Ancient Egyptian Magic

3:39 PM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT

Magicians

In Egyptian myth, magic (heka) was one of the forces used by the creator to make the world. Through heka, symbolic actions could have practical effects. All deities and people were thought to possess this force in some degree, but there were rules about why and how it could be used.
The most respected users of magic were the lector priests...
Priests were the main practitioners of magic in pharaonic Egypt, where they were seen as guardians of a secret knowledge given by the gods to humanity to 'ward off the blows of fate'. The most respected users of magic were the lector priests, who could read the ancient books of magic kept in temple and palace libraries. In popular stories such men were credited with the power to bring wax animals to life, or roll back the waters of a lake.
SekhmetStatue of Sekhmet  ©Real lector priests performed magical rituals to protect their king, and to help the dead to rebirth. By the first millennium BC, their role seems to have been taken over by magicians (hekau). Healing magic was a speciality of the priests who served Sekhmet, the fearsome goddess of plague.
Lower in status were the scorpion-charmers, who used magic to rid an area of poisonous reptiles and insects. Midwives and nurses also included magic among their skills, and wise women might be consulted about which ghost or deity was causing a person trouble.
Amulets were another source of magic power, obtainable from 'protection-makers', who could be male or female. None of these uses of magic was disapproved of - either by the state or the priesthood. Only foreigners were regularly accused of using evil magic. It is not until the Roman period that there is much evidence of individual magicians practising harmful magic for financial reward.
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Techniques

Detail from an ivory wand showing one of the 'fearsome' deities at the command of the magicianDetail from an ivory wand  ©Dawn was the most propitious time to perform magic, and the magician had to be in a state of ritual purity. This might involve abstaining from sex before the rite, and avoiding contact with people who were deemed to be polluted, such as embalmers or menstruating women. Ideally, the magician would bathe and then dress in new or clean clothes before beginning a spell.
Metal wands representing the snake goddess Great of Magic were carried by some practitioners of magic. Semi-circular ivory wands - decorated with fearsome deities - were used in the second millennium BC. The wands were symbols of the authority of the magician to summon powerful beings, and to make them obey him or her.
An ivory wand in the British MuseumIvory wand  ©
Private collections of spells were treasured possessions, handed down within families.
Only a small percentage of Egyptians were fully literate, so written magic was the most prestigious kind of all. Private collections of spells were treasured possessions, handed down within families. Protective or healing spells written on papyrus were sometimes folded up and worn on the body.
A spell usually consisted of two parts: the words to be spoken and a description of the actions to be taken. To be effective all the words, especially the secret names of deities, had to be pronounced correctly. The words might be spoken to activate the power of an amulet, a figurine, or a potion. These potions might contain bizarre ingredients such as the blood of a black dog, or the milk of a woman who had born a male child. Music and dance, and gestures such as pointing and stamping, could also form part of a spell.
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Protection

altHeadrest of a scribe protected with protective deities including the god Bes, who warded off evil demons from the headrest's owner as he slept  ©Angry deities, jealous ghosts, and foreign demons and sorcerers were thought to cause misfortunes such as illness, accidents, poverty and infertility. Magic provided a defence system against these ills for individuals throughout their lives.
Stamping, shouting, and making a loud noise with rattles, drums and tambourines were all thought to drive hostile forces away from vulnerable women, such as those who were pregnant or about to give birth, and from children - also a group at risk, liable to die from childhood diseases.
The wands were engraved with the dangerous beings ...
Some of the ivory wands may have been used to draw a protective circle around the area where a woman was to give birth, or to nurse her child. The wands were engraved with the dangerous beings invoked by the magician to fight on behalf of the mother and child. They are shown stabbing, strangling or biting evil forces, which are represented by snakes and foreigners.
Supernatural 'fighters, such as the lion-dwarf Bes and the hippopotamus goddess Taweret, were represented on furniture and household items. Their job was to protect the home, especially at night when the forces of chaos were felt to be at their most powerful.
Bes and Taweret also feature in amuletic jewellery. Egyptians of all classes wore protective amulets, which could take the form of powerful deities or animals, or use royal names and symbols. Other amulets were designed to magically endow the wearer with desirable qualities, such as long life, prosperity and good health.
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Healing

