The Origins of Egyptian Religion

The blog post for this week is written by Yvonne Buskens-Frenken, from the Netherlands. She is a member of the Dutch Egyptology society Mehen and a former student of Egyptology at Manchester University (Certificate 2015 and Diploma 2017). While Yvonne has never been to the Egypt Centre before, she hopes to visit in the near future, perhaps with other Mehen members. This is the second of the online Egypt Centre courses that she has attended.

Last week a new online course was launched by The Egypt Centre entitled The Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, which is led by Dr Ken Griffin. I do find these online lectures and courses absolutely wonderful. Because of Covid-19 we are all, in one way or another, deprived from attending the usual Egyptology lectures held in museums or Egyptology societies. I wholeheartedly embrace these online lectures as they provide a dose of Egyptology. I actually hope this form of lecturing will continue in the future, but without Covid-19 hanging over us!

As a former Egyptology student, the topics discussed are not new or unfamiliar to me but there is always a new aspect to discover or a new angle to approach a certain topic for further (private) study. Within that context, I would like to highlight here some aspects of the first session discussing the origins of Egyptian religion and myths, which I found particularly interesting. One of them is Punt, which popped up twice during the lecture, although indirectly. Dr. Griffin started with the question “what is religion?” This is a subject not easy to discuss or define. I think we all have different opinions and experience it differently. Additionally, at some level, I am sure the ancient Egyptians must have had the same difficulties in experiencing what they understand by what we call religion. Actually, I don’t think they even had a word for religion? To find out how the ancient Egyptians experienced their understanding of religion, we have to search within the available resources. However, when interpreting these resources, they don’t always give us the perfect insight. For example, are these painted pottery decorations you see here on this Predynastic vessel (fig. 1) deities and cults? If so, what did they mean for the ancient Egyptians?

Fig. 1: D-ware vessel (BM EA 35502)

From later periods in Egyptian history, we are able to get more conclusive evidence. Firstly, we can detect what we call state religion, which was performed within the temples. The king acted as the high priest while the temple priesthood performed rituals on behalf of the king. These included daily rituals such offerings, libations, anointing, and dressing the gods. You cannot fail to see these abundant “religious” scenes when you walk through the temples of Egypt, such as that of Sety I at Abydos (fig. 2). There is also the private religion, which I prefer studying over the state religion as it brings us closer to the ordinary Egyptians and is more relatable. I am glad Ken included in his lecture a beautiful ear stela (Toye-Dubs 2016), which shows how much mankind wanted to communicate with the gods: “NN, do you hear me?” The ears of God are depicted on the stela. Here you see three pair of ears, although there are more beautiful examples in museums showing just one large ear. Also interesting within the private religion is the ancestor cult, a form of keeping in contact with and honouring your ancestors by the so-called ancestor busts or ꜣḫ i͗ḳr n Rꜥ stelae (“excellent spirit of Re”) (fig. 3)

Fig. 2: Sety I performing rituals within the temple at Abydos

Gods were venerated in temples, the earliest of which were not built of stone, as the ones in Abydos or Luxor, but from organic materials. The archaic temple at Hierakonpolis is a good example. Some well-known temples in modern Luxor are Luxor Temple and Karnak Temple on the east bank. On the West Bank, Medinet Habu and Hatshepsut’s temple are my favourite places to visit! However, did you ever hear of (or visit for that matter, which I haven’t) the oldest archaic temple in the Theban area, situated on Thoth Hill. This temple on the West Bank of Luxor, dating to around 3,200 BC, was first brought to my attention during a lecture hosted by Mehen some years ago. Petrie already excavated this site over 100 years ago, but it was a team of Hungarian archaeologists who found beneath the Middle Kingdom structure of Sankhkare Mentuhotep III remnants of an archaic stone temple (pottery and architectural fragments are dated to the so-called Archaic Period). The archaic structure had almost the same layout as the Middle Kingdom temple, except for the fact that it had a single sanctuary rather than three. Dr Griffin pointed out in the lecture about its star orientation: the archaic temple differs in its orientation to Sirius by around two degrees from the later structure on Thoth Hill, thus pointing to a shift in the stars (Vörös 1998; Wilkinson 2000, 173).

