“O great god whose identity is unknown, a meal in place for the sole lord!” The line comes from the Pyramid Texts carved inside the pyramid of King Unas at Saqqara, around 2350 BCE, among the oldest religious writing on earth. It sits among spells that name Horus, Seth, Thoth and Osiris one after another. And then it addresses someone who has no name at all.
That line is the core of the question: was ancient Egypt monotheistic? The standard answer is no. Egypt worshipped many gods for three thousand years, with one short, famous exception under the pharaoh Akhenaten. My answer in Echoes of History is more careful than people expect: “I cannot claim that ancient Egyptian civilization was strictly monotheistic.” But I argue that behind the crowded pantheon stood one hidden Creator, that the wisest Egyptians knew it, and that the many gods were partly deified humans and partly names for His aspects.
In this article
- Was ancient Egypt monotheistic? What Egyptologists say
- What the book says: "the god" behind the gods
- Where the many gods came from
- What about the rest of the ancient world?
- The Book and the Egyptologist on "the god"
Was ancient Egypt monotheistic? What Egyptologists say
The Egyptian word usually translated “god” is netjer (plural netjeru). It covered great creator deities, local gods, deified kings and even sacred animals. Egyptian religion had several creation accounts: at Heliopolis, Atum rose from the primeval waters of Nun and produced the other gods; at Memphis, the text on the Shabaka Stone (copied around 710 BCE, now in the British Museum) describes Ptah creating through his heart and his tongue, that is, by thought and word.
The great exception was Akhenaten, who ruled around 1353 to 1336 BCE. He promoted the Aten, the sun disc, above all other gods, closed or neglected the temples of Amun, had the name of Amun chiselled off monuments, and built a new capital at Amarna. The Great Hymn to the Aten, found in the tomb of Ay at Amarna, praises the Aten as the sole god, beside whom there is no other, maker of every land and creature. After Akhenaten’s death the old gods returned, and later kings tried to erase his memory.
Most Egyptologists call the rest of Egyptian religion polytheistic, or sometimes henotheistic: worshippers could treat one god as supreme in a hymn without denying the others. The German Egyptologist Erik Hornung’s Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many (English edition 1982) argued strongly that Egyptians did not believe in a single hidden god behind the others, and that the many gods were real to them. Jan Assmann, in Moses the Egyptian (1997) and later work, traced a growing theology in the New Kingdom in which Amun, whose name means “the hidden one,” was described as a single god who manifests himself in all the others. A Ramesside hymn on Papyrus Leiden I 350 goes as far as saying that all the gods are three, Amun, Re and Ptah, and that the three are in some sense one.
So the mainstream picture is plural, but with currents running toward unity.
What the book says: “the god” behind the gods
My argument starts with the texts that Egyptologists themselves translate. In the Unas spells I mark a repeating phrase:
“Horus has gone with his ka; Seth has gone with his ka; Thoth has gone with his ka; the god has gone with his ka; Osiris has gone with his ka.”
And again: “your natron is Thoth’s natron; your natron is the god’s natron.” The Egyptians call each god by his name, I point out, “but who is ‘the god’? Maybe we are so wrong, and these beings are not gods, but just ‘the god’ is God.” Add the “great god whose identity is unknown,” and “there’s a mighty god even older than Sun Atum.”
I also quote Egyptian expressions for this being: “the only true living God, self-originated,” “who has made all things, but has not himself been made.” The poets, I note, wrote that “he is not carved in marble; he is not seen,” that “no shrine with painted figures of him is found,” and that “vain are all representations.” From these I conclude: “Educated Egyptians understood that the folk gods were not separate entities but rather different manifestations of the same divine being.” Ra was the sun, Thoth divine wisdom, Osiris divine goodness, Amen “possibly represented divine mystery or incomprehensibility.”
The Budge passage
I lean on E. A. Wallis Budge’s The Gods of the Egyptians (1904), where Budge says the Egyptians used one word, neter, for God and for “the lowest of the beings that were supposed to possess some attribute of divinity,” and that “in dynastic times… a lofty conception of monotheism prevailed among the priesthood.” The problem, in Budge’s words, was “their poverty of expression, or the inflexibility of their language.”
Ninety-nine names
My clearest comparison is with Islam. The Qur’an gives God ninety-nine names. “Without the Qur’an, future generations might mistakenly believe that Islam worships 99 distinct gods, each representing different attributes of God, nature, and existence.” I argue that we may be making that exact mistake with Egypt.
