doors of the tomb in hour 8 and then leaves the sandy island of Sokar by rowing vigorously back into the waters in hour 9. In hour 10 the regeneration process continues through immersion in the waters until in hour 11 the gods eyes (a symbol for his health and well being) are fully regenerated. In hour 12 he enters the eastern horizon ready to rise again as the new day’s sun.

These deities were worshipped with offerings and prayers, in local and household shrines as well as in formal temples managed by priests. Different gods were prominent at different periods of Egyptian history, and the myths associated with them changed over time, so Egypt never had a coherent hierarchy of deities or a unified mythology. However, the religion contained many overarching beliefs. Among these were the divinity of the pharaoh, which helped to politically unify the country, and complex beliefs about an afterlife, which gave rise to the Egyptians’ elaborate burial customs.

Theology

Egyptian religion was not based on firm theological principles. Its primary focus was simply the interaction between humans and the gods. These gods were believed to be present in every aspect of the natural world, yet their true natures remained to some degree mysterious. Hundreds of gods were believed to exist, and the exact nature of their complex interrelationships is still the subject of scholarly debate.

Polytheism

The Egyptians saw the actions of the gods behind all the elements and forces of nature. However, they did not believe that the gods merely controlled these phenomena, but that each element of nature was a divine force in itself. The forces deified in this way included animals, as with Sekhmet, who represented the ferocity of lions, and inanimate elements, such as Shu, the deification of air. The gods could also represent more abstract things, as Horus represented the power of kingship. The Egyptians thus believed in a multitude of gods, which were involved in every aspect of nature and human society. Egyptian myths about the gods were intended to explain the origins and behavior of these phenomena, and the hymns, prayers and offerings given to the gods were efforts to placate them and turn them to human advantage. This polytheistic system was very complex, as some deities were believed to exist in many different manifestations, and some had multiple mythological roles. Conversely, many natural forces, such as the sun, were associated with multiple deities.

The depictions of the gods in art were not meant as literal representations of how the gods might appear if they were visible, as the gods’ true natures were believed to be “mysterious” and “unknown”. Instead, these depictions gave recognizable forms to the abstract deities by using symbolic imagery to indicate each god’s role in nature. Thus, for example, the funerary god Anubis was portrayed as a jackal, a creature whose scavenging habits threatened the preservation of the body, in an effort to counter this threat and employ it for protection. His black skin was symbolic of the color of mummified flesh and the fertile black soil that Egyptians saw as a symbol of resurrection. However, this iconography was not fixed, and many of the gods could be depicted in more than one form.

Many gods were associated with particular localities within Egypt where their cults were most important. However, these associations changed over time, and they did not necessarily mean that the god associated with a place had originated there. For instance, the god Monthu was the original patron of the city of Thebes. Over the course of the Middle Kingdom, however, he was displaced in that role by Amun, who had originated elsewhere. The national popularity and importance of individual gods fluctuated in a similar way.

In addition to the major gods, there were also other, less-powerful supernatural beings. These included a profusion of minor gods, which in modern studies are sometimes referred to as “demons”. They tended to be less universal than the major gods, and were often defined by specific behaviors or tied to particular locations, but the Egyptians did not draw a clear distinction between the two classes. Some demons were localized guardian deities, while others were servants of greater gods who performed specific actions on demand. Most of them were inhabitants of the Duat, the Egyptian underworld, although many others were present in the world of the living. The spirits of deceased humans, while distinct from the gods, were also believed to exist on the same plane, and could affect the world of the living in similar ways. Deceased pharaohs were believed to be fully divine, and occasionally, distinguished commoners such as Imhotep also became deified.

Associations between gods

The Egyptians recognized that different natural phenomena are interrelated, and they often placed deities in groups to symbolize this relationship. Sometimes deities were grouped into pairs, linked because of a relationship between the two phenomena they represented, or simply to give one deity a counterpart of the opposite sex. They could also be grouped into threes; often these triads formed mythological families consisting of a father, mother, and usually male child. There were also many larger groups, including two different sets of creator deities—the eight gods of the Ogdoad and the nine gods of the Ennead—and several sets of minor gods with similar functions but no individual identity, such as the deities representing each hour of the day and night.

