amulet A small item that protects its owner from danger or harm. It could be carried or worn in a necklace, bracelet, or ring and was also placed among a mummy’s bandages to protect the deceased in the afterlife.
Book of the Dead A funerary text composed during the New Kingdom. It consisted of spells that were designed for provision, to protect, and to guide the deceased on their journey to the netherworld.
cartonnage Comprising layers of linen or papyrus covered with plaster, cartonnage was the material used to create coffins and funerary masks from the First Intermediate Period onward.
Coffin Texts So-named because they were first found inscribed in the interior of elite wooden coffins during the First Intermediate Period and Middle Kingdom, the Coffin Texts emphasize a reunion with loved ones in the afterlife and provide spells as maps with passwords and keys to overcome the difficulties on the path to the netherworld.
crook and flail Two of the most prominent items (scepters) of royal regalia. They were symbols of Egyptian kingship and dominion. The crook was a cane with a hooked handle and the flail was a rod with three attached beaded strands.
demiurge A figure responsible for fashioning and maintaining the physical universe. The concept derives from Platonic philosophy.
Instructions Also known as instructional literature, Wisdom Texts, or didactic literature. A genre of texts (called sebayt in Egyptian) that often incorporates the teachings of a father for his son. Such texts advise on all aspects of personal and professional behavior.
Intermediate period A time characterized by political unrest and the decentralization of the central administration. There were three intermediate periods in Egyptian history.
Middle Egypt The geographic region defined by modern archaeologists as stretching between Cairo and the Qena Bend.
Middle Kingdom (2040–1640 BCE; Dynasties 11–13) A period of political unity when art, architecture, literature, and religion flourished. During this time, a middle class arose, and ordinary individuals gained access to funerary privileges once only accessed by royals.
necropolis A term meaning “city of the dead,” referring to a large ancient burial site.
New Kingdom (1550–1070 BCE; Dynasties 18–20). The age of the Egyptian Empire. The period is marked by extensive building projects and military campaigns.
Old Kingdom (2649–2100 BCE; Dynasties 3–8) A period of economic prosperity and political stability that also marked the beginning of large state-organized building projects, such as the Step Pyramid at Saqqara and the Great Pyramid at Giza.
papyrus Made from the pith of the papyrus plant, this paperlike material became the most common medium for Egyptian writing.
Pyramid Texts So-named because they were first discovered inscribed on the interior walls and sarcophagi of pyramids at Saqqara dating to the Fifth and Sixth dynasties, the Pyramid Texts are the earliest set of religious texts known from ancient Egypt. They consist of a number of spells and incantations that are often difficult to interpret, but are primarily concerned with aiding the king’s ascent to the afterlife.
sarcophagus A container used to protect a mummified body, generally made of stone.
scarab An amulet in the form of a scarab beetle, associated with certain aspects of the sun god. Scarabs were generally inscribed on the bottom and were often incorporated into jewelry or used as administrative seals.
shabti Also known as ushebti. A funerary figurine placed in tombs as part of the grave goods to act as a substitute for the deceased in the afterlife by performing manual labor tasks. Many were inscribed with the name of their owner and an ushebti spell.
sphinx A mythical creature with the body of a lion and the head of a man (or in some cases a ram), which often wore the royal nemes headdress. In Egypt, the most famous sphinx is the Great Sphinx at Giza.
uraeus A protective cobra deity whose image protruded above the forehead on royal crowns and acted as a symbol of kingship.
Egyptian creation myths attempted to explain the origins of the natural, divine, and social realms. They were not monolithic; many cities had their own versions, which were adapted and retold for millennia. There were some commonalities: before the creation act, there was an infinite, formless, watery darkness (often personified as the primeval deity Nun), out of which emerged the self-generated demiurge. This divine architect fashioned other deities, who helped him form the world and establish order. The key variations between myths involved the identity of the creator(s)—he was usually the main deity of the city—and the processes by which he brought about creation. In Heliopolis, the sun god Re-Atum begat the first divine couple by masturbation. They introduced sexual reproduction, by which three other pairs of gods came into being (personifying earth, sky, and the natural world, as well as kingship, chaos, and other societal entities). In Hermopolis, four divine couples resided in the primordial waters and fashioned the world together, thereafter causing the sun to rise and the Nile to flow. Attempts were made to unite these two major genesis myths by having the Hermopolitan deities create the sun god, who then emerged from the waters to produce the rest of the universe.
