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EGYPTIAN
RELIGION
To
define ancient Egyptian religion is not easy for, as Egyptologists
have been at pains to point out, the religion incorporated a
bewildering range of practices, from the worship of the Sun,
the Moon and the stars, to Nile worship, animism, fetishism and
magic. Nevertheless, modern scholars, yielding to the natural
urge to impose order on chaos, have identified the religion as
basically a Sun cult, framed against a hotchpotch of coarse,
superstitious and primitive beliefs. And this Sun cult, in the
eyes of many, was nothing less than a monotheism in which the
Sun-god anticipated the One God of the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic
religions. In the words of E.A. Wallis Budge, one of the founding
fathers of Egyptology:
The
Egyptian in his hymns called many gods ‘One’,
but these gods were all forms of the Sun-god, and, as I
understand it, he was a monotheist pure
and simple as a Sun-worshipper.
Today,
Egyptologists tend to avoid the term ‘monotheism’ in
cognisance of the view, held by many, that the Egyptians practised
polytheism. To use the
m-word is to stoke up a passionate and ultimately non-productive debate.
Nevertheless, the impression is given in Egyptological literature that
the Sun cult was the
only religion of consequence in ancient Egypt, and that the Sun-god
(Atum or Re) was the creator of all things. Whether or not
the m-word is used,
Egyptian
religion is regarded substantially as a Sun cult for the latter two
thirds of its four-thousand-year history, and it is this
view which has informed
modern
opinion on the significance of the pyramids, the temples, and the tombs.
But
did the Egyptians really worship the Sun per se? Or did
they rather worship the Sun as a symbol? Did the Sun in fact
manifest
a more fundamental
idea in
Egyptian religion – the mystery of the creation of the Universe?
In
my books ‘Pyramid of Secrets’ (2003) and ‘The
Midnight Sun’ (2004),
I argue that Egyptian religion was in fact a ‘cult of creation’,
i.e. a cult whose primary aim was to celebrate and re-enact perpetually
the myth of the creation of the Universe.
What
do we know of the creation myth? What exactly does it mean to
speak of the act of
creation?
To
ask this question is to embark on a most difficult investigation,
for there is no one Egyptian myth that sets out
a clear, logical
and connected account
of the creation, at least not in a language that the modern
mind can comprehend. Instead, what we find, for the most part,
is
a plurality of creation myths
from different religious centres, each rendering the key events
in its
own idiosyncratic
way, using brief and obscure terminology, as if the story was
too potent for outright telling. Furthermore, to make matters
worse,
the sparse
and fragmentary
information that we possess is scattered across the texts of
some three thousand years. As the eminent scholar Henri Frankfort
explains:
The
Egyptians were so little prepared to dwell on any change
that they did not even describe in any orderly and
continuous
fashion
the supreme
change
which
took place at what they called ‘the first time’.
We are obliged to reconstruct the creation story from
allusions which are frequent and from certain
learned commentaries...
The
creation story has indeed been reconstructed by Egyptology,
but not in a satisfactory
way. I shall now summarise the
orthodox interpretation,
as deficient
as it is, in order to demonstrate why scholars have
dismissed the creation
myth
as an inconsequential product of primitive minds.
The
starting point, in all Egyptian creation myths, is an abyss
of water called Nun, which seemingly stretched
in all
directions
to
form a kind
of mini-Universe
or proto-Universe from which the created Universe
would emerge. The exact significance of this primeval ocean
remains a mystery
to Egyptologists,
who cannot understand
how, on the one hand, it could be attached physically
to the earth (it
was the source of the Nile), whilst, on the other
hand, it formed the celestial
ocean
of the sky. In any event, all sources agree that
the Nun had given birth to all things – the earth, the
sky, the stars, the Sun, and the Moon.
But
how exactly did this happen?
Here,
the creation myths are reasonably consistent. In the darkness
of the Nun, the creator-god
(regarded in some cases
as the personification
of the
waters
but in other cases as an independent entity)
had stirred from his ‘sleep
of death’, conquered the forces of
darkness, and emerged as a soul, or spirit,
from the
primeval ocean. According to this monodramatic
version of the
myth, the creator-god had created himself,
no other being having been present at the
time. As the god emerged from the waters,
so too
did the first land, providing
him a place on which to stand. This risen
earth is known to scholars as the ‘primeval
hill’ or ‘primeval mound’.
