Region

Egypt

Also Known As Egyptian

The Near East and Egypt

The Nile valley and delta, from the cataracts to the Mediterranean. Ancient Egyptian Religion is placed here, together with Gnosticism, Hermeticism and Neoplatonism. The last three are really Alexandrian: they were formed in a Greek-speaking city on the Egyptian coast, out of Greek philosophy, Jewish scripture and Egyptian material, and calling them Egyptian credits the geography rather than the sources. The Hermetic texts were long taken as ancient Egyptian wisdom until Isaac Casaubon dated them to the early Christian centuries in 1614.

Facts

Geography

Latitude

26.8 degrees north 1

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a large or historical region has no formal center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a precise boundary claim.

Longitude

30.8 degrees east 1

Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a large or historical region has no formal center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a precise boundary claim.

Modern Area

Egypt 1

Traditions

Principal Religious Traditions

Ancient Egyptian religion 2

Principal Religious Traditions

Coptic Christianity 2

Principal Religious Traditions

Islam 2

Sacred and Liturgical Languages

Ancient Egyptian, Coptic, and Arabic 3

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The Nile, and the Layering of Egyptian and Alexandrian Religion

Egypt, the narrow ribbon of the Nile valley and its delta, sustained one of the longest continuous religious traditions in human history, and then became the crucible of several others. For three thousand years ancient Egyptian religion elaborated its vast pantheon (Ra, Osiris, Isis, Horus, Anubis), its unique preoccupation with the afterlife and the preservation of the body, its temples and priesthoods, and its divine kingship, all bound to the annual miracle of the Nile's flood. The land's later religious importance is distinct and often overlooked: Alexandria, the Greek-founded city of the Nile delta, became in the Hellenistic and Roman periods one of the great intellectual centres of the Mediterranean, and it was there, in a Greek-speaking milieu, that Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and much of Neoplatonism took form, the esoteric and philosophical currents that would feed Western mysticism for two millennia.

Egypt was also a cradle of Christianity: it produced the Desert Fathers and the very institution of monasticism, the catechetical school of Alexandria and theologians like Origen and Athanasius, and the Coptic Church, which endures as one of the oldest Christian bodies. Egypt thus holds two religious identities at once, the ancient Nile religion of gods and the dead, and the Alexandrian ferment of Greek-Egyptian esotericism and early Christianity, laid down on the same ground.

Three Thousand Years, Read Mostly from Tombs

The Egyptian religious record is enormous and it is skewed in a way that is easy to state and hard to correct for. Tombs and temples were built of stone on the desert margin because they were meant to last. Houses, villages and the ordinary business of religion were built of mud brick on the floodplain, where the annual inundation and later cultivation have removed most of them.

The result is that Egyptian religion is known overwhelmingly through funerary material belonging to people wealthy enough to be buried well. The great compilations, the coffin texts and the collections of spells that became the Book of the Dead, are guides for the dead of a particular class. What an ordinary household did is reconstructed from a much thinner record, and the workers' village at Deir el-Medina is disproportionately important simply because it survived.

There is also a long interruption in understanding. Knowledge of the script was lost in late antiquity, and for roughly fourteen centuries Egypt was read through Greek and Roman authors and through a European tradition that treated the hieroglyphs as mystical emblems rather than as writing. Only with the decipherment announced by Champollion in 1822, working from the Rosetta Stone, did the texts begin to speak for themselves.

Much of what circulates as ancient Egyptian wisdom today descends from the pre-decipherment tradition rather than from the texts, and the two should not be confused.

Connections

Associated With

Nile River

Egypt was described in antiquity as the gift of the river, and every temple site of consequence stands within reach of it.

Source The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient EgyptRichard H. Wilkinson

Attested Here

Cat

Bastet worshipped chiefly at Bubastis in the Nile Delta; Herodotus's report of household mourning and the Bubastis and Saqqara cat catacombs.

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

Cheetah

Cheetahs appear collared and led in New Kingdom scenes, an animal of royal display rather than of cult.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Coptic

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Cow

Apis of Memphis and Mnevis of Heliopolis, mummified and entombed on death.

Source The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient EgyptRichard H. Wilkinson

Crocodile

Sobek worshipped at Crocodilopolis (Shedet) in the Faiyum and at Kom Ombo, where temple pools held living sacred crocodiles.

Source The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient EgyptRichard H. Wilkinson

Dog

Anubis and Wepwawet, canine guides of the dead, and the dog cemeteries at Saqqara.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Frog

Heqet, the frog goddess of birth, and the frog hieroglyph that writes a hundred thousand.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Goat

The goat of Mendes, a ram cult the Greeks reported as a goat and then embroidered.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Hawk

Horus, and the falcon form that is the standard way of writing divine kingship.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Ibis

The bird of Thoth, and the species that writes his name.

