Religion in Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egypt, one of the most remarkable civilizations in history, has fascinated and intrigued people throughout history and, of course, today. In terms of my own life and my interests in history and so on, this was one of my first loves, as it is for many other people. And it's no wonder. Ancient Egypt holds so many secrets, so many interesting historical events and developments. It's a civilization that existed in a somewhat coherent fashion for almost 3,000 years. And even though it, of course, changed and developed in all kinds of ways over those millennia, it is a remarkable sense of cultural continuity across that history. Art from the Old Kingdom and the New, or during the Roman period, are clearly distinct from each other, but at the same time, they're all characteristically Egyptian.

But can the same be said for religion? What was the religion, or perhaps religions, of the ancient Egyptians? Who were the gods? How did the people worship the gods? And what did religious practice look like for the people living along the uh Nile River in ancient times? That is what we're going to explore in today's [Applause] episode.

To cover ancient Egyptian religion as a whole is, of course, a quite daunting task, perhaps even a a foolish one, some might say. Uh, it is an incredibly complex um topic, uh, where there's a lot to to talk about, and it's impossible for me to cover everything in an episode like this. So, just with, or just as with earlier other episodes I made about like Zoroastrianism, for example, or religion in ancient Mesopotamia, this is going to be a general overview, a sort of simple, even though this is probably going to be a pretty long episode, I'm going to cover everything as comprehensively as I can. It's inevitably going to be a sort of overview, and we're going to have to rely on other specialized episodes to to sort of dive into more particular topics, both episodes that are already made in the past, but also ones that I hope to do in the future. So that's important to remember. This is sort of the the basic general overview of ancient Egyptian civilization.

Secondly, of course, uh, as I mentioned in the beginning, ancient Egypt was around for thousands of years, and it changed over those over those thousands of years, including, of course, the religion. Now, there is a also, as I said, a remarkable continuity still across those millennia, but it's very important to remember that things changed, right? So I'm going to try my best to mention when I'm sort of referring to different time periods or how things developed, but in in a general sense, I'm also going to talk about that religion in the widest sense possible, in in in terms of like, what were the features of that religion that that remain at least basically the same, or s or close to the same, across all those thousands of years. And I'm going to try try my best to refer to again how things developed and and the differences in the different time periods in Egypt.

Lastly, uh, we're talking about religion in ancient Egypt. Of course, there were other religions other than the sort of traditional native one. With the influx of the Hellenic civilization, we see the religion influence and come into ancient Egypt. Uh, we also see Judaism, eventually Christianity, and even if we count that as late antiquity, there's even Islam eventually coming. But in this episode, we're going to limit ourselves to talking specifically about the traditional, uh, native religion, the polytheistic native religion of the ancient Egyptians. And again, for sort of top like discussions on Christianity in ancient Egypt, that's going to have to be be a sort of separate episode.

Okay, so the basics. What was the religion of the ancient Egyptians? As most of you probably know already, this was a polytheistic religion, meaning that the Egyptians believed in many different gods or deities. And while this is perhaps a simple and obvious statement, it's also a very central and important one. The religion, in many ways, was centered on the multiplicity of divinity. Now, there are some indications that there existed a kind of conception of a high god or a transcendent divine force from which the multiplicity of gods came, especially later on in Egyptian history, uh, but this is a somewhat contested and debated topic, and we will return to it more in depth a bit later on in the discussion. For now, we can be safe in stating that this was essentially a polytheistic religion, bursting with divine multiplicity.

The native term that we translate as God or deity in Egyptian was *netjer*. There are many different theories on the original etymology of this word, but nothing conclusive, really. But they seem to have had basically the same function in Egyptian culture as the *theos* or or *theoi*, the gods of ancient Greece, or the *ilu* of ancient Mesopotamia, for example, right? In fact, if you are familiar with some of the other ancient polytheistic religions, you will already be sort of familiar with some of the basics of how this religious tradition and the cult worked. And there's a great amount of continuity and similarity between ancient cultures in this regard, in terms of their religious practice and beliefs, especially connected cultures geographically and culturally, such as like around the Mediterranean, which is what we're talking about today, right? So there are, if you know Greek gods and Greek mythology, or at least Greek religious practice, or Mesopotamian, you're going to be familiar with a lot of what's going on in Egyptian religion as well.

The gods were central to the lives of the Egyptians and for the entire well-being and continued existence of the world. It was the gods that created and upheld the universe. They were as real in the lives of the Egyptians as the waters, the plants, or animals that existed all around them. The gods were the forces behind most happenings and powers in the universe. They controlled the Nile, the cycle of the sun, the fertility of the crops, and every conceivable aspect of life. To not believe in the gods would have been an utterly nonsensical concept to the ancient Egyptian, something that couldn't even really be questioned. In short, then, the *netjeru* were divine forces that upheld the world, were present in it to some degree, and could be approached by humans through ritual actions. Of course, given the over 3,000-year history, at least, of this civilization, the particular ways that these forces were understood in terms of theology and its different nuances would have changed and evolved, but this is the minimalist thing we can say about them here.

As we said, the gods are responsible for creating the universe. Now, because of the diversity of gods, as well as the difference and prominence of different gods in various times and places, there are multiple cosmogonic accounts about how the world came to be, and which differ from each other in some important ways. It should be pointed out, just as we have said in other episodes on ancient religions, that the relationship that we have with sacred history as told in the Bible, that there is a single definitive version of events, simply wasn't the case in the same way for ancient peoples. There were always multiple myths or versions of myths explaining the same events, uh, stories that would be retold and embellished and changed over time, and none, none of this really mattered or impacted the truth of the message in the way that we would conceive of it today. Perhaps ancient myths had variety and change as an essential part of themselves and their social function. And when we look at mythological accounts, such as the creation of the world, for example, in ancient Egypt, we aren't surprised to see variety.

Therefore, there are few famous surviving such accounts: one often called the Heliopolitan theology, centered on the god Atum, and another referred to as the Memphite theology, centered on the god Ptah, as well as, of course, some others. But despite their differences, they're also striking similarities in some of the key plot points and details. In basically all these accounts, before there is any universe or even any gods, there was something called Nun. This was the primordial reality or entity, sometimes somewhat erroneously described as a watery mass. It's a concept that's seemingly quite hard to describe or put into words, but Henri Frankfort uses a kind of minimalist definition by describing it as "an unformed and dark mass for light had not yet been created, in which the divine beings or dead people who had achieved divine status could circulate." This was the original primordial state out of which the first movements of creation started.

This happens when a creator god emerges from this unformed mass, autogenerated. This god becomes the start of being, but the identity and nature of this deity and his method of creation is what differs in the different cosmogonical accounts. In perhaps the most famous creation account, the so-called Heliopolitan theology, this creation is attributed to the god Atum. He is a very interesting deity whose name seems to mean both something like "to be everything" and "to be nothing," as well as "to be finished." He is the all from which everything comes into being. From an act of self-pleasure, so to say, or sometimes through spitting, Atum creates the gods Shu (air) and Tefnut (moisture). From the union of these two gods, also, was born Geb (earth) and Nut (sky), who in turn gave birth to four children: Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. These nine primary gods became known in Egyptian mythology and religion as the Ennead, literally "the nine," and played a central role in mythology, not just in this particular cosmogonic account, but in all of of Egyptian mythology. Atum, the first creator god, thus creates the other gods and all of the world from himself, everything being a kind of manifestation of this primordial creator god. As we've explored in an earlier episode, this is one possible indication of a more, you could call it, pantheistic theology, perhaps, where all the gods are really part of one all-encompassing reality.