The relationships between deities could also be expressed in the process of syncretism, in which two or more different gods were linked to form a composite deity. While early Egyptologists believed that the Egyptians did this to resolve conflicts between competing deities, syncretism was more of a recognition of the presence of one god “within” another where their respective roles overlapped. Sometimes this process combined deities that had similar characteristics, or that could even be seen as different aspects of the same god. At other times syncretism combined a foreign deity with a native one, or linked a localized god with a more important national one. Sometimes syncretism joined gods with very different natures, as when Amun, the god of hidden power, was linked with Ra, the god of the sun. The resulting god, Amun-Ra, thus united the power that lay behind all things with the greatest and most visible force in nature.

Monotheistic tendencies

At various times during Egyptian history, different gods, including Horus, Ra, and Isis, rose to be seen as the greatest of all the gods. During the New Kingdom, Amun held this position, and a theology developed in which he came close to being a truly monotheistic deity. His true identity was concealed from the visible world, even from the other gods, yet his power permeated the universe. Although they retained their individual identities, all the gods were ultimately aspects of this single hidden force.

Based on this, and upon instances in Egyptian literature where “god” is mentioned without reference to any specific deity, many Egyptologists have argued that beneath the polytheistic traditions of Egyptian religion there was an increasing tendency toward monotheism, while others have seen evidence of pantheism. In recent decades, however, Erik Hornung has disputed these claims, noting that each of the gods, even Amun, was only depicted and worshipped in a limited number of forms, so that Egyptian religion was never completely pantheistic. He also points out that at no point in Egyptian history were the traits of a supreme being limited to only one deity, and many Egyptian writings call particular gods “sole” or “lord of all that exists” even in periods when other gods were preeminent. He further argues that the Egyptians used the generic term “god” to refer to any god, or “whichever god you wish”. His argument is that Egyptian religion was purely polytheistic, having no notion of a divine being beyond the immediate multitude of deities.

More recently, scholars such as James P. Allen and Jan Assmann have suggested that the Egyptians did to some degree recognize a single divine force. Allen’s compromise approach states that the Egyptians could simultaneously be polytheists and monotheists, as demonstrated by the process of syncretism which, he says, “unites the view of god as simultaneously Many and One”. Under this view, it is possible that only the Egyptian theologians fully recognized an essential unity behind the polytheistic system. However, it is also possible that ordinary Egyptians practiced a form of henotheism, identifying the single divine force with a single god in particular situations.

Atenism

The Egyptians did have an aberrant period of true monotheism during the New Kingdom, in which the pharaoh Akhenaten abolished the official worship of other gods in favor of the sun-disk Aten, of which he himself was an aspect. This exclusivity was a radical departure from Egyptian tradition, and the Aten’s impersonal nature did not appeal to the Egyptian people. Thus, under Akhenaten’s successors Egypt reverted to its traditional religion, and Akhenaten himself came to be reviled as a heretic.

Other important concepts

Cosmology

In Egyptian belief, the universe was governed by the force of ma’at. This Egyptian word encompasses several concepts in English, including “truth,” “justice,” and “order.” It referred to the fixed, eternal order of the universe, both in nature and in human society. This was the most fundamental of all natural forces, believed to have existed from the creation of the universe, which ensured the continued existence of the world. Among humans, ma’at meant that all people and all classes of society lived in harmony. Any disruption of ma’at was inherently harmful, so all people were expected to behave in accordance with it.

In nature, ma’at meant that all the forces of nature existed in balance. It included the cyclical patterns of time—the cycle of day and night and of the seasons, and of human generations. While the Egyptians recognized that time is linear, they also saw it as cyclical, in that each of these patterns represented a renewal of ma’at and a defeat of disorder, and thus a repetition of the original creation of the universe. Therefore, the theme of cosmic renewal was present in many Egyptian rituals.

Ma’at also included the structure of the world, which kept each element in its place. The Egyptians had a specific vision of this structure. In this view, the world was surrounded by infinite expanse of water from which it had originally arisen. This water was personified as the god Nun. The earth was envisioned as a flat plate of land, represented by the god Geb. Above him arched the body of the sky goddess Nut, who represented the surface of the primordial water. Shu, the air, stood between Geb and Nut and separated them. During the day, the sun god Ra traveled over the earth, across the inner surface of Nut. At night, Ra was thought to be swallowed by Nut, and pass through her body, or on the outside of the sky, through a region called the Duat. With each new sunrise, Nut gave birth to him again. By the New Kingdom, however, the Duat was also sometimes identified with a region beneath the earth, and Ra was said to sail beneath the horizon to rise into the sky the next morning.

