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Creation
Originally
only the ocean existed, but Ra, the sun, maybe born from an egg which appeared
in the waters, generated four children.
Two of them, Geb and Nut, generated two
song Seth and Osiris, and two daughters
Isis and Nefti.
Osiris deprived Ra of
the domination on the cosmos, but was killed and torno to pieces by Seth; Isis, his bride and sister,
recompored the body and embalmed it, helped by god Anubi giving him back life
whit powerful incantations, so Osiris became the god of the dead and
Horus,
Osiris’s and Isis’s son, defeated Sath during the battle and became King of
the Earth.
Embalming of Osiris
Gods
From the myth of the creation derived the
enneadi (formation of nine divinities) and the three somes (father, mother and
son), that included the minor local divinities, the most important enneade
remained Ra’s numerous descent, worshipped in Eliopoli, the centre of the
worship for the Sun in the Egyptian world.
Gradually, they were fused in unique
and branched pantheon that, besides the divinities already mentioned, included
god Amon Thot,
Path, Khnum,
Apis and the goddesses Hathor, Mut, Neit and Sekhat.
The importance at each threesome or enneade increased in proportion to the
politic importance at the places in which thay were worshipped, with the
complication of the religion, famous men who had been glorified, after their
death became halfa-gods and even the pharaohs, beginning from the V dynasty,
wanted to be worshipped as Ra’s children. The minor gods, some of then were
simple demons, found their place in some hierarchies of local divinities.
Iconography
The Egyptian gods were represented with human bust
and human or animal heads, that sometimes represented the divinities' features,
or with symbols as the solar disk or the wings of hawk, put on the pharaoh's
headgears.
Adoration of sun
Beginning from the Middle Reign (2134-1668 BC) Ra's cult, god
of the cosmic divinities, became the religion of the state, and the divinity was
gradually assimilated to Amon's figure under the teban dunasties, until he
became the supreme god Amon-Ra.
During the XVIII dynasty the pharaoh Amenofi III
baptized the sun god with the name Aton; his son and successor,
Amenofi IV,
proclaimed Aton the only true god, changing his own name in Akhenaton (Aton is
satisfied), cancelling the plural word "gods" from the monuments and persecuting
without respite Amon's priest. Although he had a great influence on art and
thinking of his time, Akhenaton monotheistic solar cult didn't survive and Egypt
returned, after his death, to the ancient polytheism.
Ritual of burial
The burial of the dead in Egypt was a very important ritual
practise, the most elaborated one the world has ever know.
The Egyptian believed
that the vital power was formed by various psychological elements, the most
important of which was the Ka, a double of the body that survived after death
but couldn't exist without it; so the keep the body, the corpses were embalmed
and mummified following a traditional method which was believed went back to
Osiris's mummification. Moreover, in the tombs stone or wood copies of the body
were put, as substitutes in case the mummy was destroyed, and extremely
complicated tombs were built to protect the corpse and what sorrounded it.
As it
was believed, after leaving the tomb, that the souls of the dead were at the
mercy of many danger, the tombs all had a copy of the book of the Dead, an
actual guide for the afterlife world.
After the arrival in the reign of the
dead, the Ka was judged by Osiris and the 42 demons who helped him. If they
decided that the dead person had been a sinner, the Ka was condemned to hunger
and thirst or was torn to pieces by horrible tormentors; if instead the decision
was favorable, the Ka went to the heavenly reign in the fields in Yaru, where
the wheat grew very high and the existance was a celebrating version of the one
on Earth.
So all the objects necessary for efterlife were put in the tomb.
As a payment for the other world and its benevolent protection, Osiris asked that
the dead worked for him, for example to work in the wheat fields. Also this
task, though, could be avoided, putting some little statues called ushabiti, in
the tomb so they could act as substitutes for the dead person.
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