"When I was alone in Nun, they were already with me." In this account, what follows is a poetic expression of creation as an awakening or coming into consciousness of the all-lord or Atum, and the role that Shu and Tefnut play in that. "He was one and became three." In another section, it is Shu, or life himself, who speaks, referring to Atum: "He created me in his heart, he made me out out of his radiant power. He was pregnant with me in his heart. I emerged from his nostrils." In other words, here Shu, or life, becomes the very breath of Atum, the creator god, or the all from which all things emerge.

It's also very significant and important to understand mythologically that Atum is also identified as a form of the sun god, otherwise known more famously as Ra. This affirms the idea that the sun god is the highest and primary god, which would be so prominent throughout Egyptian history, especially in the New Kingdom. In one text, it says, "I am Atum when I was alone in Nun, but I am Ra when he appeared at the moment when he began to govern that which he created." "Who is he at the moment when he began to govern that which he created?" "It is Ra who began to appear as king when the support of Shu had not yet come into being."

In another cosmogonical account, that of the Memphite theology, it is the god Ptah, the deity of craftsmanship, that is the creator. This is sometimes described as an intellectual creation account, as it claims that the idea of the world, so to say, emerged in Ptah's heart or mind, and that he then gave it reality by speaking the names of things into reality. This is interesting and significant in several ways. For example, that it more closely aligns with the Abrahamic conception of God, that he speaks the world into existence. It's also significant for introducing the importance of names in Egyptian culture and religion. The names of the gods and of all things are central aspects of their ontological reality. It is when the names of things are spoken by Ptah that they are created. Now, compare this, for example, to the idea that the soul of a person lives on as long as their name is still being remembered and spoken out loud, right? This is a common idea in idea in Egypt, right? That as long as you speak someone's name, they live on somehow, which is why it's important for sort of funerary cults that you pray to your ancestors, for example, right? So the name of of a person or of a thing is very central to that thing's essence or ontological reality, right? Because God, in this case Ptah, speaks things into existing by into existence by pronouncing and saying their names.

A third creation account is that from Hermopolis. Here, the primordial creative force is actually a group of divine beings, the so-called Ogdoad, or the eight *netjeru* in Egyptian. These were a group of four couples: Nun and Naunet (the primordial water), Heh and Hauhet (infinity in its spatial form), Kuk and Kauket (darkness), and Amun and Amunet (the hidden). This last pair being later replaced by Nao and Nut, who symbolize the void. These male-female couples are usually depicted with the heads of frogs and serpents, and once creation is completed, so to say, they died and were buried in the primordial mound. So they don't really play an important or significant role in the cult of the Egyptians, but mostly in this account of the origin of the world, so to say. A really curious and interesting tradition that we know quite little about due to the uh state of the sources.

Now, the the exception to that rule that these gods wouldn't play a very important role in the in the general culture is, of course, Amun, because Amun would become probably the sort of central deity, especially in the form of Amun-Ra, in the New Kingdom, which was, which many would consider the golden age of ancient Egypt, which is when Amun was like the central god in Thebes. And while all these cosmogonical accounts are different in some ways from each other, they aren't necessarily irreconcilable either, as I'm sure you've noticed. Indeed, the scholar Stephen Quirke writes that it would be better to regard the different accounts as expressions of different emphases within a single and integral whole.

So, already we've been introduced to some of the complexity of the divine pantheon. There are the Ennead and Ogdoad and a multitude of gods, but all of them emerged, in at least in some way, they seem to all emerge from a single divine force or person. What is key to know at this point is that the gods were responsible for the order and working of the world. They represented and ruled over natural phenomena and other aspects of life. Ra was the sun god, Osiris was the god of the afterlife, Ptah was the god of craftsmen, Thoth was the god of scribes and writing, etc.

There seems to be some disagreement among scholars about just how much the gods were literally identified with these natural phenomena. For example, was Ra literally the sun, and was Shu literally the wind? Or were they deities that represented or ruled over these forces? It seems, for example, in ancient Mesopotamia, that the gods were seen as more so ruling over these forces, not being identified with the natural phenomena. In ancient Egypt, um, as I understand it, scholars seem to disagree. Some say that the that it is a more pantheistic view of the world, where the gods are present as nature. Uh, what others see it more in light or similar to to ancient Mesopotamia, as I just described it.

We should also point out that while the gods certainly had characteristics and sort of features associated with themselves, um, we also shouldn't see them too much as sort of fixed, solid individuals either, because clearly the identity of the *netjeru* were a lot more fluid. We see, for example, very famously, that gods could often be combined. Right? The the most prominent and and important god of the New Kingdom period was most likely Amun-Ra, which which was a kind of combination between the gods Amun and Ra, the sun god, the hidden one and the sun. Um, and and there are many other examples like that too, where gods are sort of combined with each other, the different things that they represent come to be represented sort of in a combined figure.

Even more so, we can see the opposite too, that sometimes a single god can be divided into different, uh, representations and and divinities in themselves. So, again, let's take the example of Ra. We saw earlier that that both Atum and Ra are two different names or forms of the same god, of the sun god. Um, even again, the same god, in the New Kingdom, we see the emergence of the Aten, which is the sun disk in particular, so the sun specifically in the form of the sun disk. So a single god could be divided into all these different gods or forms, and different gods could also be combined with each other. So the nature, or which we translate as gods, are very complex, right? Their identities, their individualities, the relationship with other gods are are are complicated and and a lot more complex than we often like to believe when we think about like polytheistic gods, like, oh, Zeus in Greek, the Greek pantheon, he's the god of thunder, and Hades is the god of the underworld, and like they have these very fixed identities and fixed things that they are associated with, or or that they represent. It's not, well, that might be generally very generally true for Egyptian mythology, it's not that simple, right? It's it's a lot more complex.

Regardless, if the gods were not there, or if we lost their favor somehow, that would send the world into complete chaos and disorder. Indeed, one of the most important and central concepts to the Egyptian worldview was something called Ma'at. This is a term that meant things like order, justice, and truth, and was also personified and worshiped as a particular goddess called Ma'at. Of course, Ma'at is the order that holds the universe together, and it is the responsibility of human beings to uphold and protect it, primarily by "keeping the gods happy," or perhaps maintaining a good relationship with the gods and living according to the will or wish of said gods. In this way, we might be able to, without identifying them completely, but at least compare this with similar concepts in other ancient religions, such as the concept of the *Asha* in the Vedas or the *Asha* of Zoroastrianism. I've made this comparison to in the past, and I think, even though we should be careful that at at least I try to be careful with comparisons, too much, I think this points to a similar kind of worldview and a similar concept across these ancient religions.

Upholding Ma'at was done again through the practice and performance of the divine cult, and in a sense, the entire Egyptian society was part of this wider cult. Now, note that I'm using the word "cult" here in the classic sense, as a wider worship complex centered on a particular place or divine figure. I've seen some comments in the past that have misunderstood this to mean in cult in the modern sense of a kind of like a cult of personality, like a dangerous new religious movement. Um, this is what cult often means to people today. This is not how I'm using the word cult. I'm using it in the sort of classic academic sense. Um, so just like, keep that in mind.

And at the head of this cult, the high priest chiefly responsible for upholding Ma'at in society and the practical worship of the god *netjer* stood the Pharaoh, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt. The King was always symbolically the most important person in this religious tradition. Indeed, the institution of kingship itself was a divine one. The Pharaoh was seen as a kind of god on Earth, or the son of the high god Ra, and a human representation of the god Horus. If you want to find out more about Horus and his relationship to divine kingship in ancient Egypt, uh, Andrew Henry on Religion for Breakfast has been an excellent video covering this.

