Culture

Ancient Egyptians

Also Known As Egyptians Name without the leading Ancient the atlas carries.

Peoples

The ancient Egyptians built one of the longest-lived civilizations in history along the Nile, unified around 3100 BCE and enduring for three millennia. Their religion maintained ma'at, the cosmic order, through the daily temple cult of gods such as Ra, Amun, Osiris and Isis, and prepared the dead for the journey through the Duat toward the Field of Reeds. Hieroglyphic writing, the pyramids and temples of Giza, Karnak and Abydos, and funerary literature from the Pyramid Texts to the Book of the Dead are its enduring monuments.

Facts

Origins

Origin Region

The Nile valley and delta, from the First Cataract to the Mediterranean, unified into one kingdom around 3100 BCE and continuously inhabited for the whole of ancient history 1

Language Family

Ancient Egyptian, an Afro-Asiatic language attested across Old, Middle and Late stages, surviving latest as Coptic, the liturgical language of Egyptian Christianity 2

Writing System

Hieroglyphic writing with its cursive forms hieratic and demotic, attested from about 3200 BCE to 394 CE; Coptic later wrote the language in Greek letters 2

Practice

Practice Status

Discontinued as a state religion 1

Ancient Egyptian religion ended with the Christianization of Egypt, its last temple closing in the sixth century CE; it survives as archaeology, text and museum collection rather than as a living cult

Traditions

Principal Religious Traditions

A temple religion maintaining ma'at, cosmic order, through the daily cult of gods such as Ra, Amun, Osiris and Isis, joined to an elaborate funerary religion preparing the dead for the Duat and the Field of Reeds 3

Learn More

Ma'at, the Gods and the Dead

Egyptian religion was the daily work of keeping the world in order. Ma'at, at once truth, justice and cosmic balance, had to be maintained against chaos, and that maintenance was the pharaoh's office: in every temple, in the king's name, priests woke, washed, clothed and fed the god's image so that the sun would rise and the Nile would flood. Creation was told several ways, from the sun god rising on the first mound at Heliopolis to Ptah of Memphis speaking the world into being, and the traditions coexisted without contradiction, each temple honoring its own account.

The pantheon Richard Wilkinson catalogues is vast: Ra the sun, with whom Amun of Thebes fused as the imperial god Amun-Ra; Osiris, murdered by his brother and restored by his sister-wife Isis to reign over the dead; their son Horus, whose living embodiment was the king; Thoth of writing and reckoning; Hathor of love and music; jackal-headed Anubis, embalmer and guide. The Osiris myth carried the tradition's deepest promise, that death can be passed through.

That promise organized an elaborate funerary religion. The dead traveled the Duat by night among gates and dangers, guided by texts that evolved from the royal Pyramid Texts through the Coffin Texts to the Book of the Dead placed with commoners; at journey's end the heart was weighed against the feather of ma'at in the Hall of Two Truths, and the justified entered Aaru, the Field of Reeds, a perfected Egypt of plenty. Mummification, tomb art and offering cults all served that crossing.

Three Thousand Years on the Nile

Egypt was unified around 3100 BCE, and the Old Kingdom raised the pyramids of Giza as resurrection machines for its kings, the largest buildings on earth for nearly four thousand years. After a first age of breakdown, the Middle Kingdom classicized the language and literature, and the New Kingdom built an empire from Nubia to Syria, pouring its wealth into Karnak, the greatest temple complex ever constructed, and into the royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings. Akhenaten's attempt to replace the gods with the single solar disk Aten lasted one reign before Tutankhamun's court restored the old cults, an episode preserved in the record precisely because it failed.

Abydos, burial place of the first kings and cult home of Osiris, drew pilgrims for the whole of Egyptian history, and the Oxford History edited by Ian Shaw traces that history through Libyan, Nubian, Persian, Greek and Roman rulers, each of whom found it easier to become pharaoh than to replace what pharaoh meant. Under the Ptolemies the cult of Isis spread across the Mediterranean world, and her temple at Philae remained active into the sixth century CE.

Christianity ended the temples but not the language: Coptic, the last stage of Egyptian written in Greek letters, remains the liturgical tongue of Egypt's church. The script itself slept from the last hieroglyphic inscription of 394 CE until Champollion's decipherment in 1822 opened three thousand years of texts, from Miriam Lichtheim's translated literature to the spells of the Book of the Dead, to modern readers.

