Ancient Egyptian
Religion—Mother of
Neoplatonism and Christian
Orthodoxy
by Karl W. Luckert
Copyright 1991, 1999
Egyptian Light and Hebrew Fire: Theological and
Philosophical Roots of Christendom in Evolutionary Perspective was a book published in 1991 by the State University of
New York Press. It has since gone out of print. All the while, inquiries about
its availability are on the increase. Inasmuch as no scholar likes to see his
most significant piece of work die a premature or unnecessary death, I have
begun to revise its five portions to be displayed as separate
"booklets" (or "pages") on the Internet. I have no
illusions that this fresh exposure will in some miraculous manner make the
content much easier to read. But as it was, the original book had a serious
flaw that hereby can be remedied. The 1991 edition roams enthusiastically
across no less than five academic disciplines. Not all the readers have
appreciated this scope and complexity—and among potential reviewers only a courageous
few have accepted the challenge. Inasmuch as the Internet presents itself as a
perfect medium for virtual illusions I shall pretend here, for a while, that
the book's five sections are separate booklets that can stand by themselves.
So, for the time being my 1991 publication has become again a manuscript in
progress. This means, what you read here today may not be exactly what you will
find here tomorrow.
The ancient Egyptian cult center Junu, named On in the Hebrew
Bible, was renamed
Many basic Egyptian notions, of thinking
about gods, animals, and humankind together, definitely do date back to a most
ancient hunter-gatherer stratum of
"prehuman flux" mythology. However, the basic Heliopolitan
theological notions themselves belong later in the evolutionary sequence of
Egyptian culture and religion. They correspond to pursuits of domestication and
grand-domestication. Nevertheless, the basic Heliopolitan theological notions
could have been formulated already by the founder of the First Dynasty (ca.
3,100 B.C.E.). Overall, the theology of Junu was well suited for the justification
of imperial grand domestication by which, specifically, the lower and upper
Egyptian realms have been united and a great variety of regional cults
accommodated.
As a system of thought, the theology of
Pyramid inscriptions reflect a time when
The Helipolitan version is the clearest
formulation of any
Generally in Egyptian religion, later theological formulations
showed a need to embrace their antecedents, to accommodate them as well as they
could. It has been precisely this tolerant and endless incorporation of older
theological statements that, to this day, has held our understanding of
Egyptian royal religion in suspense.
Western minds that are accustomed to disjunctive logic may see
in ancient Egyptian religion only an irrational conglomeration of outdated
magic-theological notions. Pronouncements made about any one Egyptian god apply
to other gods as well. Yet, this apparent theoretical untidiness is not the
result of faulty Egyptian logic. Such an impression derives mostly from the
fact that Western scholars hitherto have read the Egyptian theological
statements as explaining “gods of polytheism,” or more precisely, as an
incoherent collage of idols that had to be defamed in opposition to what has
become Hebrew monotheism and Greek rationalism.
All the while, however,
the blending of divine natures and functions could have been understood easily
by the simple fact that, for learned ancient Egyptians, there has persistently
been a single God who has staged the entire combined polytheistic show. No less
than nine divine names were fused at
Written Sources reflect the Religion of Priesthood,
Royalty, and Aristocracy
The oldest substantial amounts of ancient Egyptian written
materials, containing religious information, are inscriptions on the walls of
the royal pyramids (2494–2181 B.C.E.) of
the "
The academicians' grasp
of ancient Egyptian religion is patchy at best; but then, timidity and willful
insistence on faddish impossibilities would probably be worse than incomplete
grasping. In ancient
The religion of the common people in ancient
The lacuna in our
knowledge of popular ancient Egyptian religion becomes especially painful as we
move into the first millennium B.C.E. But by and large, Egyptian religion
beneath the ruling classes has remained silent throughout the ancient history
as well. Only at the apex of the hierarchy were sufficient central tenets of
faith expressed in writing, or were memorialized in monuments bold enough for
survival. When, during the last millennium B.C.E., foreign armies periodically
clipped the Egyptian apex, records concerning the Egyptian mysteries of gods
and life after death necessarily slowed to a trickle. Only later, in the
broader Hellenistic ferment, have some Egyptian cults erupted and spread forth
into Mediterranean daylight. The imperialistic nations who were the keepers of
books during the centuries of
Genealogical Fallacy vis-à-vis Divine Emanation
The political dimension of the Heliopolitan theological system
has been the subject matter of frequent academic discussions that need not be
belabored here in their entirety. A single such commentary suffices to make a
preliminary point. Rudolf Anthes has concluded that the theologians at
As reasonable as such an explanation of political divine claims
may appear by standards of modern political theory or Greek mythic genealogies,
it is also a fact that Heliopolitan priests have included in this realm of
Horus all conceivable aspects of their cosmos. They pursued this habit of
inclusion far in excess of what an Egyptian king actually could hope to rule.
This happenstance invites us to examine the larger cosmic dimension
specifically with regard to its religious comprehensiveness.
It appears that our Western preoccupation with the metaphor of
a divine “genealogy,” after the manner in which kings used to keep track of
their authoritarian ancestors, thus far has unduly hindered our understanding
of the larger Egyptian cosmic-political order. A discussion of the Heliopolitan
theogony ought never lose sight of the fact that an Egyptian deity, a
greater-than-human reality confronting humankind, although he or she may
alter his or her manifestation from time to time, or even may prefer
invisibility, will never really cease to exist during all these
transformations. As soon as this simple fact is recognized, the Heliopolitan
“sequential genealogy” that Anthes has postulated evaporates from view. The
supposed “generations” of gods thereby are rediscovered as an ongoing process
that “generates” a multitude of ba mutations that, in turn, are all
expressions of one timeless eternal God or ka essence.
The Egyptians called the invisible life force, that spark of
life that energetically manifests itself from within, the ka. They named
outward manifestations, which in human awareness and epistemology register as
phenomena or as phenotypal mutations of that life force, the ba. Both ka
and ba are what we might call soul. A ba, appearing along the
outer reaches of divine ka emanation, is a visible, shadow-tainted, and
estranged unit of ka, whereas a ka unit by itself may be
characterized as a relatively pure participant within the original plethora of
divine essence. The ka represents divine essence, and as such it exists
in and emanates from the divine source of all being.
True to the ancient “prehuman flux” mythology of hunters and
gatherers, the gods of Egypt continued to appear in any garb or ba they
desired—of any animal, fish, bird, plant, or other natural phenomenon—as well
as in the human figure of a ruling pharaoh.[3]
They also could appear in prehuman flux “twilight,” in
half-dress, as half-animals or half-humans. In contrast to the gods, humans
were enabled substantially to transform their ba only by way of dying. In this
manner Egyptian ghosts in animal or half-animal form, who have gotten caught up
in the condition of prehuman flux alongside the gods, lingered in Egyptian
memory throughout the ancient period. They were known to appear in the shape of
animals or half-animals in accordance with the ancient mysticism typical of
hunter-gatherer religiosity.
The entire plethora of Atum's generative emission or flux does
mean, therefore, that within the larger Egyptian cosmic scheme of things we are
not contemplating five “generations” of divine personages. Nor are we faced
with an assembled pantheon of separate individual deities. Instead, we behold
with our very human eyes the manifestations of a single godhead along his more
or less visible periphery—a periphery that, as far as can be perceived at our
low level of existence, is an ever-evolving play of light and shadows. But all
the while the one God of gods remains, within and in himself, eternally the
same source of all being.
Heliopolitan theology, or ancient Egyptian orthodoxy, is best
approached from its two oldest strata of extant data; namely, the funerary
literatures that have survived as pyramid and coffin inscriptions. Excerpts and
phrases from funerary liturgies, comprising spells for good fortune in the
hereafter, were inscribed on royal pyramid walls and on patrician coffins. The
oldest among these texts, in the pyramids, were intended to establish a
hallowed intellectual context for the return of a deceased pharaoh to his new state
of fulfilled godhood. Thus, by and large the Pyramid Texts delineate the royal
soteriology (doctrine of salvation) of returning from an estranged human
condition to a more unified and divine mode of existence.
The road “thither” corresponds exactly to the road that has led
a human ka portion or life-soul “hither.”[4]
This is to say that soteriology, in accordance with Heliopolitan theology,
traces the cosmogony in reverse. And inasmuch as the greater-than-human cosmos
in ancient
The entire theological system can be visualized as a flow of
creative vitality, emanating outward from the godhead, thinning out as it flows
farther from its source. Along its outer periphery this plethora of divine
emanation diffuses into what begins to appear as the light and shadow realm of
our material world. It becomes visible. Next, beyond this periphery of visible
matter lies the realm of nonbeing that, in Egyptian mythology, was
conceptualized as watery chaos, or Nun. Thus, the boundary realm between
divinely generated being and nonbeing is what contains our apparently concrete
experiences of the world, life, and death. From a Western point of view this
ontology could be called a philosophical idealism, where it not for the fact
that the dichotomies of “ideas and things” and “mind and matter” are not
applicable here.
Along its outer periphery the plethora of divine existence, of
generation, of emanation, of being, and of life—namely, the divine current of ka
radiation—becomes visible as a multitude of ba apparitions. Along that
outer periphery it meets with nonbeing, is stunned by nonbeing, and as a result
curls inward on itself. Individualized and estranged ka units, that is, ka
sparks in ba manifestations confronting nonbeing, may swirl for a while
about, along that outer periphery of divinity, as ghostly apparitions in
lostness and confusion. But these ka souls also may be meaningfully
reoriented to again travel homeward to the source of their being, the godhead.
While the sole and hidden deity has thus been generating and
giving birth to its self-emanations, in external visibility as if it were an
ongoing process of “exhaling,” this same
sole divine source has also continually been “re-inhaling” its own life
essences. Along the outer edge of human ontology and epistemology these essences,
perceived as finite manifestations, have been stunned by the kiss of death and
nonbeing. They are thereby purified, turned around, or “resurrected” with the
help of religious funerary rites. Divine generation and emanation from the
godhead, and the nostalgic return of estranged individual life-souls to their
former source, therefore happens along a busy two way dimension.
The creative descending emanation ends in the cul-de-sac of
life made manifest, as if being caught up in the curve of a U-turn. The entire
road of creation leads hither from God to finitude; the road of resurrection
and salvation leads home again toward the heart of God.
Divine Emanation proceeds through Five
Levels, or Hypostases
The First Hypostasis (Level 1)
At the starting point of generational flow one may, in
Heliopolitan manner, visualize the source of all being as manifesting itself
concretely in the form of a phallic primeval hill, Atum, on the rise. His
creative emission or emanation may be visualized, more aptly perhaps, as Ra who
is the rising, radiating, and life-evoking phoenix or sun deity. For a still
clearer ancient perception, one may visualize our world from the vantage point
of the sun god, or even from the vantage points of descending sun rays. At the
turbulent terminals of their emanational paths, at their points of impact on
nonbeing, these sun rays evoke for us here on earth certain sensations that
cause the phenomenal or material world around us appear with substantiality and
with color—even us to ourselves.
The notion, of Atum as a hill rising from the chaotic waters of
Nun, was sublimated to account as well for the presence of theriomorphic as
well as anthropomorphic generation or procreation within this world. The
rising hill of Atum was a rising phallus. As such it was replicated on
consequent masculine hypostases like Shu, Geb, and Osiris. Atum's fondling hand
itself became the prolific vagina of Tefnut, Nut, and
All these generative divine “organs” in successive hypostases,
male as well as female, could be contemplated in singular androgynous as well
as in plural form. The Heliopolitan Ennead in its entirety was nine as well as
one. It also manifested itself in any number between one and nine—and beyond
those.
In the beginning Atum
arose from Nun, the chaotic primeval waters (see Figure 5). Nun is the
inconceivable and chaotic nothing, a moist void that at best can only be
described as being “potentially” there. By contrast, when Atum arose as
primeval Hill amidst Nun, he was the first solid someone or somebody. Not
unexpectedly, this rising Hill was visualized by male priestly storytellers as
being principally a masculine generative deity. And again not unexpectedly, it
turned out that Atum's sanctuary at Junu had been built exactly on this primal
and cosmic hill.[5]
Many scholars have alerted to the fact that the recessions of floodwaters from
the
Although the exact experiential moment when Atum became
identified with the sun god Ra can no longer be determined, it already was
standard practice in the
Figure 5. In the
beginning, within chaotic Nun, Atum arose as primeval hill.
Ra emerged as phoenix or sunburst above Atum. Together they
comprise Atum-Ra,
the total godhead of
Heliopolitan theology.
The Second Hypostasis (Level 2)
Heliopolitan
mythology and theory of evolution begins with an androgynous conceptualization
of the divine generative process, it develops from there in the direction of a
sexual process of generation. Shu and Tefnut, male and female together, are the
second hypostasis in the emanation and manifestation of Atum's pleasure (see
Figure 6). Shu and Tefnut sometimes are mentioned together as Ruti, a pair of
divinities who become visible in the ba apparitions of a male and a female
lion. Thus, though Heliopolitan theology is basically monotheistic, at the
second hypostasis it may be characterized as being ditheistic or dualistic.
Any single “One” being contemplated by an analytic human mind, sooner or later,
will reveal its two, three, or more aspects.
Figure 6. Atum spat forth
Shu and Tefnut, Life and Order, to expand himself and
to prepare the realm for life and offspring. Their invisible
union, which defies illustration,
has generated Geb and Nut.
Whereas the “Ruti” dualism represents a convenient accommodation
to the local cult of Leontopolis, Shu and Tefnut in their indigenous
Heliopolitan context still were thought of as forming a trinity, together with
Atum, from whom they both proceed.[6]
Within this trinitarian frame of reference, Shu personifies the masculine
“phallus-semen-life-breath” extension of Atum, whereas Tefnut personifies the
feminine hand-womb-mouth-order dimension. Both dimensions together continue the
creative activity of Atum's original “spitting,” which had generated and
brought them forth in the first place. And in this manner they, in turn,
generate a next hypostasis, one that would exhibit slightly more visible (or
more easily imaginable) contours.
