Egyptology | Chapter 19: Religion and Beliefs in Ancient Egypt

Religion is the centre of gravity in ancient Egyptian civilisation. Had it not been for the Egyptian's belief that he lives for a temporary period and dies for a temporary period and is then resurrected to a new, eternal, everlasting life – had it not been for this belief – the ancient Egyptian would never have left us all these creations of pyramids, temples, arts, literature and sciences. These are creations upon which he expended every effort and upon which he brought every thought to bear in order that his second, eternal life might be complete and undiminished.

This religious thought was the product of man's settlement, and consequently of his observation of what was taking place around him in the universe: the sun rises, then sets, then rises again; the plant grows, then is harvested, then grows again; the Nile, the giver of life, floods, then recedes, then floods again.

Because religion is an expression of man's religious, political and social thought, and because it was the essence of the Egyptian's first and second life, and because it coexisted with Egyptian man for thousands of years and was subject to certain of the changes through which his society passed – whether political, religious, economic or military, etc. – it was necessary that the circle should expand to include everything connected with religious beliefs, matters that require entire volumes. For this reason I have seen fit to limit the matter to certain fundamentals of Egyptian religion, among which are: the gods and goddesses, individually or in groups; the doctrines of the creation of the world; the religious books; the components of man; offerings; the rituals of the daily service; the other world and the judgement; the myths; and mummification.

If we attempt to follow the origin of religion and beliefs in Egypt, we find that this is not an easy matter in the period that preceded the historical ages – that is, the period of the prehistoric ages.

The Pyramid Texts (which were recorded inside the pyramids in the Old Kingdom beginning with the reign of Unas, the last king of the Fifth Dynasty) are considered the oldest sources that speak of the Egyptian's beliefs in the remote ages of antiquity. These texts contain allusions to myths and traditions most of which remain obscure to this day.

If we attempt to discern the reasons that make man in general feel the need for a hidden or visible power that protects him and wards off harm from him, it can be said that the small community represented by the family, for example, always needs someone to care for it and stand beside it in times of hardship – the role performed by the father. When a member of the family, or all its members, find that there are matters that go beyond the will of the head of the family, they turn to a greater and more influential power.

With the passage of time people resorted to certain living beings and the forces of nature, and worshipped some of them, either out of fear of them (such as crocodiles and snakes, for example), or for a benefit hoped for from them (such as the sun and the moon), or out of admiration and esteem for them (such as the falcons and vultures that are able to soar in distant horizons in the sky). There is no doubt that the Egyptian directed his thought towards the forces of nature, just as human beings do everywhere.

Before we continue the discussion of the religion of the ancient Egyptians, we wish to pose an important question, namely: Did the Egyptian worship animals, birds, reptiles, trees and other beings? Did he worship them for their own sake, or on the consideration that they represented hidden powers that he was unable to perceive with his limited horizons in the first stages of his life?

The phenomena indicate that the Egyptian did not worship these beings for their own sake, but rather on the consideration that the hidden powers that he perceived were represented in them. In other words, the beings that the Egyptian worshipped were in the nature of earthly symbols of these hidden powers that do not live with him upon the earth. The proof that the Egyptian did not worship these beings for their own sake is that he used to slaughter the cow and kill the crocodile and the snake – all of which were symbols of deities that he worshipped throughout the ages.

The Deities

In ancient Egyptian religion one can speak of general gods and local ones. By general gods is meant the gods whose worship spread throughout all the regions of Egypt (such as the god Re, the sun god, for example), while by local gods is meant the gods whose worship was confined to a particular province or a particular city.

The general gods were represented in human and animal form. The sun god was represented in the form of a man with the head of a falcon; the goddess of the sky appeared in the form of a cow, or in the form of a woman. It seems that these gods, and others among the gods that represent the forces of nature, were worshipped at the beginning without their having temples to which people might resort – that is, the universe remained their abode. Since the Egyptian believed only in tangible things, he established for these gods places of worship like those that he had allocated to his local gods, and these places were spread in the earliest beginnings in the centres that played an important role in the ancient Egyptian beliefs.

As for the local gods, their worship was confined to the regions in which they appeared, and they took as their symbols animals, birds, reptiles and others.

If the Egyptian wished to worship a god and took the bull as a symbol for him, he did not consecrate all bulls, but rather chose one among them distinguished by special qualities from the rest of the individuals of its species.

When the animal or bird or reptile died, it was wrapped in linen and matting in the same way as was done with human dead, then buried in particular places, either among the tombs of the dead or in an independent cemetery. The Egyptian made for these animals statues of clay or wood or stone or metal.

The gods of the cities are considered the oldest deities in Egypt. They were distinguished by their places, their names and their festivals, and the god of the city was regarded by its inhabitants as greater than all the gods of the other cities; he was the creator of everything, and he was the bestower of good things and blessings. The local deities remained established in Egypt until the end of Egyptian civilisation, despite the changes and substitutions to which they were subjected. The Egyptians continued to address prayers and petitions to them and to present offerings to them even in the periods in which the worship of the cosmic (general) gods was spreading throughout all the regions of Egypt.

Since the position of the gods was linked to political development, some of the gods of the cities became gods of the provinces that included these cities, and which were destined to play a particular political role – that is, they acquired sovereignty over the gods of the other cities within the boundaries of the provinces.

