UNESCO Ancient Civilizations of Africa (Editor G. Mokhtar)

Anctent Civilizations of Africa
The gods
All the doctrines and images we have just seen are accepted in all temples.
The hymns singing the cosmic attributes and the wondrous providence of
the god-creator take up the same themes, whether it be a primordial goddess
like Neith, an earth-god like Ptah, or even Amon-Ra, Khnum-Ra,
Sebek-Ra. The great myths - the Eye of Ra, the Eye of Horus, the
passion of Osiris - as well as the basic ritual practices are common to all
centres of population; but different gods, each with his own name,
traditional image, animal manifestation and associated gods, are the
'masters' of the various towns: Khnum at Elephantine, Isna and elsewhere,
Min at Coptos and Akhmim, Mont at Hermonthis, Amon at
Thebes, Sebek at Sumenu, the Fayyum and elsewhere, Ptah-Seker at
Memphis, Ra-Harakhte-Atum at Heliopolis, Neith at Sais, Bast at
Bubastis, Uadjit at Buto, Nekhbet at El Kab, etc., and there were many
local gods called by the name of Horus, many goddesses who are fearsome
Sekhmets or kindly Hathors. Had figuresassociated in more or less
forgotten myths been in ancient times scattered across the country? It is
possible, and in any event the existence of different local religions in
prehistoric times might explain much of the polytheism that proliferates
in a religion whose unity is obvious. It seems that this religion tended,
through the identification of certain gods with others, to reduce that
plurality to a few types: a supreme deity, generally a sun-god and often
explicitly identified with Ra (Amon-Ra, Mont-Ra, Haroeris-Ra, etc.); a
consort goddess who is the Eye of Ra (Mut = Bast = Sekhmet = Hathor,
etc.); the warrior god-son of the Horus-Anhur type; a dead god of the
Osiris type (Seker, Seph, etc.). The New Kingdom theologians represented
each 'initial' town as a stopping-place of the demiurge in the course of his
wandering genesis and considered that the state's three principal gods,
Amon of the air, Ra of the sun, and Ptah of the underworld, were three
cosmographie and political manifestations of one and the same divinity.
The maze of theoretical problems presented by a multiform pantheon gave
rise to much theological and even philosophical speculation: Ptah conceiving
in 'his heart which is Horus' and creating via 'his tongue which
is Thoth'; Sia, 'knowledge', and Hu, 'order', major attributes of the sun;
the four Souls which are Ra (fire), Shu (air), Geb (earth) and Osiris
(water); the unknowable and infinite God who is 'the sky, the earth, the
Nun, and everything that lies between them'; and so on. A feeling of the
unity of the godhead predominated among the educated, at least from the
New Kingdom on, that feeling going with a faith that worshipped, as so
many approximations to the ineffable, the myths, names and idols of all
the country's gods. The attitude of the celebrated Akhenaton, who would
recognize only the visible disc of the sun as the sole true god, still lay
in the mainstream of Egyptian thought, but was heretical in the manner in
which it upset tradition, which, allowing for the mysterious, accepted and
reconciled all forms of piety and thought.
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