EGYPTIAN RELIGION

The universe of the ancient Egyptians had three parts: earth, heaven, and the underworld. The earth was a flat disk with Egypt at its center, surrounded by foreign lands and deserts, the whole enclosed by a vast primeval ocean called Nun. It was in this sea, on a small mound, that the creation of the gods took place.

It occurred when the god Atum (“He who is self-created”) spat (or, according to other legends, masturbated) and thereby created Shu, god of air and sunlight, and Tefnut, goddess of moisture. They in turn gave birth to Geb, god of the earthly disk that grew from the primeval mound, and Nut, goddess of the heavens. Geb and Nut were the parents of Osiris, Isis, Seth, and Nephthys. They in turn bore other gods.

Around the edge of the earth four great poles supported a huge heavenly dome to which the sun, moon, and stars were attached and on which various cosmic deities made their homes. In another version, the heavenly dome was the body of Nut, who  hovered protectively over the earth.

Below the earth lay the netherworld, the realm of the dead and home to Osiris. It was here that living beings went after death to be judged and to spend eternity. The netherworld was a place very much like earth, although it was fraught with dangers.

These dangers were especially serious for solar deities like Ra. Each evening, the sun set on the western horizon and began a twelve-hour-long journey through the darkness of the netherworld.

The journey could be made on a great boat protected by other deities, but the bark was also threatened by evil creatures such as the snake Apophis, who sought to destroy the sun.

 The journey was also said to be made through the body of the goddess Nut, who swallowed the sun at sunset and gave birth to it at dawn.

 But however it was made, if the journey was unsuccessful, the sun would fail to rise at dawn and life on earth would end. Much of the decoration on the walls of royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings was devoted to ensuring the success of this nightly journey. Texts like the Book of Gates, the Imydwat, and the Book of Caverns provided spells that would defeat the sun’s enemies, and it was a principal task of Egypt’s many gods to assist in this treacherous voyage.
The netherworld was a place very much like earth, although it was fraught with dangers.

These dangers were especially serious for solar deities like Ra. Each evening, the sun set on the western horizon and began a twelve-hour-long journey through the darkness of the netherworld.

The journey could be made on a great boat protected by other deities, but the bark was also threatened by evil creatures such as the snake Apophis, who sought to destroy the sun.

The journey was also said to be made through the body of the goddess Nut, who swallowed the sun at sunset and gave birth to it at dawn.

But however it was made, if the journey was unsuccessful, the sun would fail to rise at dawn and life on earth would end. Much of the decoration on the walls of royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings was devoted to ensuring the success of this nightly  The gods of ancient Egypt were sometimes shown in animal form, sometimes in human form, and frequently as a combination of the two. In the Litany of Ra, the sun god appeared in seventy-five different forms, sometimes male, sometimes female, with the heads of many different creatures.

The gods shared many anatomical features with humans, but they were taller. Texts claim that Osiris stood 4.7 meters (over 15 feet) tall and Horus stood 4 meters (13 feet).

 This may explain why, according to the Greek traveler Diodorus Siculus (90–21 BC), Egyptian priests kept precise records of the height of their kings as an indication of their divinity.

Despite their strange appearance, ancient texts tell us that the gods displayed very human behavior. They were born, they married and had children, celebrated birthdays, felt emotions, had friends and enemies, even wrote letters to each other. Their bodily functions were the same as ours: they wept, bled, defecated, sweated, and vomited. They fell ill, grew old, and eventually died. Ra, for example, died each evening at sunset and was reborn at dawn.

Some gods seem almost like comic superheroes: they could be burned, beheaded, or cut into pieces, but then they could restore themselves or be restored by other gods and return to the world of the living, again and again.

Egyptians claimed that the number of gods was infinite; we know the names of several hundred. Perhaps to help make sense of so many, priests arranged them into communities, enneads (usually groups of nine, like that of Atum described above), families, and triads (e.g.,the Theban Triad of Amen, his wife Mut, and their son Khonsu). Like human families, these various divine groups shared festivals together, pursued mutual interests, and argued with other groups.

During the New Kingdom, the Theban Triad was the most powerful group of deities in Egypt, and Amen, especially in his syncretized form of Amen-Ra, was rightly called the “king of the gods.” Although he is first mentioned in the Old Kingdom and began his rise to prominence in the Middle Kingdom, it was during Dynasties 18–20 that Amen gained a position of pre-eminence among the gods. His name means “The Hidden One,” but the huge temples built for him by armies of dedicated priests were anything but hidden.

 Amen came close to being a monotheistic deity, and for a time, he was the wealthiest and most powerful force in all of Egypt.