Magic was not so much an alternative to medical treatment as a complementary therapy. Surviving medical-magical papyri contain spells for the use of doctors, Sekhmet priests and scorpion-charmers. The spells were often targeted at the supernatural beings that were believed to be the ultimate cause of diseases. Knowing the names of these beings gave the magician power to act against them.
Since demons were thought to be attracted by foul things, attempts were sometimes made to lure them out of the patient's body with dung; at other times a sweet substance such as honey was used, to repel them. Another technique was for the doctor to draw images of deities on the patient's skin. The patient then licked these off, to absorb their healing power.
Acting out the myth would ensure that the patient would be cured...
Many spells included speeches, which the doctor or the patient recited in order to identify themselves with characters in Egyptian myth. The doctor may have proclaimed that he was Thoth, the god of magical knowledge who healed the wounded eye of the god Horus. Acting out the myth would ensure that the patient would be cured, like Horus.
Collections of healing and protective spells were sometimes inscribed on statues and stone slabs (stelae) for public use. A statue of King Ramesses III (c.1184-1153 BC), set up in the desert, provided spells to banish snakes and cure snakebites.
Statue of HorusHorus  ©A type of magical stela known as a cippusalways shows the infant god Horus overcoming dangerous animals and reptiles. Some have inscriptions describing how Horus was poisoned by his enemies, and how Isis, his mother, pleaded for her son's life, until the sun god Ra sent Thoth to cure him. The story ends with the promise that anyone who is suffering will be healed, as Horus was healed. The power in these words and images could be accessed by pouring water over the cippus. The magic water was then drunk by the patient, or used to wash their wound.
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Curses

Though magic was mainly used to protect or heal, the Egyptian state also practised destructive magic. The names of foreign enemies and Egyptian traitors were inscribed on clay pots, tablets, or figurines of bound prisoners. These objects were then burned, broken, or buried in cemeteries in the belief that this would weaken or destroy the enemy.
In major temples, priests and priestesses performed a ceremony to curse enemies of the divine order, such as the chaos serpent Apophis - who was eternally at war with the creator sun god. Images of Apophis were drawn on papyrus or modelled in wax, and these images were spat on, trampled, stabbed and burned. Anything that remained was dissolved in buckets of urine. The fiercest gods and goddesses of the Egyptian pantheon were summoned to fight with, and destroy, every part of Apophis, including his soul (ba) and his heka. Human enemies of the kings of Egypt could also be cursed during this ceremony.
Magical figurines were thought to be more effective if they incorporated something from the intended victim, such as hair, nail-clippings or bodily fluids.
This kind of magic was turned against King Ramesses III by a group of priests, courtiers and harem ladies. These conspirators got hold of a book of destructive magic from the royal library, and used it to make potions, written spells and wax figurines with which to harm the king and his bodyguards. Magical figurines were thought to be more effective if they incorporated something from the intended victim, such as hair, nail-clippings or bodily fluids. The treacherous harem ladies would have been able to obtain such substances but the plot seems to have failed. The conspirators were tried for sorcery and condemned to death.
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The dead

All Egyptians expected to need heka to preserve their bodies and souls in the afterlife, and curses threatening to send dangerous animals to hunt down tomb-robbers were sometimes inscribed on tomb walls. The mummified body itself was protected by amulets, hidden beneath its wrappings. Collections of funerary spells - such as the Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead - were included in elite burials, to provide esoteric magical knowledge.
The soul had to overcome the demons it would encounter by using magic words and gestures.
The dead person's soul, usually shown as a bird with a human head and arms, made a dangerous journey through the underworld. The soul had to overcome the demons it would encounter by using magic words and gestures. There were even spells to help the deceased when their past life was being assessed by the Forty-Two Judges of the Underworld. Once a dead person was declared innocent they became an akh, a 'transfigured' spirit. This gave them akhw power, a superior kind of magic, which could be used on behalf of their living relatives.

