Egyptian Mythology

I

Introduction

Egyptian Mythology, beliefs about gods and other supernatural beings that made up religion in ancient Egypt. The religious beliefs of the ancient Egyptians strongly influenced the development of their culture, although a true religion, in the sense of a unified system of beliefs, never existed among them. State religion was centred on great temples, where statues of the gods were worshipped by priests. The faith of ordinary people, by contrast, was based on an unorganized collection of ancient myths, nature worship, and a large number of gods. In the most influential and famous of Egyptian myths, a divine hierarchy is developed and the creation of the Earth is explained. However, even the greatest Egyptian myths were known in different versions in different parts of Egypt and at different times.

II

Creation

According to one version of the Egyptian Creation myth, only the ocean existed at first. Then Ra, the Sun, came out of an egg (or a flower, in some versions) that appeared on the surface of the water. Ra brought forth four children, the gods Shu and Keb and the goddesses Tefnut and Nut. Shu and Tefnut became the atmosphere. They stood on Keb, who became the Earth, and raised up Nut, who became the sky. Ra ruled over all. Keb and Nut later had two sons, Set and Osiris, and two daughters, Isis and Nephthys. Osiris succeeded Ra as king of the Earth, helped by Isis, his sister-wife. Set, however, hated his brother and killed him. Isis then embalmed her husband’s body with the help of the god Anubis, who thus became the god of embalming. The powerful charms of Isis resurrected Osiris, who became king of the netherworld, the land of the dead. Horus, who was the son of Osiris and Isis, later defeated Set in a great battle and became king of the Earth.

III

Local Gods

From this myth of creation came the conception of the ennead, a group of nine divinities, and the triad, consisting of a divine father, mother, and son. Every local temple in Egypt possessed its own divine family group (often a triad). The greatest ennead, however (and the model for later variants of this grouping), was that of Ra and his children and grandchildren. This group was worshipped at Heliopolis, the centre of Sun worship in the Egyptian world. The origin of the local deities is obscure; some of them were taken over from foreign religions, and some were originally the animal gods of prehistoric Africa. Gradually, they were all fused into a complicated religious structure, although comparatively few local divinities became important throughout Egypt. In addition to those already named, the important divinities included the gods Amon, Thoth, Ptah, Khnemu, and Hapi, and the goddesses Hathor, Mut, Neit, and Sekhet. Their importance increased with the political ascendancy of the localities where they were worshipped. For example, the ennead of Memphis was headed by a triad composed of the father Ptah, the mother Sekhet, and the son Imhotep. Therefore, during the Memphite dynasties, Ptah became one of the greatest gods in Egypt. Similarly, when the Theban dynasties ruled Egypt, the ennead of Thebes was given the most importance, headed by the father Amon, the mother Mut, and the son Khonsu. As the religion became more involved, true deities were sometimes confused with human beings who had been glorified after death. Thus, Imhotep, who was originally the chief minister of the 3rd Dynasty ruler Zoser, was later regarded as a demigod. During the 5th Dynasty the pharaohs began to claim divine ancestry and from that time on were worshipped as sons of Ra. Minor gods, some merely demons, were also given places in local divine hierarchies.

IV

Iconography

The Egyptian gods were represented with human bodies and human or animal heads. Sometimes the animal or bird expressed the characteristics of the god. Ra, for example, had the head of a hawk, and the hawk was sacred to him because of its swift flight across the sky; Hathor, the goddess of love and laughter, was given the head of a cow, which was sacred to her; Anubis was given the head of a jackal because these animals ravaged the desert graves in ancient times; Mut was vulture-headed and Thoth was ibis-headed; and Ptah was given a human head, although he was occasionally represented as a bull, called Apis. Because of the gods to which they were attached, the sacred animals were venerated, but they were never worshipped until the decadent 26th Dynasty. The gods were also represented by symbols, such as the sun disc and hawk wings that were worn on the headdress of the pharaoh.