On the other hand, some of the deities of the cities might be afflicted with weakness for another reason, thereby providing the opportunity for other gods to appear at their expense.

When the priests sensed the weakness of their god, they would try to link him in one way or another with the god of the capital, claiming that he was a form of him, seeking thereby permanence and prestige for him.

Political circumstances also led at times to the linking of certain neighbouring deities so that divine families might be formed from them. Among them were those that constituted a triad of father, mother and son, such as the triad of Memphis (Ptah, Sekhmet and their son Nefertem), and the triad of Thebes (Amun, Mut and their son Khonsu). The triad might consist of a husband and two wives (as is the case with the triads of Esna and Armant).

As we indicated earlier, the Egyptians represented most of their gods with the body of a human being and the head of the animal of the deity, and on some occasions in the form of a complete human being, who might carry upon his head or in his hand something indicating his origin.

The cosmic gods were among the most important gods in Egypt, on account of the influence that the cosmic elements exert upon the souls of men. The sky of Egypt is clear, its sun is brilliant, its stars are radiant, and the Nile of Egypt is that which has bestowed life upon it, while barren deserts that terrify those who traverse them surround it with the blackness of night.

The Egyptian imagined the sky in the form of a cow standing with her legs upon the earth, or in the form of a woman bending over the earth, raised by the god of the air Shu, with her head in the west and her feet in the east; she gives birth to the sun every morning and swallows it again every evening.

As for the sun, which is the most prominent of the cosmic elements and the strongest in its effect upon the life of man, the Egyptian depicted it in various forms: sometimes in the shape of a god surrounded by certain gods, crossing the sky in a boat; at other times in the form of a scarab beetle with wings; or a man with the head of a falcon, the disk of the sun rising above his head.

The Doctrines of the Creation of the World according to the Ancient Egyptian

The evidence indicates that the Egyptians in the prehistoric ages did not have a particular theory concerning the origin of the world and its formation. When Egypt entered the stage of political stability with the beginning of the dynasties, the theories concerning the origin of the universe multiplied, and the cosmic gods began to occupy a lofty place in the souls of the people. At that time the priests and thinkers began to come out to the people with their ideas and conceptions concerning creation. These conceptions differed according to the environments in which they appeared; each group of priests of a particular god claimed that their god was the origin of existence. For this reason the ancient Egyptians left us several doctrines that they recorded in their documents, namely the doctrine of Heliopolis, the doctrine of Hermopolis, the doctrine of Memphis and the doctrine of Thebes.

The Doctrine of Heliopolis

This doctrine is considered the oldest of the other doctrines, on the consideration that the worship of the sun is among the oldest of the cults.

The deity of Heliopolis at the beginning was the god Atum, but his priests knew how to establish the connection between him and the spirit of the sun god, so that his new name became Re-Atum.

This doctrine portrayed that in the beginning there was a primordial ocean which they called Nun, and from this Nun the sun god emerged upon a hill that was behind him, and this hill was in the region of Heliopolis (the district of El-Matariya in Cairo).

The Pyramid Texts mention that when the sun god appeared in this primordial form, he stood upon a stone of pyramidal shape, which became a sacred symbol of the sun god, and from which the pharaohs of Egypt took the pyramidal form for their tombs in the Old and Middle Kingdoms. The tip of the obelisk in the New Kingdom took the same pyramidal shape as a glorification of the god Re. The adherents of this doctrine hold that after the god Re emerged from Nun, he sneezed and created the two gods Shu and Tefnut, who represent air and moisture, and they in turn begot two gods: Geb, the god of the earth, and Nut, the goddess of the sky; then Geb married Nut and they begot Osiris, Isis, Seth and Nephthys.

The religious texts mention that these gods (with Atum at their head) ruled the world one after another.

The Doctrine of Hermopolis

The city of Hermopolis (belonging to the centre of Mallawi in Minya Governorate) was the centre of the worship of the god Thoth, the god of wisdom. At the time when the doctrine of Heliopolis was at the height of its power, the city of Hermopolis had begun to rise, and its priests began to set forth a new doctrine with which to rival the doctrine of Heliopolis.

The doctrine of Hermopolis holds that the god Re is not the creator god of the universe; rather it was created by a group of gods numbering eight, who appeared upon a primordial hill from which the waters had receded. This ogdoad is represented by four gods in the form of frogs and four goddesses in the form of snakes (Heh and Hauhet, Kek and Kauket, Nun and Naunet, Amun and Amaunet). They are the ones who brought into existence an egg which they placed upon the surface of the primordial hill at Hermopolis, and from this egg emerged Re, the sun god, in order to create the universe.

It is clear that this doctrine does not deny the doctrine of Heliopolis; it seems rather that it was the product of a political conflict between the two cities of Hermopolis and Heliopolis.

Module Key Takeaways

Ancient Egyptian religion was rooted in the belief in resurrection and eternal life, which drove the creation of monumental architecture, arts, and sciences that define the civilisation.
The Egyptians worshipped both cosmic (general) deities like the sun god Re and local deities symbolised by animals, birds, and reptiles, with divine hierarchies shaped by political developments.
Multiple creation doctrines emerged from major religious centres—Heliopolis, Hermopolis, Memphis, and Thebes—each asserting their patron god as the origin of all existence.