The Patriarch of Alexandria

7:31 PM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
The Patriarch of Alexandria is the archbishop of Alexandria and Cairo, Egypt. Historically, this office has included the designation pope (etymologically "Father", like "Abbot"). The first bishop known to be called "Pope" was the thirteenth Patriarch of Alexandria, Papas Heraclas.[1]
The Alexandrian episcopate was revered as one of the three major Christian sees (along with Romeand Antioch) before Constantinople or Jerusalem were granted similar status (in 381 and 451, respectively). In the sixth century, these five archbishops were formally granted the title of patriarchand were subsequently known as the Pentarchy. Alexandria was elevated to de facto archiepiscopalstatus by the Alexandrine Council[citation needed][which?], and this status was ratified by Canon Six of the First Ecumenical Council, which stipulated that all the Egyptian episcopal provinces were subject to the metropolitan see of Alexandria (already the prevailing custom).[citation needed]
"Papa" has been the designation for the Archbishop of Alexandria and Patriarch of Africa in the See of Saint Mark.[contradictory][citation needed] This office has historically held the title of Pope—"Παπας" (papas), which means "Father" in Greek and Coptic—since Pope Heracleus, the 13th Alexandrine Bishop (227–240 AD), was the first to associate "Pope" with the title of the Bishop of Alexandria.
The word pope derives from the Greek πάππας, meaning "Father". In the early centuries of Christianity, this title was applied informally (especially in the east) to all bishops and other senior clergy. In the west it began to be used particularly for the Bishop of Rome (rather than for bishops in general) in the sixth century; in 1075, Pope Gregory VII issued a declaration widely interpreted as stating this by-then-established convention.[2][3][4][5][6] By the sixth century, this was also the normal practice in the imperial chancery of Constantinople.[2]
The earliest record of this title was regarding Pope Heraclas of Alexandria (227–240) in a letter written by his successor, Pope Dionysius of Alexandria, to Philemon (a Roman presbyter):
τοῦτον ἐγὼ τὸν κανόνα καὶ τὸν τύπον παρὰ τοῦ μακαρίου πάπα ἡμῶν Ἡρακλᾶ παρέλαβον.[7]
This is translated:
I received this rule and ordinance from our blessed father/pope, Heraclas.[8][9]
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest recorded use of "pope" in English is in an Old English translation (c. 950) ofBede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People:
Þa wæs in þa tid Uitalius papa þæs apostolican seðles aldorbiscop.[10]
In modern English:
At that time, Pope Vitalian was chief bishop of the apostolic see.
According to church tradition, the patriarchate was founded in AD 42 by Mark the Evangelist.[citation needed] All churches acknowledge thesuccession of church leaders until the time of the monophysite Second Council of Ephesus (the so-called "Robber Council") of 449 and the orthodox Council of Chalcedon in 451, which gave rise to the non-Chalcedonian (miaphysite-monophysite) Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and the Chalcedonian Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria

Amun: "the hidden one" or "invisible"

11:43 AM | BY ZeroDivide EDIT
Amun, Amun-Ra, or Amon
King of the gods and god of the wind [Spirit, Pneuma, Invisible]
Amun.svg
Typical depiction of Amun during the New Kingdom, with two plumes on his head, the ankh symbol and the was sceptre.
Name inhieroglyphs
imn
n		C12
Major cult centerThebes
Symboltwo vertical plumes, the ram-headed Sphinx(Criosphinx)
ConsortAmunet
Wosret
Mut
OffspringKhonsu
Greek equivalentZeus
Amun (also Amon (/ˈɑːmən/), Amen; Ancient Greek: Ἄμμων Ámmōn, Ἅμμων Hámmōn) was a major Egyptian deity. He was attested since the Old Kingdom together with his spouse Amaunet. With the 11th dynasty (c. 21st century BC), he rose to the position of patron deity of Thebes by replacing Monthu.[1]
After the rebellion of Thebes against the Hyksos and with the rule of Ahmose I, Amun acquired national importance, expressed in his fusion with the Sun god, Ra, as Amun-Ra.
Amun-Ra retained chief importance in the Egyptian pantheon throughout the New Kingdom (with the exception of the "Atenist heresy" under Akhenaten). Amun-Ra in this period (16th to 11th centuries BC) held the position oftranscendental, self-created[2] creator deity "par excellence", he was the champion of the poor or troubled and central to personal piety.[3] His position as King of Gods developed to the point of virtual monotheism where other gods became manifestations of him. With Osiris, Amun-Ra is the most widely recorded of the Egyptian gods.[3] As the chief deity of theEgyptian Empire, Amun-Ra also came to be worshipped outside of Egypt, in Ancient Libya and Nubia, and as Zeus Ammon came to be identified with Zeus in Ancient Greece.

