The funerary rituals and architecture of this time greatly influenced the more elaborate temples and rituals used in worshipping the gods in later periods.
[81], 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 resulted in a complex pantheon in which some deities remained only locally important while others developed more universal significance.
[83] Yet in addition to temples, the populace also used separate local chapels, smaller but more accessible than the formal temples. [23] He was key to upholding Ma'at, both by maintaining justice and harmony in human society and by sustaining the gods with temples and offerings.
These chapels were very numerous and probably staffed by members of the community.
[49], Another important mythic motif was the journey of Ra through the Duat each night. [62], The Coffin Texts included sections with detailed descriptions of the underworld and instructions on how to overcome its hazards.
[16] 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.
[90], 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. The diverse pantheon ranged from gods with vital roles in the universe to minor deities or "demons" with very limited or localized functions. magical power was encapsulated in the
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. In pharaonic times many of its symbols, such as the sphinx and winged solar disk, were adopted by other cultures across the Mediterranean and Near East, as were some of its deities, such as Bes. 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. [123], The Middle Kingdom crumbled in the Second Intermediate Period (c. 16501550 BC), but the country was again reunited by Theban rulers, who became the first pharaohs of the New Kingdom.
[120] The texts are an extremely important source for understanding early Egyptian theology.[121].
[100], The first Egyptian tombs were mastabas, rectangular brick structures where kings and nobles were entombed. The exclusion of all but one god from worship was a radical departure from Egyptian tradition and some see Akhenaten as a practitioner of monolatry or henotheism rather than monotheism,[36][37] as he did not actively deny the existence of other gods; he simply refrained from worshipping any but the Aten. These included the royal patron Horus, the sun-god Ra, and the mother-goddess Isis. All were paid with portions of the temple's income. In doing so, Akhenaten claimed unprecedented status: only he could worship the Aten, and the populace directed their worship toward him.
Then the mummy was buried and the tomb sealed. [82] 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. [138] In late antiquity, the Christian conception of Hell was most likely influenced by some of the imagery of the Duat. Egyptians frequently donated goods to be offered to the temple deity and objects inscribed with prayers to be placed in temple courts.
[118] 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.
The importance of the pharaoh continued to decline, and the emphasis on popular piety continued to increase. 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.
Careful burials during the Predynastic period imply that the people of this time believed in some form of an afterlife. [134] 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.
The Egyptians sought to maintain Ma'at in the cosmos by sustaining the gods through offerings and by performing rituals which staved off disorder and perpetuated the cycles of nature.
[127] Thus, many probably continued to worship the traditional gods in private.
Some were performed daily, while others took place annually or on rare occasions.
Alongside these rituals centered on temple, royal, and funerary cults, a number of personal religious practices have been reconstructed as well as one major break in continuity, the Amarna Revolution, in which the ruling king seems to have briefly instituted a form of monotheism.
[72], State religious practice included both temple rituals involved in the cult of a deity, and ceremonies related to divine kingship. and myths were being formulated. [116], The Ancient Egyptians regarded the sun as a powerful life force.
[60] In the New Kingdom, several new funerary texts emerged, of which the best-known is the Book of the Dead. [66] 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. [74] The most common temple ritual was the morning offering ceremony, performed daily in temples across Egypt. By the New Kingdom he was also associated with Amun, the supreme force in the cosmos.
[69], Theoretically it was the duty of the pharaoh to carry out temple rituals, as he was Egypt's official representative to the gods. [136] In Egypt itself, as the empire weakened, official temples fell into decay, and without their centralizing influence religious practice became fragmented and localized. [135], Ptolemaic-era beliefs changed little after Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire in 30 BC, with the Ptolemaic kings replaced by distant emperors.
Over the course of the Middle Kingdom, however, he was displaced in that role by Amun, who may have arisen elsewhere. [104], 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. Death was understood through a range of metaphors, to which the ritual response was to link the deceased to one or more of the cosmic cycles through practices aimed at translating them into the divine sphere and thus ensuring their continued existence.
that are essential to the growth of a civilization.
Only in the New Kingdom did professional priesthood become widespread, although most lower-ranking priests were still part-time.
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. unleashed. Three mythic cycles are key to its understanding: the creation of the world, and the related solar cycle, which describe the origin and maintenance of the world, and the Osiris cycle, which provides a justification for the human institutions of kingship and funerary rites.
understanding about the creation of the world and the possibility of All were still employed by the state, and the pharaoh had final say in their appointments. fully formed at its inception. By looking at ancient Egypt, one can Egyptian 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. The religion had its roots in Egypt's prehistory and lasted for 3,500 years.
It seems most likely that the Egyptians viewed royal authority itself as a divine force. [139], Traces of ancient beliefs remained in Egyptian folk traditions into modern times, but its influence on modern societies greatly increased with the French Campaign in Egypt and Syria in 1798 and their seeing the monuments and images.