Divine pharaoh

Egyptians viewed kingship itself as a force of nature. Thus, even though the Egyptians recognized that the pharaoh was human and subject to human frailties, they simultaneously viewed him as a god, because the divine power of kingship was incarnate in him. He therefore acted as intermediary between Egypt’s people and the gods. He was key to upholding ma’at in society, by defending the country from enemies, appointing fair officials, settling disputes between his people, managing the food supply, and appeasing the gods with temples and offerings. For this reason, temple reliefs often depict the pharaoh presenting an emblem of ma’at to the gods, representing his maintenance of the divine order. Theoretically, he held dominion over the entire world, and thus the Egyptian word for “king” referred only to the pharaoh, and not to any foreign ruler.

The king was also associated with many specific deities. While alive, a pharaoh was logically identified with Horus, the god of kingship. Due to analogy between the sun, the dominant force in nature, and the king, the dominant force in human society, the pharaoh was also associated with Ra and regarded as his son. Once Amun had been syncretized with Ra, Amun was also identified with the king and seen as his father. Several goddesses functioned as the “mother” of the pharaoh, and he could also symbolically take the place of the child deity in many family triads of gods.

Upon his death, the king became fully deified. In this state, he was directly identified with Ra, and was also associated with Osiris, god of death and rebirth and the mythological father of Horus. Many mortuary temples were dedicated to the worship of deceased pharaohs as gods.

Afterlife

The Egyptians had elaborate beliefs about death and the afterlife. They believed that humans possessed a ka, or life-force, which left the body at the point of death. In life, the ka received its sustenance from food and drink, so it was believed that, to endure after death, the ka must continue to receive offerings of food, whose spiritual essence it could still consume. Each person also had a ba, the set of characteristics distinguishing one individual from another, similar to the concept of a personality. Unlike the ka, the ba remained attached to the body after death. Egyptian funeral rituals were intended to release the ba from the body so that it could move freely, and to rejoin it with the ka so that it could live on as an akh. However, it was also important that the body of the deceased be preserved, as the Egyptians believed that the ba returned to its body each night to receive new life, before emerging in the morning as an akh.

Originally, however, the Egyptians believed that only the pharaoh had a ba, and only he could become one with the gods; dead commoners remained dead. The nobles received tombs and the resources for their upkeep as gifts from the king, and their ability to enter the afterlife was believed to be dependent on these royal favors. In early times the deceased pharaoh was believed to dwell among the circumpolar stars, which never set in the Egyptian sky and were therefore regarded as eternal. Over the course of the Old Kingdom, he came to be more closely associated with the daily rebirth of the sun god Ra and with the cyclical death and resurrection of the fertility god Osiris as those deities grew more important.

During the late Old Kingdom and the First Intermediate Period, the possession of a ba and the possibility of a paradisiacal afterlife gradually extended to all Egyptians. To reach this pleasant afterlife, the soul had to avoid a variety of supernatural dangers, before undergoing a final judgment known as the “Weighing of the Heart”. In this judgment, the gods compared the actions of the deceased while alive (symbolized by the heart, the center of reason and emotion in Egyptian belief) to ma’at (symbolized by a feather), to determine whether he or she had behaved in accordance with ma’at. If the deceased had not done so in life, then he or she could not be expected to do so in the afterlife, and was thus destroyed by the demon Ammut. If the deceased was judged worthy, his or her ka and ba were united into an akh. Specific beliefs about the destination of the akh varied. The vindicated dead were often said to dwell in Osiris’ kingdom, a lush and pleasant land believed to exist somewhere beyond the western horizon, but kings, and sometimes commoners as well, were often said to travel with Ra across the sky. Over the course of the Middle and New Kingdoms, the notion that the akh could also travel in the world of the living, and to some degree magically affect events there, became increasingly prevalent.

Writings

While the Egyptians had no unified religious scripture, they produced many religious writings. These included a variety of hymns, prayers, and funerary texts. Despite the great number of Egyptian myths, however, mythological information is more fragmentary.

Mythology

Egyptian myths were metaphorical stories intended to illustrate and explain the gods’ actions and roles in nature. The details of the events they recounted could change as long as they conveyed the same symbolic meaning, so many myths exist in different and conflicting versions. Mythical narratives were rarely written in full, and more often texts only contain episodes from or allusions to a larger myth. Partly this was because the Egyptians avoided explicitly describing or depicting negative events within myths, believing that this risked giving power to the forces of chaos. Much of what mythological information is known comes from papyri originally kept in temple libraries, from devotional writings, and from funerary texts. Surprisingly little comes from inscriptions in the temples themselves, as temples were meant to celebrate the eternal power and benevolence of the gods, and the turbulent events often found in myths conflicted with this purpose.