Early history[edit]

Amun and Amaunet are mentioned in the Old Egyptian Pyramid Texts.[4] Amun and Amaunet formed one quarter of the ancient Ogdoad of Hermopolis. The name Amun (written imn,[amn, related to iman of islam] pronounced Amana in ancient Egyptian [5]) meant something like "the hidden one" or "invisible".[6] It was thought that Amun created himself and then his surroundings.[1]
The other members of the Ogdoad are Nu and Naunet, Kuk and Kauket, Huh and Hauhet.
Amun rose to the position of tutelary deity of Thebes after the end of the First Intermediate Period, under the 11th dynasty. As the patron of Thebes, his spouse was Mut. In Thebes, Amun as father, Mut as mother and the Moon god Khonsu formed a divine family or "Theban Triad".

Temple at Karnak[edit]

Main articles: Precinct of Amun-Re, Karnak and History of the Karnak Temple complex
The history of Amun as the patron god of Thebes begins in the 20th century BC, with the construction of the Precinct of Amun-Re at Karnak under Senusret I. The city of Thebes does not appear to have been of great significance before the 11th dynasty.
Major construction work in the Precinct of Amun-Re took place during the 18th dynasty when Thebes became the capital of the unified Ancient Egypt. Construction of the Hypostyle Hall may have also began during the 18th dynasty, though most building was undertaken under Seti I and Ramesses II. Merenptah commemorated his victories over the Sea Peoples on the walls of the Cachette Court, the start of the processional route to the Luxor Temple. This Great Inscription (which has now lost about a third of its content) shows the king's campaigns and eventual return with booty and prisoners. Next to this inscription is the Victory Stela, which is largely a copy of the more famous Israel Stela found in the West Bank funerary complex of Merenptah.[7] Merenptah's son Seti II added 2 small obelisks in front of the Second Pylon, and a triple bark-shrine to the north of the processional avenue in the same area. This was constructed of sandstone, with a chapel to Amun flanked by those of Mut and Khonsu.
The last major change to the Precinct of Amun-Re's layout was the addition of the first pylon and the massive enclosure walls that surrounded the whole Precinct, both constructed by Nectanebo I.
Amon-Ra (l'esprit des quatre elements, lame du monde matérial),N372.2., Brooklyn Museum

New Kingdom[edit]

Bas-relief depicting Amun as pharaoh
Further information: High Priests of Amun

Identification with Min and Ra[edit]

When the army of the founder of the Eighteenth dynasty expelled the Hyksos rulers from Egypt, the victor's city of origin, Thebes, became the most important city in Egypt, the capital of a new dynasty. The local patron deity of Thebes, Amun, therefore becamenationally important. The pharaohs of that new dynasty attributed all their successful enterprises to Amun, and they lavished much of their wealth and captured spoil on the construction of temples dedicated to Amun.
The victory accomplished by pharaohs who worshipped Amun against the "foreign rulers", brought him to be seen as a champion of the less fortunate, upholding the rights of justice for the poor.[3] By aiding those who traveled in his name, he became the Protector of the road. Since he upheld Ma'at (truth, justice, and goodness),[3] those who prayed to Amun were required first to demonstrate that they were worthy by confessing their sins. Votive stelae from the artisans' village at Deir el-Medina record:
"[Amun] who comes at the voice of the poor in distress, who gives breath to him who is wretched..You are Amun, the Lord of the silent, who comes at the voice of the poor; when I call to you in my distress You come and rescue me...Though the servant was disposed to do evil, the Lord is disposed to forgive. The Lord of Thebes spends not a whole day in anger; His wrath passes in a moment; none remains. His breath comes back to us in mercy..May your ka be kind; may you forgive; It shall not happen again."[8]
Amun-Min as Amun-Ra ka-Mut-ef from the temple at Deir el Medina.
Subsequently, when Egypt conquered Kush, they identified the chief deity of the Kushites as Amun. This Kush deity was depicted as ram-headed, more specifically a woolly ram with curved horns. Amun thus became associated with the ram arising from the aged appearance of the Kush ram deity. A solar deity in the form of a ram can be traced to the pre-literate Kerma culture in Nubia, contemporary to the Old Kingdom of Egypt. The later (Meroitic period) name of Nubian Amun was Amani, attested in numerous personal names such as Tanwetamani, Arkamani, Amanitore, Amanishakheto, Natakamani. Since rams were considered a symbol of virility, Amun also became thought of as a fertility deity, and so started to absorb the identity of Min, becoming Amun-Min. This association with virility led to Amun-Min gaining the epithet Kamutef, meaning Bull of his mother,[9] in which form he was found depicted on the walls of Karnak, ithyphallic, and with a scourge, as Min was.
imn
n		ra
Z1		C1
Amun-Ra
in hieroglyphs
Re-Horakhty ("Ra (who is the) Horus of the two Horizons"), the fusion ofRa and Horus, in depiction typical of the New Kingdom. Re-Horakhty was in turn identified with Amun.
As the cult of Amun grew in importance, Amun became identified with the chief deity who was worshipped in other areas during that period, the sun god Ra. This identification led to another merger of identities, with Amun becoming Amun-Ra. In the Hymn to Amun-Ra he is described as
"Lord of truth, father of the gods, maker of men, creator of all animals, Lord of things that are, creator of the staff of life."[10]

