Ancient Egyptian Religion
The religion of the ancient Egyptians were the dominating influence in the development of their culture. Their religion was not a true religion in the sense of a unified theological system. Rather, the Egyptian faith was based on an unorganized collection of ancient myths, nature worship, and innumerable deities. In the most influential and famous of these myths, a divine hierarchy is developed and the creation of the earth is explained. According to the Egyptian account of creation, only the ocean existed at first. Then Ra, the sun, came out of an egg (a flower in some accounts) that appeared on the surface of the water. Ra brought forth four children, the gods Shu and Geb and the goddesses Tefnut and Nut. Shu and Tefnut became the atmosphere. They stood on Geb, who became the earth, and raised up Nut, who became the sky. Ra ruled over all. Geb and Nut later had two sons, Set and Osiris, and two daughters Isis and Mephthys. Osiris succeeded Ra as king of the earth, helped by Isis, his sister-wife. Set, however, hated his brother and killed him. Isis then embalmed her husband's body with the help of the god Anubis, who thus became the god of enbalming. The powerful charms of Isis resurrected Osiris, who became king of the netherworld, the land of the dead. Horus, who was the son of Osiris and Isis, later defeated et in a great battle and became king of the earth. From this myth of creation came the conception of the ennead, a group of nine divinities, and the triad, consisting of a divine father, mother, and son. Every local temple in Egypt possessed its own ennead and triad. The greatest ennead, however, was that of Ra and his children and grandchildren. The group was worshipped at Heliopolis, the center of sun worship. In addition to those already named, the important divinities included the gods Amon, Thoth, Ptah, Khnemu, and Hapi, and the goddesses Hathor, Mut, Neit, and Sekhet. Their importance increased with the political ascendance of the localities where they were worshiped. For example, the ennead of Memphis was headed by a triad composed of the father Ptah, the mother Sekhet, and the son Imhotep. Therefore, during the zmemphite dynasties, Ptah became one of the greatest gods in Egypt. Similarly, when the Theban dynasties ruled Egypt, the ennead of Thebes was given the most importance, headed by the father Amon, the mother Mut, and the son Khonsu. As the religion became more involved, true deities were sometimes confused with human beings who had been glorified after death. During the 5th Dynasty, the pharoahs began to claim divine ancestry and from that time on were worshiped as sons of Ra. Minor gods, some merely demons, were also given places in local divine hierarchies. The Egyptian gods were represented with human torosos and human or animal heads. Sometimes the animal or bird expressed the characteristics of the god. Ra, for example, had the head of a hawk, and the hawk was sacred to him because of its swift flight across the sky; Hathor, the goddess of love and laughter, was given the head of a cow, which was sacred to her; Anubis was given the head of a jackal because these animals ravaged the desert graves in ancient times; Mut was vulture headed and Thoth was ibis headed; and Ptah was given a human head, although he was occassionally represented as a bull, called Apis. Because of the gods to which they were attached, the sacred animals were venerated, but they were never worshiped until the decadent 26th Dynasty. The gods were also represented by symbols, such as the sun disk and hawk wings that were worn on the headdress of the Pharoah. The only important god who was worshipped with consistency was Ra, chief of cosmic deities, from whom early Egyptian kings claimed descent. Beginning with the Middle Kingdom (2134-1668 BCE), Ra worship acquired the status of a state religion, and the god was gradually fused with Amon during the Theban dynasties, becoming the supreme god Amon-Ra. During the 18th Dynasty, the pharoah Amenhotep III renamed the sun god Aton, an ancinet term for the physical solar force. Amenhotep's son and successor, Amenhotep IV, instituted a revolution in Egyptian religion by proclaiming Aton the true and only god. He changed his own name to Akhenaton(He who is devoted to Aton). Akhenaton was so iconoclastic as monotheist that he had the plural word gods deleted from monuments and relentlessly persecuted the priests of Amon. Akhenaton's sun religion failed to survive, although it exerted a great influence on the art and thinking of his time, and Egypt returned toi the ancient labyrinthine religion of polytheism after Akhenaton's death. Burying the dead was of religiosu concern in Egypt. The ka, a duplicate of the body, accompanied the body throughout life, and after death, departed from the body to take its place in the kingdom of the dead. Mummification was used to preserve the bidy because the ka could not exist without the body. In the underworld after death, souls appeared before Osiris and his 42 demon assistants for judgment. If the dead was judged a sinner, the ka was condemned to hunger and thirst and to be torn to pieces by horrible executioners. If the decision was favorable, the ka went to the heavenly relam of the fields of Yaru, where grain was rich and existence was a glorified version of life on earth.
My Info:
Name:
Chad Harvey
Email: