Egyptian Religion

Early Civilisations Eleanor Simmance exs976@bham.ac.uk

Hypostyle Hall, Temple of Amun at Karnak

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‘they are religious beyond measure, more than any other people’

But how religious were they?

[see Kemp, B. 1995. ‘How religious were the ancient Egyptians?’, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 5, 25-54.]

Herodotus Histories II, 37

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• No word for ‘religion’ in Egyptian language – Magic (HoAw – hekau)

– God (nTr, plural nTr.w – netjer(u))

– Temple (Hw.t, r-pr, pr – hut, er-per, per)

– Worship (dwA, iA – dua, ia)

• No sacred text that tells us all (like Bible, Koran, Torah etc.)

• No single belief system – ‘multiplicity of approaches’ and localised traditions

• Various levels of ‘religion’ – state and personal

Features 3

• Mythology – the background to religious beliefs, explaining the world and its origins.

• State religion/temple cult – the sphere of royalty and the elite

• Personal religion, popular religion, folk religion, personal piety – everyday practices by the individual – From king to peasant (but often used to describe the

latter)

• Magic – loosely applied to a variety of practices, usually within personal religion

• Funerary religion – relates to death, burial and the afterlife

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Sources

• Buildings – temples and tombs • Funerary texts

– Pyramid Texts (late Old Kingdom, pyramid walls, only for royalty)

– Coffin Texts (Middle Kingdom, often on coffins, extension of PTs for elite)

– Book of the Dead (New Kingdom, CTs developed and often written on papyrus, elite)

– (many other NK funerary texts e.g. Book of Gates, the Amduat. BD is the main one)

• Archaeology – small and personal items, statues, monuments

• Greek and Roman texts (don’t worry too much about these for now)

5 Clappers/’magic wands’. For daily rituals? Middle Kingdom © Petrie Museum UC3051

In the beginning, there was…water

• Primeval waters of Nun – representative of chaos, but with the potential for all life.

– Compare with the Nile – can destroy (floods), but also provide life (fertile land)

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• From Nun grew the primeval mound (bnbn - benben)

– beginnings of life, and eventually civilisation.

• The gods then ruled on earth: known as

the ‘first time’ (sp tpy – sep tepy).

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A pyramidion, known as a benben, was the capstone of a pyramid (in this case, a pyramid-chapel belonging to a Ramose and showing him worshipping the sun-god Horakhty). Museo Egizio, Turin, c.1603.

Cosmogony – pertaining to the origin of the cosmos

Heliopolitan family tree:

Atum

Shu (air) Tefnut (moisture) =

Geb (earth) Nut (sky) =

Nephthys Seth Isis Osiris = =

Horus

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Other origins stories

Heliopolis

Memphis

Hermopolis

Thebes

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Other origins stories

• Memphite: god of crafts, Ptah, spoke out loud, and his ideas (the world) came into being

• Hermopolitan: the Ogdoad existed as components of Nun and combined to form the benben-mound: – Nun and Naunet (water); Huh and Hauhet (infinity); Kuk

and Kauket (darkness); Amun and Amaunet (hiddenness)

• Theban: Amun was hidden (imn), and was the creating force behind the primeval waters, the Ogdoad and the mound.

• Khnum (ram-headed god): created mankind on the

potter’s wheel

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Natural phenomena

• Sky (Nut) and earth (Geb), held apart by Shu (air)

• Inundation of the Nile (Hapy)

Greenfield Papyrus British Museum EA 10544, 87 © Trustees of the British Museum

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The sun • Represented by several divine beings inc. Khepri, the scarab

beetle rolling dung (i.e. the sun) across the sky

• Also envisaged as being on a boat (sun-barque); Nut swallows sun in evening, giving birth in the morning

• Counterpart: moon (often god Thoth) and moon-barque

Pectoral with Khepri as scarab British Museum EA 7846 © Trustees of the British Museum

Nut. The sun can be seen passing through her body in the upper section

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Sun worship Radical (and short-lived) change: the Aten. Cult centre was Akhetaten (Tell el-Amarna)

Traditional: Re (or Ra). Cult centre was Heliopolis

Stela of Tayiusheri, 3rd Int. Period. British Museum, EA 8447 © Trustees of the British Museum

Akhenaten and family under the rays of the Aten, New Kingdom Ägyptisches Museum, Berlin. Inv. 14145 © Ägyptisches Museum, Berlin http://www.egyptian-museum-berlin.com/c52.php

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Animals

• Gods often in form of animals,

or with animal heads

– Anthropomorphic

– Represented the characteristics of animals

– e.g. Sekhmet (volatile) vs Bastet (docile)

– Normally feared creatures could be harnessed e.g. Taweret (pregnant hippo) and Anubis (jackal)

• Seth: an unknown animal, probably a composite

– From the desert; mysterious; almost demonic

14 Seth-animal

Gods as animals

A votive statuette representing Bastet, 26th Dynasty (Late Period) Louvre E 2533 © Musée de Louvre/C. Décamps

Falcon-headed Horus and Seth (mythological/composite animal-headed) uniting the two lands [see later slide, ‘Osiris, Seth, Isis and Horus’].