Atum in the form of High Hill created Shu and Tefnut, a brother
and sister pair of twins. In terms of cosmographic visualization, Shu pushed
forth from the solid Hill as a force of life—as a soul-charged divine breath of
air. Within
Shu, and to the limits of Shu, there arched together with him a
kind of feminine “order” or “firmament.” In the Hebrew creation story this
firmament was established by God for the orderly purpose of separating the
waters above from those below (Genesis 1:6–7). Theologians at
This entire trinitarian portion of the Ninefoldness and
All-God, Atum together with Shu and Tefnut, at the demise of ancient Egyptian
culture was transposed by Plotinus into Greek-looking philosophy: into One
Father (Atum), Mind (Mahet), and Soul (Shu). Around that time it was also
transposed by Christian theologians into Father (Atum), Son (Shu), and Holy
Spirit (Mahet).
Modern connoisseurs of origin stories may be baffled by the
very basic anthropomorphic demeanor of
These ancient Egyptians felt only slightly uneasy about
cultivating a masturbation metaphor in their high theology. Their uneasiness
stemmed not from a realization that sexual prowess was unbecoming of a
God-of-gods. On the contrary; it stemmed rather from the fact that God's sexuality
could be imitated somewhat at the lowest human level, at a scale far too small
to be kept lastingly in reverential focus. They therefore broadened their
sexual metaphor in light of analogous emission processes—spitting and expectoration—which,
it turned out, were scarcely more endearing to later Indo-European dualistic
theological sensibilities.
The Third Hypostasis (Level 3)
Geb
and Nut are the manifest divinities at this level (see Figure 7). Together they
represent a hypostasis in which anthropomorphic conceptualization and
cosmological visualization have come together. Ancient Egyptian artists
themselves have drawn our illustration for this hypostasis. They were in the
habit of drawing the contours of Geb and Nut in various degrees of
anthropomorphism and sexual explicitness. The preceding illustrations in this
book, depicting more elementary hypostases, were drawn as backward projections
based on descriptive statements.
Geb as Father Earth and Nut as Mother Sky, nevertheless,
constitute an anomaly among the mythologies of humankind. In most other
cosmogonies the Sky is Father and the ever-bearing Earth is recognized as
Mother. But Egyptian royalty has identified itself unambiguously with the life-evoking
splendor of the sun. Kings preferred to be born from on high, “trailing clouds
of glory” as William Wordsworth would have said.
Figure 7. Geb as Father
Earth is represented in person and by his emblem, the
Great Cackler, on the left. He rises to meet Mother Sky, Nut, who
arches above him. Their father Shu, on the
right, proceeds to separate them. Together they illustrate the
Egyptian cosmology-theology in the
anthropomorphic mode Twenty-first Dynasty Papyrus of Tameniu,
The geo-focal myth that describes the emergence of Atum as a
rising hill, or a rising phallus, has given direction to the generative nature
of all subsequent hypostases. It has established the primacy of the masculine
dimension of Atum-Ra as godhead in the personae of Shu, Geb, and Osiris. It has
kept Egyptian royal masculinity anchored solidly on earth and has bestowed upon
pharaohs the authority to administer and to rule “the heritage of Geb”; that
is, the visible earth. The pharaoh as a divine predator and Horus-falcon,
having been born from on high, thus was empowered to rule all that lived or
grew on earth. By extension, he also ruled everything that was mummified and
buried in it.
From Level 2 onward in the creative process, the texts read as
though the deity is emanating by way of perpetual sexual union between its Shu
and its Tefnut aspects. Cosmographically speaking, from the perspective of an
earthling observing Level 3, it also would have been difficult to perceive how
far the body of Geb, the male, reached and where the body of Nut, the female,
began. Some descriptions given in Pyramid and Coffin Texts nevertheless are
very explicit theography—pornographic theography in fact.[7]
That such a very intimate engagement has lead to pregnancy and offspring in
another hypostasis should come as no surprise.
All the while, no negative valuations have been intended by
these stark depictions. The visible world, which was the subject matter of
graphic, sculpted, and scribal depictions, was never more than low-intensity
divine reality. Our low-intensity material world is perceived by human eyes as
being generated, by ka energies, from shadow contrasts over against what
ontologically speaking amounts to even less—chaotic Nun or nonbeing.
Atum, that is, Shu and Tefnut together, procreated Geb and Nut.
These two offspring together constitute the more or less “visible” Father Earth
and Mother Sky. Cosmographically, it may be said that the creative emissions of
Atum, by which Shu and Tefnut have come to occupy a joint visible realm of life
and order, have with the appearance of Geb and Nut come into sharper focus.
Father Geb can be felt, seen, and understood much more easily than his still
invisible father Shu. His concrete outlines can clearly be discerned and can
even be modified by human hands and skill. Mother Nut can be visualized as
well. In the azure sky she can be seen as being there. Though, everyone will
admit that seeing her, and her attempts at concealing her nudity, requires a
healthy dose of masculine imagination—which, we may safely assume, presented
no real obstacle to Egyptian priests.[8]
In this manner the godhead Atum displays his otherwise hidden
nature, channeled through the still invisible personae of Shu and Tefnut. His
essence appears diluted, of course, as it is made visible in the ba
modes of Geb and Nut. But all such light-and-shadow apparitions happen for the
benefit of human eyes whose ability to perceive is limited to that outer
boundary of Nun-tainted reality.
The Fourth Hypostasis (Level 4)
With
Mother Sky and Father Earth now having come into better focus, the Egyptian
world was ready to have still more specific divine births occur. From Geb and
Nut were born two brother and sister pairs of twin gods: Osiris with Isis, and
Nephthys with Seth (see Figure 8). These twin pairs were envisioned
anthropomorphically or, sometimes, were seen as existing in a twilight
condition of prehuman flux. As gods at Level 4 they appeared and operated
understandably on a smaller and more visible scale than their great parent(s).
At this level of specificity the Egyptian godhead sponsored and renewed
divine-human kingship in the world of Egyptian planters and domesticators—in
the visible realm that was the lowest visible level of his emanation.
Figure 8. Seth and
Nephthys, Osiris and Isis. These children of Geb and Nut
occupy the lowest rank in the Heliopolitan Ennead, at Level 4;
they exist low enough to participate more
intimately in the human experience of life and death, at Level 5.
Drawn after Bonnet, and Erman (1934).
Gods of this fourth hypostasis, or “generation,” function primarily
along the outer edge, the turnaround curve and perimeter of divine emanation.
Nephthys, as goddess of the home fire, was credited with having suckled and
nurtured young Horus kings. Seth, as god of desert heat and of enemy lands, has
been saddled with the blame and responsibility for having death occur. He was
the one who stopped living Horus kings dead in their tracks; and he transformed
them into corpses, that is, into Osiris natures. Because this involves a
bonafide male member of the Ennead, one can assume that Atum's phallus somehow
was also present for Seth—but the “sexual” distinguishing mark of Seth happens
to be a hunter's or a warrior's phallic aberration: a deadly weapon with which
to stab and to kill. By contrast, Osiris is the real phallus bearer of this
generation of Enneadean gods. He procreated all subsequent Horus-kings of
The Turnaround Realm (Level 5)
The
gods who may be mentioned together with the outermost generation of the
Ennead, and in association with the “turnaround realm,” played major roles in
Egyptian funerary proceedings, at least in so far as these proceedings were
overshadowed by Helipolitan theology. Foremost among these lesser gods may be
mentioned Horus, Thoth, and Anubis (see Figure 9). Horus represented any duly
installed Egyptian king—a divine falcon-king. The ibis-headed Thoth was scribe
and keeper of the divine words; he was later in Memphite theology rediscovered
as tongue of the All-God, Ptah. The ibis-headed Thoth and the jackal-headed
Anubis belonged to some kind of lower or “lesser Ennead.” At the same time,
Horus in the “turnaround realm” became associated more personally and
intimately with the “great” Ennead. As the son of Isis and Osiris he seems to
have functioned at times almost as the Ennead's “tenth” member.
Figure 9. Left to right:
Horus, Thoth, and Anubis. Drawn after Erman (1934).
Of course, in the Heliopolitan perspective these lesser gods
are created, like everything else in the cosmos, by that same emanation that
also generates the primary hypostases of the Ennead itself. Everything that
now exists comes into existence as Atum. In Atum's emanation all creatures live
and move and have their being.
The cosmos was generated by Atum alone, first; and from that
point on simultaneously by the trinity composed of Atum, Shu, and Tefnut. By
the same divine breath of Shu and presence of Tefnut was generated the visible
cosmos—by Atum himself or by his trinity simultaneously—for the All-God to
become increasingly more apparent to humankind as Geb and Nut (see Figure 10).
Figure 10. Directionality and levels in Heliopolitan
theogony and funerary soteriology
It just so happened that
various Egyptian local traditions cultivated additional divine manifestations
and saviors who had to be reckoned with. The wise theologians of Junu knew how
to accommodate them all in their system. Some of these divinities found new
roles to play along the lower end of an already variegated Enneadean emanation.
They found new ways “to surf,” as it were, on the waves that rolled along the
outer perimeter of Atum's emanation. They helped reverse the fates and redirect
the movement of ka sparks, of life-souls, who had become estranged from
their source and gotten caught up in the shadow play and confusion that exists
in the vicinity of moribund bodies.
Some such lower gods were called upon to serve as preparers,
guides, and conveyors of life souls during funerary proceedings. Anubis was
undertaker; and Thoth officiated as priestly scribe. In performing their saving
tasks these extra gods interacted with some of the lower among the divinities
of the Greater Ennead. Turnaround assistance frequently also was provided by
Nephthys and Isis. The significance of Horus to Egyptian soteriology and the
funerary cult increased during the Intermediary Period (2181–2040 B.C.E.), when
patricians availed themselves of royal Heliopolitan soteriology. In Coffin
Texts the god Horus is recognized as a living savior symbol unto whom, on his
way home to the godhead, a deceased's soul could attach itself for easier
travel. For some returning souls Horus even had become the focus of mystic
re-identification with
divinity.
The ability of Horus to function as a son of God and savior of
humankind is underwritten by Heliopolitan imperial mythology. Horus, the divine
falcon-king of United Egypt, was a son of the god Osiris and of his mother Isis
who, for the
purpose of enthronement rites, embodied the Egyptian throne. Every
divinely installed Egyptian king was ceremonially reborn from her—upon that
throne. Then, when a ruling god-king of
When a deceased pharaoh was put into his coffin he represented
the potentially creative and masculine Atum-Shu-Geb-Osiris “phallus” dimension.
Isis—and we may refer to her as representing the feminine Atum-Tefnut-Nut-Isis
“hand” dimension—hovered over the entombed royal body of Osiris to be
impregnated by him.
Inside on many ancient Egyptian coffin
lids was painted an image of
Repeatable cycles, of God begetting a son to rule the human
realm of
The Homeward Journey
In Pyramid Texts, as well as in the Coffin
Texts later on, Helipolitan “theogony” or “cosmogony” are explained only
incidentally. The primary concern of all ancient Egyptian funerary texts is,
necessarily, the journey of ka souls homeward to the godhead. Therefore
it has become necessary for us to discuss “generation and emanation,” and even
the “turnaround realm” as preliminary and as derived conceptualizations.
Levels 6 through 9 can be understood more easily by turning
directly to the textual data. Excerpts from Pyramid and Coffin Texts, which
will be presented below, will provide direct imagery and samples from Egyptian
soteriology. Materials that are as foreign to modern minds as the funerary
utterances of several millennia ago are best understood when they are left to
speak for themselves. Extensive commentaries tend to obscure what in the
original context might seem only quaint.
The commentary in the next two sections will be kept to a
minimum. It can be abbreviated further with the help of the reference numbers
introduced in Figure 10. These numbers will help link theogonic hypostases
(Levels 1 through 4) with “way stations” along the soul's journey homeward to
the godhead (Levels 6 through 9).
All the while, it will
be good to keep in mind that reference numbers for hypostases, along the
generative flow of divine life force, correspond to numbers assigned along the
homeward path in the following manner: 1 corresponds to 9,
Heliopolitan Theology in the Pyramid Texts
This section
focuses on a small selection of pyramid texts that may be useful for sketching
Heliopolitan theology logically and coherently. Critics of our present approach
to ancient Egyptian religion, who hitherto may have prejudged Egyptian
"polytheism" vis-à-vis Hebrew "monotheism," probably will
want to insist on the absolute individuality of each and every Egyptian
divinity. But, be that as it may, this writer is saddled with the historical
and human obligation to visualize ancient peoples in light of how they
themselves might have lived out their finitude vis-à-vis greater-than-human
realities—or might have accepted their temporality in light of their own
glimpses of eternity. Hebrew religion, Greek philosophy, and Christian theology
are latecomers. From their respective places in history they have no parental
claims over early Egyptian religion.
Logic is not
abandoned when one tries to understand human existence the ancient Egyptian
way; namely, from the perspective of divinely radiated energy and life, from
within emanations of divine purpose and pleasure, or from sun rays which in
turn engender what we, nowadays, regard as being more "substantial"
protoplasm and genes. The ancient stream of a godhead's conscious emanations
surely will outlive our finite spans of memory, our schizophrenias and mental
traumas. Eternity itself will arbitrate between moribund analytic and
disjunctive reasoning, on one hand, and the type of holistic reasoning which
was cherished by Heliopolitan priests on the other.