Among the most important Egyptian myths were the creation myths. While there were several different creation myths, they all shared common elements: an infinite, lifeless ocean which preceded the creation, and a pyramidal mound of land which was the first thing to emerge from this ocean. However, the creation accounts differ in focusing on different gods. One creation myth describes the Ogdoad, the group of eight gods who embodied the primeval waters, and how their meeting resulted in the creation and emergence of the mound. Another myth relates the actions of Atum, who was said to be the first god to appear on the mound, in creating the Ennead, nine gods representing the natural forces of the world. A third myth says that the god Ptah, who was associated with the mound, created the world simply by envisioning and naming all things in it, while a fourth claims that Amun was the hidden power that caused all the other creator gods to form. To some degree these myths represent competing theologies, but they can also be seen as representing different aspects of the process of creation. The convergence of the Ogdoad represented the transformation of the lifeless primordial chaos into the orderly, life-bearing world; the Ennead myth demonstrated how the world’s original, embryonic form (Atum) evolved into the multiplicity of elements it later contained. Amun was the ultimate cause of creation, who first developed a concept of what the world would be like, and Ptah was the power of creative speech, by which that initial vision was made reality, and which caused the evolution of Atum.

Another story central to Egyptian belief was the myth of Osiris and Isis. It tells of the god Osiris, who had inherited his rule over the world from his ancestor Ra. Osiris was murdered and dismembered by his jealous brother Set, a god often associated with chaos. Osiris’ sister and wife Isis reassembled Osiris’ body and resurrected him so that he could conceive an heir to take back the throne from Set. Osiris then entered the underworld and became the ruler of the dead, while Isis eventually gave birth to his son Horus. Once grown, Horus fought and defeated Set to become king himself. Set’s association with chaos, and the identification of Osiris and Horus as the rightful rulers, provided a rationale for pharaonic succession and portrayed the pharaohs as the upholders of order. At the same time, Osiris’ death and rebirth were related to the Egyptian agricultural cycle, in which crops grew in the wake of the Nile inundation, and provided a template for the resurrection of human souls after death.

The sun god Ra was essential to life on earth, and was thus among the most important gods. In myth, the movement of the sun across the sky was explained as Ra traveling in a barque, and the setting of the sun was regarded as Ra’s entry into the underworld, through which he journeyed during the night. While in the underworld, Ra met with Osiris, who again acted as a god of resurrection, so that his life was renewed. He also fought each night with Apep, a serpentine god representing chaos. The defeat of Apep and the meeting with Osiris ensured the rising of the sun the next morning, an event that represented rebirth and the victory of order over chaos.

Devotional Writings

Like many cultures, the Egyptians prayed to their gods for help, although there are few written prayers that predate the Nineteenth Dynasty. There are also many formal hymns praising particular deities or the pharaoh. These poems consist of short lines organized into couplets or triplets, and were probably recited, or possibly even sung, during religious ceremonies. They often included mention of many different aspects of the deity whom they addressed, and expounded on his or her nature and mythological function. Thus, they are important sources of information on Egyptian theology.

Funerary Texts

Among the most significant and extensively preserved Egyptian writings are funerary texts designed to insure that deceased souls reached a pleasant afterlife. The earliest of these are the Pyramid Texts, the oldest religious writings in the world. They are a loose collection of hundreds of spells inscribed on the walls of royal pyramids during the Old Kingdom, intended to magically provide the king with the means to join the company of the gods in the afterlife. The spells appear in differing arrangements and combinations, and few of them appear in all of the pyramids.

At the end of the Old Kingdom a new body of funerary spells, which included material from the Pyramid Texts, began appearing in tombs, inscribed primarily on coffins, but also found on tomb walls and on other funerary objects. This collection of writings is known as the Coffin Texts, and was not reserved for royalty, but appeared in the tombs of nonroyal officials. In the New Kingdom, several new funerary texts emerged, of which the best-known is the Book of the Dead. Unlike the earlier books, it often contains extensive illustrations, or vignettes. The book was copied on papyrus and sold to commoners to be placed in their tombs.

The Coffin Texts included sections with detailed descriptions of the underworld and instructions on how to overcome its hazards. In the New Kingdom, this material gave rise to several “books of the netherworld”, including the Book of Gates, the Book of Caverns, and the Amduat. Unlike the loose collections of spells, these netherworld books are structured depictions of Ra’s passage through the Duat, and by analogy, the journey of the deceased person’s soul through the realm of the dead. They were originally restricted to pharaonic tombs, but in the Third Intermediate Period they came to be used more widely.