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Personifications

• Ma’at: order, truth, justice

– Symbol is an ostrich feather

• Sekhem(et): power

– Sekhmet was, in some contexts,

a lioness-deity, the daughter of Re,

responsible for both destruction

and healing

Ma’at in the Peace Palace (Netherlands) – the International

Court of Justice

Sekhmet statue, one of hundreds made under Amenhotep III New Kingdom Museo Egizio, Turin, C.247

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Religion and the state

• The king was essentially a god on earth – Incarnation of Horus (son of Osiris)

• His role was to maintain cosmic order (ma’at) and please the gods – In constant battle to keep Seth (chaos) from taking the

throne

• Horus = often shown as a child - vulnerable, but represents innocence and potential, growth and strength

• Seth = adult or as a strange animal - desert being(?) i.e. unknown, chaotic, barren

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Religion and the state

• Temples – to provide a focal point for royal, religious activity – Limited access to all but the king and the highest

elite • Internal scenes of cult practices involving deities

– Not for the ordinary person to pray

– Legitimised the king’s authority: looked impressive! • Size; cost; brought work to the local community

• External scenes of battle and tribute

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Thutmose III, seventh pylon, Temple of Amun, Karnak New Kingdom

Public face of the king at temples: smiting the enemies

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Osiris, Seth, Isis and Horus (a.k.a. those crazy Egyptian storytellers!)

• Seth kills Osiris, king of Egypt (fratricide and regicide) – Chops him into pieces

• Isis (their sister and Osiris’ wife) gathers the pieces and remakes her husband

– N.B. part with the lost penis (eaten by a fish) is only in Plutarch’s version i.e. Greek, not Egyptian

• Isis proceeds to conceive Horus (Osiris still dead…) – Raises him in Delta until he is old enough to challenge Seth

• Horus takes the throne – Conflict with Seth continues

Eventually it is resolved: • Unification of Upper, or southern, and Lower, or northern, Egypt under the control of Pharaoh (Horus) • Harmony and peace restored by the symbolism of tying together the two

plants of the regions (UE – lotus; LE - papyrus) – often appears on thrones

Is this ‘religion’?

Statuette of Isis and Horus, c.332-330BC © Met Museum, 55.121.5 www.metmuseum.org

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Religion and the state

• King was a god incarnate, a child of gods, beloved of gods and also a servant of gods

• Religion and state almost indistinguishable – king often received full cult

himself, centred around his

mortuary temple or cenotaph

– Amenhotep I at Deir el-Medina

i.e. brought into smaller-scale

cults

Links to the gods: divine triad of Amun, the pharaoh Ramesses II and Mut Museo Egizio, Turin. C.767

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State religion vs. personal practices

• OK and MK – only king shown in presence of gods • Late MK/SIP, but mostly NK onwards – depictions of

non-royals with gods – personal contact?

• Personal religion on a different scale to state cults: – Daily practices – Links with magic (hekau) – Can be connected to state cults, or independent of them – Archaeology particularly important – houses, small

chapels and shrines, votive offerings – BUT existed across social boundaries e.g. Bes appears at

the Malqata palace of Amenhotep III - a royal building

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Sin and forgiveness

• Generally, ancient Egyptian religion is not redemptive.

• Book of the Dead (NK) Ch. 125 – ‘weighing of the heart’, and being judged by the gods.

– Accompanied by the ‘Negative Confession’, in which the deceased says ‘I have not done so-and-so’, many times

‘Weighing of the heart’, papyrus of Ani New Kingdom British Museum EA 9901,3 © Trustees of the British Museum

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Sin and forgiveness at Deir el-Medina

God (Ptah) sitting before an offering table

Stela owner (Neferabu), arms raised in adoration and speaking a prayer

British Museum, EA 589 © Trustees of the British Museum

• Crime: Neferabu ‘swore falsely against Ptah’

• Punishment: He was caused ‘to see darkness in the daytime’ (blindness)

• Repentence: He acknowledges that Ptah was ‘just toward me’

• Forgiveness: He pleads for the god to ‘be merciful to me’

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Localisation

• Remember: multiplicity of approaches • Local traditions (on state and personal levels) • Certain cults became more prominent at different

times – E.g. Amun at Thebes during New Kingdom; Seth

during Hyksos rule (2nd Intermediate Period) and under Ramesside pharaohs (late NK)