Now, according to the mythological accounts, Ra, the sun god, was actually the first king on Earth. Once the world was created, and he ruled over a world where humans also existed, but at some point, there was a rebellion against Ra by the humans, which is quelled, but still results in the god stepping away from the world, making Nut, or sky, separate herself from the earth. He also then appoints other gods to stand in for himself as king: first Shu, then Geb, and then lastly Osiris. It is at this point that the famous Osiris myth cycle takes over, and which becomes important for the story of kingship. Osiris, the king of Egypt, has siblings, among them the goddess Isis, as well as his brother Set, which came to represent things like disorder and chaos. Later on, history, he became associated with things like outright evil as well, right? But at an early stage, more so disordering chaos, so the the opposite of Ma'at, basically.

And in this myth story, Set murders his brother Osiris in order to gain the throne. He dismembers him and throws his remains in the river. But then Isis, who is also Osiris's wife, finds the body parts, puts them back together, she mummifies him and gives him a proper burial, but not before also impregnating herself with her late husband's phallus. The result of this coupling is her giving birth to the god Horus, who would grow up to challenge his uncle Set. To make a long story very short, Horus eventually wins this battle against Set, his uncle, does, representing the victory of harmony over chaos, and he becomes the king of Egypt. Horus is always depicted as a falcon, a royal bird, representing majesty and kingship. And all the human kings of Egypt, the Pharaohs, are representations of Horus and his kingly authority. They are the sons of Ra, an earthly form of Horus, and thus responsible for keeping order and harmony in the world.

But as such, he, that is the King, was also the high priest of the religious cult, responsible for all the temple rituals. The historian Henri Frankfort writes, "As an individual he was only a man subject to moral vicissitudes, but in so far as he occupied the royal office he belonged to the divine, son of the gods and their permanent representative in this world. He was the sole protagonist authorized to act face to face with them and on their behalf, for he belonged to the same sphere as they. He was par excellence the ritualist who knew what acts to perform and what words to speak."

Now, of course, it was impossible for the Pharaoh or the king to be present at every religious ritual in every temple in Egypt, which would often take place, of course, at the same time. So, even though he was symbolically the high priest and the one responsible for all of of of the the cult and the temple rituals, uh, we see this depicted on on temple walls, for example, there is always the Pharaoh that's sort of leading the cults, almost always, at least. But of course, in actual practice, in actual reality, the the priests, particularly the high priest, would sort of stand in. They were they were sort of substitutes for the king. So this is how the cult worked. The King was responsible for the cult, but the priests were sort of um hired, you could say, as as stand-ins or substitutes for the king to carry out the religious cult in the temples and elsewhere.

Because, as we saw, the gods were not only abstract mythological concepts, but could be made present in the world, not only through the natural phenomena that they represented, but also through the cultic image. The Egyptian landscape was dotted with temples and shrines dedicated to the gods. It was these temples that served as the center for the religious cult, where priests carried out their duties, and most importantly, with the divine image or statue was housed. While the gods were cosmic, perhaps metac cosmic forces, they were also directly present in their icons and cultic images. Those who have seen Egyptian art will no doubt have encountered these images of the gods. They are usually depicted anthropomorphically, with human bodies and sometimes with human heads, but often the head will also be that of an animal of some sort. And sometimes the the reverse is also true, that the god would have an animal body with a human head, although this is less common. As we saw before, four, the identities of the gods are very complex, and so, of course, there are often multiple ways of depicting a certain god, just as there are several names or combinations of names, depending on the context. But many of them have certain forms that sort of universally represent that god. For example, Horus is usually basically always depicted with a falcon's head, as a falcon more generally. Ra, especially in the form Ra-Horakhty, also has a falcon's head, but usually with a sun disk on top of his head. There is Anubis, which has the head of a jackal. Osiris has a characteristic crown on his head. Thoth is usually an ibis bird or a kind of monkey, etc. Clearly, then, certain animals were associated with certain gods, and this would also play a role in the cults. But basically, these images were very important for the Egyptian religion and were really at the center of the cult.

The divine forces could be represented metaphorically through the image or statue. They weren't limited or confined to the image, of course. The latter was only, again, the representation of the god. But at the same time, the image was more than a simple representation in the normal sense. Through certain rituals, such as the famous Opening of the Mouth ritual, priests would, through certain actions and incantations, wake the god, so to say. It became a kind of "breathing image," one in which the god in question was incarnated and directly present. It is through this concept that the image just could rightly be the recipient of worship and prayer, because the god was present in the image, even if it wasn't limited or confined to the image.

These images of the major gods were housed in temples, known in Egyptian as *Hut-Netjer*, the mansion or house of the god. These temples were the site of daily rituals, in which the god would be taken care of, given offerings, uh, songs would be sung, and many such other practices. This cult of the gods was the main religious practice in Egypt, which basically upheld Ma'at and order in the universe. The Pharaoh, as we saw, was the high priest and responsible for making sure that this was practiced properly. But in reality, the temple and its rituals were, of course, mostly the responsibility of the priests. "A temple was not a place where assembled people proclaimed the existence of the divine, but rather the place where the divine was rooted and manifested itself directly and visibly on Earth, its permanent receptacle, and thus itself divine." Ancient Egypt was full of these temples.

Indeed, another important aspect of the gods is that they were all usually associated with a certain region or with a city, and there would usually be a major temple in each city dedicated to the patron god. So, for example, Amun was the god of Thebes, which in Egyptian was known as Waset, the city of Memphis had Ptah as their patron god. Thoth was the god of Hermopolis, in Egyptian, Khenu, and so on. Worship in the city was dedicated first and foremost to the patron deity, and its citizens would often direct their prayers toward this god. There was a sort of personal, um, like relationship and, uh, like loyalty to your to your city's patron god. And these local cults were, of course, part of a wider religious complex in Egypt as a whole, and all made up parts of a single mythological whole. But the locality of these cults are an important part of this tradition.

Again, the temples were attended by priests who were responsible for the daily rituals and the annual festivals. And like many other cultures, the priests weren't a dedicated class of society, such as in India, where the Brahmins, for example, at least not in the earlier periods of Egyptian history. Instead, the priests were regular people. They had families and jobs, uh, and they would often sort of work in the temple for about three months of the year, and then return to their regular lives, right? So this wasn't a full-time profession.

Now, the temples of Egypt could look different depending on the place or the time period, of course, but they generally follow a certain pattern, a certain outline, and and symbolism. In a basic sense, the temple was conceived to be a kind of representation of the primordial mound on which the first creator god arose in the dark mass of Nun. Thus, as you get further into the temple, the floor is increasingly raised, and the the the roof becomes lower, right? So the temple, um, um, sort of becomes smaller, right? It sort of closes in on you the deeper into the temple you come. Secondly, the temple, in this way, was also a kind of representation of the world at large. Especially in later periods, the roof of the temple would be adorned with images of stars, as well as Nut, the the goddess of the sky. The pillars or columns are constructed to represent the palm trees, and the walls will be painted with various mythological and symbolic scenes.

And just like in many other kinds of ancient temples, there were kind of ascending levels of holiness and restrictiveness. The temple was usually walled off, so not generally accessible to the public for the most part. The opening was often marked with a pylon, a kind of gate leading into the temple. The most famous example being, of course, the pylons of the Great Temple of Karnak in Luxor. This pylon then led to the first and largest part of the building, which was a courtyard, often without a roof. This is where, if anywhere, the general public would be allowed to enter on certain occasions. It was a larger open space where one could also leave offerings and things like this. But the rest of the temple was restricted to only the priests and the King, since again, he was the high priest.

After the courtyard, as you go deeper into the temple, you came to a smaller, columned hall, the so-called hypostyle hall. And finally, as the light gets darker and darker, the deeper into the temple you go, there was the enclosed inner sanctuary, called the *naos*, with the image of the god was housed. This was restricted only to the high priest, as they would perform the daily ritual involving the god. Every morning, before entering the sanctuary, the priests had to wash themselves and to become ritually pure. Then the various ranks of priests would gather the material needed and go towards the *naos*. As he approached it, they would start reciting prayers, they would light incense, and the chief priest would proclaim, as a greeting to the god, that "the King sends me," confirming that the priests were only, again, substitutes for the king, who really held responsibility for the cult. He would then approach the image of the god, tell the god to wake up, and then open the doors of the shrine, revealing the image, to which he would then prostrate and kiss the ground.

This began the process, often called the Opening of the Mouth ritual, where the god will be woken up from his slumber during the night. The image was taken out of the shrine, the outer linen garment from the day before was also taken off, they washed the image and gave him new clothing while reciting liturgy in a fixed smoke of incense. The god was then given new clothes, along with green and black eye cosmetics, jewelry, scepter, and the famous headdress. As the god was now properly awake, the priest would present offerings in the form of food, drink, and flowers. The food was likely placed on an altar in front of the god and then removed after an unclear period of time, after which it would have been distributed to the temple staff. After these rituals, the god was returned to the shrine, and order was still upheld in the world. This ritual was then repeated at least two more times each day, but the morning ritual was the most elaborate and important.

So, this is an example of how the temple cult and the religious practices worked. For the most part, it was something that was reserved primarily for the priests, right? And the general population, the regular people, did not really have any access to this inner part of the temple at all, and they never really got to see the the image of the god. They didn't have access to that. Or actually, that's not entirely true. Um, scratch that, at least partly, because there were times during the year during the so-called festivals. Uh, there were many festivals across the sort of an the year for the Egyptians, and during the the festivals, uh, the the people would be able to participate much more directly in the religious cult, when the gods would often be brought out of their temples, and people would be able to interact with them and sometimes even see them.

There is, for example, the so-called Beautiful Feast of the Valley, which was celebrated in Thebes, and which was primarily centered on the god Amun. This was a kind of festival for the dead, where the living and the dead would meet. As Emily Teeter points out in her book, *Religion and Ritual in Ancient Egypt*, the festival changed and developed over time, but during the 18th Dynasty in the New Kingdom, the only god that was in focus was indeed again Amun. But in later periods, he would often be joined by other gods and goddesses. Teeter describes the procession like this: "The festival began on the East Bank of the Nile at the Karnak temple, where after purification ceremonies, the statue of Amun was removed from its dark sanctuary, placed in its portable shrine, and loaded onto a ceremonial boat. Priests carried the god from the temple to the Nile, where it was placed aboard an elaborate barge called Userhat, 'Powerful of Prow,' whose top sides were covered with gold and ornamented with scenes of the king before the gods. The procession, led by the king, was accompanied by throngs of priests who carried the great fans signifying the presence of the deity, and by huge crowds of locals."

The passage from east to west symbolized the transition from life to the Land of the Dead. The procession would then go to the necropolis in Thebes, places like the Valley of the Kings, where so many of the New Kingdom royals lay buried. The place was filled with music, dancing, and singing, and through these songs and chantings, the dead kings and general ancestors would be called on to come forth from their graves and meet the god and celebrate. For two days, this festival took place, and must have been quite a thing to experience. One has to imagine the smell of incense, of food, and the sound of people singing, talking, and yelling. The image of Amun and the procession would also visit Deir el-Bahari, which was thought to be the dwelling place of Hathor, goddess of fertility, sensuality, merrymaking, and drunkenness. Symbolically, Amun spent the night with Hathor, thus the festival was both about the dead, but also celebrated things like rejuvenation and recreation.

When all these rituals and celebrations were over, the image of the god was taken back to the temple, and the people would have to wait another year for another festival, at least this specific festival, because, as we said, the yearly calendar was filled with different festivals celebrating both gods, as well as the jubilees of the kings, and much else. This was just one example of such a festival where the general population could uh participate more directly in the divine cult. During these festivals, they could get a glimpse of the god, especially at certain points of the festival where the face of the god was revealed, which would have been a very profound experience. People could even approach the god and seek oracular help. They would ask the god a yes or no question, and the god could answer by making the portable house, the shrine, move either backwards or forwards, indicating a yes or no answer.

With all this said, we shouldn't neglect to mention the importance of the king himself in terms of religious devotion and worship. As we saw, the king was seen as the incarnation of Horus and as the son of Ra, as a kind of semi-divine being himself. In the words of Stephen Quirke, "The preeminence of kingship in the surviving record should illustrate clearly that all cult in Egypt was royal cult. It was part of a cosmic pact in which the king offered up to the heavens the fruits of the earth in exchange, channeling down to earth the blessings of heaven. Any temple in Egypt is a monument to the kingship that created it as much as to the deity for whom it was created."

Temples for the royal cult of the king were built during a king's reign. These are the buildings that are sometimes referred to as mortuary temples, but this can lead to a quite common misunderstanding that the main purpose of these complexes were for the burial of the king, and that he or she simply prepared for his own death as an episode of postmortem cult. This was not the full picture, this was not really the case. The temples were eventually used as the burial place for the king, but the cult was also active primarily during his or her life. In fact, it seems that after a king died, the cult would often sort of slowly start to decay and and die out. So the temples were arguably built primarily for use during their actual lifetimes and reigns.

Famous such places include, of course, the temple in connection with the Great Pyramid in Giza, dedicated to the fourth Dynasty Pharaoh Khufu. There is also the Ramesseum, dedicated to Ramesses the Great, the Temple of Deir el-Bahari, dedicated to the female 18th Dynasty Pharaoh Hatshepsut, and the sadly destroyed mortuary temple of Amenhotep III, which was supposedly the largest ever built, but of which only part survives, being the so-called Colossi of Memnon, these two very famous colossal statues, that also said to to to speak or sing on certain mornings, I believe is one of the sort of legendary stories about those. Anyway, those are the only things that remain from this mortuary temple of Amenhotep III. Arguably the Pharaoh that ruled, with the exception of perhaps Ramesses the Great, it's a sort of toss-up in my mind, but one certainly one of the periods that could be best described as a sort of golden period or golden age, most prosperous period in Egyptian history, during the reign of Amenhotep III, and his mortuary or his cultic temple in Thebes was supposedly the the greatest sort of masterpiece of of architecture, the largest temple built, uh, and just incredible. And sadly, it's been completely ruined by by history, right? This this is what we have to face often when we when we study history.

The king himself or herself sometimes was worshiped in these temples, showing how central the royal cults and the king was to the religion and cosmology of the ancient Egyptians. But aside from these official and and sort of statewide practices of religion, what did like actual piety look like for a regular individual in everyday life? How did like Joe down the street connect with and worship the gods? There's often been a kind of misleading picture painted of religion in ancient Egypt, that there was somehow this sort of fundamental, uh, distinction between the official cult of the temple and everyday piety, that this was two completely almost different religions, right? Regular people would be like performing magic and superstition, whereas the official, um, religion in in the temple was what we have just described, right? This elaborate cult. This is not the case, right? Uh, there, the same gods were worshiped by the people as by, um, the priests, and and and the religion, it was a continuous whole, basically, although it took, of course, different forms to some degree.

The gods were very much present in the lives of everyday Egyptians. They were very important, and they played a role in everyday life in different ways. We saw again that the regular people, except when they served as priests for three months a year or whatever, they didn't really have access to to the temple, at least not to the inner sanctuary of the temple. There are indications that it might have had some access to the courtyard of the temple, like the first part, the biggest part of the temple, maybe sometimes even the hypostyle hall, it's uncertain. But generally, even though they didn't have access to these more sacred parts of the temple, often in connection with these larger temples, often usually on the sort of outside wall, on the sort of back wall of the temple, would be more minor shrines. It's like mini temples or shrines dedicated to gods that people could approach and pray and ask for favors from the gods. They would often be a kind of, uh, there would be holes in the wall, and there would be sort of a a cloth, um, a fabric, I should say, hanging, sort of boxing in the person, so that they could sort of get privacy when they spoke to the gods. And so people would often come to these mini shrines. They would ask the gods for favors, they would bring, uh, votive offerings, for example, in the form of often tiny, uh, like statues of maybe the god in question or some other gods, sometimes other motifs, but like offerings, sometimes, I guess, food, things like this. And they would ask for things in return. Usually, they could ask for, like, maybe, you know, they had trouble with infertility, maybe they, um, wanted business transactions to be successful, they wanted to find love. This is, of course, one of the most universal things in all these kinds of practices. We always find people wanting love and having trouble finding love. So that could be another example. People could go to these shrines and ask for favors and and pray to the gods more generally.

Another form of these kinds of mini temples is something referred to as, um, chapels of the hearing ear, which were also kind of just these kinds of, um, yeah, like chapels where there will often be sort of a hall, and it would be adorned with things like the the Eye of Horus, famous, right? But also sometimes with just straight-up ears. So you see many monuments of these kinds, the chapels of the hearing ear. There are sometimes two ears or more ears, which represented the fact that the god would hear the the pleas and the prayers. So the person coming there to speak to the god. And these places of private worship weren't, of course, limited to the temple area either, even though that was seems to been a sort of hot spot for those kinds of shrines. Um, these kinds of mini temples and chapels could exist all over, in the village, on the on the countryside, on sort of pilgrimage routes, you could find these shrines. In the big cities, they were all over, right? So the people could access the gods in different ways.

We also know, for example, that some people, primarily people that could afford it, so people that were sort of in the perhaps elite classes of society, could have a statue of themselves made and sort of pay to have it placed in the temple, right? So that a statue representing themselves, with their names inscribed on it, again, the name being important as the sort of indicator of a person, uh, would be placed in the temple so that they would be close to the gods, and this would bring benefits, so that the gods would more perhaps more easily answer their prayers, because they were always there in the temple, at least in a in the form of a representation through a statue. Very unique and fascinating practice.

But people also, of course, had more personal and private ways of contacting the gods at home. For example, we know that there might have been like mini shrines at home that people could have in their house with a sort of patron deity, perhaps, or something like that, that they could dedicate worship towards while they were at home. They were also more portable objects, like amulets. We will get to this soon, but amulets, but also we have like stelae, um, that seems to have been used also as a sort of, remember I mentioned the sort of chapels of the hearing ear? Um, there there seems to be portable versions of these these hearing ear, um, things, right? So there's there's a sort of slab, a stela, that has ears on it that people probably used to sort of pray and ask for things. It's almost like a kind of divine telephone, right? You could speak and ask for things into this more portable sort of object.

One could also come into direct contact with gods through dreams and trances. It was believed that sleep was a state where one could communicate more easily with other realms and dimensions, and there are many examples of people claiming to have communicated with the gods through a dream. Now, this also extends to that other category that we often call magic, as problematic as that term can sometimes be. As part of life for the Egyptian, there were various kinds of "magic" to help with certain situations. To generalize in a quite major way, we could say that the regular divine cult in the temple.

had the primary purpose of maintaining Maat, the divine order of things.

On the contrary, different kinds of magic sought to manipulate and change these natural forces for one's own benefit in different ways. At the center of magic was a force called heca, which, as always, could also be depicted as a god. Heca was a kind of divine power not limited to the practice of magic. It was through the power of heca that God created the world, for example. But this heca isn't limited to the gods; but we as humans also have access to it on a certain level, and this is what allows us to affect things in an occult, magical way.

As is often the case with magic, there were many different kinds. There was protective magic against illnesses, misfortune, and things like scorpion bites or snake bites. Uh, one could use incantations, either said out loud or sometimes written down on papyrus and used as talismans to protect against such things. Very universal practice across so many cultures historically, right? Amulets and talismans. We find this also in Egypt, to very much so.

If you remember from before, there was a huge importance placed on names in this culture. So a lot of this magic was focused on using names and words to channel the power of of heca. To know the name of a person or a god was to have a certain level of power over them, because the name was directly connected to their essence.

But there was also more aggressive magic, not used preventively to protect oneself, but rather to attack someone else. For a more complicated procedure like this, one would often consult a ritual expert, sometimes known in this culture as a heca, a guardian of heca. There are different names and indications what these professionals are supposed to have been called, but this is one of them.

While much of this magic practice is still unknown to us in its details, we know quite a lot about this more aggressive kind of magic of execration. Say, for example, you want to hurt your enemy. In this case, you would make a wax figure of this person, whether they be a god or some other human that you don't like. Then you would inscribe the name of this person on this figure, very important, sometimes also the names of their family members, and then bind it with a cord. The figure would then be spat on, trampled, and eventually thrown in the fire to be destroyed. This pretty violent stuff.

Profoundly, this magical practice more broadly, especially that performed by the ritual professionals, worked in such a way that he or she would often sort of admonish or intimidate the gods themselves to do their bidding. This seems strange that a mere human being is able to intimidate the gods in this way. Well, this is because it seems that in order to do this, the practitioner would in some way assimilate themselves to the gods, so that when they made their pronouncements or chanted these incantations, they did so as the god themselves.

Frad Dunan argues in the book Gods and Man in Egypt that we might be dealing here with something akin to shamanic practice, where the ritual practitioner was somehow possessed by or united with the gods in some way. And that indeed brings us to another touchy, yet always interesting topic, that is, was there such a thing as mysticism in ancient Egypt?

I suspect if you watched this channel for a while, that you are familiar with the problems with this term. And if you haven't, then I advise you consult my earlier episodes on mysticism, either, uh, Christian mysticism or or Sufism, etc., where I sort of talk about this, this term more in detail and what it means and how we define it, mostly here on this channel. In short, we recognize the issues with the term, especially applying it to a context as different in time and place as ancient Egypt. But we still to ask the question: if we find some of those themes characteristic of mysticism, such as altered states of consciousness and a direct experience of, and maybe even union with the divine in some way, coupled with the practices leading to and theories explaining such encounters.

As far as I can tell, there seems to be some disagreement in scholarship about this question, as is so often the case, of course, with ancient Egypt. Jan Assmann, in his classic work, The Search for God in Ancient Egypt, essentially argues that we don't find anything equivalent to mysticism in this culture. But others aren't as convinced. One example could be what we just described, the possible presence of what we could loosely call shamanic practices, where a ritual professional would put himself or herself in an altered state of consciousness and somehow become assimilated to the divine.

One Egyptian text, inscribed on a statue of Ramesses III, revealing the claim that, quote, "I have rinsed my mouth, I have taken natron, and I've mingled with the ankh of gods. In the evening, I have lain down in the bosom of Horus, and thus I have heard what he was saying, while he held in his hand a viper of one cubit, as evil as a viper of a dozen cubits. It was thus that I was instructed in the words that have been used forever, going back to the time when Osiris was still alive. Thus I now slay a horned viper of one cubit, I being Horus, instructed in words."

But even in more everyday, regular piety, we find expressions that at least get us close to mystical expressions in the prayers expressed by regular people, and which survive in different writings. One of the recurring themes is a strong wish expressed to, quote, "see the god." This could, of course, simply mean the cultic image, to see the statue, or perhaps the god through natural phenomena. But there could also be more to it.

Dunan again points out that in some texts, we see clear indications of a devotion that goes beyond regular prayers or daily practice, and toward a more profound relationship with God, involving giving up oneself to the god in a kind of contemplation, meditation, and ecstasy. One text states, quote, "I abandoned yesterday and today into the hands of Amun. I have found myself well, my conditions stable. I have assured myself a happy state of being until I end my existence. I have given myself entirely to him. It is he who grants the land."

But these kinds of expressions, which border on what we often call mystical, are hard to interpret with clarity, because these personal experiences are hard to put into words on the one hand, and by their nature as personal experiences of piety, there was no reason to record or write it down in the way that one would for more official rituals or practices. So the question of contemplation and mysticism in Egypt remains something of a mystery, and one that will probably have to be further studied before we can say something more concrete about it.

Many of these expressions of piety, especially from the 19th Dynasty forward, seem to also indicate other interesting things. It raises certain questions, right? We stated in the beginning that ancient Egypt, like the religion of this culture, was definitely polytheistic, and the multiplicity and diversity of divinity was very central to this religion. But in these more personal expressions of piety in the later periods, we also see references to God in the singular, and a with a sort of indefinite form, that God with a capital G, right? Um, as well as ideas that God seems to somehow be transcendent, even transcendent of the other gods, in ways that we don't see earlier in history. So what's up with that?

Well, here we have stumbled upon another one of the most debated topics, I would say, in the in, like, ancient Egyptian religion within scholarship, namely whether or not there is this idea in ancient Egypt of a one transcendent God from which all the other gods are manifestations or from which the other gods come, right? That while it is polytheistic, there is this idea of a divine unity that transcends the multiplicity. This is a question that scholars very much disagree on.

We have to point out once again that the religion of the ancient Egyptians was definitely polytheistic. Their conception of the divine was one of diversity, and in the cult, the worship of one god was always in connection with that god's relationship with the rest of the multiplicity of deities. What is not at stake here is some primordial monotheism, something that many primarily Christian scholars in the past have wanted to argue and search for. We have no indication that there was anything like such a monotheistic conception of a god at any time in Egyptian history, aside of course, perhaps, from the, uh, Amarna period with the cult of the Aten of Akhenaten. But aside from that, this search for a primordial monotheism is very, it's, it's not considered anymore, and that is not what we are talking about here at all.

With that said, and as I've explored in my previous episode about this exact topic, categories like polytheism and monotheism are quite limited, and things on the ground are actually quite a lot more complicated than that. When we look at many, perhaps most, even of the ancient religions that we refer to as polytheistic, they will have a multiplicity of gods, sure, but they will often also have a concept of a transcendent divinity that encompasses the other gods, a divine unity from which the multiplicity of the gods and the world come. The Vedic Hindus call this the Brahman, the Shites call it Shiva, the ancient Greeks, in their multiplicity of gods, often talked about Hoot, the god, which was sometimes identified with Zeus, and philosophically also talked about concepts like the, the One and the Good, the Form of the Good, etc., in Plato, that approximates the same idea. The Aztecs in Mesoamerica also had a multitude of gods, but simultaneously spoke of something called Teotl, a kind of pantheistic force from which all gods come. It is the question whether this kind of concept can be found in ancient Egypt that is up for discussion, and as I said, that scholars disagree upon.

Egyptologists like Erik Hornung argued in his Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt that we don't find such an idea, emphasizing the divine multiplicity. And this line is also followed by people like the aforementioned Fran Dunan. But others disagree. The most famous proponent of the more one supreme god position is probably Jan Assmann, as famously argued in his work, The Search for God in Ancient Egypt.

First of all, we should point out that even though there are many gods and their diversity is important for the cult, there was one divine force that was kind of always seen as the supreme and most exalted one: the Sun God. Whether it is as Ra and his importance in the mythology, or as the creator Atum, as the All that we saw before, or as Amun in the New Kingdom, the Sun God always had a very special position. This becomes especially apparent in the New Kingdom, was arguably the case even further back in history as well.

In one Coffin Text, it says, quote, "Incantation for coming forth by day in the necropolis. The word took form. All was mine when I existed alone. I am Ra in his first appearances when he shines forth from the horizon. I am the great God who took form of himself, who created his names, Lord of Ankhs, who has no opponent among the gods. Yesterday is mine, and I know tomorrow." As in the Theology of Heliopolis, it was the Sun God that created all the other gods from himself.

And even as we start seeing more personal expressions of piety that talk about God in the singular, such as in the Instructions Literature that appear from the Middle Kingdom, when they make such proclamations, this singular personal God is usually either the patron god of that person's city, or referring to Ra or Amun, the high God. Quote: "He who listens to the entreaty of one in distress, gracious to one who calls to him, who saves the timorous from the hand of the violent, who pronounces justice between the poor and the rich, Lord of cognition, on whose lips is creative word, for whose sake the Nile inundation comes, the Lord of affection, the great of love. When he, the inundation comes, humankind lives. He who grants a clear road to every eye that was created in Nun, whose radiance allows it to become light, over whose beauty the gods rejoice at the sight of whom their hearts quicken."

This cult of the Sun arguably reached its culmination during the reign of Akhenaten, who completely reformed the religion of Egypt into one solely dedicated to the sun disk Aten, and essentially suppressed the worship of Amun, who was the primary god previously. This episode is the only clear break from the traditional religion that we have described so far, and only basically lasted for, like, for the duration of his reign. I've made a full episode dedicated to Akhenaten and the the religion of the Aten on the channel a few years back, um, so I'm not going to cover it basically at all here and just mention it because it is an important part of this history, but that is not what we're going to be focusing on. So if you want to know more about that, check out my earlier episode about that, or Andrew also made an excellent one a couple years ago.

Assmann argues that across Egyptian history, we can spot two essentially parallel ways of talking about the divine: implicit theology, which is the kind of theological speculation that is implicit in the religious cult, and explicit theology, which runs parallel and gives birth to more abstract and philosophical conceptions of the divine. This explicit theology can be found in earlier periods, but becomes most apparent during the New Kingdom, and especially after the revolution of Akhenaten and the return to traditional worship. The trauma of this religious reform and the suppression of the traditional gods like Amun seems to have fostered a new kind of relationship with God, because Amun couldn't be worshipped in public anymore, basically. People instead developed a kind of inner relationship with the god by, quote, "placing him within the heart." "The son of him who does not recognize you sets Amun, but he who recognizes you says it has risen. In the forecourt, he who attacks you is in darkness, even when the whole land is in light. But he who places you in his heart, lo, his sun has risen."

It is in the Ramesside period that we also possibly get the high point of theological expression related to the idea of the one universal, all-encompassing God. Of course, we should remember that after the Amarna Revolution ended, the traditional polytheistic cult was reinstated and supported. So what appears here is not a monotheism in the more strict definition of that word, such as what Akhenaten seems to have tried to establish, but rather a more complex theology where the unity of God and the plurality of deities and the world is merged in a grand pantheistic formulation. Again, here it becomes clear that the conception of God in the singular is a very real concept that stands above the other gods, or in which those gods are integrated.

This all-encompassing God is the creator, the source of everything, moral guide, and giver of life. Quote: "Life belongs to you. There will be no other who gives life to every visage. You are the light that drives off evil. No eye lives that does not see you. You are the air that allows the throat to breathe. No animal lives that does without you. You are the inundation that keeps humankind alive. No face lives if you are not in it." As you can tell, the all-encompassing nature of this divinity is radical and formulates itself in a pantheistic way. God is everything. He embodies the cosmos. Quote: "You are the sky, you are the earth, you are the netherworld, you are the water, and you are the air between them."

According to the arguments of Assmann, this exalted conception of the divine, a kind of pantheistic theology with a single divinity at its center, came to dominate theological expression from the 19th Dynasty and for the rest of the classical Egyptian civilization, all the way into the Hellenistic and Roman periods. We continue to see these kinds of expressions. This is another example to show you how complex the conceptions about the divine could be in antiquity generally, and for the Egyptians in particular. It was a polytheistic religion, and the basic meaning of that word, for sure, but there was a lot more going on theologically at the same time.

So now we've talked about some of the basic mythology and perhaps theology of the religion, as well as how people related to the divine and how, how they practiced their religion. But we still haven't talked about one of the most, perhaps important and indeed famous aspects of ancient Egyptian culture and religion, which is, of course, death and the afterlife.

Now, as many of the scholars that I've quoted in this episode so far have also pointed out, the way that some people have portrayed the ancient Egyptians as completely obsessed with death, or that this was somehow like the most important part of their lives and culture, is pretty oversimplified and, honestly, kind of inaccurate. Because they built monuments relating to death and tombs with the express purpose of them surviving for as long as possible by building in stone, for example. Much of that which does survive of their culture has to do with death and the afterlife, naturally. It's easy, easy, therefore, to overemphasize this part of ancient Egypt. I think for a lot of people, some of the very first imagery that comes to mind when we think of Egypt are like mummies and elaborate tomb art.

But with that said, there is, of course, no escaping the fact that death and the afterlife was very important and something that the Egyptians spent a lot of time preparing for and thinking about. And what they believed was that death certainly wasn't the end. Well, it was a kind of end, because the dead never returned to this world of the living, but it wasn't an end in terms of being an end of our existence completely. After the demise of our body, our soul, or souls in plural perhaps, live on in the afterlife, what the Egyptians called the Duat, and often simply referred to as the West.

This afterlife was not unlike our own, at least in terms of its descriptions and depictions in art, but it was a complex one, full of dangers and trials. The god Osiris was the god of the underworld and was strongly associated with the afterlife, since, if you remember, in the mythological story, he had been killed by his brother Set and then been reborn and, and sort of mummified by his sister, and therefore is able to be reborn. He is now the master of death, so to say. And together with the jackal god Anubis, who is the god of funerary rites among other things, they both represent the world of the dead in different ways.

The Egyptians believed that we have several different, quote, "souls" to use a Greek and modern term that might not be entirely appropriate for this culture. On the one hand, there was the Ka, often described as the life force of the individual. This is the part of us that needs offerings and help after death. A person dies when the Ka leaves the body. Then there's the Ba, which is often depicted as a bird with a human head. This is a kind of soul that could travel between the world of the tomb and the world of the living, spending time in the sun and around those still alive. These two parts of our, again, soul maybe, are in deep relationship with each other, of course.

And after death, the person and their soul have to travel through the underworld and face different trials in order to hopefully eventually reach a place called the Field of Reeds. In later periods, we find perhaps the most famous aspect of these post-life challenges when one comes to the court of Osiris, and Anubis will weigh one's heart on a scale against the feather of Maat. This is justice or order. If the heart is heavier than the feather, then it will be thrown to the Ammit creature, which will consume it and seemingly condemn the person to kind of oblivion. But if the heart is equal to, or maybe even lighter than the feather, then they are allowed to enter the Field of Reeds. The Ka and the Ba come together and unite to create another aspect of the soul called the Akh, which is a kind of illuminated soul that joins the gods.

This strong dichotomy between the two realms seems to be something that shows up in later records and might have been influenced by outside traditions, or at least developed over time, so to say. But the general idea that is the moral character and actions of the person in life that matters for our afterlife seems to be something that remains across this civilization's history.

So how does one achieve a good afterlife, then? Well, as we saw, one basic way is to be a good person. But there was more to it than that, and this is where we see that the burial customs of ancient Egypt were so important and elaborate. People who could afford it would start working on their own tombs pretty early in life, and once dwelling after death was very important, not just for, like, social status, right, but also for your comfort in the afterlife. The tomb of a person usually consisted of two main parts: an underground burial chamber and an above-ground offering chapel, where the people could come and offer food and prayers for the dead person. The tomb was almost like a house in itself, similar to a temple, with structures and art that aim to reflect the natural world.

And the body of the person was also very important, because the body was in some way the home of the soul, its image, you could say. It needed to be preserved as much as possible, and this is the background to what is probably the most famous aspect of ancient Egyptian culture, namely mummification. After death, the body of the deceased would be taken to professional embalmers, who would wash it and then begin a long and complex process of removing the organs, drying out the body, and wrapping them in linen. The process was a lot more complicated and involved and a lot more than I've mentioned here, and could take up to 40 days, sometimes even 70 days. Over the course of Egyptian civilization, the techniques of mummification also changed and developed, so that by the later periods, they had gotten really good at preserving bodies. This is where you find mummies today that look almost like they died only recently, even though they've been dead for thousands of years. It's kind of like, I don't want to use the word creepy, but it's, it's quite striking to see those mummies that are so well preserved.

Once the mummification process was done, the funeral began, where the body would be taken to the tomb before being permanently entombed. Priests performed the Opening of the Mouth ritual, which involved certain invocations and ritual, um, like opening of the mouth of the mummy to wake it up. This is similar, of course, if you remember, to how they would, uh, how the priests in the temples would wake up the god in the mornings, right? This was also called the Opening of the Mouth, so it's, it's similar, uh, in sort of making the person or the body alive in some way in preparation for, for death.

But as we saw, the journey wasn't over once it was in the grave either. And to help the deceased person on his journey through the underworld, several things could be done. For one, as we saw, family members and friends would often come to the offering chapel in connection with the tomb to make offerings of food to the deceased. One could also, for example, leave images of food on the walls of the tomb, and many other gifts that were left in the burial chamber. We've all seen the famous tomb of Tutankhamun, for example, where there was a whole host of different objects from objects used in, in life, you know, like weapons and bow and food items and beer and all kinds of things.

A peculiar item that would often be left in the tomb were small figurines called Ushabti, which were essentially like workers. It was believed that these Ushabti would function as servants to the deceased in the afterlife and help them with various things. In general, it was believed that all these objects that were left in the tomb, and if they were painted on the walls or whatever, everything that was in the tomb would help the person in the underworld and in the afterlife.

But another very important aspect of the funerary rituals was that certain texts were left in the tomb: spells, prayers, instructions, and utterances that were to guide the soul in the afterlife and help them transform into the illuminated Akh. The earliest example of these spells are the so-called Pyramid Texts, primarily in use in the Old Kingdom. These are indeed some of the oldest surviving religious literature in the whole world. At this early stage, however, they were only reserved for the tombs of the pharaohs and didn't really contain any illustrations; it was just text.

But over the course of time, into the First Intermediate Period and the Middle Kingdom, there was a kind of democratization of the afterlife. These instructions and prayers weren't anymore just for the kings, but also for more regular people. And this we see in the emergence of the next development of this tradition, which is called the Coffin Texts. As the name suggests, these were now written on the coffins of the deceased. They contained images, and here we also see some of the earliest examples of the classic depictions of the Duat and its different parts and phases.

And it is even later, in the New Kingdom Period, that these texts develop into the form that most of us are familiar with today: the so-called Book of the Dead. This collection, whose real title was actually the Book of Coming Forth by Day, was usually written on papyrus and would be left in the coffin or the burial chamber of the deceased, generally. And had the same function as the earlier Pyramid and Coffin Texts. It was a further development of these earlier texts and traditions. It contains instructions for the soul and how to traverse the Duat and become the transformed Akh in order to enter the Field of Reeds. It's a quite large body of text with very intricate and complex descriptions that have become very famous. It's, for example, here that we find the famous story about the of the weighing of the heart by Anubis, right? This is from The Book of the Dead.

So, in short, the Egyptians did a lot of different things to ensure that the afterlife was a pleasurable one. Not only were they asked to be a good person in this world, to uphold the principles of Maat and and the will of the gods, but also required complicated rituals and objects to have a better chance in the land of the West. Again, most of what I've talked about in this episode have been to some degree generalizations. As I mentioned in the beginning, this was a religious tradition that changed over time and in different periods, and I hope I have shown that in different ways. I've tried to capture the general features as much as I can, but this fact must be kept in mind.