Pyramid Texts 1248-49
The portion of liturgical utterance
that follows affirms the self-createdness of Atum and suggests a method by
which the godhead might reasonably have generated or given birth to his next
hypostasis, Shu and Tefnut. Concerning Levels 1 and 2 we are given an
anthropomorphic explanation of the theogonic and emanational dimension of
Egyptian mythology.[9]
Atum is he who [gave pleasure to himself]
in On. He took his phallus in his grasp that he might create orgasm by means of
it, and so were born the twins Shu and Tefnut. May they put the King between
them.[10]
Kurt Sethe's
translation suggests the primeval givenness of the phallus-in-hand situation, a
creative process, rather than the volition of God to create in that manner:
Atum ist der [von selbst] entstand, der
mit sich onanierte in
This soteriological
utterance delivers the returning king directly into the arms of the godhead, at
Levels 8 and 9, which, of course, correspond to Levels 2 and 1 along the path
of emanation. More precisely, the king is placed smack between Shu and Tefnut.
He has returned to the primeval moment, or to the primeval condition, at
which and in which all subsequent gods and life-souls have had prior
existence. Atum's emanation as Shu and Tefnut constitutes a trinity. One must
keep in mind that both aspects of the deceased, his Shu and Tefnut relatedness,
are subsequently engaged in creative sexual union and that between these two is
no empty space for a separate royal personage to coexist. The king therefore is
mentioned here as being "set among the gods" after the manner in
which all gods and hypostases blend into one another. Being an Osiris spark of ka,
the deceased king henceforth is contained in the All-God and participates in
his creative self-emanation, more intimately now than prior to having suffered
death. In the final analysis, the king who is "set among the gods" is
situated "within the godhead." He returns home to the source of all
being, at Level 1 and 9.
Pyramid Texts 1652-55
The royal pyramid dedicated by the words that follow here
has been built in the realm of ontological turnaround, at Level 5. All the
while, the theogony is invoked along its entire dimension. The entire creative
Ennead is mentioned in its full spatial presence (Levels 1-4). This is done to
arrange a mystic primeval union of the king's pyramid with Atum himself. It was
understood that, by dying, the ruler will have achieved a mystic union of
sorts, with the edifice he had built. In it he was to rest as an Osirian
corpse. It is Atum's own embrace that bridges or collapses the distance from
Level 5 through 9:
O Atum-Khoprer, you became high on the
height, you rose up as the bnbn-stone in the Mansion of the "
O Atum, set your protection over this
King, over this pyramid of his, and over this construction of the King, prevent
anything from happening evilly against it for ever, just as your protection was
set over Shu and Tefnut. O you Great Ennead which is in On—Atum, Shu, Tefnut,
Geb, Nut, Osiris,
Pyramid Texts 167-78
Defeated by Seth at Level 5, the
Egyptian Horus-king was transformed into the condition of Osiris who exists at
Level 4 and 6. It is noteworthy regarding the liturgical utterance that follows
that its writers have not found it necessary to acknowledge the god
Osiris—apart from the presence of the mummified body of the king. Had they done
so, Osiris would have been invoked between the lines that address Nut and
O Atum, this one here is your son Osiris
whom you
have caused to be restored that he may
live...
O Shu, this one here is your son Osiris...
O Tefnut, this one here is your son Osiris...
O Geb, this one here is your son Osiris...
O Nut, this one here is your son Osiris...
O Isis, this one here is your brother
Osiris...
O Seth, this one here is your brother
Osiris...
O Nephthys, this one here is your brother
Osiris...
O Thoth, this one here is your brother
Osiris...
O Horus, this one here is your father
Osiris...
O Great Ennead, this one here is Osiris...
O Lesser Ennead, this one here is
Osiris...[12]
Pyramid Texts 1660-62
Inasmuch as the temple compound
at Junu contained two sanctuaries, one for Atum and another for Ra-Herachte,
the duality of the godhead as "rising Ra" and "setting
Atum" seems to have been an early aspect of the Heliopolitan cult.
Therefore, even at its cultic core has the theological oneness of the godhead
contained this directional East/West duality. The exact path of reasoning along
which the one dual God, Atum-Ra, first was perceived as a Shu and Tefnut
duality perhaps no longer is traceable. In the text quoted next it appears as
though, initially at
O you Great Ennead which is in On
[Heliopolis], make the King's [name] endure, make this pyramid for this King
and this construction of his endure forever, just as the name of Atum who presides
over the Great Ennead endures. As the name of Shu, Lord of
Pyramid Texts 447-49
The soteriology expressed in the
next selection focuses on Levels 8 and 9, thus on Ruti and Atum. Shu and Tefnut
as lion pair, or Ruti, are implored to grant to the deceased king safe passage
past their own divine presences along the horizon. This implies that the
deceased is now on his way home to the first and eternal One, Atum.
You have your offering-bread, O Atum and
Ruti,
Who yourself created your godheads and
your persons.
O Shu and Tefnut who made the gods,
Who begot the gods and established the
gods:
Tell your father
That the King has propitiated you with
your dues.
You shall not hinder the King
When he crosses to him at the horizon,
For the King knows him and knows his name;
"Eternal" is his name;
"The Eternal Lord of the Year"
is his name.
In support of Level
8 and 9 soteriology, this passage also makes reference to Levels 1 and 2 at the
generative or theogonic side. Atum is acknowledged as the original godhead who
created his own masks, personae, duality or plurality of gods. Shu and Tefnut
are credited with having subsequently begotten other gods. And, as everywhere
in the Heliopolitan system, soteriology in this passage is based on the
trinitarian theogony and theology of Atum, Shu, and Tefnut.
Pyramid Texts 552-53
The deceased king's
identification with Shu and Tefnut, at Level 8, explains his new mode of
existence. His hunger and thirst are satisfied after the manner in which gods
satisfy theirs. The "morning-bread which comes in due season" seems
to provide a cosmological hint: Shu as air, and Tefnut—as sunlight that
introduces order, perhaps—appear themselves to be nourished when together they
consume the morning dew:
I will not be
thirsty by reason of Shu, I will not be hungry by reason of Tefnut...
My hunger is from
the hand of Shu, my thirst is from the hand of Tefnut,
but I live on the morning-bread which
comes in due season.
I live on that whereon Shu lives, I eat of
that whereof Tefnut eats.
Pyramid Texts 1817-18
Although the syntax of the next
text is somewhat problematic, it nevertheless is clear enough to provide a hint
about the interrelatedness of Shu and Atum. Atum's phallus is on Shu. By
extension, in light of the importance of the phallus for Osiris-Isis mythology
and coronation mythology, one might surmise that subsequently it is thought to
be also on Geb and Osiris.
O Shu, you enclose
for yourself all things within your embrace [...]
this Osiris the King; may you prevent him
from escaping [from you...]
of Atum, whose phallus is on you, that you
may be [...] his ka; may you protect him...
Pyramid Texts 2065-67
The various hypostases of the
godhead are in the course of a funerary washing rite visualized as a flow of
pure water that originates with Atum the father, or with Shu and Tefnut.
Immersed in this "baptismal" flow of living water the king is made
divine for his return journey to the Father:
Behold this King, his feet are kissed by the
pure waters which exist through Atum, which the phallus of Shu makes and which
the vagina of Tefnut creates. They have come and have brought to you the pure
waters with their father; they cleanse you and make you divine, O King. You
shall support the sky with your hand, you shall lay down the earth with your
foot...
Inasmuch as in
Egyptian iconography Shu frequently is depicted as the one who lifts up Mother
Sky with his hands, the last phrase in this statement may provide a cosmogonic
hint about Tefnut. By contrast, she seems to be the one who laid down Father
Earth, with her foot—with the force of her light that introduces order,
perhaps.[13]
Pyramid Text 1405
An invocation addressed to Tefnut provides a further hint about her place in
theogony and cosmology: "The earth is raised on high under the sky by your
arms, O Tefnut, and you have taken the hands of Ra..."
Thus, Tefnut's
function is complementary to that of her brother Shu. As masculine
manifestation of the divine life force, Shu supports the arching sky goddess,
Nut, for Geb. Tefnut as female life force is found balancing the Heliopolitan
ontology on a larger scale than Nut. Her presence delimits the masculine earth
god, Geb, and also sustains his passion and his masculinity to arch skyward.
Pyramid Text 1443
The deceased king presents
himself to the sun god, Ra, in hope of being given conveyance across the sky.
The sun deity here is acknowledged as born from Nut, upon the arms of Shu and
Tefnut. No contradiction between this and earlier Pyramid Text selections is
implied. As cosmic mother, the sky goddess Nut manifests herself from within
Tefnut as well as participates in the function of the prior "hand" of
Atum. The daily birth of Ra, from Nut, repeats the primordial sunburst of light
that has issued from Atum's phallic hill.
The face of the sky is washed, the
celestial expanse is bright, the god is given birth by the sky upon the arms of
Shu and Tefnut, upon my arms.
Apparently the
deceased king, though he introduces himself a little later in Pyramid Text 1448
merely as a son of Geb and Osiris (Levels 3 and 4), nevertheless identifies
here his own arms with the primeval arms of Shu and Tefnut (Level 2), to
obligate the sun god toward him as a brother, perhaps.
Pyramid Text 1066
This formation in which the soul
returns to Atum may have been determined by the theogonic sequence. The
emanation called Tefnut emerged from Atum "behind" her brother Shu.[14] It would follow, therefore, that, on a
corresponding return journey of souls to Atum, at Levels 8 and 9, the order of
these divinities is reversed:
I am a man of Dendera, I have come from
Dendera with Shu behind me, Tefnut before me, and Wepwawet clad[?] at my right
hand.
Pyramid Texts 1466-69
Egyptian priests were capable of
reasoning at various ontological levels. This much is demonstrated by the text
given next. Indeed, everyone knew how Egyptian kings were born first of human
mothers, bodily, onto this earth. And surely, many people also knew that during
coronation rites their kings were reborn as Horus gods, from the womb of Isis
who was present as throne. Being a member of the lowest Enneadean hypostasis,
The King's mother was pregnant with him,
[even he] who was in the Lower Sky, the King was fashioned by his father Atum before
the sky existed, before earth existed, before men existed, before the gods were
born, before death existed.... the King will not die because of any dead, for
the King is an Imperishable Star, son of the sky-goddess who dwells in the
Mansion of Selket. Ra has taken this King to himself to the sky so that this
King may live, just as he who enters in the west of the sky lives when he goes
up in the east of the sky.
Truly, this text
resonates in harmony with such famous post-Egyptian statements as "before
Abraham was I am," or, "the child is father of the man." In any
case, the deceased king returned to his point of origin. He participated in the
eternity of the sun god Ra as well as in the total godhead, Atum-Ra.
Pyramid Text 841-43
The liturgical context of the
next statements is not difficult to surmise. They belonged to a purification
rite that was performed during funerary proceedings.
O King, stand up, that you may be pure and
that your ka may be pure, for Horus has cleansed you with cold water. Your
purity is the purity of Shu; your purity is the purity of Tefnut; your purity
is the purity of the four house spirits when they rejoice in Pe.
Be pure! Your mother Nut the great
Protectress purifies you, she protects you. "Take your head, gather your
bones together," says Geb. "The evil which is on this King is
destroyed, the evil which was on him is brought to an end," says Atum.
The exhortation to
the deceased king begins here in the turnaround realm at Level 5 and it covers
the entire distance from there back to Atum, at Level 9. The purity that is
achieved provides the rising and returning king with an affinity to all major
hypostases or divinities along the way—to four house spirits, to Nut and Geb,
and to Shu and Tefnut-guaranteed and decreed all along by the eternal godhead
himself.[15]
Pyramid Texts 2051-53
Many commentaries on Egyptian
religion fail to recognize the unity of the Ennead as constituting a single
godhead. The English rendition of the following text provides an occasion to address
this issue:
If the King be caused to be embalmed, the
[female] Great One will fall before the King, for the King's mother is Nut, the
King's (grand)father is Shu, the King's (grand)mother is Tefnut, they take the
King to the sky, to the sky, on the smoke of incense.
As a meticulous
translator, R. O. Faulkner has added the parenthetical generational indicators
(grand)father Shu and (grand)mother Tefnut. That would definitely be an
improvement if, in an absolute specific sense, the goddess Nut could be
identified as the King's mother. But divine relationships in ancient
However, now that
the king is dead and being contemplated in his Osirian condition, Nut indeed is
his proper mother and, generationally speaking, his (grand)parents are those
whom Faulkner has designated. Nevertheless, theologically speaking no family
tree with specific branches need be concocted in this case. Heliopolitan
theology regards all masculine manifestations in the Enneadean godhead as one Father.
Likewise, it regards all feminine manifestations as one Mother.
It makes little
sense to speak here of specific generations of gods as if their family tree had
become known, as is the case with mortals, in linear time. Family trees with
fixed and immutable branches make sense only in the realm of mortals among whom
sequence and death are significant existential boundaries. All along in this
presentation, the term generation must be understood in its gerundial sense—of
the godhead "generating" or "procreating" his very own
hypostases. Enneadean theology collapses the divine "family tree"
into a single process of emanation. Divine "generations" that precede
the human level of existence do not die. Atum is godhead, he lives as Shu and
Tefnut, he lives as Geb and Nut, and he lives as the remainder of the Ennead
combined.
Thus, the deceased
king in this instance is carried as ka or divine Osiris-soul to the sky,
ritually on the smoke of incense but ontologically by Shu and Tefnut. He is
carried by these parental deities past the hypostasis of Geb and Nut, all the
way home to Atum.