What Egyptologists sometimes call “minor” or “personal” gods were responsible for the homely needs of human beings. Bes or Taweret, for example, could be asked by a peasant woman for protection during pregnancy or help curing a sick child. Other gods could be approached for marital advice or good crops. But the principal “state” gods tackled more serious duties: they were responsible for ensuring that the sun would rise and set, the moon wax and wane, the Nile rise and fall, and that Ma’at would triumph over chaos and discord.

 Our life and death was in their hands. These were the gods for whom great temples were built and who were worshipped and offered to by great armies of priests. These were deities so powerful, so awesome that, until well into the New Kingdom, ordinary mortals had no direct access to them.

This had not always been the case. The origin of humankind is dealt with only cursorily in Egyptian texts: we are said to have come from the tears of the creator-god, a play on the words: remi means “to weep,” remitj means “humankind.” We were separate from the gods and lived apart from them, but at one time early in the history of the cosmos, men and gods had lived together on earth. Then, because of humankind’s annoying behavior, the gods decided to leave earth and take up residence in the heavens.

 Of course, we humans immediately regretted the resulting loss of divine help and we pleaded for it to continue. In a moment of compassion, the gods designated one of their number, Horus, to serve as an intermediary between man and gods.

He was the “living Horus” and he resided on earth in the body of the king. The king’s position between gods and man might be likened to the constriction in an hourglass whose upper part was the realm of gods, its lower part the realm of man. Any communication between the two parts had to flow through the constriction, i.e., through the king. It was he who made known to the gods the needs of humankind, and to humankind the wishes of the gods.

Given such an arrangement, the death of a king was a supremely threatening event because it severed this line of communication upon which all life depended.

 This is why such care was taken by means of elaborate rituals and careful burial of the dead king to ensure that he would journey safely to the netherworld where he joined the gods as Osiris. It also explains why the coronation of his rightful successor, the next king, was so carefully orchestrated: the ceremony had to ensure that the new king could replace his father as living Horus, intercessor between man and gods. And if the transition from the dead king to his living successor were upset in any way, humankind would suffer terrible consequences.

The precise orientation of temples (their foundations were often surveyed by priests at night so the temple axis could be aligned with Ursa Major), the careful design of royal tombs, the care taken in carving religious texts and scenes, and the elaborate process of mummification—all are the result of this concern with maintaining communication between man and god. Offerings had to be precisely prepared and arranged, prayers had to be spoken without error, and even the smallest acts of ritual had to be performed according to exacting ritual or the gods might turn their backs on humankind.

RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS

Two annual ceremonies in Thebes were devoted to reaffirming the relationship between the king and the gods, between the three parts of the Egyptian cosmos. Like nearly all Egyptian RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS. They involved processions . It was such processions  that helped to determine the location of tombs and temples in Thebes and dictated their plan.

During the Opet Festival, a celebration held in the second month of the Nile flood, priests carried barks with the statues of Amen-Ra, his wife, and son from their home at Karnak to Luxor Temple. The festival’s purpose was to reaffirm the close ties between Amen-Ra and the king, the living embodiment of Horus on earth.

 
Musicians, dancers, acrobats, and others accompanied chanting priests as thousands of commoners looked on. In Dynasty 18, this celebration grew from eleven days to twenty seven , an indication of the festival’s increasing importance. The Beautiful feast of the valley was a festival of regeneration and recreation , a reaffirmation of the ties between the living and the dead.

 About eight months after the Opet Festival, statues of Amen-Ra and former kings were carried in grand processions from Karnak across the Nile, then along canals cut through the valley floodplain to the royal memorial temples, stopping at each in turn on their way to an ancient shrine of Hathor in the Dayr al-Bahari cirque. Later in the New Kingdom the procession continued by canal to Madinat Habu, then eastward to the Nile, to Luxor Temple on the east bank, and finally back to Karnak.

 
Theban families, decked out in their finest clothes , took picnics and bouquets of flowers and visited local cemeteries , honoring their ancestors , just as the living king honored both his mortal and divine predecessors. Scores of other ceremonies  were performed as well, and most Egyptian temples were beehives of activity, with processions, prayers, and offerings conducted several times each day.

If the gods for whom these acts were undertaken seem strange to us, if Egyptian religious beliefs seem at odds with our own, it is well to remember that the Egyptians’ goals were little different from those humankind has sought for millennia: they were attempts to give meaning and purpose to our transitory existence on earth and to explain the otherwise inexplicable phenomena of the eternal and transitory, of good and evil, of life and death. We may not agree with the paths the Egyptians trod, but we can hardly fault the passion with which they explored these profound and frightening questions.

From" The Illustrated Guide to Luxor" by kent R.Weeks ,published by the American University in Cairo Press. Copyright © 2005 White Star S.p.a