Atenist heresy[edit]

During the latter part of the eighteenth dynasty, the pharaoh Akhenaten (also known as Amenhotep IV) disliked the power of the temple of Amun and advanced the worship of the Aten, a deity whose power was manifested in the sun disk, both literally and symbolically. He defaced the symbols of many of the old deities, and based his religious practices upon the deity, the Aten. He moved his capital away from Thebes, but this abrupt change was very unpopular with the priests of Amun, who now found themselves without any of their former power. The religion of Egypt was inexorably tied to the leadership of the country, the pharaoh being the leader of both. The pharaoh was the highest priest in the temple of the capital, and the next lower level of religious leaders were important advisers to the pharaoh, many being administrators of the bureaucracy that ran the country.
The introduction of Atenism under Akhenaton constructed a monotheist worship of Aten in direct competition with that of Amun. Praises of Amun on stelae are strikingly similar in language to those later used, in particular the Hymn to the Aten:
"When thou crossest the sky, all faces behold thee, but when thou departest, thou are hidden from their faces ... When thou settest in the western mountain, then they sleep in the manner of death ... The fashioner of that which the soil produces, ... a mother of profit to gods and men; a patient craftsmen, greatly wearying himself as their maker..valiant herdsman, driving his cattle, their refuge and the making of their living..The sole Lord, who reaches the end of the lands every day, as one who sees them that tread thereon ... Every land chatters at his rising every day, in order to praise him."[11]
When Akhenaten died, the priests of Amun-Ra reasserted themselves. His name was struck from Egyptian records, all of his religious and governmental changes were undone, and the capital was returned to Thebes. The return to the previous capital and its patron deity was accomplished so swiftly that it seemed this almost monotheistic cult and its governmental reforms had never existed. Worship of Aten ceased and worship of Amun-Ra was restored. The priests of Amun even persuaded his young son, Tutankhaten, whose name meant "the living image of Aten"—and who later would become a pharaoh—to change his name to Tutankhamun, "the living image of Amun".

Theology[edit]