Pyramid Texts 1687-95
The deceased king has traveled
in the bark of the sun god toward the western horizon, as though he were the very
son of Nut, the sun god Ra himself. Before he died, the king had lived in human
flesh, temporarily, for the worthy purpose of ruling
Go aboard this bark of Ra... in which Ra
rows to the horizon, that you may go aboard it as Ra; sit on this throne of Ra
that you may give orders to the gods, because you are Ra who came forth from
Nut who bears Ra daily, and you are born daily like Ra..."Who is like
him?" say the two great and mighty Enneads who preside over the Souls of
On. These two great and mighty gods who preside over the Field of Rushes
install you upon the throne of Horus as their firstborn; they set Shu for you
on your east side and Tefnut on your west side, Nu on your south side and Nenet
on your north side; they guide you to these fair and pure seats of theirs which
they made for Ra when they set him on their thrones.... Do not be far removed
from the gods, so that they may make for you this utterance which they made for
Ra-Atum who shines every day. They will install you upon their thrones at the
head of all the Ennead(s) as Ra and as his representative. They will bring you
into being like Ra in this his name of Khoprer; you will draw near to them like
Ra in this his name of Ra; you will turn aside from their faces like Ra in this
his name of Atum.
In the second
portion of this important text the individual gods gather to make enabling
utterances—of the kind they made when they empowered Ra-Atum, the one who
shines every day. Of course, this is bloated poetry that reverses orthodox
cosmic causality. Originally Atum-Ra himself empowered everyone and everything
else. Such ambitious poetry was concocted to lend credence to priest-craft and
statecraft in the lower visible regions. So it may seem from an outsider's
perspective. But what if these gods have all along been no more than ka
manifestations of the All-God?
Be that as it may,
Ra, like Khoprer the cosmic dung beetle, brings forth the visible sun. When he
shines from on high as sun, Ra is godhead in his manifest mode; after he sets
as sun and hides in darkness this same godhead is more appropriately named
Atum. While a deceased Egyptian king traveled so in the company of Ra, he
participated for a while longer in the administration of the cosmos. But he
went his way, just the same, to fuse again his ka with Atum-Ra, the total
godhead.
Noteworthy in all
these texts is the ease with which the plurality of the Ennead(s) is made to
blend into a single godhead. The difference between polytheism and monotheism,
or pantheism for that matter, generally is one of perspective and focus. And
this perspective, or focus, ordinarily is a function of a mortal person's
degree of ego-assertion or ego-surrender vis-à-vis the gods or God. It is a
question of whether human wills can be pious enough to permit their God to show
a single face or more than one—or to show no specific face at all—at any given
moment in time. Pantheistic revelations generally reflect a condition of mystic
surrender, wherein the human ego has surrendered to a single God as an
"All-God." Pantheism is no more and no less than a mystic's maximum
version of monotheism.
Pyramid Texts 1773-74
Here again the king ascends as
Ra to shine back upon
The King passes the night, having daily
mounted up to Ra, and the shrine is opened for him when Ra shines. The King has
ascended on a cloud, he has descended [...] Mahet in the presence of Ra on that
day of the Festival of the First of the year.
Pyramid Texts 1582-83
As in the preceding text, so too
in the following one, the king is destined to shine Mahet (the divinity of
order and righteousness) that represses wrongdoing. This is considered an
extension of his royal duties that he performed while ruling
May you shine as Ra; repress wrongdoing,
cause Mahet to stand behind Ra, shine every day for him who is in the horizon
of the sky. Open the gates which are in the Abyss.
It appears as
though Mahet is envisioned here as a form of Tefnut who, in cosmogonic
sequence, emerged from Atum "behind" Shu. This possibility must be
considered again later, in relation to Coffin Texts, Spells 76 and 80.
Pyramid Text 5
The deceased king is loved by
the gods, especially by the sky goddess, Nut (Level 3). According to divine gossip,
which somehow had reached the ears of knowledgeable priests in Heliopolis, Nut
as sky goddess was more lovingly disposed toward this particular deceased
pharaoh than toward her own mother—or more than Tefnut was. In either case,
Enneadean divine love flows outward—flows downward in the direction of king and
humankind.
Recitation by Nut the great:... The King
is my son of my desire....All the gods say: Your father Shu knows that you love
the King more than your mother Tefnut.
Pyramid Texts 1353-54
Cosmologically speaking, the
realm of Shu and Tefnut is situated in the upward direction. Hence, the
deceased's soul is "raised aloft" on the hands of these divinities.
Moving in the upward direction, the homeward bound soul arrives where Nut arches
as firmament (Level 7), as celestial manifestation of Atum. We are told that
previously, at Level 5, Nephthys sustained the king:
Your water jar is firm...you are raised
aloft on the hands of Shu and Tefnut in the Mansion of Her who provides, O
King, because you are a spirit whom Nephthys suckled with her left breast.
Pyramid Texts 2097-99
The embalmed and wrapped corpse
of the king participates in the nature of Osiris, his face wears a jackal mask,
and his ka is now wrapped in Atum's own divine flesh, which, of course,
is not "flesh." The return of a king to the primordial condition is
indicated by allusion to very archaic "prehuman flux" hunter
mythology.[16]
Thus begins the king's homeward journey at Level 5. Inasmuch as Shu and Tefnut
themselves are his primary guides, his complete return to the godhead is
assured.
This King comes provided as a god, his
bones knit together as Osiris....Your face is that of a jackal, your flesh is
that of Atum, your soul is within you, your power is about you, Isis is before
you and Nephthys is behind you, you encompass the Horite Mounds and you go
round about the Sethite Mounds, it is Shu and Tefnut who guide you when you go
forth from On.
Pyramid Texts 1984-85
The deceased king's destination
once again is the source of all being, Atum. He is the "great god" as
long as oneness is considered (Level 9). Shu and Tefnut are his designation
when he is contemplated as twofold hypostasis (Level 8). To invoke the
assistance of Shu and Tefnut as ferry gods who "row," considered within
the trinitarian logic of Junu, implies nothing less than that the great godhead
himself conveys the deceased king unto himself.
...you go forth that you may go up to the
broad hall of Atum, travel to the Field of Rushes, and traverse the places of the
great god. The sky is given to you; [it is] the good great gods who row you,
(even) Shu and Tefnut, the two great gods of On.
Pyramid Text 1739
The king's progress is assured
because he is being carried homeward by Ra, or by Atum-Ra. The divine and royal
status of the god, as carrier of the sun, does not permit him to weaken or to
turn back on his path. In addition, the king's progress during his journey is
guaranteed because he is carried along, not only by the self-conscious and
dependable sun god, but also by Tefnut and Shu:
...Tefnut seizes
you, Shu grips you; the Majesty of Ra will not turn back in the horizon, for
every god sees him.
Heliopolitan Theology in the Coffin Texts
The second stratum of
literary sources for Heliopolitan theology are Coffin Texts from the First
Intermediary Period and the Middle Kingdom (2133-1786 B.C.E.). These were
written on inside surfaces of wooden coffins on behalf of patrician owners who
had status and wealth. Their material possessions afforded these mortals not
only more elaborate funerals and prestigious burial facilities but also higher
status in relation to the gods, thus, a better entry into afterlife.
Like the Pyramid
Texts after which they were modeled, Coffin Texts are spells or "strong
prayers" that, in the obvious presence of death, affirm and insist on more
life. Generally these affirmations proceed on the assumption that the deceased
person will be able to achieve a special mystic relationship with a great
deity. The divinities on whom Middle Kingdom patricians depended were not
low-ranking gods at Level 5 who could, just possibly, be persuaded to serve as
guides to realms beyond. Rather, a dying person of rank identified himself or
herself in the manner of superior pharaohs during the Old Kingdom, thus, with
the greatest divine presences whom he or she dared approach.
Among the various
theologies quoted for existential reinforcement in Middle Kingdom coffin
spells, the Heliopolitan theology still appears the most coherent. This state
of affairs attests to the fact that the Old Kingdom priests of Junu, who
composed spells for inscription in royal pyramids, were able to perpetuate
their theological tradition throughout the period of Egypt's first major
political crisis, the Intermediary Period, which lasted from 2181 to 2040
B.C.E.
The Heliopolitan
"Ennead," or "Ninefoldness," was understood by orthodox
Egyptian theologians to be one All-God; that is, as a single divine reality or
process that has manifested itself in causal succession, contemporaneously, as
nine divine personae in four pairs.
Heliopolitan
mythology assured that, on the death or Osirization of a Horus-king, his
ceremonial offspring would be born as the next new Horus-king unto the throne
of Egypt. This ritualization of the political process allowed for a measure of
flexibility in the choice of royal successors; it also made the rare
changeovers to other dynasties less traumatic than otherwise they could have
been. Isis represented the feminine divine throne on whose lap a duly installed
king was ceremonially reborn.
Nevertheless, even
in the context of idealistic mythology, this royal "soteriology" has
produced its own bout of fighting between Horus and Seth. Only the intervention
of a third god, Thoth, who was known as a god of wisdom, could return this
ritualized defense of Osiris's honor on the part of his successor Horus—or,
could whitewash a new dynasty's violent takeover—to a state of normalcy. Thoth
himself healed the wounds of the divine combatants, and thereby the new king
was endorsed to rule Egypt henceforth in peace.
All the while, the
decisive battle fought against Seth as the cause of death, and fought on behalf
of mortal humankind as much as it was for the continuity of the empire, was
thereby repeatedly postponed. That battle had to be remembered by each
succeeding generation and dealt with anew.
Alongside this
dynamic monotheistic theology and soteriology, the divine status of an Egyptian
pharaoh was also anchored in the sure fact and foil of his de facto human
mortality. Whereas a living pharaoh, as a divine Horus-falcon, represented the
first and highest human rank that emanated from the Ennead, a dying pharaoh
returned toward the Ennead, and the godhead, by virtue of being immediately
transformed into Osiris. Egyptian royalty thereby oscillated between membership
in the Ennead, on the one hand, and being anthropomorphically reborn as
Horus-falcon divinity, on the other.
Dying is the birth
process in reverse. Therefore, getting saved in the face of death required the
homeward movement of the human ka, swimming against the original
procreative flow of divine emission and emanation. Theologically this meant
that any mortal king who wished to preserve his royal status, or any king who
had just suffered the misfortunes of death, was able to view himself as someone
caught up in the original mythic "turnaround struggle" perpetually
being waged between Osiris and Seth. Any mortal king thereby could also participate
in Osiris' moment of truth—in his triumphant journey through death and in his
regenerative collaboration with Isis.
During the
Intermediate Period nobles of lesser rank usurped royal authority. They
continued doing so, still, during the Middle Kingdom by way of insisting on
equal burial status in relation to the ancient deified royalty. The cult that
served to save dead pharaohs during the Old Kingdom was expanded, during the
Middle Kingdom, to also include patricians. And then it was only a matter of time
before, during the New Kingdom, a democratization of afterworld status was
being claimed piecemeal by plebeians as well. Numerous papyri, found in New
Kingdom coffins of commoners, bear inscriptions of ancient spells that have
precedents on earlier coffin and pyramid walls. Their very existence attests to
a massive trend of democratization concerning status in the afterlife.
The insistence
among Egyptian common folk on royal status after death was internationalized
and universalized later in the wider Greco-Roman world, under the guise of
Hellenistic philosophy and various branches of "gnosticism." It also
was given new form by the Kingdom of Heaven movement founded by John the
Baptizer and continued by Jesus of Nazareth. All these trends of democratization
and universalization have undercut the divine status that hitherto was claimed
by human emperors and kings. So, for example, Jesus undertook to distribute
this divinely bestowed royal status as evenly as he could among those commoners
who followed in his footsteps as his brothers and sisters.
Freedom from grand
domestication systems—this our Western modern reformers should not forget—was
achieved by commoners in ancient Egypt first on behalf of their dead. It was
derived by the living later on from the status of privileged ghosts. Still
later, in the course of Christian history, egalitarian rights could be derived
from the royalty status that could be assumed by faith in a "kingdom of
heaven," another kind of world, which was open to all people. Equality and
freedom could and has been claimed, in each instance, by living folk who would
labor to accumulate sufficient merit and status for their personal
post-existence. Equality and freedom could be derived by modern democratic
revolutions from that greater-than-human dimension and extended, on
"afterlife credit," one might say, to all those who were willing to
die or to dedicate their dying to the cause of a more egalitarian democratic
order.
The selections from
among Coffin Texts in this section have been made on the basis of certain
emphases and themes in Heliopolitan theology, which are present in this second
stratum of Egyptian literature. These selections pertain (1) to general
theogony and the emergence of trinitarian theology as Atum, Shu, and Tefnut;
(2) to the soteriological functions of Isis and Horus proceeding at Level 5;
and (3) to the ensuing process of overt theologizing and latent philosophizing.
In conjunction with
our previous exposition of selected Pyramid Texts, the present selections from
among later Coffin Texts will add to our understanding of the larger ancient
Egyptian background. They will enable us to revise our historical understanding
of Hellenic philosophy, of Neoplatonism, and of the origins of Christendom and
Gnosticism.
Theogony and Cosmogony
Some of the most
informative sentences concerning Heliopolitan theogony and cosmogony, in the
published Coffin Texts, can be found among Spells 75, 76, 78 and 80. Spell 80
is the most explicit and deserves to be quoted at the outset in larger than
ordinary installments. The method to be followed for its exposition calls for
presentation and discussion of paragraph-size quotations, followed by
commentary on those excerpts.[17]
O you eight Chaos-gods, being truly
Chaos-god of the two Chaos-gods, who encircle the sky with your arms, who
gather together sky and earth for Geb, Shu fashioned you in chaos, in the
Abyss, in darkness and in gloom, and he allots you to Geb and Nut, while Shu is
everlasting and Tefnut is eternity. I am the soul of Shu at the head of the
celestial kine, who ascends to heaven at his desire, who descends to earth at
his wish. Come joyfully at meeting the god in me, for I am Shu whom Atum
fashioned, and this garment of mine is the air of life. A cry for me went forth
from the mouth of Atum, the air opened up upon my ways. It is I who make the
sky lighten after darkness, my pleasant [azure] colour is due to the air which
goes forth after me from the mouth of Atum, and the storm-cloud of the sky is
my efflux; hail-storms and dusk are my sweat. (Spell 80)
These opening words
are put in the mouth of Atum, the "soul of Shu." He addresses the
remaining Chaos-gods contained in his ninefoldness. The entire Heliopolitan
Ennead consists of Chaos-gods inasmuch as, together with Atum, the remaining
eight gods of the Ennead also have risen from chaos or Nun.