Religious practices

Temples

Temples existed from the earliest periods of Egyptian history, and at the height of the civilization were present in almost every town. These included both mortuary temples to serve the spirits of deceased pharaohs and temples dedicated to patron gods, although the distinction was blurred because divinity and kingship were so closely intertwined. Not all gods had temples dedicated to them, as there were many cosmic deities that did not receive widespread worship, and many household gods who were the focus of popular veneration rather than temple worship.

Temples served as “houses” for the gods, in which physical images which served as their intermediaries were cared for and provided with offerings. This service was believed to be necessary to sustain the gods, so that they could in turn maintain the universe itself. Thus, temples were central to Egyptian society, and vast resources were devoted to their upkeep. Pharaohs often added to them as part of their obligation to honor the gods, so that many temples grew to be huge—the Temple of Amun at Karnak, for instance, is the largest religious structure in the world.

In the New Kingdom, a basic temple layout emerged, which had evolved from common elements in Old and Middle Kingdom temples. With variations, this plan was used for most of the temples built from then on, and most of those that survive today adhere to it. In this standard plan, the temple was aligned along a central axis oriented relative to some significant location; most commonly, temples were built along the Nile with an axis running roughly east–west. The major entrance to such temples was usually the nearby landing quay on the Nile, from which a processional way ran through the walls of the temple enclosure. Beyond this, there were usually one or more pylon gateways, followed by a courtyard enclosed by a colonnade. This courtyard was likely where commoners delivered offerings and met with the priests. Further in was the covered hypostyle hall, and beyond this was the sanctuary, surrounded by subsidiary rooms related to the daily business of temple ritual.

The entire journey from the temple entrance to the sanctuary was seen as a journey from the human world to the divine realm; thus, the sanctuary was the most sacred part of the temple, and contained a shrine with a statue of the temple’s god. Access to the sanctuary was usually restricted to the pharaoh and the highest-ranking priests. Ritual offerings were typically performed in the morning and evening, either by the pharaoh or, more commonly, the priest acting as his surrogate. In these rituals, the god’s statue was washed, anointed, and elaborately dressed, and food offerings were placed before or near it. Afterward, when the god had consumed the spiritual essence of the offerings, the items themselves were taken to be distributed among the priests. In addition to these daily offerings, there were other rituals performed at certain times of year for particular festivals, and infrequent rituals performed under special circumstances. Many of these rituals involved the transportation of the god’s image to visit another significant site, the symbolic destruction of the forces of disorder, or the reenactment of particular myths.

Temples were supported by donations from the monarchy and by estates of their own. These estates could include vast areas of land, with farms, gardens, mines, quarries, and workshops devoted to supplying the temple’s needs. Large temples were therefore very important centers of economic activity, sometimes employing thousands of people.

Priests

The pharaoh was Egypt’s official representative to the gods, so in theory, temple priests merely acted on his behalf. In fact, during the Old and Middle Kingdoms, there was no separate class of priests; instead, many government officials served in this capacity for several months out of the year before returning to their secular duties. Only in the New Kingdom did professional priesthood become widespread, although most lower-ranking priests were still part-time. The pharaoh theoretically retained the right to make all priestly appointments, although he often delegated this duty. However, as the wealth of the temples grew, the influence of their priesthoods increased, until it rivaled that of the pharaoh. In the political fragmentation of the Third Intermediate Period, the high priests of Amun even became the effective rulers of Upper Egypt.

There were several different varieties of priests and temple personnel. One class of priests worked outside temples: those who served in the mortuary cults of private individuals. The lector priests, who recited the incantations during temple rituals and were versed in many magical texts, also performed outside duties, such as officiating at funerals. The priests serving in each temple were divided into several ranks and specialized roles. At the top of this hierarchy was the high priest, or “first servant of the god.” This office was frequently passed from father to son and tended to become hereditary. Temples also employed many people outside the priesthood, including farmers and artisans to supply their needs, and musicians and chanters who assisted in temple rituals. All were paid with portions of the temple’s income.

Priests were usually male. During the Old Kingdom, many women from wealthy families held important priestly roles, mainly in temples to female deities. However, during the Middle Kingdom women became less prominent in public life, and afterward most of the women involved in temple activities seem to have been in more minor roles. There was an exception to this during the Third Intermediate Period, when important female roles emerged in the cults of several deities, most notably the “god’s wives” of Amun.