Indeed, in the later periods of Egyptian civilization, we see some significant changes and developments. After the end of the classical Pharaonic state and in the so-called Late Period, Egypt was conquered by different empires and states, from the Babylonians to the Assyrians, the Persians, all of whom ruled the land of the Nile for periods of time and influenced its culture in different ways. The Hellenistic period, after the conquest of Alexander the Great, which represents the endpoint of classical Egypt, also saw some very significant changes in the religious cults and its practice. This was the period of the Ptolemies as kings, with the last of them, of course, being the very famous Cleopatra.

The Hellenic religious tradition was not exclusive in terms of their gods. Most of us know about the Greek pantheon with gods like Zeus and Hera, Hades and Dionysus, etc. And when they conquered Egypt, they syncretized the Egyptian gods, either foreign gods that could be incorporated into the wider worship of their religion, or sometimes as the same gods but with different names. The Greeks seem to have had a special fascination with Egypt and its culture, even before the Hellenic conquest, as we see from the writings of people like Herodotus. A quite common trope for great Greek philosophers like Pythagoras was that they were often claimed to have gone to Egypt to learn some of their wisdom, particularly, it seems, that of the soul, of afterlife, and magic. How much truth there is to these stories is hard to say, but it seems clear that Egypt was seen as a land of mystery and magic.

In fact, many of the features of what would become known as the Mystery Cults in the Hellenic world, including the Orphic, Pythagorean, and Bacchic Cults, are sometimes claimed by Herodotus, again, for example, to originate in Egypt, right? So this seems like a significant connection, if if not historically accurate, then at least to the Greeks themselves, they considered to come from Egypt in some way. It seems, though, that the Egyptians themselves weren't as excited about Hellenism and the syncretisms that it brought with it, but the Greeks were very enthusiastic, taking on the role of pharaohs, adapting many of the religious practices and traditions, including burial customs.

During this period, we also see different gods being combined to essentially form sometimes new divinities. The question of which god was the most popular and widely worshipped changed from period to period, as we saw. And during the Hellenic Age, two gods seem to have been the most particularly prominent: Isis, whom we have met, and a new god called Serapis. The name Serapis is essentially a combination between Osiris and Apis, and his depiction is very similar to Hades in the Hellenic tradition. So he is essentially a combination between all these different gods and was maybe the most prominent and popular god in the late period of Egyptian civilization. We've talked before, for example, about the great Serapeum in Alexandria, the Temple of Serapis, which was, uh, almost on the level of the Great Library, right? This was a very important center. So this shows us how important Serapis was as a god for, uh, at least for the Hellenic age and forward in, in Egypt.

Another famous syncretic god of this kind was born from the claim that the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth, both being associated with things like writing, language, and hidden wisdom, was is in fact the same god. From this came the combined divine figure called Hermes Trismegistus, or Hermes Thrice Great. It is this figure that became the central point of the body of writings called the Hermetica, a large body of text including magical and occult knowledge, as well as more philosophical and, quote, "mystical" texts, such as the Corpus Hermeticum and the Perfect Discourse, or Asclepius. It is these writings that make up the core of what we sometimes refer to as Hermeticism, or Hermeticism, even though the idea of Hermeticism as a unified tradition is challenged by many scholars today.

This tradition, or to be safe, maybe we should just say these writings, are a perfect example of the syncretic nature of Hellenic Egyptian culture at that time. The Corpus Hermeticum probably appeared in Egypt, and many scholars point out that it is definitely Egyptian in nature in many ways, but there is also no doubt that it is hugely influenced by Hellenic philosophy, such as Middle Platonism and Stoicism. Its monistic idea of God, which it probably derives partly from this Platonist tradition, but it might also have some precedence in the native pantheistic-adjacent explicit theology of earlier Egyptian religion. But this is mostly me just speculating.

And other details of religious practice also changed during this period. It seems that while in earlier times, as we said, the priesthood of the temple only worked part-time, being in the temple for three months a year, but otherwise living normal lives, and during the Hellenic age, we seem to see the development of a more fixed priestly class as a profession, only dedicated to temple ritual and upkeep. The burial customs, while mostly consistent with classical Egyptian tradition, also go through some modifications here. This is perhaps most clearly apparent during the Roman period, when the coffins of mummies would often be adorned with a painted, quite realistic portrait of the person, very distinct to this particular period.

There is so much more we could talk about. We of course see the entrance of Judaism into Egypt around this time, with some of the most important early Jewish philosophers like Philo of Alexandria. We also have Plotinus and the birth of Neoplatonism, the early Christians like Origen, Clement, St. Anthony, Cyril, and others. But we would have to be here for weeks if you want to cover all of that. As I said in the beginning, we have to kind of limit ourselves here to the traditional religious tradition in this episode. Much as it is tempting to keep the discussion going.

Needless to say, there is more to say about religion in Egypt after the fall of the classical civilization and the monumental changes that were brought with the dominance of Christianity and the erasure of the traditional religion. But that will have to be saved for another day. Of course, it should also be said that while the religion sort of died out for the most part after the, the sort of dominance of Christianity and later also Islam in the region, um, just as with so many other ancient religions and polytheistic/pagan religions, um, there has been a kind of revival today where the gods of ancient Egypt have sort of returned as objects of worship, both in the sort of wider, more universalist traditions like Wicca and other forms of Neopaganism, but also more particularly in a sort of revival of the ancient Egyptian system of worship. Um, there is, for example, a movement known as Kemeticism. The name Kemeticism comes from the actual name for Egypt in Egyptian, because Egypt is, after all, a Greek name for, comes at least from a Greek name for the land. The name that the Egyptians themselves called Egypt was Kemet, which means the black land, basically. And most people think this refers to the black, um, soil around the Nile, sort of fertile, fertile soil. I don't know much about this movement, and so we're not going to talk about it today. I'm not really qualified to talk about that, so I'm going to have to make myself qualified to talk about it and then maybe dedicate another episode to that more particularly. But just sort of putting it out there that this, this ancient religion has also seen a revival with these different neopagan, so-called movements in the modern world.

For now, I hope this was an informative and interesting episode dive into the the general characteristics and features of religion in ancient Egypt. Um, this episode turned out to be pretty long, which is maybe natural, right? Um, but even so, that we've only sort of scratched the surface, really. And so I look forward to exploring these topics more in depth in future episodes. As always, ancient Egypt remains such an enticing and intriguing moment in history, and its culture continues to fascinate and inspire people, including myself. Its religious tradition is, in some way, really unlike anything else, and its relative consistency across history is very impressive and telling. Perhaps it was a system and a way of life that simply worked and was beneficial to the people living by the Nile in ancient times, helping them make sense of the world around them, their lives in this world and the afterlife, and how to live good, meaningful lives. And there's no doubt that this culture and religion has had a massive impact in different ways on the whole of humanity down to this very day.

I would like to give a special shout out, as always, to my patrons on Patreon who support this channel and without whom none of this would be possible. Um, of course, I enjoy doing this, and I, I, I, it's a pleasure and an honor to be doing this, but of course, having that monetary help really helps me do this on the level that I do and to the amount that I do. So I, I'm, I'm so incredibly grateful and thankful for all the support on Patreon. Uh, if anyone else wants to become a patron and and a patron and support this channel, I will leave links in the description and the pinned comment, as always. Uh, you can also leave a one-time donation through PayPal, or through Super Chats here on YouTube, and, and, and so on. Or of course, as always, it just helps to leave a like, maybe subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, and, and continue the discussion in the comments. If you're interested in my work more generally, you can find me on my socials, which are on the screen. You can also find me on my other channel, Philip Holm, which is dedicated to my music, primarily, so my own music and talking about music in the way that I talk about music, or when I talk about religion on this channel.

I'm getting tired. It's been a long, long recording session today, right? Um, anyway, thank you so much everyone for watching, and I'll see you next time. [Music]