The second phrase
still addresses all the remaining gods, but it acknowledges that they are one
in number, at Level 1, and that there are two of them at Level 2. Together Shu
and Tefnut form a triune unity with Atum, the All-Father. As such their arms
embrace sky and earth and hold them together as the next explicit unit in which
life was to be generated and made possible. Shu, the masculine manifestation of
Atum, has fashioned the other gods in chaos inasmuch as, at Level 2 symbolism,
he represents the creative hill or phallus of Atum that, it is said, rose from
chaos or Nun.
We also learn that
the tenures of Shu and Tefnut are everlastingness and eternity. Accordingly, in
hope of its own eternity, the soul of a deceased person identifies with these
divinities who, initially, have contained all the primeval stirrings and all
the energies of life. Mystic identification with Shu makes sense, indeed,
because this god is air and life. To the extent that the god Shu is air, it
follows that he embodies the very life breath of Atum. The living breeze of Shu
also brings light after darkness, the dawn, and while doing so he radiates a pleasant
color. His masculine temper occasionally erupts in hailstorms whereas morning
and evening dew, it would seem, are his own gentle sweat.
The portion from
Spell 80 that follows next is central to understanding the dawning of Tefnut's
manifestation as Mahet. Atum has generated Shu and Tefnut and, in all
likelihood, Mahet is here identical with Tefnut.
Atum said: Tefnut is my living daughter;
she is (will be) with (her) brother Shu.[18]
His name is Living One; her name is Mahet
(Order).
I live with my two children; I live with
my two fledglings.
For I am before them; they are behind my
body to lift (me) up.[19]
I live with my daughter Mahet:
One (fem.) is within me; one (fem.) is
behind me.[20]
I have raised up upon because of them;
their two arms are behind me.
It is Geb who will live, (he) whom I begat
in my name...
(Spell 80)
I have obtained a
fresh translation for this passage because Faulkner's rendition assumed,
erroneously I suspect, that the text refers to two goddesses, Tefnut and Mahet.
To achieve his desired degree of separation between these two divine names,
Faulkner was obliged to disregard the predicated use of Mahet earlier—as in
"her (Tefnut's) name is Mahet." Concerning Tefnut he therefore
translated "righteousness is her name." In our next installment from
Spell 80, it will become clear that Mahet indeed is identical with Tefnut.
Also, quite
clearly, in the beginning Atum himself decreed creative togetherness for his
twin offspring, Shu and Tefnut. Shu is air, breath, and life whereas Tefnut is
containment and order (Mahet). But no sooner than the creative union of Life
and Order has been determined by the godhead, than he reflects on his continued
intimacy with his twin children—as a union and expression of himself. The goal
of this self-union of Atum as primal trinity is the procreation of Geb and
Nut—Father Earth and Mother Sky.
Faulkner's note 15, in his published translation, suggests
that two documents "erroneously" have named the son of Atum as Geb.
He insists that mythologically this son should be Shu. It is precisely this
sort of disjunctive reasoning, about ancient Egyptian theology, that has
obscured for modern minds the ancient Heliopolitan "riddle of life."
In the larger scope of Enneadean theology, Geb is not born as an estranged or
separate entity; he is never seen as being less than an emanation or
manifestation of Atum. Geb is only somewhat more distant from the All-Father
than is his immediate father Shu. As Father Earth, Geb simply is made to appear
a little more specific and concrete, that is, more visible than his immediate
sire Shu who represents Life or the invisible breath-soul of Life. We must
realize that in the Heliopolitan scheme of things, where generations of divine
creative phalluses are fused as manifestations of a single primeval rising
hill, a "grandson" remains always a son, and a son in turn continues
to emit the essence of his father(s) through his son(s).
So, who is within?
Who is behind? Who rises? And who embraces?
We are faced here
with a splendidly convoluted puzzle; namely, the Heliopolitan riddle of cosmos
and life. As one might expect, this puzzle of creation had to be stated in an
inverse mode from the familiar puzzle that all along has been attributed to the
Sphinx. The Sphinx, an afterworld guardian caught up between human and
mysterious animal existence, between the realms of the living and of those who
continue to exist in a state of twilight beyond prehuman and postmortem flux,
naturally belongs to the turnaround realm of Level 5. Accordingly, the riddle
of the Sphinx to King Oedipus pertained to aging and mortality. And, true to
her station in the scheme of things, the Sphinx traditionally has killed her
victims and therefore also had to be defeated, somehow.
But this, here, is
the much greater riddle about Atum as the source of all life and being. It
pertains to the secret of the All-God's mode of creation, to his generation and
his love, and to the intelligence he inspires. How does one go about searching
for an answer to this riddle? What, ontologically speaking, is the creative
dynamic within the first trinity of the Heliopolitan Ennead—within Atum, Shu,
and Tefnut? Can there, perchance, be found in the Kama Sutra an analogous
posture or relationship? Or perchance in the Perfumed Garden? There is no need
to make this ancient Egyptian riddle of divine life and existence more
complicated than it really is. There is no need to scavenge extravagances from
among the life-styles of mortals.
First, the phrase
"I have raised up upon because of them" surely links up, as do all
risings in Atum's realm, with the original rising of Atum as primeval hill and
creative phallus. However, in the present symbolic mode, the "hand"
of Atum, which served to give him creative pleasure in the context of Level 1
symbology (see Pyramid Text 1248), here is transposed appropriately to Level 2.
The All-God's "hand" thereby has become the "arms" or
embrace of Shu and Tefnut. Shu is the life-energy that issued forth; and Tefnut
is the containment, order, and firmament, an emanation of "hand,"
which Faulkner hedgingly has translated as "righteousness." Indeed,
righteousness in the sense of containment and order is what is meant when
Tefnut is referred to as Mahet.
It must be obvious
that this entire passage narrates a single event, the procreation or generation
of Geb and Nut by Atum. However, for that purpose Atum has appeared in the mode
of his Father-Son-Daughter (Atum-Shu-Tefnut) trinity. It should also be obvious
that both Shu and Tefnut are manifestations of Atum on a smaller scale. The
generative Atum contains and, in turn, is lovingly embraced by both of them. It
is equally obvious that the existential scopes of Geb and Nut are made
manifest, accordingly, in a still more specific and more visible manner than
the scopes of Shu and Tefnut. In turn, the specific offspring of Geb and Nut
have become manifest on a still smaller scale; they have become much more
visible at the lower existential frequencies of Level 4.
The answer to our
riddle lies at hand. Indeed, in this primeval embrace of one, two, and three
divine personae, the arms—and with confidence one could even add the
legs—embraced the primeval Atum who as primeval hill and phallus was contained
within that self-same embrace; namely, within a single unit of divine creative
pleasure. Atum's phallus, and that much we have learned already from the
Pyramid Texts, for the purpose of creation was on Shu as well.
Nu(n) said to Atum: Kiss your daughter
Mahet, put her at your nose, that your heart may live, for she [they] will not
be far from you; Mahet is your daughter and your son is Shu whose name lives.
Eat of your daughter Mahet; it is your son Shu who will raise you up.
I indeed am one who lives, son of Atum; he
has fashioned me with his nose, I have gone forth from his nostrils; I have put
myself on his neck and he kisses me with my sister Mahet. He rises daily when
he issues from his egg which the god who went up shining fashioned....
My father Atum kisses me when he goes forth
from the eastern horizon, and his heart is at peace at seeing me; he proceeds
in peace to the western horizon, and he finds me in his path. (Spell 80)
One Coffin Text
variation of Spell 80 contains the plural form they—indicated parenthetically
in the first sentence—which Faulkner judges to be an error. However,
"they" appears to be correct because the statement forthrightly
continues to tell about Mahet and Shu. In the preceding discussions we already
have shown what the closeness of these two divinities, in relation to Atum, has
been all about. Moreover, we have learned from the present selection that Atum
has not only kissed his daughter with his kiss of life, but he has done so as
well to his son Shu. At this point in the reading there should no longer be any
doubt that Mahet indeed is identical with Tefnut. Other coffin inscriptions,
such as Spell 121, support this conclusion as well.
The deceased, whose
death has been the occasion for having inscribed in his coffin this most
complete of all theogonic spells, Spell 80, should not be faulted for having
contemplated Tefnut with an emphasis on her order-righteousness-wisdom or her
Mahet dimension. After chaotic moments of death, the ordering efforts of Mahet
were expected to assure order and life.
But whence came Atum's idea, to the effect that he should kiss his
daughter, or to the effect that his Shu and his Tefnut should be united? This
notion, we are told here, originated already while he was still hidden in Nun,
in chaos. The latter, Nun, somehow "knew" a thing or two about the
chaotic potentiality of Atum's breath and about the potency of his rising. But
then, whence did Chaos "know" all these things? Perhaps it would have
been wiser for our ancient author not to have attempted an explanation of this
deepest creative mystery of Atum. At some point during ontological learning and
speculation all human questions and answers must cease. Divinely given life is
destined to discern and find delight within its own inherent chaos and order.
Life or ka essences rising,
resurrected ka essences soaring homeward and trailing their temporarily
visible "comet tails" or ba appearances, that is what Coffin
Texts are all about. Atum still rises daily; his emissions of ka, as light
of the sun god Ra, demonstrate that fact. The dead look up to that divine
manifestation for conveyance to travel homeward in the direction of Atum. In
contrast to his own Ra manifestation, the hidden aspect of Atum is suggested by
his daily retreating, into darkness and gloom. The Ra-rays of Atum simply
continue to give the primeval kisses that the godhead began giving while he was
still coiled unto himself in gloom. These rays are intended for those among his
offspring who have come forth to live for a while in sunlight.
*
* *
Our excerpts and
exposition of Spell 80, pertaining to theogony and cosmogony, may be
supplemented with quotations from Spells 75, 76, and 78. In various coffin
texts the god Shu is mentioned as though he were more important than his father
Atum. This, of course, is due to the fact that Shu is the god of life and
breath. During funerary proceedings, whereby the effects of death are to be
checked and undone, he is in great demand in that mode. This practical funerary
concern has spilled over into theogony when, as an answer to the demands of
mortal minds, the generative role of Atum increasingly became associated with
Shu. The mythological basis for this transposition, naturally, has been the
credo about Shu's continuation of Atum's emission or his spitting.
I am the soul of Shu the self-created god,
I have come into being from the flesh of the self-created god. I am the soul of
Shu, the god invisible in shape.... I am merged in the god, I have become he.
(Spell 75)
The unique status
of Shu is based on his parthenogenetic origin. He issued directly from his
father. Atum conceived him by himself, with his own mouth. He spat out Shu and
Tefnut together to be born. Shu's primacy is established by the fact that Tefnut
emerged after him. In addition, Shu's attributes are clearly identified as
being breath of life or, more anthropomorphically, as being the breath of life
that has come from Atum's throat. The eye of Atum once sought Shu and his
sister Tefnut. This hint probably refers to the mythic moment when the two
began mating as a pair:
I [the deceased] indeed am Shu whom Atum
created, whereby Ra came into being; I was not built up in the womb, I was not
knit together in the egg, I was not conceived, but Atum spat me out in the
spittle of his mouth together with my sister Tefnut.[21]
She went up after me, and I was covered with the breath of the throat. The
phoenix of Ra was that whereby Atum came into being in chaos, in the Abyss, in
darkness and in gloom. I am Shu, father of the gods, and Atum once sent his
Sole Eye seeking me and my sister Tefnut. (Spell 76)
The two action
metaphors, of seminal emission and spitting, were used separately in the
Pyramid Texts (see 1248 and 1652). From that point on each metaphor appears to
have engendered its own train of mythic conceptualizations and ritual
responses. And so Atum's hand and phallus led the myth makers to imagine the
discovery of a series of mating twins. On the other hand, Atum's spitting mouth
has encouraged speculation about air and breath; and eventually that line of
speculation has evolved to mean the spoken divine command or logos. Spoken
words are but breath made audible. This we shall find expressed by Memphite
theology, in the next section.
From the point of view of a dead person, Shu as god of life is
understandably the most significant divine personage mentioned in these
funerary spells. On that account he also is the one most clearly introduced. He
is air, breath, and life. By contrast, the naturalistic equivalents of Tefnut
are a little more difficult to determine. Spell 78 is significant because it
supports what we already have learned about Shu, and in addition, it gives us a
new hint about the nature of Tefnut and her destiny to become the mother of
Atum's creation. As her brother Shu elsewhere (as in Spell 80), so here Tefnut
also "shines on the gods."
It appears as
though Shu's ability to shine has been a direct extension of Atum-Ra's
"phoenix in Heliopolis" (Pyramid Texts 1652). For Shu it is the
"flame of the fiery blast" and is his radiant emission, whereas the
shine on the countenance of Tefnut, mentioned subsequently, appears more like
an afterglow in the feminine experience of that same event.
I am this soul of Shu which is in the flame
of the fiery blast which Atum kindled with his own hand. He created orgasm and
fluid (?) fell from his mouth. He spat me out as Shu together with Tefnut, who
came forth after me as the great Ennead, the daughter of Atum, who shines on
the gods. (Spell 78)
The priestly mind
that composed this spell has been well in tune with combined Shu and Tefnut
mysticism; but, obviously, it was out of touch with the original metaphors that
applied to Atum specifically. The priest who composed this particular spell was
plagued by conscientious literalism. He no longer understood that phallus and
mouth were alternate expressions for phallus and hand. His was a mind that
hoped to eliminate ambiguity by way of rationalizing and combining the separate
"ejaculation" and "spitting" metaphors. The result was a
third metaphor, of masturbation culminating in auto-oralism, a theological
symbology that begins to approach the grotesque.