In the New Kingdom, Amun became successively identified with all other Egyptian deities, to the point of virtual monotheism (which was then attacked by means of the "counter-monotheism" of Atenism). Primarily, the god of wind Amun came to be identified with the solar godRa and the god of fertility and creation Min, so that Amun-Ra had the main characteristic of a solar god, creator god and fertility god. He also adopted the aspect of the ram from the Nubian solar god, besides numerous other titles and aspects.
As Amun-Re he was petitioned for mercy by those who believed suffering had come about as a result of their own or others wrongdoing.
Amon-Re "who hears the prayer, who comes at the cry of the poor and distressed...Beware of him! Repeat him to son and daughter, to great and small; relate him to generations of generations who have not yet come into being; relate him to fishes in the deep, to birds in heaven; repeat him to him who does not know him and to him who knows him...Though it may be that the servant is normal in doing wrong, yet the Lord is normal in being merciful. The Lord of Thebes does not spend an entire day angry. As for his anger – in the completion of a moment there is no remnant..As thy Ka endures! thou wilt be merciful!"[12]
In the Leiden hymns, Amun, Ptah, and Re are regarded as a trinity who are distinct gods but with unity in plurality.[13] "The three gods are one yet the Egyptian elsewhere insists on the separate identity of each of the three."[14] This unity in plurality is expressed in one text:
"All gods are three: Amun, Re and Ptah, whom none equals. He who hides his name as Amun, he appears to the face as Re, his body is Ptah."[15]
The hidden aspect of Amun and his likely association with the wind caused Henri Frankfort to draw parallels with a passage from the Gospel of John: "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going."[John 3:8][16]
A Leiden hymn to Amun describes how he calms stormy seas for the troubled sailor:
"The tempest moves aside for the sailor who remembers the name of Amon. The storm becomes a sweet breeze for he who invokes His name... Amon is more effective than millions for he who places Him in his heart. Thanks to Him the single man becomes stronger than a crowd."[17]

Third Intermediate Period[edit]

The sarcophagus of a priestess of Amon-Ra, c.1000 BC – Smithsonian'sNational Museum of Natural History

Theban High Priests of Amun[edit]

Main article: Theban High Priests of Amun
While not regarded as a dynasty, the High Priests of Amun at Thebes were nevertheless of such power and influence that they were effectively the rulers of Egypt from 1080 to c. 943 BC. By the time Herihor was proclaimed as the first ruling High Priest of Amun in 1080 BC—in the 19th Year of Ramesses XI—the Amun priesthood exercised an effective hold on Egypt's economy. The Amun priests owned two-thirds of all the temple lands in Egypt and 90 percent of her ships and many other resources.[18] Consequently, the Amun priests were as powerful as the Pharaoh, if not more so. One of the sons of the High Priest Pinedjem would eventually assume the throne and rule Egypt for almost half a decade as pharaoh Psusennes I, while the Theban High Priest Psusennes III would take the throne as kingPsusennes II—the final ruler of the 21st Dynasty.
This Third Intermediate Period amulet from the Walters Art Museumdepicts Amun fused with the solar deity, Re, thereby making the supreme solar deity Amun-Re.

Decline[edit]

In the 10th century BC, [time of Moses] the overwhelming dominance of Amun over all of Egypt gradually began to decline. In Thebes, however, his worship continued unabated, especially under the Nubian Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt, as Amun was by now seen as a national god in Nubia. The Temple of Amun, Jebel Barkal, founded during the New Kingdom, came to be the center of the religious ideology of the Kingdom of Kush. The Victory Stele of Piye at Gebel Barkal (8th century BC) now distinguishes between an "Amun of Napata" and an "Amun of Thebes". Tantamani (died 653 BC), the last pharaoh of the Nubian dynasty, still bore a theophoric name referring to Amun in the Nubian form Amani.

Iron Age and Classical Antiquity[edit]

Depiction of Amun in a relief at Karnak (15th century BC)

Nubia, Sudan and Libya[edit]

In areas outside of Egypt where the Egyptians had previously brought the cult of Amun his worship continued into Classical Antiquity. In Nubia, where his name was pronounced Amane or Amani, he remained a national deity, with his priests, at Meroe and Nobatia,[19] regulating the whole government of the country via an oracle, choosing the ruler, and directing military expeditions. According to Diodorus Siculus, these religious leaders even were able to compel kings to commit suicide, although this tradition stopped when Arkamane, in the 3rd century BC, slew them.
In Sudan, excavation of an Amun temple at Dangeil began in 2000 under the directorship of Drs Salah Mohamed Ahmed and Julie R. Anderson of the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums (NCAM), Sudan and the British Museum, UK, respectively. The temple was found to have been destroyed by fire andAccelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) and C14 dating of the charred roof beams have placed construction of the most recent incarnation of the temple in the 1st century AD. This date is further confirmed by the associated ceramics and inscriptions. Following its destruction, the temple gradually decayed and collapsed.[20]
In Libya there remained a solitary oracle of Amun in the Libyan Desert at the oasis of Siwa.[21] The worship of Ammon was introduced into Greece at an early period, probably through the medium of the Greek colony in Cyrene, which must have formed a connection with the great oracle of Ammon in the Oasis soon after its establishment. Iarbas, a mythological king of Libya, was also considered a son of Hammon.

