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Ye Gods!
by
David C. Scott
Perhaps no other part of the world has witnessed more
religions and systems of belief than Egypt. For Jews,
Christians, and Muslims it is part of the Holy Land,
occupying a revered place in both their history and in their
theology. Yet Egypt's religious tradition goes back even
further, into the mists of prehistory. As one of the first
places in the world where human beings developed
civilization, it is also one of the first places in which
codified religion evolved. Even the protohumans who occupied
the first settlements in Egypt show traces of primitive
belief of a level not normally found in similar cultures.
Certainly for the Western world, Egypt is where religion
was born. The beliefs practiced by the ancient Egyptians at
the height of their glory influenced the world around them,
and their impact is still felt to this day. Though other
civilizations predate them, and some of their beliefs are
older, none have endured with the power of the gods of
Egypt. They are the stuff of both legend and modern culture.
They are transformed into heroes and villains for our books
and movies. They have settled quite well into popular
literature. They leap off the pages of comics and lend their
names to high technology. Reproductions of their papyri hang
in the offices of the Fortune 500. Egyptian-style artworks
are in all the fashionable catalogues. The archaic
revivalists focus on them as the core deities of human
belief. They pervade the world around us at a level second
only to the gods of Greece and Rome.
Why all the new interest in the deities of ancient Egypt?
There are I believe a number of reasons, but the most
important one is the notion that we, as a species, are
reaching back in time for a stable moment. As a people, the
human race is moving too quickly for some of us and has been
for some time. As our technology advances further, our souls
long for a more natural existence, a desire for times past.
We've been reaching into the past for decades. The late
Terence McKenna said that any time a civilization "gets
into trouble, it casts itself back into the past, looking
for the last sane moment it ever knew." Many aspects of
our modern world show this. Look at how organic our cars and
computers are looking. Plastics are giving way once more to
wood, glass, and other more "natural" construction
materials. This is why modern music has so many roots in
tribal rhythms. Forget the minimalists and the
assimilationists, just listen to jazz or rock and you'll see
the desire for our ancient ancestors.
In the Sixties and Seventies, the United States went
through a huge romantic period involving the American West,
the cowboy and the Indian. At the same time, Europe
continued to romanticize the Middle Ages. In the Eighties it
was the New Agers who searched wildly for the older ways,
almost becoming like the Theosophists and Rosicrucians who
had led the archaic revival decades before. In the Nineties,
everything came to a head with the creation of an almost
global side-culture through the Internet. And what did we
find happening? All over the world, computer networks named
for Egyptian gods, artificial intelligence software called
ISIS, high-tech mummification, a furor over possible alien
relics that looked like a Sphinx's head and pyramids on
Mars, the list goes on. The further we go, the further back
we reach, and today we are reaching back almost to the dawn
of the formation of faith. The Egyptian gods are some of the
oldest gods of mankind, and they influenced the development
of even the monotheistic religions that exist today. They
have become the anchor for the modern world, just as the
Greek and Roman gods were the anchor before that. Western
science and philosophy owes much to the Greeks and Romans,
but Western religion owes even more than that to Egypt.
And so we've redone our ancient Egyptian religion section
on Tour Egypt. After all, it's important to know our roots,
and the concepts created by the Egyptians echo in all the
Western religions that came after. However, it is not my
purpose to be overly scholarly about the Egyptian gods. I
will tell you now that I have left ethnology to the
ethnologists and have tried my best to make this site
informative and enjoyable, rather than pedantic. What you
will find here is a clear and concise listing of gods,
goddesses, demigods, monsters, heroes, and myths. This is
after all what most people want when they go looking for
information on the Egyptian gods: stories. Those who were
hoping for something deeper can go read Joseph Campbell.
He's already said most of what needs to be said, I can add
little to his works. For something even deeper, I recommend
the writings of the aforementioned McKenna, possibly the
foremost ethnologist of the latter Twentieth Century.