Soteriology in the Turnaround Realm
In Coffin Text
Spells 131 and 335, and at other places, the god Seth is mentioned as the one
who causes death. This attribution is based on the fact that, mythologically,
Seth is known to have been the killer of Osiris. By extension he also is the
one who slew every moribund Egyptian pharaoh since that formative mythic event.
And, by further extension from the royal cult, through the usurpation of royal
status by lower ranking folk during the Middle Kingdom and later, Seth has
become the cause of death for other ranks of humankind as well. Accordingly,
the twin sister of Osiris who was Isis, and for good measure even Nephthys who
was the twin sister of Seth, provide encouragement:
"Raise
yourself, O my brother, so that your heart may live and that Seth may not exalt
over you." (Spell 74)
The homeward-bound
ancient Egyptian soul could identify with the great soul of Osiris. This soul,
as the sexual opposite of Osiris, continues to enact the role of Isis true to
orthodox mythological perspective. Formerly the gods commanded Osiris to
copulate with his twin sister as with his soul. The theogonic background
certifies this soteriological option:
"Go forth and
copulate with your soul," say all the gods. (Spell 96)
By virtue of
Osiris's primeval copulation, a latter-day deceased, for whom this spell was
inscribed, was remade "into his (i.e., Osiris's) living soul according to
the word of the gods."
It may be surmised
that most ordinary Egyptian folk, later on, had no ambitions of being reborn as
actual Horuses, as if coming forth from Isis and destined to sit upon the
throne of Egypt. They therefore also had no need to identify specifically with
Osiris's emission of seed that, ceremonially, has been transmitting a
concentrated divine spark of life to Horus-king successors. Ordinary people
therefore focused their mysticism on the process of copulation itself. They
interpreted the union of Osiris and Isis mystically as the God's loving embrace
of their own souls, as though their souls were somehow feminine partners in
that relationship.
Of course, it is
possible, too, that Spell 96 was first intended and inscribed on behalf of a
deceased woman. In that case the contrary identification with the male
offspring of Isis, with Horus (as in Spell 84 and elsewhere), could be
interpreted as a "masculine" variety of spells. However, it appears
far more likely that the Enneadean sexual union between Isis and Osiris itself
has furnished an existential model for the human soul's surrender to, and union
with, the godhead.
Nevertheless,
reasoning in Egypt about the mystic-sexual union of Osiris and Isis, in
accordance with Helipolitan coronation theology, produced real offspring.
Moribund human minds could hurry to a quick conclusion and thereby think of
liberated ka sparks as having subsequently, as well as momentarily, been
reborn from Isis. Joyously they could exclaim:
"I have issued
from between the thighs of Isis as Horus." (Spell 84)
Then, being sent on
its way by the birth waters of Isis, the returning soul could analogously be
seen as "going out into daylight"; it could be envisioned as swimming
homeward. This swimming home after being reborn constitutes,
cosmo-biologically, a reversal of direction from the original generative
seminal emissions of Atum. In the lower turnaround realm, at Level 5, Seth
stopped Horus. By killing him he returned him to the condition of Osiris.
The role of Isis
accomplishes similar results. By way of giving birth to Horus she stopped and
reversed the flow of seminal emissions that had come her way from the masculine
Atum-Shu-Geb-Osiris lineage. Birth from a female is the beginning of a process
of swimming against the current of masculine emission—also against the larger
current of Atum's generation. These mythico-biological facts have brought the
reborn and homeward-bound Egyptian souls to a point where they began their
swimming homeward in Isis' birth waters.
O Horus of the Netherworld, you have swum
to Pe [the cult city of Horus], and the gods who were given to you by Atum have
swum after you, the men who are among them have followed you, the women who are
among them have turned back faint through you and through your seed, O
Osiris... (Spell 74)
Although this
passage remains opaque at some points, several interesting notions can still be
gleaned from it. Those who swum after Horus were given and sent by Atum—and,
whatever Atum sends corresponds, cosmo-biologically, to his emission and the
procreation of his divine offspring. Of course, a Horus who enters the
Netherworld is no longer a Horus; he has been promoted to the full Enneadean
rank of Osiris. Then, by identifying with the virility of Osiris, as is
suggested by the effect he has had on the women mentioned in Spell 74, the
deceased person implicitly identifies with the general procreative activity of
the godhead. It therefore can be argued that the "swimming" metaphor
of rebirth has remained a close parallel, all the while, to the initial
mystic-sexual union of Osiris and Isis.
Even the best of
swimmers in Egypt, along the river Nile in which crocodiles are plentiful, is
tempted to dream of a safer alternative to swimming. Human salvation and the
journey home to God were not immune to temptations from technology. There is an
alternative to salvation by swimming: it requires rowing a boat. Accordingly,
in Spell 181 Isis no longer gives birth or only reverses the water-of-life
current in her old-fashioned feminine way. Isis actually is portrayed as rowing
a boat.
Engaging Isis as a
ferry lady seemed a little farfetched to another wayward soul; its coffin spell
preferred to seek salvation in traditional Osiris-Isis mysticism. But a mystic
union with Osiris, on the part of a human soul who had learned to identify with
Isis, needed to be properly augmented with assistance from her offspring.
Salvation for souls who knew themselves as Isis, and who needed help with
rowing across the waters of death and rebirth, was better left to the divine
son whom the friendly goddess was able to persuade:
"I am Isis; I have gone forth from my
house and my boat is at the mooring-rope; Horus ferries me over, Horus brings
me to land." (Spell 182)
Our data are
insufficient for telling whether the change-over between ferry personages,
between Isis and Horus, stood in some kind of relationship to the gender of the
deceased. Perhaps it does not really matter. Being ferried by either Isis or
Horus is a euphemism. It is a way of claiming salvation by virtue of being
"sired by Osiris" and "born of Isis" into the larger family
of God.
There is an
inherent difficulty in the soteriology of rowing yonder. Mythologically
considered, Horus is either a king or a falcon. Egyptian kings, that is, Horus
falcons existing in prehuman flux twilight, occasionally would avail themselves
of boats and the services of oarsmen, but falcons preferred to fly and soar.
Therefore, another coffin spell begins to reason afresh, at the point of
traditional Osiris-Isis mysticism:
Isis wakes pregnant with the seed of her
brother Osiris. She is uplifted, (even she) the widow, and her heart is glad
with the seed of her brother Osiris. (Spell 148)
A time later Isis
"goes down to the Releaser who brings Horus," who apparently is
releasing Isis by way of hastening Horus to be born. The soul of a dying person
that is about to emerge from its bodily containment now experiences being born
of Isis, as a consequence of experiencing death—that is, birth pangs. The proud
Horus-soul promptly introduces itself as a "leader of eternity," with
confident words like these:
"See Horus, you gods! I am Horus, the
Falcon who is on the battlements of the Mansion of Him whose name is hidden....
my place is far from Seth, the enemy of my father Osiris. I have used the roads
of eternity to the dawn, I go up in my flight." (Spell 148)
The one "whose
name is hidden," in this passage, is the single godhead of the Ennead who
later in the history of Egyptian religion has become known specifically as
Amun, the Hidden One. The ontological home, or the mansion of this source of
all being, is located far from his distant Sethian hypostasis; that is, far
from the lesser god of death who roams along the outermost perimeter of the
Enneadean emanation.
Sooner or later the
god Seth has wounded every Horus-king who ruled over ancient Egypt, and
invariably he has transformed these kings into Osiris corpses. But then, this
act in Heliopolitan turnaround mythology was followed by the miraculous
impregnation of Isis, by Osiris. And Isis, in turn, has given birth to a new
Horus-falcon king. In royal religion this mythology and ritual has facilitated
succession on the throne of Egypt and also helped establish new dynasties. At
the level of democratized personal soteriology, during the Middle and New
Kingdoms, this same turnaround mythology has been invoked to stop and reverse
the outward flow of the All-God's creative emanation among ordinary folk as
well. On having encountered Seth, somewhere along the lower and outer edge of
the divine Enneadean emanation, all human souls or ka sparks could be
reborn, freed, and returned. They could be liberated to swim or fly homeward
against the currents and swirls of Enneadean generation.
A number of spells
inscribed in Middle Kingdom coffins insist emphatically that their inhabitants
refuse the naturalistic demands that traditionally the gods have placed on dead
humankind. So for instance, some mortals have expressly put their foot down and
have refused to accept the consequences of mortality regarding their appetites.
Doing so they insisted on an older and more primitive version of salvation,
salvation from mortality's reversals. They refused to walk upside down or eat
excrement—even if these be the excrement of the god Osiris himself!
"Eat this excrement which issued from
the hinder parts of Osiris; what (else) can you live on?" say the gods to
me. "What have you come to eat?" (Spell 173)
Reversal of living
space and alimentary processes are commonplace in primitive eschatologies. And
indeed, such a limited and primitive victory could seem sufficient if one's
homeward journey led only to an afterworld in horizontal space. Was it really
necessary for the human soul to immerse itself mystically in the entire
Enneadean stream of life? Flying and soaring in the air certainly seemed
preferable to the person who selected Spell 173. He or she continued to eat the
food of the living, as well as the habit of flying aloft—and thereby watched
Egypt from on high. Impossible? No, not if you are the divine Horus-falcon:
"I eat of
bread and of white emmer..."
"Be off!"
say they to me. "Who pray are you?"
"I am Horus
[on] his tall perch(?)." (Spell 173)
From Theology to Philosophy
The priestly rites
and activities that dealt with human mortality, and with prospects for eternal
life, have inspired confidence in dealing with the gods directly. Some priests
relied on methods of bureaucratic bluffing; that is, on the methods that had
served them well in the environs of the Egyptian royal court. Vis-à-vis humans
and gods they learned how to function as skillful politicians, theologians, and
magicians. Not many Egyptian mortals would have dared to boast in their coffins
with ambitious spells such as the next one. But this particular chief magician
knew all too well how Egyptian theology had been put together through the ages:
I am indeed the son of Her who bore Atum,
I am the protection of what the Sole Lord commanded, I am he who caused the
Ennead to live, I am "If-he-wishes-he-does," the father of the
gods....
I have come that I may take possession of
my throne and that I may receive my dignity, for to me belonged all before you
came into being, you gods; go down and come upon the hinder parts, for I am a
[chief] magician. (Spell 261)
These words
constitute the ultimate in a mystic's daring among Egyptian coffin spells. This
homeward-bound ka did not even think to bother with lesser gods like
Horus, Isis, Seth, or even Osiris. He went straight home to identify with the
source of all being: He identified with the very power that generated Atum's
first appearance and emanation. This chief magician—or shall we call him a
chief systematic theologian? —he knew how imperial theology was reasoned and
how it was amended and expanded through time. He understood the process by
which greater gods absorb smaller ones. He even understood the secret of how to
transpose theology into psychology.
This magician was
an If-he-wishes-he-does kind of "father of the gods." He knew that if
one wished to influence, control, or usurp a present divine power one either
had to be, or one had to identify with, the next greater power on whom such a
present power depended. She who bore Atum-if such an All-Mother was ever
thinkable in ancient Egypt-must have been the chaotic and indefinable Nun
herself. Thus, from his exalted point of self-esteem this headstrong returning
theologian's soul, this coequal partner of Atum, has commanded all gods to
"go down and come upon the hinder parts"; thus, to approach him on
their haunches.
Fortunately for Atum's
primordial status, this haughty magician and systematic theologian remained
humble enough not to also claim identity with "Mother Nun" herself.
Looking at the positive side, it may be said that with this man's passing the
godhead Atum has received back a confident collaborator in his work of
generation. In his own wise Egyptian way, this chief magician either became
divine himself or else he helped humanize the Egyptian cosmic All with help
from Helipolitan theology. His exaggerated mysticism may sound like blasphemy.
But if that is what it was, then his spell differed only in degree from others in
ancient Egypt, who also sought salvation through identification with Atum.
Daring and selfish
priests turn into magicians. Doomed as they are to perform labors of the mind,
being homines sapientes, they perform, react to, and put in question inherited
rites of passage. But then, it is also a fact that the contributions to human
life made by boisterous challengers are often of a negative sort. Great ideas
that can sustain human balance and survival are hatched more often than not
from common embryos, nearer to the heart of an orthodox ontology. Clothed in
orthodox garb some great new ideas can be adopted without resistance, for a
time, as simply representing common sense. Here is such an instance:
Oh you eight Chaos-gods whom I created
from the efflux of my flesh, whose names Atum made when the Abyss was created,
on that day when Atum spoke in it with Nu(n) in chaos, in darkness and in
gloom. (Spell 76)
Atum created the
gods by naming them. Spoken from the point of view of the self-created first God,
Atum, the other members of the Ennead can be designated properly as the eight
remaining "Chaos-gods" (who back in Chaos were first created as
names). But then in addition, a rational adjustment had to be made in these
funerary spells in light of the fact that Shu, the Son, was frequently honored
as the god of "life" in place of Atum the All-Father.
Inasmuch as all
life known to humankind could be traced through Shu, it seems significant to
learn from Spell 76 that the "names" of all gods—thus also human
"ideas" about them—were created first by the one and only Atum while
he was still alone in Nun. The ancient Egyptian wise man who composed these
lines has surmised that divine ideas and intelligence, in the Enneadean
process, must have preceded the throbbing creative commotion of Shu and those
that followed, must have preceded life and his breathing. In the contemplative
efforts of some Egyptian homines sapientes, the category of
"intellect" has thereby been given precedence to empirical presences.
Rational thinking demanded this self-oriented perspective, for the welfare of
its own process.