Fig. 3: Fragment of an ꜣḫ i͗ḳr n Rꜥ stela (A232)

We next looked at the origins of the Egyptian gods, which will be the focus of week two. When studying Egyptology you think “now I know them all”, but then another one pops up. I actually don’t know how many gods even existed in ancient Egypt, but then does anybody? It fascinates me that on the one hand the ancient Egyptians wanted strict rules and order, as can be seen with this king upholding maat (cosmic order). On the other hand, it is somewhat chaotic; countless gods in different forms and in different contexts could be created and depicted, almost as if one could make up one for every occasion. One of my favourite gods from the Egyptian pantheon is Min of Coptos (fig. 4). He is mostly known as being the god of sex and fertility, but I find him interesting as being the god of the Eastern Dessert. Did you know there are cowrie shells depicted on this statue shown here, now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford? This seems to be a reference to the Red Sea and trade. From Coptos, (trading/military) expeditions were sent through the Eastern Desert. Soldiers, sailors, and craftsmen, all on foot with dismantled ships and trading goods/food loaded on donkeys, trotting towards the Red Sea. From there the expedition continued on ships, which were assembled on the spot, with some going to the “mysterious” land of Punt. The exact location of Punt remains a mystery. While for many the famous Punt expedition during the reign of Hatshepsut comes to mind, expeditions were already being sent during the Old Kingdom (Bard & Fattovich 2018; Breyer 2016).

Fig. 4: Colossal statue of Min from Coptos

The last part of the lecture was about creation myths. Within ancient Egyptian religion you have many creation myths, such as the Hermopolitan myth, the Heliopolitan myth, the Memphite myth, and many other local traditions. From the Heliopolitan myth I like the story of the Great Cackler: Geb was a god of the earth and one of the Ennead of Heliopolis (fig. 5). He was largely worshiped as a goose, his sacred animal, and was already around during Predynastic times. He was also called Gengen Wer, meaning “Great Honker”, who is the personification of creative energy. In his shrine in Bata in Iunu (Heliopolis) he laid the great Egg (symbolising rebirth and renewal) from which the Sun-god arose in the form of a phoenix or Benben. He was given the epithet “The great Cackler” because of the noise he made when the egg was laid. During the lecture on someone asked why a male goose could can lay an egg? Well, it turns out Geb was often considered to be a hermaphrodite (Griffiths 2001, 473). From later times, we have a wonderful text about the Great Cackler (Coffin Text 307) “… He cackled, being the Great Cackler, in the place where he was created, he alone. He began to speak in the midst of silence … He commenced to cry when the earth was inert. His cry spread … He brought forth all living things which exist. He caused them to live. He made all men understand the way to go and their hearts came alive when they saw him… (Clagget 1989, 301–302).

Fig. 5: Geb from the tomb of Pashedu (TT 3)

At the end of the lecture I hear the word Punt again. One could have easily missed it but it was mentioned in the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor. Although the Shipwrecked Sailor is more of a tale than a myth, it was presented in this lecture because of its many connotations with gods and religion. The story looks very straightforward, but when analysed and translated it keeps you puzzling over and over again about its meaning. The only surviving copy of the text is now in the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. It is about a trading, exploration, or a military expedition from the South and its return to Egypt. One part of the tale is about the sailor telling his story to his master about being shipwrecked on an island full of wonders. He encounters a giant snake (the god), who calls himself the “prince of Punt”. They become friends and the snake tells his unfortunate story to the sailor. The island full of good and abundant food is here mythically described as the Land of Punt, the well-known land/area for trading since early times (Simpson 2003, 45–46. An added bonus to the lecture was a video by Luke Keenan, the Senior Education Officer at the Egypt Centre, vividly retelling the story!

Bibliography:

Bard, Kathryn A. and Rodolfo Fattovich † 2018. Seafaring expeditions to Punt in the Middle Kingdom: excavations at Mersa/Wadi Gawasis, Egypt. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 96. Leiden; Boston: Brill.

Clagett, Marshall 1989. Ancient Egyptian science: a source book. Volume one: Knowledge and order, 2 vols. Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society 184. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.

Breyer, Francis 2016. Punt: die Suche nach dem “Gottesland”. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 80. Leiden; Boston: Brill.

Griffiths, J. Gwyn 2001. Solar cycle. In Donald B. Redford (ed.), The Oxford encyclopedia of ancient Egypt, 476-480. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Griffin, K. 2007. An ꜣḫ i͗ḳr n Rꜥ stela from the collection of the Egypt Centre, Swansea. In Schneider, Thomas and Kasia Szpakowska (eds), Egyptian stories: a British Egyptological tribute to Alan B. Lloyd on the occasion of his retirement, 137–147. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag.

Simpson, William Kelly (ed.) 2003. The literature of ancient Egypt: an anthology of stories, instructions, stelae, autobiographies, and poetry, third ed. New Haven; London: Yale University Press.

Toye-Dubs, Nathalie 2016. De l’oreille à l’écoute. Etude des documents votifs de l’écoute: nouvel éclairage sur le développement de la piété personnelle en Egypte ancienne. BAR International Series 2811. Oxford: BAR.

Vörös, Győző 1998. Temple on the pyramid of Thebes: Hungarian excavations on Thoth Hill at the temple of Pharaoh Montuhotep Sankhkara 1995–1998. Budapest: Százszorszép Kiadó és Nyomda.

Wilkinson, Richard H. 2000. The complete temples of Ancient Egypt. London: Thames & Hudson.