The ancient Egyptians devised a number of differing but complementary mythological accounts of the creation of the cosmos and society and the beginnings of life.
A later, perhaps more sophisticated creation account originated in the capital city of Memphis, casting the local god Ptah as supreme creator. Instead of rising from the waters of Nun or generating life from semen, blood, or tears, Ptah envisioned the cosmos in his mind and then spoke it into being. He did this with the aid of Sia and Hu, deities representing his divine intellect and creative utterance, and the god of magic, Heka.
Rachel Aronin
The Egyptians had several creator gods, including Ptah (seated, top left) and Re-Atum (top right). The gods of the Heliopolitan myth represented earth, the sky, and nature.
If ancient Egyptians had one divinity more powerful than any others, it was the sun god. He took three forms: the scarab-shaped Khepri was the rising sun, the sun disk Re was the midday sun, and the anthropomorphic Atum was the setting sun. In some accounts, Atum was believed to be the creator of gods and men, while his emergence as a phoenix on a mound or a child in a lotus flower at the dawn of time signified the appearance of light in the world. He was said to travel through the day sky in a barque. At night, the ram-headed Re traveled through the underworld, attended by a divine crew that kept dangers away. To strengthen their own gods’ prestige, local theologians merged them with Re to create a new divinity whose name was compounded with that of the sun god; thus were Amun-Re and Re-Horakhty formulated. In the Fourth Dynasty, the phrase “son of Re” was introduced in the royal titulary to establish a link between the king and the sun god. In the 14th century BCE, King Akhenaten brought the importance of the solar disk—the Aten—close to a monotheistic type of worship, but his religious revolution did not survive him.
Re was a solar god primarily worshipped at ancient Iunu, “Pillar Town,” a city the Greeks called Heliopolis, “City of the Sun.”
Like many people in history, the ancient Egyptians told a story of a demiurge angry at his creation because of its rebellious ways. Re sends a goddess to punish mankind. After a day of slaughter, Re reconsiders destroying his creation entirely and so he tricks the goddess by spreading 7,000 jars of red-colored beer over the earth. Seeing the land covered in what looks like blood, she drinks the beer, falls asleep, and mankind survives.
AKHENATEN
reigned 1352–1336 BCE
King of Egypt
Ronald J. Leprohon
The sun god’s forms included a scarab and a hawk-headed figure wearing a sun disk headdress.
The god Osiris was identified as a deceased king, depicted as mummified and wearing a crown, holding the royal emblems of the crook and flail. His primary domains were fertility—signified by greenish skin—and death. He was the son of Geb (Earth) and Nut (Sky) at the time of creation, a member of the first divine generation with humanlike forms and behaviors. His jealous brother Seth murdered him and dismembered his body, scattering his parts across Egypt. Osiris’s sister/wife, Isis, and their sister, Nephthys, scoured the country, recovering all the body parts except Osiris’ genitals, which were eaten by a fish in the Nile. With Osiris nearly whole again, Isis (through magic) resurrected him and (through use of a false phallus) conceived their son, the falcon-headed god, Horus. Horus fought Seth over the right to Osiris’ throne, ultimately winning and establishing a divine model for father-to-son royal succession. Osiris adjourned to become ruler of the underworld, where he assumed the role of judge of deceased Egyptians wishing to enter the next life. Although originally only kings could associate with Osiris, eventually this applied to everyone. Mummification refashioned a corpse in Osiris’s image, keeping it whole and instilling everyone with the capabilities of “an Osiris” through rebirth in the afterlife.
A model for royal succession and for succeeding to the afterlife, Osiris was one of the most successful Egyptian deities.