Man's first gods were the forces of nature. Terrifying
and unpredictable, they were feared rather than revered by
our ancestors. Yet while much of the world was in darkness,
worshipping cruel incarnations of natural forces, the
ancient Egyptians followed a different path. They worshipped
gods that were beautiful to behold, luminous beings that
walked the earth, guiding the human race to Paradise. They
had human forms but were much more powerful; yet like
humans, they got angry, despaired, fought with one another,
had children, and fell in love. They lived lives that were
very much like those of the people who worshipped them.
They were gods to be feared yes, as all gods are, but
they were also gods to be loved. What's more, the Egyptians
enjoyed talking about the gods. Like the gods of the Greeks
and Romans, the Egyptian gods seemed to be made for
storytelling. There were tales to educate, tales to
entertain, and tales with morals, and in those stories, the
gods didn't seem so far away and unreachable. It was
comforting to hear that the gods also wept for those they
had lost, to hear about the gods laughing, to learn that the
gods faced many of the same problems that the people did,
albeit on a grander scale. In learning about the gods on
such an intimate level, the Egyptians could better relate to
the universe around them.
The ancient Egyptians practiced a belief system that was
part totemism, part polytheism, and part ancestor worship.
There were numerous gods, but rather than living on an
isolated mountain or in an unreachable heaven, many of them
lived invisibly in the mortal world, acting through sacred
sites, items, animals, or even chosen people. Furthermore,
the spirits of the deceased, if remembered and honored,
could aid and guide the living from the Afterlife.
I'm a storyteller by nature, as are we all. The first
religions were oral in nature, the laws and traditions
passed down by word of mouth, carried by narrative and
fable. I've tried to reflect this in the structure of this
site. I've left out all the dry, and quite frankly boring,
details about ritual and how Aru-Lat-Hotep translates to
"Peace Beyond the Gate," which means that he is a
derivative of the Sumerian god...
But I'm breaking my own rule already.
If I want dry, I'll go read a Master's Thesis on early
Middle Eastern belief structure (in other words, I'll go
read mine). Most of the users of this site I've talked to
would rather hear stories, and I'd rather tell stories any
day. I blame my father for this, having given me a copy of D'Aulaires'
Book of Greek Myths for my sixth birthday. I finally got
my revenge by giving him a copy of Joseph Campbell's The
Hero with a Thousand Faces for his sixty-sixth. That'll
teach him.
I actually went through several drafts of the new site
before finally settling on the storytelling angle. The
original draft was horribly technical, including essays on
the evolution of Egyptian religion, the role of the pharaoh
in the death cult, and lengthy treatises on Egyptian ritual.
I still can't believe I wrote any of it. Thankfully I
abandoned it, because just about everyone I showed it to
gave up reading about halfway. I have since considered
submitting it to the publication house at the university,
but as the market is already flooded with books on the
Egyptian gods, I doubt it would go anywhere.
I settled on a much simpler and easier-to-follow format.
There are two pages of deities, Greater
Gods and Minor
Gods. There is a page of Essays
and Studies (and I invite contributions to the archive),
and finally, a collection of Myths.
I will warn you now, there is no way I could have included
every god worshipped by the ancient Egyptians. Quite
frankly, I think only the Shinto religion has more deities.
I know I've left a few out, some of them I left out on
purpose. I mean, there is only so much one can say about the
god of toiletries. I've tried to include the popular
deities, the well-known ones, the major players in the
mythic cycles, and some of the really fun ones. But if I've
left out your favorite, let me know and send me some
information on them. I'll be sure to add them in.
Like all my pages, I expect this to be a
constantly-evolving project. I eventually would like to add
in hieroglyphics of the names of the gods and goddesses
along with totem symbols and maybe even some pictures of
each one. This however, will take some time to collect, but
it will give you something to look forward to. I will be
adding in new entries as I come across them in my research
and so though it will be quite large by the time it is
nearly complete, it will be quite thorough.
But that is a task for another day. Today I give this
site to you to enjoy. Peruse the stacks, leaf through
the volumes I've set up here. Remember the stories you read,
and share them with those around you. A story isn't a story
until it's told to someone else, after all. |
