Amun 46
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."[11]
Atenist heresy
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" Re-Horakhty ("Ra (who is the) Horus of the
worship of Aten in direct competition with that of Amun. Praises of two Horizons"), the fusion of Ra and Horus,
in depiction typical of the New Kingdom.
Amun on stelae are strikingly similar in language to those later used, in
Re-Horakhty was in turn identified with
particular the Hymn to the Aten: Amun.
"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."[12]
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
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 god Ra 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.
Amun 47
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!"[13]
In the Leiden hymns, Amun, Ptah, and Re are regarded as a trinity who are distinct gods but with unity in
plurality.[14] "The three gods are one yet the Egyptian elsewhere insists on the separate identity of each of the
three."[15] 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."[16]
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 [17]][18]
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."[19]
Third Intermediate Period
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 Upper 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 stranglehold on Egypt's economy. The Amun
priests owned two-thirds of all the temple lands in Egypt and 90
percent of her ships plus many other resources.[20] Consequently, the
Amun priests were as powerful as Pharaoh, if not more so. One of the
sons of the High Priest Pinedjem I 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 king
Psusennes II—the final ruler of the 21st Dynasty.
The sarcophagus of a priestess of Amon-Ra, c.
1000 BC – Smithsonian's National Museum of
Natural History
Amun 48
Decline
In the 10th century BC, 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.
This Third
Intermediate
Period amulet
from the Walters
Art Museum
depicts Amun
fused with the
solar deity, Re,
thereby making
the supreme
solar deity
Amun-Re.
Amun 49
Iron Age and Classical Antiquity
Nubia, Sudan and Libya
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,[21] 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 and Accelerator Mass
Depiction of Amun in a relief at Karnak (15th
Spectrometry (AMS) and C14 dating of the charred roof beams have
century BC)
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.[22]
In Libya there remained a solitary oracle of Amun in the Libyan Desert at the oasis of Siwa.[23] 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
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 אמוןNo Amown occurs twice in reference to Thebes,[24] 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?"
Amun 50
Greece
Ammon had a temple and a statue, the gift of Pindar (d. 443 BC), at
Thebes,[25] and another at Sparta, the inhabitants of which, as
Pausanias says,[26] consulted the oracle of Ammon in Libya from early
times more than the other Greeks. At Aphytis, Chalcidice, Ammon 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 Ammon. Roman copy of a Greek original
Zeus,[27] continued to be the principal local deity of Thebes. from the late 5th centrury B.C. The Greeks of the
lower Nile Delta and Cyrenaica combined
Several words derive from Amun via the Greek form, Ammon, such as features of supreme god Zeus with features of the
ammonia and ammonite. The Romans called the ammonium chloride Egyptian god Ammon-Ra. Staatliche
they collected from deposits near the Temple of Jupiter Amun in Antikensammlungen Munich.
ancient Libya sal ammoniacus (salt of Amun) because of proximity to
the nearby temple.[28] 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
[1] Warburton (2012:211).
[2] 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) (http:/ / books. google. co. uk/ books?id=VP3o2908v10C& pg=PA185& lpg=PA185& dq=Amun+ religious+
self-creation+ definition& source=bl& ots=KZRcLTyiix& sig=c1YxVb8j2eAplPGPweBDAZVnjHQ& hl=en&
ei=vN3nTr3WLpLb8QOx_o2bCg& sa=X& oi=book_result& ct=result& resnum=8& sqi=2& ved=0CFcQ6AEwBw#v=onepage& q=Amun
religious self-creation definition& f=false)
[3] 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] Die Altaegyptischen Pyramidentexte nach den Papierabdrucken und Photographien des Berliner Museums (1908), no 446 (http:/ / www. lib.
uchicago. edu/ cgi-bin/ eos/ eos_page. pl?DPI=100& callnum=PJ1553. A1_1908_cop3& object=242).
[5] Egypt and the Egyptians pg. 123 (http:/ / books. google. ca/ books?id=Lo8BI6vUv18C& pg=PA123& dq=amun+ amana+ egyptian& hl=en&
sa=X& ei=hU7eULGLMenB0QHdnoCoBQ& ved=0CEcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage& q=amana & f=false)
[6] Stewert, Desmond and editors of the Newsweek Book Division "The Pyramids and Sphinx" 1971 pp. 60–62
[7] http:/ / www. ancientegyptonline. co. uk/ amun. html
[8] Blyth, 2007, p.164
[9] Ancient Egyptian Literature: Volume II: The New Kingdom, Miriam Lichtheim, p105-106, University of California Press, 1976, ISBN
0-520-03615-8
[11] Budge, E.A. Wallis,""An Introduction to Egyptian Literature", p.214, Dover edition 1997, first pub. 1914, ISBN 0-486-29502-8
[12] 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 (http:/ / www. press. uchicago. edu/ presssite/ metadata. epl?mode=synopsis&
bookkey=67334)
Amun 51
[13] "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 (http:/ / www. press. uchicago. edu/ presssite/ metadata. epl?mode=synopsis&
bookkey=67334)
[14] Egyptian Religion: Siegried Morenz, Translated by Ann E. Keep, Cornell University Press, 1992, p.144-145,ISBN 0-8014-8029-9
[15] "Before Philosophy", Henri Frankfort, John A. Wilson, Thorkild Jacobsen, p. 75, Pelican, 1951
[16] "Of God and Gods", Jan Assmann. p. 64, University of Wisconsin Press, 2008, ISBN 029922554
[17] http:/ / www. biblegateway. com/ bible?passage=John%203:8;& version=NASB;
[18] "Before Philosophy", Henri Frankfort (contributor), p. 18, Penguin, 1951
[19] The Living Wisdom of Ancient Egypt, Christian Jacq, p. 143, Simon & Schuster, 1999, ISBN 0-671-02219-9
[20] Peter Clayton, Chronicle of the Pharaohs, Thames & Hudson Ltd., 1994. p.175
[21] Herodotus, The Histories ii.29
[23] Pausanias, Description of Greece x.13 § 3
[24] Strong's Concordance / Gesenius' Lexicon (http:/ / cf. blueletterbible. org/ lang/ lexicon/ lexicon. cfm?Strongs=0528& version=NIV)
[25] Pausanias, Description of Greece ix.16 § 1
[26] Pausanias, Description of Greece iii.18 § 2
[27] Jerem. xlvi.25
Sources
• Adolf Erman, Handbook of Egyptian Religion (London, 1907)
• David Klotz, Adoration of the Ram: Five Hymns to Amun-Re from Hibis Temple (New Haven, 2006)
• David Warburton, Architecture, Power, and Religion: Hatshepsut, Amun and Karnak in Context, 2012, ISBN
9783643902351.
• E. A. W. Budge, Tutankhamen: Amenism, Atenism, and Egyptian Monotheism (http://sacred-texts.com/egy/tut/
tut00.htm) (1923).
• Ed. Meyer, article "Ammon" in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie
• Pietschmann, articles "Ammon" and "Ammoneion" in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911).
Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
External links
• Wim van den Dungen, Leiden Hymns to Amun (http://www.maat.sofiatopia.org/amun.htm)
• (Spanish) Karnak 3D :: Detailed 3D-reconstruction of the Great Temple of Amun at Karnak (http://www.
karnak3d.net), Marc Mateos, 2007
• Amun with features of Tutankhamun (http://www.flickr.com/photos/schumata/3478852986/) (statue, c.
1332–1292 BC, Penn Museum)
