Ancient Egyptian religion

Religion in Egypt grew with the Nile. Long before the first pharaohs, people along the river buried their dead with food and tools for another life and worshipped local gods, many in animal form. When Upper and Lower Egypt were united, around 3000 BCE, the king became the link between gods and people.

In the Old Kingdom the cult of the sun god Ra rose at Heliopolis, and kings built the pyramids of Giza and Saqqara as gateways to eternity. In the Middle and New Kingdoms Amun of Thebes became king of the gods, and his temple at Karnak grew into the largest religious complex of the ancient world.

Around 1350 BCE the pharaoh Akhenaten tried to replace the gods with a single sun disc, the Aten, and built a new capital at Amarna; after his death the old cults returned. Under Greek and Roman rule Egyptian gods spread across the Mediterranean, above all Isis. Christianity gradually replaced the old religion, and the last temple, at Philae, was closed around 535 CE.

Egypt’s religion was shaped from the start by its kings. After the unification of the country around 3000 BCE, the rulers of the first dynasties were buried at Abydos, the later cult centre of Osiris, with elaborate tombs and offerings. In about 2650 BCE the architect Imhotep built a step pyramid of stone for King Djoser at Saqqara, the first monumental stone building in Egypt; Imhotep himself was later revered as a god of wisdom and healing. The pyramids of Giza followed in the 26th and 25th centuries BCE, and the kings of the Fifth Dynasty built temples to the sun god Ra and called themselves his sons.

When royal power collapsed at the end of the Old Kingdom, around 2160 BCE, religious privileges once reserved for the king spread more widely. Spells from the Pyramid Texts reappeared, adapted, as the Coffin Texts of officials, and the hope of becoming an Osiris after death opened to many. Mentuhotep II reunited the country from Thebes around 2050 BCE, and in the Middle Kingdom the Theban god Amun rose to prominence. Pilgrims flocked to Abydos for the festival of Osiris, leaving memorial stones along the processional way.

The New Kingdom, from about 1550 BCE, was the golden age of Egyptian temples. After the expulsion of the Hyksos rulers from the north, the kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty enriched Amun-Ra of Karnak with the spoils of empire, and the queen Hatshepsut built her terraced temple at Deir el-Bahri. Kings were now buried in the Valley of the Kings, their tombs painted with guides to the underworld. Akhenaten (reigned about 1353–1336 BCE) broke with this world: he closed or neglected the temples of other gods, promoted the worship of the Aten alone and moved the court to Amarna. Scholars still debate whether his reform amounted to true monotheism. Under Tutankhamun the court returned to the old gods, and later kings erased Akhenaten’s name. Ramesses II, who ruled for 66 years, built on a colossal scale, including the rock temples of Abu Simbel.

After the New Kingdom the power of the priesthood grew. Around 1070 BCE the high priests of Amun effectively ruled southern Egypt from Thebes, and the god himself was treated as king, issuing decisions through oracles. Libyan and then Kushite dynasties ruled Egypt in turn, the Kushites as devoted servants of Amun. In the Late Period the Saite kings of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty revived ancient styles, and the cults of sacred animals flourished: millions of mummified ibises, cats and falcons were buried as offerings, and the Apis bulls of Memphis were laid to rest in vast galleries at Saqqara.

Persia conquered Egypt in 525 BCE, and Alexander the Great arrived in 332 BCE, visiting the oracle of Amun at the Siwa oasis. The Ptolemies, Alexander’s Macedonian successors, presented themselves as pharaohs and built some of Egypt’s best-preserved temples, at Edfu, Dendera, Kom Ombo and Philae. They also promoted Serapis, a god combining Osiris and the Apis bull with Greek features. After Octavian’s conquest in 30 BCE, Roman emperors were carved on temple walls in the dress of pharaohs, while Isis and Serapis were worshipped from Britain to the Black Sea.

Christianity spread through Egypt from the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE and, by the 4th, Egypt had become a heartland of Christian monasticism. Imperial laws of 391–392 under Theodosius I banned pagan sacrifice and temple worship, and the great Serapeum of Alexandria was destroyed by a Christian crowd around 391. Knowledge of the old scripts faded: the last known hieroglyphic inscription was carved at Philae in 394 CE. The temple of Isis there survived longest, as a place of worship for the Nubian peoples to the south, until the emperor Justinian’s officials closed it around 535–537. Many temples became churches, and the Coptic language preserved the last stage of Egyptian speech.

At the heart of Egyptian religion was ma’atma’at Truth, justice and cosmic order in ancient Egypt, upheld by the king and personified as a goddess. Glossary: truth, justice and the right order of the cosmos, personified as a goddess with a feather. The king’s duty was to uphold ma’at against chaos by serving the gods and ruling justly.

Egyptians worshipped many gods. Ra was the sun, sailing across the sky by day and through the underworld by night. Osiris, killed by his brother Seth and restored to life by his wife Isis, ruled the dead; their son Horus was the god of kingship. Gods could merge, take many forms and be worshipped in different ways in different cities.

Life continued after death. Each person had several souls, among them the kaka The life force of a person in ancient Egyptian belief, which lived on after death and received offerings. Glossary and the ba. The dead faced judgement before Osiris, where their heart was weighed against the feather of ma’at; the righteous entered the Field of Reeds.

Temples were the houses of the gods, not places of public worship. In the inner sanctuary priests served the god’s statue each day, washing, clothing and feeding it. Ordinary people met the gods at festivals, when statues were carried out in processions, and prayed at household shrines and to local gods.

Care for the dead was a lifelong concern. Bodies were mummified, tombs filled with food, furniture, amulets and texts, and families brought offerings to keep the dead alive in memory and in the afterlife.

Egypt had no single holy book, but a great many religious texts. The Pyramid Texts, carved in royal pyramids from about 2350 BCE, are among the oldest religious writings in the world. The Coffin Texts extended such spells to officials, and the Book of the Dead, written on papyrus from about 1550 BCE, guided ordinary people through the underworld.

Hymns, myths, temple inscriptions and wisdom literature complete the picture, preserved in stone and on papyrus.