By the late Middle Kingdom, widespread popularity of Osiris peaked. Religious tradition proclaimed the god himself was buried at Abydos in an early royal tomb that, in actuality, belonged to King Djer of the First Dynasty. Abydos became the destination of a major religious pilgrimage. Yearly festivals commemorated the god with ritual, theatrical reenactments of his story beginning at his temple and processing to his supposed tomb.
Nicholas Picardo
Associated with death, resurrection, and fertility, Osiris (top left) was one of the principal gods of ancient Egypt. His son, the falcon-headed Horus (bottom), was the god of the sky and embodied divine kingship.
Monogamist, monotheist, pacifist—all inaccurate terms used at one time or another to describe Egypt’s “heretic” king.
Akhenaten succeeded his father Amenhotep III in ca. 1352 BCE and was known as Amenhotep IV. His principal wife Nefertiti bore him six daughters; with his “other wife” Kiya, he sired another daughter. Whether either woman (or an as yet anonymous spouse) produced a male heir is not known.
On his accession to the throne, Amenhotep IV commissioned reliefs at Karnak Temple, the state god Amun’s cult center at Thebes, to honor the sun god Re-Horakhty in his traditional guise as a falcon-headed man. But soon a new icon was created to express the king’s solar theology, focusing on the sun disk Aten. In the new icon, sunbeams end in hands that caress the royal couple and proffer the sign of life to them as sole intermediaries between Aten and humankind. Simultaneously, a radical change in depicting the king and queen was made: they now had elongated faces with slitlike eyes and hanging chins, spindly limbs, and swelling hips and thighs.
Around his fourth regnal year, Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten (“Beneficial-for-Aten”). In the fifth year he founded a new capital city, today called Tell el-Amarna, in Middle Egypt, where depictions of the king and his family became more traditional as the reign progressed. The presence of the army and police was ubiquitous at the new capital. Abroad, Akhenaten pursued a foreign policy similar to his father’s. Both deployed troops in Nubia to secure Egypt’s southern border, and both sought to keep Egypt’s rivals to the northeast at bay with diplomacy, as correspondence between the main players, discovered at Amarna toward the end of the 19th century, demonstrates.
At some point during Akhenaten’s reign, he instituted an iconoclastic campaign against Amun and a few other deities closely associated with the god and with Thebes. Throughout Egypt, Amun’s name and figures were desecrated. Akhenaten’s attitude toward other gods outside Thebes is best described as indifferent.
The cult of the sun god as envisioned by Akhenaten did not survive him. Events surrounding his death and the beginning of his proscription are unclear. Did a man and/or a woman (perhaps Nefertiti or a daughter) succeed him before Tutankhamun ascended the throne? What is clear is that Amun was reinstated as King of the Gods, and by the time of Ramesses II, Akhenaten was branded a criminal.
M. Eaton-Krauss
Amun, “the hidden one,” is mentioned in the oldest Egyptian religious texts, but his cult first came to prominence in the Middle Kingdom. His origins are disputed, but a connection to the solar cult of Ra at Heliopolis is assured: labels for the earliest depictions of him read Amun-Re. In art, Amun assumed two very different guises: striding forward confidently like a king, suiting his status as King of the Gods, but also standing shrouded, his erect phallus sticking out, as befits a fertility god. His blue skin color, like the pair of falcon feathers atop his caplike crown, is appropriate for a sky god. Amun shared this headgear with a few kings, but unlike them, he never sported a uraeus cobra at his brow. Amun had two consorts: Amunet (a feminized version of his name), and Mut (Mother) who came to prominence in New Kingdom times. Amun, Mut, and their son, the moon god Khonsu, formed a typically Egyptian divine triad. Amun was often depicted as a ram, especially in Nubia. Statues of recumbent rams or ram-headed sphinxes regularly flanked the processional avenues approaching his temples. Amun’s oracle at Karnak was the most famous in Egypt, having given first Hatshepsut and then Thutmose III the nod to ascend the throne.