In Spell 76 can
therefore be found the important seed concept that, well over a millennium
later in Greece, blossomed out into Platonic philosophy, into Plato's theory of
preexistent and eternal "ideas." Still later, switching homeward
again in the direction of Egypt, it ripened and gave birth in Alexandria to a
genuine fruit of Egyptian intellect, the so-called Neoplatonic philosophy—Egyptian
theology philosophized within the Greek idiom.
Other Ancient Egyptian Theologies
In this section we
will introduce four additional ancient Egyptian theological systems, those of
Hermopolis, Memphis, and Thebes. Included in our discussion of the Theban
system, as the primary New Kingdom theology, will be a brief digression into
the Amarna episode.
Amarna theology
here will be mentioned intentionally in a subordinate fashion. Of all the
ancient Egyptian monotheisms referred to in this book, the Atonism of Akhenaton
is perhaps the least significant. It has been included here for consideration,
because Western scholars have propelled it into prominence for the wrong
reasons—and to the detriment of our overall understanding of ancient Egyptian
religion.
The Theology of Hermopolis
The ancient city of
Unet in Upper Egypt, Hermopolis in Greek, is known as the home of an Ogdoad of
gods. This Eightfoldness of divine creative personages, apparently in
competition with Heliopolitan theology, has come to be structured into four
pairs of male gods with female counterparts. First is Nun, the primeval water
who coexists with Naunet. Second, Huh or spatial infinity is matched by Hauhet.
Third, Kuk or darkness has for its partner Kauket. And fourth, Amun as hiddenness
is accompanied by Amaunet. Some sources mention Niau and Niaut as the fourth
pair instead.[22]
At some point in time
the priests of Hermopolis must have felt significant enough to challenge the
Memphite as well as the Theban theology. As a result, the Memphite theologians
have incorporated the names of Nun and Naunet into their understanding of the
godhead, Ptah. The Thebans on the other hand claimed Amun, and by implication
also absorbed his spouse, the Amaunet.
Early Hermopolitan
documentation is scarce, and the personages of the Ogdoad are mentioned first
in a Coffin Text.[23] In any case it is difficult to tell which of
the three cults—Hermopolis, Memphis, or Thebes—first tried to absorb either one
or both of the others. For as little as is now known about the Hermopolitan
cult, Memphite and Theban theology could indeed be indebted to it.
The Theology of Memphis
A brief glance at
the theological system of Memphis is necessary for a larger perspective on the
religious history of ancient Egypt. Our source is the famous Shabaka Stone, an
eighth century B.C.E. copy or summary of an alleged older text. For Memphite
theologians the name of the God of gods was Ptah. Whatever this Memphite god
was before his imperial ambitions became apparent, whether or not he was Lord
of Memphis or only of that city's artisans remains unclear. We know only that,
at one point in the history of New Kingdom theology, someone contemplated the
great Ptah of Memphis and, doing so, beheld again the All-God of Egypt.
Some scholars have
tended to project the Shabaka Stone theology back in time to the beginnings of
Egyptian history. This leap into the past, beyond 3000 B.C.E., was suggested by
the fact that Memphis was Egypt's first capital city. It served as residence for
Menes who was the founder of the First Dynasty. But such a generous historical
backward projection leaves insufficient room for the Heliopolitan system to
develop and become better established by comparison. Heliopolitan theology
flourished and dominated at least by the time when the great pyramids were
built (2494-2181 B.C.E.). During the reign of the Hyksos kings (1720-1540
B.C.E.) the cult center at Heliopolis was still regarded as primary in Lower
Egypt.[24]
And still during the reign of Ramses III its budget far exceeded that of
temples in the capital city of Memphis. The center at Heliopolis finally may
have been destroyed by Cambyses, the Persian.[25]
All of this, taken
together, may recommend the reign of Tuthmoses I (1494-1482 B.C.E.) as a time
for the formulation of the prototype Shabaka Stone theology. This was a time
when Memphis again had been made the capital of Egypt; and this would have been
a reasonable moment for priests of Ptah to have made their bid for primacy
among the cult centers and theologies in the land. Shabaka Stone theology, as
it has been preserved, constitutes an obvious usurpation of Heliopolitan
theological claims. Nevertheless, even at this present level of historical
uncertainty, the Shabaka text may serve as a good indication on the larger
Egyptian theological and political process.
Memphite priests
introduced their god Ptah as having been prior in time to Atum, as well as
greater in scope. Ptah completely absorbed into himself the chaotic mystery of
Nun that all along, although undefined, had been containing within itself the
entire Helipolitan process of divine procreation. The duality composed of
Ptah-Nun or Ptah-Naunet, it was said, together begat and generated the
Heliopolitan Atum. In Memphite perspective the God Ptah was considered to be
"the heart and tongue of the Ennead" and the one "who gave birth
to the gods."[26]
Whether Memphite or
Hermopolitan priests were the first to seize upon the Heliopolitan weakness of
an undefined first Nun, that possibility is now difficult to assess. In any
case, at Memphis as well as in Hermopolis the category "Nun" was
doubled by the method of introducing genders. Nun, which in Heliopolis was
known as the chaotic outside wrapping of the cosmos, was invoked here to
encapsulate the entire Heliopolitan theological system—and in this process the
significance of Nun was increased to absorb within itself every other Egyptian
theology as well.
Prior knowledge on
the part of Memphite theologians, about the political importance of the Heliopolitan
Ennead with Atum as its godhead, may be assumed. That awareness clearly is
reflected in the following Shabaka Stone passage:
(53) There came into being as the heart
and there came into being as the tongue (something) in the form of Atum.
This sentence must
be one of the cleverest theological pronouncements ever devised. It bristles
with priestly ambition and soft diplomatic fur. Memphite priests may have
wished that the tradition of Heliopolis would disappear from the face of the
earth and make room entirely for their own. However, it is significant that on
account of such ambitions they never dared to deny the existence of Junu's
godhead. They simply told their Memphite story a little bigger; that is, big
enough to absorb the Helipolitan theology within their own. The Shabaka Stone
text sets the tone for Memphite theologizing. "Something in the form
of..." means that Atum is no longer someone mighty enough to worry about.
His "centrality" has not been denied, of course. That would have been
un-Egyptian. He merely was absorbed by the prior and apparently larger
Ptah-Nun-Naunet trinity.
All creative power
in Ptah theology can be traced in terms of concrete symbology, as thought and
word, all the way to the heart and tongue of the God. The claims of the
Memphite God of gods thereby were expanded to where all living creatures could
be included under the variety of Ptah's intimate ba manifestations; that is, as
thought sparks of his ka that have become audible and visible.
The mighty Great One is Ptah, who
transmitted [life to all gods], as well as (to) their ka's, through this heart,
by which Horus became Ptah, and through this tongue, by which Thoth became
Ptah.
(Thus) it happened that the heart and
tongue gained control over [every] (other) member of the body, by teaching that
he is in every body and in every mouth of all gods, all men, [all] cattle, all
creeping things, and (everything) that lives, by thinking and commanding
everything that he wishes.
...Indeed, all the divine order (lit.
"every word of the god") really came into being through what the
heart thought and the tongue commanded. Thus the ka spirits were made
and the hemsut spirits were appointed, they who make all provisions and
all nourishment, by this speech.
Those among us
within the Hebrew-Christian tradition who have spent some time wondering about
creation as a result of divine command—as it is narrated for example in Genesis
1—or those who have contemplated the nature of the divine logos in John
1 will discover in this Memphite text an obvious antecedent.[27]
And indeed, this Memphite creation story tells us something about divine
behavior we have come to expect:
And so Ptah was
satisfied, after he had made everything, as well as the divine order.[28]
But more is implied
in this Memphite theology, and some of it shows the less comfortable side of
Egyptian religion. That over-plus is the factor of grand domestication. As far
as it mattered to his human inferiors, the person and will of an Egyptian
pharaoh blended in nicely with the will of the supreme God of gods. Ptah's
creative thoughts and words and the judgments of a divinized pharaoh were one
and the same thing, even though each of them supposedly operated at different
levels of divine emanation. As a result,
the king's claim to authority over the lives of his subjects was absolute.
Memphite theology rationalized the authority and power of its king as follows:
(Thus justice was given to) him who does
what is liked, (and injustice to) him who does what is disliked.[29]
Thus life was given to him who has peace and death was given to him who has
sin. Thus were made all work and all crafts, the action of the arms, the
movement of the legs, and the activity of every member, in conformance with
(this) command which the heart thought, which came forth from the tongue, and
which gives value to everything.
The function of
imperial theology, as constitution for Egyptian grand domestication, becomes
unmistakingly clear as the catalog of Ptah's founding activities is being
enlarged upon. A reader of these theological sentences ought to keep in mind
that for whatever this creative God of gods is given credit, some reigning
Horus-king felt called upon to own and supervise.
(Ptah)...had formed the gods, he had made the
cities, he had founded nomes, he had put the gods in their shrines, he had made
their bodies like that (with which) their hearts were satisfied. So the gods
entered into their bodies of every (kind of) wood, of every (kind of) stone, of
every (kind of) clay, or anything which might grow upon him, in which they had
taken form. So all the gods, as well as their ka's gathered themselves
to him, content and associated with the Lord of the Two Lands.
Shabaka Stone
theology is historically significant for two main reasons: (1) for illustrating
ancient Egyptian ways of theologizing, of how Atum-oriented theogony was recast
into Ptah-oriented theogony, and (2) for showing the transition from an
orthodox generative theogony to a cosmogony based on the creative divine word, logos,
or command of God. The first of these reasons pertains to the history of
ancient Egyptian religion, whereas the second affects our understanding of
subsequent countercurrents against the Egyptian grand domesticator religion.
The second dimension casts new historical light on Hebrew religion and such
later universalisms as Judaism, Christendom, and Neoplatonism.
The transition from
Atum-oriented theogony to Ptah-oriented theogony most probably has been a
concern of city-based schools of priests that vied with one another for the
attention of Egypt's religiously contained population. Nothing really new was
added by Memphite theology to the conceptualization of Egypt's basic theogonic
process; that is, nothing new concerning the godhead who emanates his essence
down to an outer level of better visibility. And nothing was really new about
the concomitant soteriology either. The primary bone of contention was not the
basic structure of Enneadean monotheism and process theology; rather, it concerned
the question of whose city deity might be exalted and magnified to lend its
name to the unnameable godhead of Egypt-and by extension bestow the godhead's
authority on the king as his legitimate Son of God.
The priestly cult
center that was able to embrace, rationally, all other Egyptian theologies,
could aspire to become the cult center of the empire. Its high priest could
become the first cultus-minister in the land. In this high priest's divinely
favored city, even the nobility could infer from that fact, mythologically and
ontologically, their eligibility for divine-royal status—for the eventuality
that an older dynasty would be replaced.
However,
Heliopolitan theology has been a longstanding tradition that, for centuries and
millennia, was able to embrace and contain within itself all rival cults and
theological alternatives. To capture the religious life of all of Egypt, the
Shabaka document had to make a real effort to absorb first within itself
everything that was ever thinkable about Atum.
The primary
weakness in the Heliopolitan theogony was that it ascribed the name of Nun to
chaos—that it ascribed any name at all to that "nothing." If Nun was
really of no consequence whatsoever, then it should have remained nameless.
Names are nesting places for fresh ontological configurations. This is so
because it is linguistically impossible to talk about no-thing, or about Nun,
without somehow suggesting its presence as a "something." Moreover, a
something that also happens to be a first is bound to become significant sooner
or later.
Heliopolitan
theologians named the Nun and then left it undefined as a next-to-nothing kind
of chaos. The Hermopolitan theologians took hold of this weakness; they talked
about Nun and then proceeded to pair it off with a Naunet. Memphite
theologians, in addition, wrapped up all first manifestations of the All-Father
into the divine figure whom in their city they knew as Ptah. These
reformulations, on the one hand, claimed cultic and political sovereignty for
Memphis; they also reduced the Heliopolitan All-God, his Trinity and his entire
Ennead, to a much smaller portion of the larger cosmic scheme.
Mythologically and
symbolically the Memphite theology first shifted its emphasis from the
ejaculation metaphor to the spitting metaphor, which by itself was no radical
shift. Some Heliopolitan priests had done as much when they contemplated and
used the "spitting" alternative. Moreover, Heliopolitan priests even
refined their metaphor to mean exhaling forth the essence of Shu—thus of
breath, air, and life in general. For good measure they even had Atum emit an
audible "cry."
Memphite
theologians, in principle, subscribed to all of this. They merely added the
specific point that the breath of their godhead, Ptah, resounded with voice and
with distinct words. In addition, they insisted that these divine words were
first vocalized as creative commands.
Gone was the
soothing flow and divine emission of living water, which has been experienced
so concretely in Egypt by the presence of the everflowing and overflowing
Nile—gone with the stroke of a writer's pen. It was replaced with references to
divine commands that coincided with the daily orders issued by reigning
pharaohs. All the while royal authority was still being derived, in some
fashion or other, from orthodox generative process theology. How else could an
Egyptian pharaoh have continued to sit on the throne of Egypt as a real
begotten Son of God!
The godhead Ptah
has created specifically through his logos and this, in accordance with
Memphite theology, meant the king's royal command. For all practical purposes,
and for the pharaoh's subjects, the logos of the godhead and the logos
of the ruling God-king were kept indistinguishable.
In breakaway Hebrew
tradition, later, the first creation story in the book of Genesis was based on
divine command or logos as well. But this divine command was presented
in the context of Yawistic rebel theology. It was introduced without reference
to legitimizing a human God-king.