Source The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient EgyptRichard H. Wilkinson

Koine Greek

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Late Egyptian

Late Egyptian is documented in use as a written language in Egypt. The claim is where the language is documented in use as a written, literary or liturgical language. It is not a claim about the full extent of its speakers, and it is not a claim about where the language originated.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Lion

Sekhmet, the lion-headed, and the sphinx as a lion given a king's face.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Middle Egyptian

Middle Egyptian is documented in use as a written language in Egypt. The claim is where the language is documented in use as a written, literary or liturgical language. It is not a claim about the full extent of its speakers, and it is not a claim about where the language originated.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Old Egyptian

Old Egyptian is documented in use as a written language in Egypt. The claim is where the language is documented in use as a written, literary or liturgical language. It is not a claim about the full extent of its speakers, and it is not a claim about where the language originated.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Apis, a living bull kept, worshipped and buried as a god.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Phoenix

The bennu, a heron of Heliopolis tied to Ra and to the first mound, which is what the Greek phoenix reports.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Ram

Amun in ram form, and Khnum shaping people on the potter's wheel.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Scarab Beetle

Khepri, and the most common amulet form in Egypt for three thousand years.

Source The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient EgyptRichard H. Wilkinson

Scorpion

Serqet, and the seven scorpions that travel with Isis.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Serpopard

Snake

The uraeus on the brow of the king, and Apep, the serpent the sun must pass each night.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Sphinx

The Egyptian sphinx is a royal image, a lion body with the head of the king, set as a guardian at temple approaches and by tombs. It is generally male, benign toward the king, and has no riddle.

Source The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient EgyptRichard H. Wilkinson

Vulture

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Originated Here

Amarna (Akhetaten)

Ancient Egyptians

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

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

Apep

Bennu

Demotic

Demotic is a stage of the Egyptian language and its cursive script.

Euclid

He worked at Alexandria.

Hermeticism

The Corpus Hermeticum was composed in Roman-era Egypt, chiefly Alexandria.

Source The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan MindGarth Fowden

Joseph and His Brothers

The second half of the narrative is set in Egypt

Kyphi

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Luxor Temple

Middle Kingdom of Egypt

Middle Kingdom rule was reunified from Thebes and later centered on Itjtawy near the Faiyum.

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

Moses and the Exodus From Egypt

New Kingdom of Egypt

New Kingdom Egypt ruled an empire from the Nile Valley, with its state cult centered at Karnak in Thebes.

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

Old Kingdom of Egypt

Old Kingdom rule was centered in the Nile Valley and Delta, with its royal cemeteries at Saqqara, Dahshur and Giza.

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

Saqqara and the Serapeum

Seti I

The Myth of Osiris

Source Moralia, Volume V: Isis and Osiris (De Iside et Osiride)Plutarch; Frank Cole Babbitt (translator)

The Pyramids of Giza

Tutankhamun

Plants Native Here

Blue Lotus

Source Plants of the World OnlineRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew

Plants Used in Ritual Here

Blue Lotus

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

Chamomile

Source A Modern HerbalMaud Grieve

Garlic

Source A Modern HerbalMaud Grieve

Iris

Source A Modern HerbalMaud Grieve

Myrrh

Source A Modern HerbalMaud Grieve

Principal Tradition Of

Ancient Egyptian Religion

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Islam

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Related To

Near East

Egypt is included in the Near East in the wider comparative sense used here.

Sky Figures Read Here

Meskhetiu

The foreleg in the northern sky, among the stars that never set.

Source Egyptian Astronomical TextsOtto Neugebauer and Richard A. Parker

Sah

Osiris in the sky, rising ahead of Sopdet and the inundation.

Source Egyptian Astronomical TextsOtto Neugebauer and Richard A. Parker

Societies Attested Here

Hellenistic Period

Ptolemaic Egypt, centered on Alexandria, was a principal site of Hellenistic religious syncretism, including the cult of Serapis.

Source From Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic AgePeter Green

Sources

1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)

Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024s.v. regional geographyView the Source

2. Encyclopedia of Religion

Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005The geography of religions

Quote, The geography of religions

General reference for the extent of each region and for the traditions placed within it.

View the Source

3. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions

John Bowker (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997Egyptian and Alexandrian religionView the Source

The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition

Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source

De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI

Isaac Casaubon, John Bill, 1614The dating of the Hermetic corpus

Quote, The dating of the Hermetic corpus

Dated the Hermetic texts to the early Christian centuries in 1614, ending their reception as ancient Egyptian wisdom.

The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt

Richard H. Wilkinson, Thames & Hudson, 2003

Attested Here: Cow
Attested Here: Crocodile

View the Source

The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt

Donald B. Redford (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2001Attested Here: CatView the Source

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Egypt

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Attested Here

Originated Here

Plants Native Here

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Principal Tradition Of

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Sky Figures Read Here

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