Amun, a relative latecomer, eventually occupied the pinnacle of the Egyptian pantheon. His cult and priesthood, centered in Thebes at Karnak Temple, reaped the benefits of empire in the New Kingdom.
Amun came to prominence when Mentuhotep II founded the Middle Kingdom. Excavations of the king’s funerary temple at western Thebes revealed some of the earliest known depictions of Amun. In the Third Intermediate Period, Amun’s priesthood established a theocracy in Upper Egypt to rival the pharaohs in the Delta.
MENTUHOTEP II
reigned 2040 BCE
He reunited Egypt after the First Intermediate Period, becoming the first king of the Middle Kingdom
M. Eaton-Krauss
Amun could be represented as a king or as a fertility god. Ram-headed sphinxes lined the avenue leading to Amun’s temple in Karnak.
The Egyptians made careful burial preparations to ensure a ready supply of provisions for the afterlife. Many products were created specifically for the tomb. Papyri, amulets, and other objects contained excerpts from the Book of the Dead or other mortuary texts to help the tomb owner’s spirit overcome the obstacles it would encounter on its journey through the underworld. Coffins (usually of wood or cartonnage) and/or stone sarcophagi decorated with religious motifs and spells safeguarded the body. Four stone canopic jars fashioned with the heads of deities protected the separately embalmed viscera. Carved heart scarabs were placed on the torsos of mummies to aid in the Weighing of the Heart ceremony before Osiris, judge of the dead. Faience or wooden shabtis and models of servants were created to serve the tomb owner by performing all requisite tasks in the next world. Items utilized during life could also later be interred in burials, including furniture, clothing and jewelry, weapons, and/or tools of the deceased’s trade. Board games, such as senet, were popular pastimes among the living and took on additional religious significance when placed in tombs. Quantities of different kinds of food and drink offerings were provided in ceramic or stone vessels for the deceased’s continued nourishment.
Much like the Boy Scouts, the philosophy of the ancient Egyptians, who hoped to enjoy a blessed life after death, was “be prepared.”
Ideally, family members and funerary priests would continue to make new offerings in the tomb chapel, thereby provisioning the deceased’s spirit in perpetuity. However, because this eternal devotion could not be guaranteed, the practical-minded Egyptians devised other methods to ensure their afterlives. Images of offering bearers, friezes of objects, offering lists, and formulae frequently inscribed on tomb walls and coffins, as well as stone, metal, or wooden models, were intended to magically replace/replenish actual offerings.
Rachel Aronin
Canopic jars and shabti figures were essential pieces of equipment. The Weighing of the Heart ceremony (top) was a key test on the journey to the netherworld.
Mortuary texts were designed as guidebooks or instruction manuals for life after death. In the Old Kingdom, the Pyramid Texts, a series of more than 700 spells comprising some of the oldest known religious writings in the world, were inscribed on the walls of royal pyramids. They focused on safeguarding and restoring the deceased pharaoh’s remains and allowing him to ascend to the heavens to join with the sun god and the “Imperishable Stars.” By the Middle Kingdom, these funerary spells (along with many new ones) had been made available to a wider audience, inscribed on private burial goods, especially coffins. These Coffin Texts emphasized the deceased’s journey through a subterranean realm presided over by Osiris, the judge of the dead. Many obstacles threatened the deceased and the spells provided sacred knowledge and magical protection. The Book of Two Ways, a subset of these texts, for the first time included illustrations, showing different paths through the underworld. Painted vignettes became numerous and quite lavish in the New Kingdom Book of Going Forth by Day (known as the Book of the Dead). The judgment scene before Osiris, during which the deceased denied committing any sins in life and his heart was weighed against the feather of Truth (maat), was a significant and frequently depicted episode.
Numerous ancient Egyptian magico-religious texts were utilized to guide and preserve the soul after death, ensuring a prosperous and beautiful afterlife in the next world.