Levant[edit]

Amun is mentioned as a deity in the Hebrew Bible, and in the Nevi'im, texts presumably written in the 7th century BC, the name נא אמון No Amownoccurs twice in reference to Thebes,[22] by the KJV rendered just as No:
Jeremiah 46:25:25 The Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, said: “Behold, I am bringing punishment upon Amon of Thebes, and Pharaoh and Egypt and her gods and her kings, upon Pharaoh and those who trust in him.
English Standard Version:
Nahum 3:8 "Art thou better than populous No, that was situate among the rivers, that had the waters round about it, whose rampart was the sea, and her wall was from the sea?"

Greece[edit]

Zeus Ammon. Roman copy of a Greek original from the late 5th century BC. The Greeks of the lower Nile Delta and Cyrenaica combined features of supreme god Zeus with features of the Egyptian god Amun-Ra.Staatliche Antikensammlungen Munich.
Amun, worshipped by the Greeks as Ammon, had a temple and a statue, the gift of Pindar (d. 443 BC), at Thebes,[23] and another atSparta, the inhabitants of which, as Pausanias says,[24] consulted the oracle of Ammon in Libya from early times more than the other Greeks. At Aphytis, Chalcidice, Amun was worshipped, from the time of Lysander (d. 395 BC), as zealously as in Ammonium. Pindar the poet honoured the god with a hymn. At Megalopolis the god was represented with the head of a ram (Paus. viii.32 § 1), and the Greeks of Cyrenaica dedicated at Delphi a chariot with a statue of Ammon.
Such was its reputation among the Classical Greeks that Alexander the Great journeyed there after the battle of Issus and during his occupation of Egypt, where he was declared "the son of Amun" by the oracle. Alexander thereafter considered himself divine. Even during this occupation, Amun, identified by these Greeks as a form of Zeus,[25] continued to be the principal local deity of Thebes.
Several words derive from Amun via the Greek form, Ammon, such as ammonia and ammonite. The Romans called the ammonium chloride they collected from deposits near the Temple of Jupiter Amun in ancient Libya sal ammoniacus (salt of Amun) because of proximity to the nearby temple.[26] Ammonia, as well as being the chemical, is a genus name in the foraminifera. Both these foraminiferans (shelled Protozoa) and ammonites (extinct shelled cephalopods) bear spiral shells resembling a ram's, and Ammon's, horns. The regions of the hippocampus in the brain are called the cornu ammonis – literally "Amun's Horns", due to the horned appearance of the dark and light bands of cellular layers.
In Paradise Lost, Milton identifies Ammon with the biblical Ham (Cham) and states that the gentiles called him the Libyan Jove.

References[edit]