While actively serving the temple, priests adhered to strict standards of purity. They were required to shave their heads and bodies, wash several times a day, and wear only clean linen clothing. In the service of some specific gods, there were also particular behaviors, such as eating certain foods, from which priests had to refrain. They were not required to be celibate, but sexual intercourse rendered them unclean until they underwent further ritual purification.

Festivals

The Egyptians celebrated a variety of religious festivals. Most were annual, tied to one or more specific days of the year, but some took place at longer intervals or on irregular occasions. Some, such as the celebration of the new year, took place across the country, but most were celebrated only locally, at a specific temple. Temple festivals usually involved a procession carrying the god’s image out of the sanctuary in a model barque to visit other significant sites, such as the temple of a related deity. Commoners celebrated these events along with the priesthood, gathering to watch the procession and sometimes receiving portions of the unusually large offerings given to the gods on these occasions. Other festivals were part of the rituals of kingship rather than the cult of a deity; these included coronation ceremonies and the sed festival, a ritual renewal of the pharaoh’s strength which took place periodically during his reign.

Magic

The word “magic” is used to translate the Egyptian term heka, which meant “the ability to make things happen by indirect means”. Heka was believed to be a natural phenomenon, the force which was used to create the universe and which the gods employed to work their will. Humans could also use it, however, and magical practices were closely intertwined with religion. In fact, even the regular rituals performed in temples were counted as magic. Individuals also frequently employed magical techniques for personal ends. Although these ends could be harmful to other people, no form of magic was considered inimical in itself. Instead, magic was seen primarily as a way for humans to prevent or overcome negative events.

Magic was closely associated with the priesthood. Temple libraries contained numerous magical spells, and many of the spells found in other contexts seem to derive from temple books; thus, great magical knowledge was ascribed to the lector priests who studied these books. These priests often worked outside their temples, hiring out their magical services to laymen. Other professions also commonly employed magic as part of their work, including doctors, scorpion-charmers, and makers of magical amulets. It is also likely that the peasantry used simple magic for their own purposes, but because this magical knowledge would have been passed down orally, there is limited evidence of it.

Language was closely linked with heka, to such a degree that Thoth, the god of writing, was sometimes said to be the inventor of heka. Therefore, magic frequently involved written or spoken incantations, although these were usually accompanied by ritual actions. Often these rituals invoked the power of an appropriate deity to perform the desired action, using the power of heka to compel it to act. Sometimes this entailed casting the practitioner or subject of a ritual in the role of a character in mythology, thus inducing the god to act toward that person as it had in the myth. Rituals also employed sympathetic magic, using objects believed to have a magically significant resemblance to the subject of the rite. The Egyptians also commonly used objects believed to be imbued with heka of their own, such as the magically protective amulets worn in great numbers by ordinary Egyptians.

Funerary practices

Because it was considered necessary for the survival of the soul, preservation of the body was a central part of Egyptian funerary practices. Originally people were buried in graves in the desert, where the arid conditions mummified the body naturally. In the Early Dynastic Period, however, the Egyptians began using tombs for greater protection, and the body was insulated from the desiccating effect of the sand and was subject to natural decay. Thus, the practice of embalming developed. The process was not fully developed until the New Kingdom, but from then on the embalmers removed the internal organs, dried the corpse in natron crystals, and wrapped it in linen to be placed in its coffin. The quality of the process varied according to cost, however, and those who could not afford it were still buried in desert graves.

Once the mummification process was complete, the mummy was carried from the deceased person’s house to the tomb in a funeral procession that included his or her friends and relatives, along with a variety of priests. At the tomb entrance, a number of rituals were performed, including the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, in which a priest touched the mummy with various ceremonial tools to restore the dead person’s senses and give him or her the ability to receive offerings. Then the mummy was buried and the tomb sealed. Afterward, relatives or hired priests gave food offerings to the deceased in a nearby mortuary chapel at regular intervals. However, over time families inevitably neglected offerings to long-dead relatives, and most mortuary cults only lasted one or two generations.

The first Egyptian tombs were mastabas, rectangular brick structures where kings and nobles were entombed. Each of them contained a subterranean burial chamber and a separate, aboveground chapel for mortuary rituals. In the Old Kingdom the mastaba developed into the pyramid, which symbolized the primeval mound of Egyptian myth. Pyramids were reserved for royalty, and were accompanied by large mortuary temples sitting at their base. Middle Kingdom pharaohs continued to build pyramids, although far smaller than those of the Old Kingdom, but the popularity of mastabas waned. Increasingly, commoners with sufficient means were buried in rock-cut tombs with separate mortuary chapels nearby, an approach which was less vulnerable to tomb robbery. By the beginning of the New Kingdom even the pharaohs were buried in such tombs, and they continued to be used until the decline of the religion itself.