[65] 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. 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. Religion is the glue that binds local communities
However, these associations changed over time, and they did not mean that the god associated with a place had originated there. [94] Therefore, magic frequently involved written or spoken incantations, although these were usually accompanied by ritual actions.
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. sceptre (or rod
[74] 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. [11], 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. 336339, ascend to the sky and dwell among the stars, "Egyptian Animals Were Mummified Same Way as Humans", "Gift of the Nile?
[46] It tells of the divine ruler Osiris, who was murdered by his jealous brother Set, a god often associated with chaos. Nevertheless, for the most part the two belief systems remained separate, and the Egyptian deities remained Egyptian. However, many other gods, including Amun and Osiris, were very important in both popular and official religion. [133], In the 4th century BC, Egypt became a Hellenistic kingdom under the Ptolemaic dynasty (30530 BC), which assumed the pharaonic role, maintaining the traditional religion and building or rebuilding many temples. Other animals were selected for much shorter periods.
[110][111][112], The Early Dynastic Period began with the unification of Egypt around 3000BC.
In elaborating their beliefs, the Egyptians were working on the cosmic plane, searching for an understanding of the most basic laws of the universe. The depth of Egyptian thinking and the rich imagination displayed in the creation of ideas and images of the gods and goddesses are beyond compare. [45] Regardless of these variations, the act of creation represented the initial establishment of Ma'at and the pattern for the subsequent cycles of time. [40] Finally, Greeks and Romans such as Plutarch recorded some of the extant myths late in Egyptian history. 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. There was no single belief system, but the Egyptians shared a common Hermeticism, for instance, derived from the tradition of secret magical knowledge associated with Thoth. 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 incarnated in him.
One of the more common combinations was a family triad consisting of a father, mother, and child, who were worshipped together. At many sacred sites, the Egyptians worshipped individual animals which they believed to be manifestations of particular deities. [102] 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. Pyramids were reserved for royalty, and were accompanied by large mortuary temples sitting at their base.
The importance of oracles as a means of decision-making grew, as did the wealth and influence of the oracles' interpreters, the priesthood. The Egyptians often grouped gods together to reflect these relationships. [47] Osiris' sister and wife Isis resurrected him so that he could conceive an heir, Horus. Ancient pagan beliefs gradually faded Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). These Theban pharaohs initially promoted their patron god Montu to national importance, but during the Middle Kingdom, he was eclipsed by the rising popularity of Amun. [126], The New Kingdom religious order was disrupted when Akhenaten acceded, and replaced Amun with the Aten as the state god. hieroglyph of a
Hymns and prayers follow a similar structure and are distinguished mainly by the purposes they serve. Over time, families inevitably neglected offerings to long-dead relatives, so most mortuary cults only lasted one or two generations.
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.
[7], Many gods were associated with particular regions in Egypt where their cults were most important. The Egyptians used oracles to ask the gods for knowledge or guidance.
It had existed since the creation of the world, and without it the world would lose its cohesion.
[63] 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.
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.
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. [6] This iconography was not fixed, and many of the gods could be depicted in more than one form. such as a cat-goddess, cobra-goddess, You could not be signed in, please check and try again. [77] 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. No religion is One of the most interesting aspects of ancient Egypt is its religion.
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.
[9], 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. The populace began to believe that the gods were much more directly involved in daily life. 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.
[87], The deities invoked in these situations differed somewhat from those at the center of state cults. I, pp. [98] Afterwards, relatives or hired priests gave food offerings to the deceased in a nearby mortuary chapel at regular intervals. [122] In this new Egyptian state, personal piety grew more important and was expressed more freely in writing, a trend that continued in the New Kingdom. It was the fixed, eternal order of the universe, both in the cosmos and in human society, and was often personified as a goddess. ibis-god or jackal-god. [4] It could include gods adopted from foreign cultures, and sometimes humans: deceased pharaohs were believed to be divine, and occasionally, distinguished commoners such as Imhotep also became deified. They were originally restricted to pharaonic tombs, but in the Third Intermediate Period they came to be used more widely. The details of the events they recounted could change to convey different symbolic perspectives on the mysterious divine events they described, so many myths exist in different and conflicting versions. [17][18], When thinking of 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.
Egyptian beliefs also influenced or gave rise to several esoteric belief systems developed by Greeks and Romans, who considered Egypt as a source of mystic wisdom. [13], The Egyptian conception of the universe centered on Ma'at, a word that encompasses several concepts in English, including "truth", "justice", and "order". Egyptian religion may be seen as being centered on its temples, which functioned both as sites for the worship of the resident gods and the elaboration of their theologies and as important economic and political centers. gods and goddesses were given human bodies and credited with human a degree of personal identity.
attributes and activities. deities into a national religion with a smaller number of principal
[129], Before the Amarna Period, popular religion had trended toward more personal relationships between worshippers and their gods.
ever present in images of the pharaohs and the gods. The most important of these ceremonies were those surrounding death, because they ensured the soul's survival beyond it.
