Through the Eras

Religionern observers would call religion in several ways. UnlikeJudaism, Christianity, and Islam, the Egyptian religionwas not a founded religion. In other words there is nosingle individual such as Abraham, Moses, Jesus, or Mohammedwho received credit for founding Egyptian religion.The exception is Akhenaten (1352–1336 B.C.E.),who founded the cult of the Aten. Furthermore, Egyptianreligion is not scriptural. There is no set of writingsthought to be revealed by the gods to mankind explicatingthe tenets of Egyptian religion. This does notmean that the Egyptians did not have religious texts, forthey most certainly did. But these writings neverachieved the status of a canon against which all else couldbe judged. There was no doctrine for people to believe,and no creeds to which people had to agree. Egyptianreligion was greatly influenced by the natural world. TheEgyptians did not worship nature, but it was throughnature that they gained their knowledge of the gods. Thelandscape, plants, and animals could all have religioussignificance. The Nile River and the scorching Egyptiansun played prominent roles in Egyptian theology.MULTIPLICITY OF APPROACHES. One of the moststriking characteristics of Egyptian religion to the modernstudent is what has been termed the “multiplicity ofapproaches.” The Egyptians did not seek a single explanationfor phenomena or events. Rather, the same phenomenoncould have several different, and to usmutually exclusive, explanations. There were several differentexplanations for the creation of the world that ascribedcreation to different gods. The same phenomenoncould be described through several different symbols. Forexample, the Egyptians imagined the sky as a cow withstars adorning her belly, as a body of water on which thesun-god sailed in his boat, as a woman’s body stretchedout over the earth, and as a roof or canopy, all at thesame time.SPOKEN WORDS AND NAMES. Another feature ofEgyptian religion was the importance of the spoken wordand names. Words were not simply vibrations of soundsor collections of letters; they possessed power. The Egyptiansdid not believe that similarities in sound betweenwords were coincidental, but rather revealed essential informationabout the relationship between the entities.Just as individuals like the king or vizier (high governmentofficial) could accomplish things by speaking orders,the speaking of words could bring about concreteevents. Reading the offering formula on behalf of a deceasedrelative provided him with the commoditiesneeded in the afterlife. Names referred to the essence ofa person or deity, and manipulation of an entity’s namegranted control over the entity. In order to bring aboutthe destruction of an enemy, his name could be writtenon a clay bowl or anthropomorphic figurine. The writercould then smash the bowl or the figurine. This actionensured the enemy’s destruction. Knowing the true nameof a god granted one power over the god. The names ofgods became the building blocks for expanding knowledgeof the deities, and the more names a god had themore aspects his being possessed.EVIDENCE. When studying Egyptian religion, scholarsmust always keep in mind that most interpretationsare based on evidence spread out over more than 3,000years of history. The main source of information aboutEgyptian religion is the abundant written material thathas been preserved. The first written evidence for Egyptianreligion comes from the period of Dynasty 0(3200–3100 B.C.E.) and the Early Dynastic Period(3100–2675 B.C.E.). This evidence is in the form ofnames of individuals that include a god’s name as an element.Names such as “he whom Khnum has saved,” or“he whom Anubis has created” or “she whom Neithloves” give scholars the first indication of which gods theEgyptians worshipped, and the types of actions and relationshipspeople expected from their gods. Labels andclay seals used to close jars also preserve brief texts thatgive evidence for temples in ancient Egypt. The texts occasionallyindicate that the commodities in the containerswere destined for, or came from, a particular temple.TEXTS. The texts that the Egyptians buried withtheir dead to aid them in making a successful transitionto the afterlife are an extremely important source of informationon the Egyptian gods and their doings. Theearliest of these texts, and in fact the oldest religious textsknown anywhere in the world, are found on the wallsof the pyramids of the last king of the Fifth Dynasty,Unas (2371–2350 B.C.E.), and in the pyramids of theSixth-dynasty kings (2350–2170 B.C.E.) and even someof their queens. Because of their location Egyptologistscall them Pyramid Texts. These texts were initially theexclusive prerogative of royalty. Towards the end of theOld Kingdom a new type of funerary text appearedamong the high officials of the bureaucracy. These textsbecame more frequent during the Middle Kingdom, andare found mainly on the walls of wooden coffins, andtherefore are called Coffin Texts. At the end of the MiddleKingdom, funerary spells written on papyri andburied with the deceased or painted on tomb walls replacedthe Coffin Texts. The Egyptian title of these spellswas “The Book of Going Forth by Day.” Once introduced,these texts continued in use until the end of theRoman period of Egyptian history. In 1842 the GermanEgyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius published a PtolemaicArts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Egypt (2675 B.C.E.–332 B.C.E.) 209