Tombs could contain a great variety of other items, including statues of the deceased to serve as substitutes for the body in case it was damaged and Canopic jars containing the organs removed during the mummification process. Because it was believed that the deceased would have to do work in the afterlife, just as in life, burials often included small models of humans to do work in place of the deceased. The use of these model workers replaced the practice, used by the earliest pharaohs, of burying human servants along with the king. The tombs of wealthier individuals could also contain furniture, clothing, and other everyday objects intended for use in the afterlife, along with amulets and other items intended to provide magical protection against the hazards of the spirit world. Further protection was provided by funerary texts inscribed on the tomb walls, the burial shroud, the coffin, or on separate rolls of papyrus. The tomb walls also bore artwork, including images of the deceased eating food which were believed to allow him or her to magically receive sustenance even after the mortuary offerings had ceased.

Because they believed that the gods could manifest themselves in animal form, the Egyptians mummified and interred animals as well as humans. Originally this only applied to specific sacred animals, such as the Apis bull worshipped as a manifestation of Ptah. Beginning in the Twenty-sixth dynasty, however, the Egyptians began mummifying a wide variety of animals in honor of the gods whom they represented. Worshippers paid the priests of a particular deity to acquire and mummify an animal which represented that deity, and the mummy was placed in a cemetery near the god’s cult center as an offering. Some such crypts contain millions of animal mummies.

History

Predynastic and Early Dynastic periods

The beginnings of Egyptian religion extend into prehistory, and information about religious activity in these early times comes solely from archaeological evidence, which is difficult to interpret and subject to differing opinions. Careful burials during the Predynastic period imply that the people of this time believed in some form of an afterlife. At the same time, animals were ritually buried, a practice which may reflect the development of zoomorphic deities like those found in the later religion. While these early Egyptians also produced anthropomorphic figures which may represent gods in human form, the evidence is unclear, and this type of deity may have emerged more slowly than those in animal shape. Each region of Egypt originally had its own patron deity, but it is likely that as these small communities conquered or absorbed each other, the god of the defeated area was either incorporated into the other god’s mythology or entirely subsumed by it. This resulted in a complex pantheon in which some deities remained only locally important while others developed more universal significance.

The Early Dynastic period began with the unification of Egypt around 3000 BC. This event transformed Egyptian religion, as some deities rose to national importance and the cult of the divine pharaoh became the central focus of religious activity. The early kings were interred in elaborate mastaba tombs with expensive grave goods and, in the case of First Dynasty rulers, humans sacrificed to attend the king in the afterlife. These burials demonstrate the importance of the royal funerary cult even at the beginning of Egyptian history. High officials were buried in less-elaborate tombs of a similar type.

Old and Middle Kingdoms

During the Old Kingdom the priesthoods of the major deities tried to organize the confusing national pantheon into groups, each with their own mythology and cult center. It was in this period that family triads of deities emerged, and the theologies of Heliopolis, Hermopolis, and possibly Memphis were developed. Meanwhile, pyramids replaced mastabas as the tombs of pharaohs, although important non-royals continued to use mastabas. Pyramids were accompanied by large mortuary temple complexes, which were extremely important in the development of Egyptian temple design.

In the Old Kingdom, the city of Heliopolis became the nation’s most important religious site, and its patron god Ra was increasingly influential. The Fourth Dynasty change from step pyramids to true pyramids, for instance, may have been influenced by the symbolic association of the true pyramid shape with the rays of the sun. By the Fifth Dynasty Ra was effectively the nation’s state god, with and had developed the close links with kingship and the afterlife that he retained for the rest of Egyptian history. Around the same time, Osiris became an important afterlife deity.

At the end of the Fifth Dynasty, kings began inscribing the Pyramid Texts inside their tombs. The texts contain not only the solar and Osirian concepts of the afterlife that were current at the time, but also older traditions, some dating back to Predynastic times. They are thus an extremely important source for understanding Egyptian theology during and before the Old Kingdom.

In the 22nd century BC, the Old Kingdom collapsed into the disorder of the First Intermediate Period, with important consequences for Egyptian religion. Old Kingdom officials had already begun to adopt the funerary rites originally reserved for royalty, but now, less rigid barriers between social classes meant that these practices and the accompanying beliefs gradually extended to all Egyptians, a process called the “democratization of the afterlife”. The Osirian view of the afterlife had the greatest appeal to commoners, and thus Osiris became one of the most important gods. The new pharaohs originated from Thebes, and they promoted their patron god Monthu to national importance, but during the Middle Kingdom he was eclipsed by the rising popularity of Amun.