This is one of the most enduring symbols of divine power, Unlike the earlier books, it often contains extensive illustrations, or vignettes. [103] Human sacrifices found in early royal tombs were probably meant to serve the pharaoh in his afterlife. Once grown, Horus fought and defeated Set to become king himself. The winged disc had protective significance and was found on temple ceilings and ceremonial entrances.
Symbols such as the 'winged disc' took on new features. [142], System of beliefs and rituals integral to ancient Egyptian society, Allen, James P., "The Cosmology of the Pyramid Texts", in, Van Dijk, Jacobus, "The Amarna Period and the Later New Kingdom", in, Thompson, Stephen E., "Cults: Overview", in Redford 2001, vol.
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. Eventually, he eliminated the official worship of most other gods and moved Egypt's capital to a new city at Amarna.
[70] However, as the wealth of the temples grew, the influence of their priesthoods increased, until it rivaled that of the pharaoh. [85], Individual Egyptians also prayed to gods and gave them private offerings.
[57] The earliest of these are the Pyramid Texts. As human society evolved, people gradually gained 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. Although these ends could be harmful to other people, no form of magic was considered inimical in itself. The link was not copied. 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.
animal,
[54] Most are structured according to a set literary formula, designed to expound on the nature, aspects, and mythological functions of a given deity.
the land were constructed to venerate local gods. The Egyptians believed in a pantheon of gods, which were involved in all aspects of nature and human society. As with all aspects of the religion, these rituals changed over time but show remarkable consistency throughout recorded history. Climate Change, the Origins of Egyptian Civilization and Its Interactions within Northeast Africa", List of religions and spiritual traditions, Castro culture/Proto Gallaecian-Lusitanian, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ancient_Egyptian_religion&oldid=1096472093, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages, Pages using multiple image with auto scaled images, Articles with unsourced statements from April 2022, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 4 July 2022, at 17:46.
While ancient Egyptians had no conception of religion as a distinct sphere of life, modern scholars have identified a wide range of Egyptian beliefs and practices relating to the divine.
[106], The beginnings of Egyptian religion extend into prehistory, though evidence for them comes only from the sparse and ambiguous archaeological record. Due to continued interest in Egyptian beliefs, in the late 20th century, several new religious groups going under the blanket term of Kemetism have formed based on different reconstructions of ancient Egyptian religion. Outside the temple were artisans and other laborers who helped supply the temple's needs, as well as farmers who worked on temple estates.
reverting to chaos if the destructive forces of the universe were
Instead, these depictions gave recognizable forms to the abstract deities by using symbolic imagery to indicate each god's role in nature.
[5], 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.
Some information is also provided by allusions in secular texts. Access to this most sacred part of the temple was restricted to the pharaoh and the highest-ranking priests. This is particularly true of a few gods who, at various points, rose to supreme importance in Egyptian religion.
This part of Egyptian history, the Amarna Period, is named after this. monotheistic faith [22], Egyptologists have long debated the degree to which the pharaoh was considered a god.
Under Akhenaten's successors Egypt reverted to its traditional religion, and Akhenaten himself came to be reviled as a heretic. 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.
You do not currently have access to this article, Access to the full content requires a subscription, Copy this link, or click below to email it to a friend. Millions of mummified cats, birds, and other creatures were buried at temples honoring Egyptian deities.
[28] Many mortuary temples were dedicated to the worship of deceased pharaohs as gods.
YOUR HISTORY.
[128] Akhenaten's successors restored the traditional religious system, and eventually, they dismantled all Atenist monuments. The Atenist system lacked well-developed mythology and afterlife beliefs, and the Aten seemed distant and impersonal, so the new order did not appeal to ordinary Egyptians. People also sought to affect the gods' behavior to their own benefit through magical rituals. For instance, the god Montu was the original patron of the city of Thebes. In the 22nd century BC, the Old Kingdom collapsed into the disorder of the First Intermediate Period. In Egyptian belief, Ma'at was constantly under threat from the forces of disorder, so all of society was required to maintain it. The tomb walls also bore artwork, such as images of the deceased eating food that were believed to allow him or her to magically receive sustenance even after the mortuary offerings had ceased. Other professions also commonly employed magic as part of their work, including doctors, scorpion-charmers, and makers of magical amulets. These ritual texts were kept mainly in the temple libraries.
[38][39], While the Egyptians had no unified religious scripture, they produced many religious writings of various types. Each person also had a ba, the set of spiritual characteristics unique to each individual.
The kingdom's Greek ruling class identified the Egyptian deities with their own. expressions. Ancient Egyptian religion was a complex system of polytheistic beliefs and rituals that formed an integral part of ancient Egyptian culture.
Temples themselves are also inscribed with such texts, often accompanied by illustrations. They believed that humans possessed a ka, or life-force, which left the body at the point of death. [117] Early in the Old Kingdom, Ra grew in influence, and his cult center at Heliopolis became the nation's most important religious site.