As mortuary texts, originally composed exclusively for pharaohs, were adapted and utilized by an ever-widening portion of the populace on private tombs, coffins, papyri, and amulets, new compositions were created solely for royal burials. The “Amduat” and later Royal Netherworld Books depict the deceased king’s nightly journey with the sun god, who travels through the netherworld and, by means of a mystical union with Osiris at midnight, is revivified and reborn with each new dawn.
Rachel Aronin
Appearing on tomb walls, coffins, papyri, and amulets, mortuary texts were guides to the afterlife. The judgment before Osiris (bottom) was a common scene.
“Instructions,” as the Egyptians called Wisdom Texts, taught young men how to behave properly, in order to secure their place in the rigidly hierarchical society. As one text states, “A woman is asked about her husband while a man is asked about his rank.” Although some Instructions were purportedly written by famous noblemen from earlier periods, it is possible that they were written later and attributed to distinguished ancestors to add authority. The advice ranged from demonstrating proper table manners to choosing the right words for a certain situation, or even sleeping on a thought before uttering it. Initiates were warned to stay silent about information not observed first-hand, for indiscreet words could be used against the thoughtless one. Recommendations varied, depending on whether one was dealing with a superior, a social equal, or an underling. At home, a husband was to respect his wife and not question her judgment, while a guest in another’s house should avoid snooping or approaching the women improperly. Other advice included respecting the elderly and not laughing at the unfortunate, who were “in God’s hand.” Instructions were also given to crown princes, who were counseled to be “skillful in speech,” for “the tongue is a king’s sword” and “speaking is stronger than any fighting.”
Wisdom literature is a genre of texts composed to teach a code of ethics that would assure its listeners prominent social standing.
All ancient Egyptian “Instructions” were designed for the improvement of upper-class young men by teaching them proper virtues and attitudes. As the sage Ptahhotep counseled his sons, “Don’t be overly confident of your knowledge; consult the ignorant as well as the learned. The limits of expertise can never be attained; there are no craftsmen who have attained their mastery.”
PTAHHOTEP
ca. 25th century BCE
Vizier under King Izezi, purported author of the “Instructions of Ptahhotep”
Ronald J. Leprohon
The 12th Dynasty Prisse Papyrus records the Instructions of Kagemni (top right), a nobleman. Like other Wisdom Texts, he advocated moral behavior and virtue.
Did all ancient Egyptians follow the culture’s moral code, and fear divine retribution for misbehavior? Clearly for some, the lure of fabulous royal grave goods proved too tempting. An important distinction here is between tomb reuse and abuse, and actual tomb robbing. Families died out or moved away, and cults ceased to operate; in these cases tombs were taken over by later individuals, or the materials quarried for other uses. In other cases, malicious damage was inflicted on the tomb’s inscriptions in an effort to obliterate the memory and survival of the deceased’s spirit. But tomb robbery was the outright theft of precious materials, and royal tombs, whether pyramids or rock-cut sepulchers, were the choice targets. Almost all royal tombs were plundered in antiquity, many probably within years of the burial and perhaps aided by corrupt necropolis guards. Middle Kingdom royal pyramids were built with ingenious blocking stones, false passages, and other devices meant to protect their contents, but all to no avail. Our best evidence for robbery, and the legal consequences that followed, come from a New Kingdom series of tomb robbery papyri from Thebes. After “examination” with a stick (i.e. torture), the thieves confessed to breaking in, ripping jewelry off mummies, and sometimes burning the tombs.
Tomb robbers attacked royal and private tombs at all ages. New Kingdom trial accounts provide glimpses into ancient Egyptian criminal justice and corruption.
Dating to the late 20th Dynasty, the tomb robbery papyri concern corruption cases against Theban officials under Ramesses IX and XI. Inspection tours of the 17th Dynasty royal tombs on the West Bank followed, and eventually many royal mummies were hidden in two secret caches for their own protection. A pious move by concerned priests, or a prelude to plundering the royal grave goods to fill depleted state coffers?
Peter Der Manuelian
Despite the many precautions taken when building the structures, most tombs were plundered for the precious goods that they contained.