New Kingdom

The Middle Kingdom crumbled in the Second Intermediate Period, but the country was again reunited by Theban rulers, who became the first pharaohs of the New Kingdom. They promoted their deity Amun to the position of supreme state god, and syncretized him with the long-established patron of kingship, Ra. The temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak in Thebes thus became the religious capital of Egypt. Increased contact with outside peoples in this period led to the adoption of many Near Eastern deities into the pantheon, while the subjugated Nubians absorbed Egyptian religious beliefs, and in particular, adopted Amun as their own.

The New Kingdom religious order was disrupted when Pharaoh Amenhotep IV replaced Amun with the Aten as the state god, and renamed himself Akhenaten in its honor. Eventually he prohibited the worship of gods other than the Aten, and moved Egypt’s capital to a new city at Amarna, for which this part of Egyptian history, the Amarna period, is named. In doing so Akhenaten claimed unprecedented status for himself, as an aspect of the Aten itself as well as its sole intermediary for worship. The Atenist system lacked well-developed mythology, moral philosophy, and afterlife beliefs, and the Aten itself seemed distant and impersonal, so the new order did not appeal to ordinary Egyptians. Thus, many of them continued to worship the traditional gods in private. Nevertheless, the withdrawal of state support for the other deities undermined the structure of Egyptian society. Akhenaten’s successors therefore restored the traditional religious system, and eventually they dismantled all Atenist monuments.

The confusion of the Amarna period resulted in a long-term decline in pharaonic religious influence, despite the efforts of later pharaohs to counteract it. As a backlash against Akhenaten’s claim to be the only interface between the populace and the gods, people began to believe that the gods were more directly involved in daily life. The pharaoh was therefore less significant, more human and less divine. At the same time, after the religious restoration the priesthood of Amun grew still more powerful, and these factors contributed to the breakdown of the New Kingdom.

Later periods

In the first millennium BC, Egypt was significantly weaker than in earlier times, and in several periods foreigners seized the country and assumed the position of pharaoh. Animal cults, a characteristically Egyptian form of worship, became increasingly popular in this period, possibly as a response to the uncertainty and foreign influence of this period. Isis grew more popular in this period as well, and eventually became the most important goddess in Egypt.

In the fourth century BC, Egypt became a Hellenistic kingdom under the Ptolemaic dynasty, which assumed the pharaonic role, maintaining the traditional religion and building or rebuilding many temples. The kingdom’s Greek ruling class identified the Egyptian deities with their own, and syncretized several Greek gods with Osiris and Apis to create Serapis, a new state god intended to unite the Greek and Egyptian communities. Nevertheless, for the most part the two belief systems remained separate, and the Egyptian deities remained Egyptian.

The Ptolemaic religious system changed little after Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire, with the Ptolemaic kings replaced by distant emperors. The cult of Isis appealed even to Greeks and Romans outside Egypt, and in Hellenized form it spread across the empire. In Egypt itself, however, knowledge of many of the details of Egyptian belief had become confined to the insular and shrinking temple priesthoods. The religion declined further in the first century AD, when Christianity and its exclusive monotheism arrived and began winning converts. In 383 AD, when Christianity had become the official religion of the empire, Emperor Theodosius I ordered the closing of all pagan temples, including those in Egypt. While it persisted among the populace for some time, Egyptian religion slowly faded away thereafter.

Revival

With the Neopagan emergence in the 20th century, a form of reconstructed ancient Egyptian religion called Kemetism was formed.

Article Source: Wikipedia.org

I. THE KING OF THE REBU

II. THE SIEGE OF THE CITY

III. CAPTIVE

IV. AN EASY SERVITUDE

V. IN LOWER EGYPT

VI. FOWLING AND FISHING

VII. HIPPOPOTAMUS AND CROCODILE

VIII. THE CONSPIRACY IN THE TEMPLE

IX. A STARLING EVENT

X. THE CAT OF BUBASTES

XI. DANGERS THICKEN

XII. THE DEATH OF AMERES

XIII. THE SEARCH FOR MYSA

XIV. A PRINCE OF EGYPT

XV. AMERES IS REVENGED

XVI. UP THE NILE

XVII. OUT OF EGYPT

XVIII. THE DESERT JOURNEY

XIX. HOME AT LAST

XX. THE KING OF THE REBU

By G. A. HENTY