• Deified men (royals and non-royals) – Amenhotep I at Deir el-Medina – Heqaib at Elephantine – Amenhotep son of Hapu at Thebes

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Localisation on a state level

Ptah of Memphis Amun(-Re) of Thebes

Great Hypostyle Hall, Karnak This statue actually found in Thebes! Now Museo Egizio, Turin, Cat. No. 87

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Foreign deities

• Some adopted into the Egyptian pantheon, particularly in later times e.g. Reshep, Anat and Astarte (all Semitic deities) and possibly Bes (perhaps of Nubian origin)

Stela showing Reshep with Egyptian iconography (the White Crown) New Kingdom Museo Egizio, Turin. S.1307

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Funerary religion

• General rule: King would become a god and join the sun-god; non-royals would enter afterlife

• Several approaches (and chronological differences) – e.g. one belief that you stay in the tomb; another that you

travel through afterlife

– Links to the gods – processions that recreated Osiris’ journey

• Funerary cults – Centred around tomb or mortuary temple

– Could be family-based or with a priesthood

– Maintaining the deceased with food, drink and prayers.

– Majority likely diminished after a generation or two

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Anubis tends to the mummy (above) and Osiris stands in his kiosk awaiting the deceased’s arrival (right), Tomb of Sennedjem (TT 1), New Kingdom

[note mummiform body, green/black skin (fertility, rebirth), divine (curved) beard, crook and flail, and atef-crown with two feathers]

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All fun and games?

Funerary religion in every part of life

– Tombs and funerary assemblages created throughout life (those who could afford them!)

– Some hymns request that they have a pleasant afterlife after a long life.

Board game ‘senet’ – funerary symbolism (note the signs on some squares) Tutankhamun’s tomb, Carter no.345 (Burton photograph p1251) © Griffith Institute, University of Oxford

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Egyptian religion: key points • No sacred books explaining it all and no word for

‘religion’ • Beliefs stem from observations of the world • A variety of ideas and approaches • Strong links to the king, kingship and the state • Personal religion different to ‘state religion’ in purpose

and methods, but could be practised by all • Basic ideas generally consistent throughout Egypt’s

history – Some changes e.g. Akhenaten and sun-worship; foreign

influences.

• Funerary religion – Links to the main pantheon, but with differences across

social divides – Percolated through many aspects of life

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Further reading (a small selection)

• Assmann, J. 2001. The search for god in ancient Egypt, Ithaca, NY. and London. • Assmann, J. 2005. Death and salvation in ancient Egypt, Ithaca, NY. • David, A.R. 2002. Religion and magic in ancient Egypt • Hornung, E. 1983. Conceptions of god in ancient Egypt: the one and the many,

London. • Hornung, E. 1999. The ancient Egyptian books of the afterlife, Ithaca, NY. and

London. • Luiselli, M. 2008. UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology s.v. ‘Personal piety (modern

theories related to)’. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/49q0397q (accessed 5 Jan 13)

• Morenz, S. 1973. Egyptian religion, London. • Quirke, S. 2001. The cult of Ra: sun-worship in ancient Egypt, London. • Redford, D.B. 2002. The ancient gods speak: a guide to Egyptian religion, Oxford. • Shafer, B.E. (ed.) 1991. Religion in ancient Egypt: gods, myths and personal

practice, London. • Teeter, E. 2011. Religion and ritual in ancient Egypt, New York and Cambridge. • Wildung, D. 1977. Egyptian saints: deification in Pharaonic Egypt, New York. • Wilkinson, R.H. 2003. The complete gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt, London.

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Image credits

The following images are my own (Eleanor Simmance, exs976@bham.ac.uk): Pyramidion of Ramose; Ma’at medallion; Sekhmet statue; Ramesses triad statue; Ptah of Memphis statue; Reshep stela. Images of objects from museums, where the image is from the museum’s own database, are credited in-slide Other credits: • Hypostyle Hall at Karnak: Blalonde/Wikimedia Commons • Map of Egypt: © Jeff Dahl/Wikimedia Commons • Nut swallowing the sun: © GoShow/Wikimedia Commons • Seth-animal: adapted from © P Aculeius/Wikimedia Commons • Horus and Seth uniting lands: © Soutekh67/Wikimedia Commons • Thutmose III smiting enemies, Karnak: Wikimedia Commons (public domain) • Amun(-Re) of Thebes: © Hedwig Storch/Wikimedia Commons • Anubis and Osiris (tomb of Sennedjem): © Thierry Benderitter/Aude Gros de

Beler/Christian Mariais/Osirisnet.net

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