  1. Jump up^ Warburton (2012:211).
  2. Jump up^ Michael Brennan Dick, Born in heaven, made on earth: the making of the cult image in the ancient Near East, Eisenbrauns, 1999 ISBN 1575060248, p. 184 (fn. 80)
  3. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Vincent Arieh Tobin, Oxford Guide: The Essential Guide to Egyptian Mythology, Edited by Donald B. Redford, p. 20, Berkley books, ISBN 0-425-19096-X
  4. Jump up^ Die Altaegyptischen Pyramidentexte nach den Papierabdrucken und Photographien des Berliner Museums (1908), no 446.
  5. Jump up^ Egypt and the Egyptians pg. 123
  6. Jump up^ Hart, George (2005). The Routledge Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and Goddesses. Routledge. p. 21. ISBN 0-415-36116-8.
  7. Jump up^ Blyth, 2007, p.164
  8. Jump up^ Ancient Egyptian Literature: Volume II: The New Kingdom, Miriam Lichtheim, p105-106, University of California Press, 1976, ISBN 0-520-03615-8
  9. Jump up^ Hart 2005, p. 21
  10. Jump up^ Budge, E.A. Wallis,""An Introduction to Egyptian Literature", p.214, Dover edition 1997, first pub. 1914, ISBN 0-486-29502-8
  11. Jump up^ John A. Wilson, "The Burden of Egypt", p. 211, University of Chicago Press, 1951, 4th imp 1963, Republished as "The Culture of Ancient Egypt", ISBN 978-0-226-90152-7 Uchicago.edu
  12. Jump up^ "The Burden of Egypt", John A. Wilson, p300, University of Chicago Press, 1951, 4th imp 1963, Republished as "The Culture of Ancient Egypt", ISBN 978-0-226-90152-7 Uchicago.edu
  13. Jump up^ Egyptian Religion: Siegried Morenz, Translated by Ann E. Keep, Cornell University Press, 1992, p.144-145,ISBN 0-8014-8029-9
  14. Jump up^ "Before Philosophy", Henri Frankfort, John A. Wilson, Thorkild Jacobsen, p. 75, Pelican, 1951
  15. Jump up^ "Of God and Gods", Jan Assmann. p. 64, University of Wisconsin Press, 2008, ISBN 978-0-299-22554-4
  16. Jump up^ Before Philosophy, Henri Frankfort (contributor), p. 18, Penguin, 1951
  17. Jump up^ The Living Wisdom of Ancient Egypt, Christian Jacq, p. 143, Simon & Schuster, 1999, ISBN 0-671-02219-9
  18. Jump up^ Peter Clayton, Chronicle of the Pharaohs, Thames & Hudson Ltd., 1994. p.175
  19. Jump up^ Herodotus, The Histories ii.29
  20. Jump up^ Sweek, Tracey; Anderson, Julie; Tanimoto, Satoko (2012)."Architectural Conservation of an Amun Temple in Sudan".Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies 10 (2): 8–16.doi:10.5334/jcms.1021202.
  21. Jump up^ Pausanias, Description of Greece x.13 § 3
  22. Jump up^ Strong's Concordance / Gesenius' Lexicon
  23. Jump up^ Pausanias, Description of Greece ix.16 § 1
  24. Jump up^ Pausanias, Description of Greece iii.18 § 2
  25. Jump up^ Jerem. xlvi.25
  26. Jump up^ "Ammonia". h2g2 Eponyms. BBB.CO.UK. 2003-01-11.Archived from the original on 2 November 2007. Retrieved2007-11-08.

Sources[edit]

Further reading[edit]

  • Assmann, Jan (1995). Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom: Re, Amun and the Crisis of Polytheism. Kegan Paul International. ISBN 978-0710304650.
  • Ayad, Mariam F. (2009). God's Wife, God's Servant: The God's Wife of Amun (ca.740–525 BC). Routledge. ISBN 978-0415411707.
  • Cruz-Uribe, Eugene (1994). "The Khonsu Cosmogony". Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt 31. JSTOR 40000676.
  • Guermeur, Ivan (2005). Les cultes d’Amon hors de Thèbes: Recherches de géographie religieuse (in French). Brepols. ISBN 90-71201-10-4.
  • Klotz, David (2012). Caesar in the City of Amun: Egyptian Temple Construction and Theology in Roman Thebes. Association Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth.ISBN 978-2-503-54515-8.
  • Kuhlmann, Klaus P. (1988). Das Ammoneion. Archäologie, Geschichte und Kultpraxis des Orakels von Siwa (in German). Verlag Phillip von Zabern in Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. ISBN 978-3805308199.
  • Otto, Eberhard (1968). Egyptian art and the cults of Osiris and Amon. Thames & Hudson.
  • Roucheleau, Caroline Michelle (2008). Amun temples in Nubia: a typological study of New Kingdom, Napatan and Meroitic temples. Archaeopress.ISBN 9781407303376.
  • Thiers, Christophe, ed. (2009). Documents de théologies thébaines tardives. Université Paul-Valéry.
  • Zandee, Jan (1948). De Hymnen aan Amon van papyrus Leiden I. 350 (in Dutch). E.J. Brill.
  • Zandee, Jan (1992). Der Amunhymnus des Papyrus Leiden I 344,Verso (in German). Rijksmuseum van Oudheden. ISBN 90-71201-10-4.

External links[edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Amun.
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