The
primeval mound was the focal point of creation.
It was here that the creator-god
defeated the
forces of chaos, and
ordained
the birth
of the stars, the Sun
and the Moon. But how did he bring these
celestial bodies into being? Here, the
myths are at their most opaque. There is talk of
the stars ascending to the sky; of the
Sun and Moon rising up
from the earth,
or being conceived
and born in
the
sky; and there is mention of a time when
the
sky was separated from the
earth. None of these allusions are understood
by Egyptology, which assumes that the
stars, the Sun and the Moon were simply
magicked into existence by the creator-god as he stood
triumphantly
upon the primeval
mound.
 Such
is the creation myth, as conceived by modern scholars. What is
to be made
of it?
According
to Egyptologists, not a lot. In their view, the story of Nun
and the
rising
primeval
mound was
inspired by
the flooding
and
receding
of the
Nile.
In other words, there is nothing to
this part of the story but a mundane agrarian
phenomenon.
Meanwhile,
the rest of
the creation
myth is dismissed
as a ragbag
of imaginative and contradictory ideas
on the origins of the Universe, which,
far from
containing
any profound
wisdom
or
esoteric insight,
reflect the idle
speculations of a simple and primitive
people.
Unable
to see any merit in the creation myth, Egyptologists have made
it subordinate
to
the Sun cult on the grounds
that the functions
and
titles of the Sun-god
included that of creator-god. As
they see it, it was the Sun-god who stirred
in the
watery
abyss; the Sun-god who raised himself
onto the primeval
mound; and the Sun-god who created
himself, the Sun, and the other
celestial bodies.
The Sun was thus
the self-created creator of the Universe,
and no other creator existed
beside him. Granted, this is a preposterous
story, but scholars are troubled
not a jot, since the myth of creation is,
after
all, the product of crude and primitive
minds.
To
be fair, the second half of the 20th century saw Egyptology display
a more
positive attitude
to the
creation myth, particularly
in the
books of Henri
Frankfort and R.T. Rundle Clark.
Many scholars now accept that the
discrepancies
in the
various creation myths represent,
as Frankfort put it, ‘a multiplicity
of approaches’ and ‘a
meaningful inconsistency’;
in other words, the Egyptian philosophers
used a diverse range of images
and allegories to describe
a single ineffable mystery. Furthermore,
in his ‘static universe’ theory
of the Egyptian culture, Frankfort
put forward a theoretical framework
for the importance of the
creative act:
In
a static world, creation is the only event that
really matters
supremely,
since it alone
can be said
to have made
a change.
It makes the difference
between the nothingness of chaos
and the fullness of the present
which has
emerged
as a result of that unique act.
Unfortunately,
this bold insight did nothing to dislodge the idea
that the
Sun was the
creator. With the sole
exception of Clark
(‘Myth and Symbol in
Ancient Egypt’, 1959),
no Egyptologist has rendered
the creation myth in anything
but a solar
context. Clark, it should be
noted, did present the creator-god
as a mystical and metaphysical
phenomenon, but
he stopped short of advocating
his primacy over the Sun (or
even his independence from
the Sun).
In short, neither
Frankfort, Clark, nor any other
scholar, has questioned the
assumption that Egyptian religion
was primarily
a Sun cult.
In
order to challenge this assumption – for
the Sun-god to yield primacy
to the creator-god – it
is a minimum condition that
the myth of creation be viewed
not as a ‘simple folk
tale’,
as Egyptologists maintain,
but as a logical, consistent
and profound account of the
origins of the Universe.
It would then follow, arguably,
that the true God
of ancient Egypt was the
creator-god;
that the creator-god had
manifested himself in the
Sun (a created
object); and that the Sun-god
Re was a creator-god first
and foremost.
Whilst
this might sound like a subtle
difference, it actually
opens the
door to a fundamental
re-evaluation
of Egyptian
religion.
In
my books ‘Pyramid
of Secrets’ (2003)
and ‘The Midnight
Sun’ (2004),
I argue that the Egyptian
creation myth indeed
represented a coherent
theory of the
origins of
the Universe, albeit
conceived in a way that
is the veritable
antithesis of modern
science and religion.
(Its
fundamental concepts
include geocentrism,
duotheism,
cataclysm, and body-soul
duality. A full explanation
of these ideas is reserved
for readers of my books).