Connections

Associated With

The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt

This source names Ancient Egyptians directly: "Ian Shaw is an Egyptologist, and this is an edited academic reference volume from Oxford University Press with each period of ancient Egyptian history written by a specialist in that period, drawing..."

Source The Oxford History of Ancient EgyptIan Shaw (ed.)

The psh-kf and the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony: A Ritual of Birth and Rebirth, in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 78

This source names Ancient Egyptians directly: "Ann Macy Roth's The psh-kf and the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony: A Ritual of Birth and Rebirth, published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, volume 78, by the Egypt Exploration Society in..."

Source The psh-kf and the Opening of the Mouth Ceremony: A Ritual of Birth and Rebirth, in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 78Ann Macy Roth

The Pyramids of Giza

The pyramids of Giza were raised as resurrection machines for the Old Kingdom kings.

Source The Oxford History of Ancient EgyptIan Shaw (ed.)

Transcultural Use of Narcotic Water Lilies in Ancient Egyptian and Maya Drug Ritual

This source names Ancient Egyptians directly: "William A. Emboden was a botanist, and this Journal of Ethnopharmacology article is his peer-reviewed argument that the blue water lily, Nymphaea caerulea, functioned as a ritual psychoactive..."

Source Transcultural Use of Narcotic Water Lilies in Ancient Egyptian and Maya Drug RitualWilliam A. Emboden

Virgo Fifth Term: Saturn

This source names Ancient Egyptians directly: "The fifth of the five terms (bounds) the sign of Virgo is divided into in the Egyptian table of planetary terms transmitted by Vettius Valens (Anthologies, 2nd century CE) and recorded by Claudius..."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

Virgo First Term: Mercury

This source names Ancient Egyptians directly: "The first of the five terms (bounds) the sign of Virgo is divided into in the Egyptian table of planetary terms transmitted by Vettius Valens (Anthologies, 2nd century CE) and recorded by Claudius..."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

Virgo Fourth Term: Mars

This source names Ancient Egyptians directly: "The fourth of the five terms (bounds) the sign of Virgo is divided into in the Egyptian table of planetary terms transmitted by Vettius Valens (Anthologies, 2nd century CE) and recorded by Claudius..."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

Virgo Second Term: Venus

This source names Ancient Egyptians directly: "The second of the five terms (bounds) the sign of Virgo is divided into in the Egyptian table of planetary terms transmitted by Vettius Valens (Anthologies, 2nd century CE) and recorded by Claudius..."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

Virgo Third Term: Jupiter

This source names Ancient Egyptians directly: "The third of the five terms (bounds) the sign of Virgo is divided into in the Egyptian table of planetary terms transmitted by Vettius Valens (Anthologies, 2nd century CE) and recorded by Claudius..."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

Wab Priest

This source names Ancient Egyptians directly: "The wab (pure one) was the entry level rank of the ancient Egyptian temple priesthood, responsible for the mundane daily upkeep of the temple, carrying offerings and the sacred bark in festival..."

Source The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient EgyptDonald B. Redford (ed.)

We Used Ancient Egyptian Magic to Heal Our Colleagues (Curators' Corner, British Museum)

This source names Ancient Egyptians directly: "An episode of the British Museum's own Curators' Corner video series, published on the Museum's own YouTube channel, in which Museum staff step into a recreated "Curator's Clinic" to explore how..."

Source The British Museum's Own Curators' Corner and Heka Exhibition Records

Wikipedia, "Graffito of Esmet-Akhom"

This source names Ancient Egyptians directly: "A community-maintained tertiary reference on the last dated ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic inscription, directly examined."

Source Wikipedia, "Graffito of Esmet-Akhom"Wikipedia contributors

Zep Tepi

This source names Ancient Egyptians directly: "Zep Tepi, the First Time or First Occasion, is the primeval moment of creation in ancient Egyptian cosmology, when the first mound of earth rose from the waters of Nun and the first sunrise broke..."

Source The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient EgyptDonald B. Redford (ed.)

Showing 101 to 113 of 113 in Associated With, page 3 of 3.

Originated In

Egypt

Egypt, the gift of the Nile, is the civilization's whole world and stage.

Source The Oxford History of Ancient EgyptIan Shaw (ed.)

Egypt

Modern Egypt holds the monuments, and Coptic Christianity still prays in the language's last stage.

Source The Oxford History of Ancient EgyptIan Shaw (ed.)

Originates in Language

Middle Egyptian

Middle Egyptian is the classical stage of the language, the standard of religious texts for two millennia.

Source Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume II: The New KingdomMiriam Lichtheim