This assessment, of
the major difference between Hebrew and Egyptian monotheism, distances itself
from commentators like Henri Frankfort who sharply distinguished between
theological immanence and transcendence. For instance, Frankfort saw
"immanence" as a factor that has reduced the worth of ancient
Egyptian religion. Thus, even while he recognized Amun-Ra as an otherwise
"supreme and universal god, known within the scope of Egyptian
polytheism," Frankfort nevertheless remained more impressed by a divinity that
throned as a universal monarch above and beyond earthly phenomena. Still, he
noticed a tendency toward theological transcendence in what he called Ptah's
"spiritual" creation by thought and word.[30]
Comparisons and
evaluations of the kind Frankfort offered obviously are based on a double
standard. After all, was the breath blown into Adam's nostrils by the Hebrew
God any less material than the Egyptian wind of Shu? Were the creative commands
of the Hebrew God, in Genesis 1, more spiritual than the commands of Ptah? Or,
were the words that resounded from the heart and tongue of Ptah more
"spiritual" than Atum-Shu's mostly silent breathing? Then, is a
sovereign God any less real if his involvements extend into the human as well
as material spheres?
It is high time for
historians of religions to become reconciled with Planet Earth and its
materiality on which, and by which, we all live and move and have our being.
Historians cannot afford to sympathize with only so-called spiritual religions
that seem in tune with severe Indo-European dualism—or schizophrenia.
In any case,
several centuries after the book of Genesis had been edited for the last
time—after the "seven days" creation story had been
included—Christians broke away from their Hebrew religious environment. One of
the major Christian scribes, known as John, began his gospel account with a
wonderfully poetic logos cosmogony. In his prologue he carefully avoided
any allusions to logoi that could have been claimed or usurped by human
kings. On the contrary, he identified the creative Word of God with a contrary
kind of Son of God. That Son of God was sent into this world, specifically to
enact a parody on the traditional roles of Horus-falcons, and on all the sons
of God who have ruled Egypt and subsequent civilizations. The Christian
understanding of the creative Word of God, although retaining the old logos label,
implied a radical rejection of imperial or grand domesticator theology. It
implied a radical switch from grand domestication theology to "kingdom of
heaven" soteriology.
More remains to be
told about this Christian modification of Egyptian grand domestication religion
in a later portion of this work. But before that history can be told more
completely it will be necessary to reexamine outbreaks of Hebrew
"fire" and mirror reflections of Hellenic "sophia" from
amidst the large Egyptian sea of "light." Only, let it be told
already now, that over against the background of Egyptian theology it can no
longer be said that the Christian religion was "merely," or even
"primarily," an offspring of Semitic religion in general or of
Judaism in particular.
The Theology of Thebes
The city of the
province Uaset, which was named after that province, is on record since the
Middle Kingdom. Occasionally it has been referred to as "Southern
City" or as "City of Amun." The historical beginnings of the god
Amun cannot be traced farther back in Thebes than the Eleventh Dynasty. But we
know that his cult was well established during the Twelfth Dynasty (1991-1786
B.C.E.). Was this god in his first Theban manifestation a modification of the
god Min? The headdresses of Amun and Min are similar. Or, did awareness of him
begin with Amun-Amauet as a theological branch of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad? Or,
has Amun been claimed only spuriously by Hermopolitan politician-theologians?
The resistance and
liberation movement against the Hyksos occupation of Egypt proceeded under
Ahmoses I, from Upper Egypt and Thebes (Eighteenth Dynasty, 1567 B.C.E.). With
this important event the god Amun, manifest in history, has ushered in Egypt's
"New Kingdom" era; in that process the god has fully established
himself as Egypt's supreme patron, liberator, and imperial deity. Amun's
imperial cult was defined historically, one can safely surmise, by minds that
began to think internationally and who were inspired by anti-Hyksos or
anti-Semitic national pride.[31]
The Amarna Interlude
Amun's hegemony was interrupted
briefly during the Fourteenth Century, by a religious "reform" that
the pharaoh Akhenaton (Amenhotep IV) attempted. This king hoped to
institutionalize a narrowly defined monotheism that had the solar deity, named
Aton, for its focal point of fascination. The name of Aton as a sun deity has
been known in
Akhenaton's worship
of "Aton" featured "Ra" theology in a very restrictive
mode. Cyril Aldred, finding fault with Petrie's interpretations of the typical
Amarna depictions, has called our attention to the fact that the rays of the
Aton "do not give life to each person, but bring its breath only to the
nostrils of the king and queen."[33]
Amarna hymnody make that same point. Anyone who carefully ponders the king's
beautiful hymns, composed specifically for the royal worship of Aton, certainly
will discover more than poetic beauty. Had these stanzas been written by
someone of low status, their theological shallowness would have remained of
little concern. But authored by, or at least ascribed to, an Egyptian king who
claimed Son of God status for himself, the narrow scope and selfishness
reflected in these psalms indeed does evoke suspicion. That narrowness surely
must have raised concerns among all Amun theologians in Egypt at the time.
In none of
Akhenaton's hymns is God ever approached as one who would stoop low enough to
bless someone other than his chosen and beloved son, the pharaoh Akhenaton
himself, together with Nefertete his beautiful spouse. In fact, the entire
wonderful world of Aton's creatures is said to have been created for the
express pleasure of this jaded king. No allowances were made in Aton liturgy
for any problem in the land that the pharaoh himself might be unable to
perceive. And there is also no evidence that, preoccupied with the religious
legitimization of his royal-divine authority, the king still was capable of
recognizing anyone else's needs. The closing stanza of his Great Hymn to Aton
is sufficient to expose the narrow vision of this royal would-be reformer:
Your are in my heart,
There is no other who knows you,
Only your son, Neferkheprure,
Sole-one-of-Ra,
Whom you have taught your ways and your
might.
[Those on] earth come from your hand as
you made them,
When you have dawned they live,
When you set they die;
You yourself are lifetime, one lives by
you.
All eyes are on [your] beauty until you
set,
All labor ceases when you rest in the
west;
When you rise you stir [everyone] for the
King,
Every leg is on the move since you founded
the earth.
You rouse them for your son who came from
your body,
The King who lives by Maat, the Lord of
crowns,
Akhenaten, great in his lifetime;
(And) the great Queen whom he loves, the
Lady of the Two Lands.
Nefer-nefru-Aten Nefertiti, living
forever.[34]
Akhenaton's
"monotheism," if such selfish usurpation of God's created world by a
single human ego deserves this appellation, reveals, if nothing else, the
loneliness of a hereditary and beleaguered grand domesticator. It exposes the
ruler's monotheistic solar theology as a feeble attempt at trying to become an
absolute divine Sun-king again. To accomplish his goal he had to rid himself of
the religious "checks and balances" that, in the course of Egyptian
history, had come to humanize government and safeguard at least some of the
interests of common people. Akhenaton wanted to shake off the largest
"check and balance" that weighed on him; namely, the Theban cult of
Amun. That cult was represented by Amun temples throughout Egypt and beyond,
and it had the support of many people. No doubt, Akhenaton would rather have
ruled Egypt under a God who created the entire world especially for him.
The Return of Amun
The religion and priesthood of
Amun outlived Akhenaton's attempt at royal reintrenchment. And Egypt was
probably better off because of it.[35]
This is not to say that Amun's Theban-based priesthood was the first of its
kind in Egyptian history that stood apart from, or over against, the Egyptian
god-king. Already very early, at Heliopolis, Egypt had an imperial cult center
that stood in something like a "check and balance" relationship to
the royal seat at Memphis. The dichotomy of Thebes and Amarna was only a more
recent example of old tensions and conflicting checks and balance arrangements.
The general
emphasis ancient Egyptian cult centers placed on funerary proceedings
underscores this same dynamic of checks and balances. After all, funerary rites
are excellent means to celebrate the balancing of a royal strongman who
willfully had pushed too far ahead during his lifetime.
It shall not be
suggested here, in any shape or form, that good priests always kept bad kings
in check. Check-and-balance institutions all generate their own share of overly
ambitious people. Nevertheless, the very fact that a zealous and jaded ruler
here was eventually checked by a cult that more broadly appears to have
represented the interests of common people—as some of the Amun theology given
later will show—in itself is historically significant.
Kings gained
leverage and power whenever a neighboring political entity flexed its muscles.
Heroic citizen defenders, of necessity, were thereby lured by self-interest
into reinforcing their lord's grand domestication scheme for the sake of
defense and protection. And then, once a strong leader had dared to raise his
head above the limiting norms of religious traditions, he, too, had no other
choice but to pursue greater organizational goals. He was obliged to do so for
his own personal safety as well as for the fulfillment of his larger grand
domestication hopes.
Before Aton and
after Aton, in ancient Egypt, there flourished the cult of Amun. During
Akhenaton's reform years that cult went underground. However, as seen from the
Theban theological perspective, the military and iconoclastic measures of
Akhenaton never could inflict real damage on the cult of Amun. The reform king
could order that inscriptions of the name Amun be erased from temples and public
buildings. But he could not touch the real name of the God who, as all faithful
believers knew, kept himself hidden—and who continued to hide his real name
behind this cover name Amun.
The Leiden Papyrus
Amun theology, after Akhenaton, is
beautifully expressed in a document stored at the museum in Leiden.[36]
A quick reading will reveal at least one of the heights to which the pseudonym
Amun has been exalted in Egyptian consciousness, during the New Kingdom era.
Not only were priests of Amun active throughout the Egyptian empire, it also
appears that their cult of the hidden God responded to some extent to the
existential needs of Egypt's people, at least more than the Aton cult. In
contrast to the royal snobbishness inspired by Aton, the general concern of
Amun for all status levels of humanity is noteworthy.
Like all imperial
gods in Egypt's past, Amun accounted for and embraced all there is. He was the
power of growth in vegetation. The God of gods stooped to lower social levels
also to save non-aristocratic folk. He stood by them in their hour of need,
even while they were dying. Also, this God of gods assisted them while they
were still alive. Earlier in Egyptian religious history such lowly functions
had been left to lesser and local gods. Now these benign concerns for mortal
humanity had become part and parcel of the general grace and demeanor of the
Egyptian God of gods.
Amun became known
as one who "drives away evil and illness"... "He is Amun who
saves whom he will, and be it from the netherworld"..."He lends his
eyes and ears to [protect] the path of anyone he loves"..."He hears
the prayers of those who call on him; he comes momentarily from afar to him who
calls out for him"..."He lengthens and shortens life, and he adds
something extra to the destiny of him whom he loves"..."Amun's name,
when called upon, is mighty on the waters; the crocodile has no power when his
name is spoken; the wind changes, and the storm subsides when one thinks about
him"..."He is better than millions for him who keeps him in his
heart, and with his name a single one is mightier than hundreds of thousands;
the truly good protector...is the irresistible [one in battle]" (pp. 66f).
Amun's indebtedness
to earlier imperial theologies is evident in many ways. And yet, earlier
Egyptian theologians never have come up with a better description of their
All-God:
He who has given shape to himself, his
form is unknown, that beautifully shimmering (hue of) color which has become a
beautiful but secret form—the one who gave shape to himself and who did create
himself.... The eight gods were your first manifestations.[37]
Before them you alone hast been. Your body was made secret to the ancients,
you, who hast hidden yourself as Amun, as the first among the gods. You assumed
the form of Tenen (primal Hill) to give shape to the first gods of the primeval
era.... The Ennead together, (the nine) were in your members, and in your form
were all the gods united. Your first form by which you have begun was
Amun—namely, he who hides his name from the gods.... When Ra arose in the sky,
to rejuvenate himself again, he (Amun) spat forth...to create Shu and Tefnut to
be joined. (pp. 70f)
The godhead's
hiddenness, together with the obscurity of his name and his general
compassionate involvement in human affairs, at every stratum in human history,
is highlighted by a number of characteristics that scholars customarily
reserved for the Yahweh of the Hebrews. The Israelite "schema"
concerning their God's oneness has here been spoken, earlier, by Egyptian
worshippers of Amun:
Amun is one! (He) who hides himself from
the gods...whose nature is unknown.... His nature is not recorded (or
displayed) in sacred scriptures; he cannot be described and taught. He is too
mysterious for his power to be laid bare; he is too great to be even asked
about, too immense to be perceived. One would fall dead suddenly, in fear, if
one were to pronounce the god's mysterious name, unknown to everyone. Not even
a god can call him by his name, the vital one, because his name is secret. (p.
73)
The most amazing
sentence in this passage, in light of historical hindsight, is the one that
claims that God's nature has not been adequately recorded or displayed in
sacred scriptures. Here the Egyptian theologian-scribe has attained a degree of
objectivity and ego-suspension seldom matched again afterward among scribes in
reactionary Hebrew, Jewish, Christian, and Islamic traditions. With a larger
scope of artistic sacred manifestations still kept constantly before Egyptian
eyes, balancing one another—for example, images of gods, the presence of divine
kings, and pictorial inscriptions—a wise Egyptian scribe was less prone to fall
into idolatry toward a sanctified piece of writing.
Of course, the
composite nature of Egyptian official theology, concerning Amun the God of
gods, is not difficult to perceive. But this happenstance by itself does not
tell very much. All learning by human minds, in any field of knowledge or
endeavor, remains piecemeal. Moreover, the composite appearance pertains only
to the human "process" of theologizing. It has not really affected
the primeval All-God who is known to be hiding beyond this process of
theologizing—hiding even behind the sum total of theologies devised by earlier
generations. All Egyptian imperialists have tried to honor, conceptualize, and
manipulate the God of gods by governing in his name. Amun theology appears to
have been the first contrivance that introduced the "check and
balance" of a no-name.
Then, a holy
trinity seemed as easily acceptable to Theban priests as an Ennead has been
embraced by priests in
Three are all the gods, Amun, Ra, and
Ptah. Aside from these is none. He who hides his name behind (the word)
"Amun" is Ra at his head, Ptah at his body. His cities on earth are
eternal:
Quoted from a
religion pronounced dead millennia ago, this trinitarian proclamation still
resounds vibrantly alive, mysteriously awesome, magnificent, and to some extent
even politically relevant.