The
key conclusions are
as follows:
• Ancient
Egyptian religion was not a Sun cult per se, but a cult of
creation, i.e. a cult whose primary aim was to celebrate
and re-enact perpetually the myth of the creation
of the Universe. The creation of the Universe was the one great
mystery of Egypt
from the beginning to the end
of its mighty civilisation.
• The
true object of worship in ancient Egyptian religion was not
the Sun-god
but the creator-god,
who personified the creation of the Universe.
• The
Sun was a created body in which the light of the creator-god
had been made gloriously
manifest. The rising of the Sun signified the first light of creation. In its
daily cycle, the Sun re-enacted
the death and rebirth of
the creator-god,
i.e. the death and rebirth of the Universe.
• The
pharaoh was not a Sun-king, as Egyptologists believe,
but rather a creator-king,
who embodied the spirit of the creator-god (known variously as Horus
or ‘the
son of Re’). The beginning
of
kingship can be traced to the beginning of the world, when Horus, the
falcon-god,
had flown up
from
the
abyss, alighted on his perch, and been crowned with the Sun and the Moon.
• All
Egyptian ritual was aimed at re-enacting the creative act in
which the creator
had established right order (maat) at the beginning of time.
Every city the king established was ‘the first’ city; every temple he
commissioned was ‘the
first’ temple;
every
obelisk
he raised
was ‘the
first’ obelisk,
or Benben;
and if
he built
a pyramid,
it was ‘the
first’ pyramid.
By means
of magic
rituals
and spells,
performed
on an
annual,
seasonal,
monthly,
and even
daily
basis,
the power
of the
creator-god
was rejuvenated
and the
forces
of chaos
were
reshackled.
The king
himself – as
an incarnation
of both
Horus
and Seth – personified
this ongoing
struggle. With
the king
at the
helm, the
sky would
never fall,
the Sun
disc would
never be
hidden, the
Nile would
never run
dry, and
the land
would never
sink into
the abyss.
• Each
major
city
in
Egypt claimed
to
be a microcosm
of
the primeval
mound.
The
city thus paid tribute to the fundamental importance of the
creation myth.
• The
Egyptian temple was a simulacrum of creation.
The floor of the temple was
the primeval mound; the ceiling was the sky; and its
pillars and obelisks froze the mythical moment when the sky
had been
separated
from the earth. Beneath its
floor lay the primeval ocean and underworld, whilst outside,
the enclosure wall symbolised the celestial ocean that bounded
the Universe.
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The
Benben meteorite at the Temple of
the Phoenix, Heliopolis
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• The
Egyptian obelisk was a phallic symbol, its pyramidal apex representing
the seed of creation, otherwise known as the Benben Stone.
The erection of the obelisk re-enacted the moment when the
creator-god had inseminated the sky-goddess for the conception
and birth of the stars, the Sun, and the Moon.
• In
death, the king underwent the same transformation as had been
experienced
by the creator-god at the beginning of time. Or, otherwise said, the death
and rebirth of the king re-enacted the death and rebirth
of the creator-god, i.e.
the death and rebirth of the Universe.
 • The
Pyramid Texts – such
a puzzle to scholars – make
sense as a ritualistic re-enactment of the events of creation,
in which the
king played the part of the creator-god. The king’s body was thus mummified
and revivified, just as the creator-god had been reassembled and brought
back
to life at the beginning of time. At this, the king’s soul separated
from
its body and ascended to the sky, just as the soul of the creator-god had originally
done, and brought the Universe into being in all its diverse splendour.
The
various afterlife destinies of the king in the Pyramid Texts – the celestial
ocean, the stars, the Sun and the Moon – are thus
not contradictory, as Egyptologists imagine, but rather represent complementary
ideas in the myth
of creation.
• The
true pyramid was a symbol of the creation, its capstone, benbenet,
recalling the insemination of the sky for the conception
and
birth of the stars,
the Sun, and the Moon. (Hence the solar, stellar and lunar
aspects of the pyramid’s
symbolism, which are not contradictory but complementary.)
To build the pyramid
was to re-enact the creation,
the miracle of the one reflecting the miracle of the other.
For
an expansion
of these
ideas, and
a complete
decoding of
the myth
of creation,
please see ‘Pyramid of Secrets’ (chapters 1 and 5) and ‘The
Midnight Sun’, which may be purchased from
the on-line
Bookshop.
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