Where the many gods came from
I offer a second explanation for the pantheon: many Egyptian gods “were originally humans who made significant cultural and historical contributions,” later raised to divine status. Thoth, in my reading, was Enoch, “a revered figure loved, taught, and chosen by God,” whom later Egyptians turned into a god. I identify Imhotep with Joseph. I even raise the question whether Atum, the self-created first god, “might have been perceived not as a god but as the first man, Adam!” And the story of Osiris murdered by his brother Seth looks to me “a lot like the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis.”
That deification is not unique to Egypt. I note that soon after Jesus’s disappearance Christians began to treat him as divine, and that even in Ali ibn Abi Talib’s lifetime some regarded him as a god.
A divided society, not one faith
I also caution against assuming all Egyptians believed the same things. The priests “likely had their own language, beliefs, and practices.” The Qur’an’s story of Joseph shows Egyptians who praise Allah alongside others who worship many gods; Joseph asks his fellow prisoners, “are separate gods better, or Allah, the One, the ruling God?” (12:39). And I remind readers that the surviving texts mostly come from the “Late Egyptians” of the dynasties after about 3000 BC, whose religion, in my view, was a more mythical inheritance from a much older civilization that began soon after the Flood.
What about the rest of the ancient world?
The pattern I see in Egypt has parallels elsewhere, which both sides read differently. In Mesopotamia, Anu stood at the head of the pantheon, and in the Babylonian Enuma Elish the other gods give Marduk fifty names, absorbing their powers into him. Scholars usually call that supremacy within a pantheon, not monotheism. In Echoes of History I say that similar beliefs in resurrection, judgment and prayer appear in Egypt, Mesopotamia “and even Buddhism,” and that this suggests “a common source from which various religious traditions have drawn inspiration,” not one culture copying another.
The Book and the Egyptologist on “the god”
The Book: The Unas texts list Horus, Seth, Thoth, Osiris, and then “the god.” No name. That looks to me like a reference to God Himself.
The Egyptologist: It’s a fair thing to notice. But netjer with no name is common in Egyptian writing. In wisdom texts like Ptahhotep, “the god” usually means whichever god is relevant in context, often the king’s god or the local one. Hornung spent a whole book on this.
The Book: And what about “great god whose identity is unknown”? That isn’t a local god with a temple.
The Egyptologist: Egyptian religion loved hiddenness. Amun’s name literally means “the hidden one.” I’ll concede that the Egyptians had a real idea of a god beyond images.
The Book: Then you’re halfway to my point. The hymns say vain are all representations, no shrine contains him, no mother bore him. That’s not a sun god. It’s the Creator.
The Egyptologist: Some of those phrases come from New Kingdom hymns to Amun-Re, and they sit right next to hymns to dozens of other gods in the same temples. The same priests who wrote them were feeding and dressing statues every morning.
The Book: Priests serving the people’s gods while knowing the One isn’t strange. I argue the priests had their own beliefs apart from the populace. Budge said a lofty monotheism prevailed among them.
The Egyptologist: Budge wrote in 1904 and most of us treat him with caution now; his translations are badly dated. Assmann is closer to your view, and even he talks about one god manifest in many, not many fictions hiding one.
The Book: One God manifest in many names is what I said. Think of Islam’s ninety-nine names. A historian three thousand years from now, without the Qur’an, could count ninety-nine gods.
The Egyptologist: That’s a clever comparison. But in Islam the text tells you they’re names of one God. In Egypt, Osiris has a body, a murder, a widow and a son. Those are characters, not attributes.
The Book: Characters who were once people. Osiris killed by his brother is Cain and Abel. Thoth taught writing and wisdom, as Enoch did. The later Egyptians deified their ancestors, the way some Christians deified Jesus.
The Egyptologist: That’s euhemerism, and it’s an old idea; Greek writers proposed it too. There’s no Egyptian text that says Osiris was a mortal man.
The Book: And there’s no Egyptian text that tells you what “the god” in the Unas spells means either. Your translations are still a work in progress. I’d rather read the gaps with Genesis and the Qur’an in hand than with the assumption that these builders were primitive.
The Egyptologist: Then we agree on one thing at least: nobody should call the people who built Saqqara simple. Akhenaten proves some Egyptians could think of one god alone. Whether the rest secretly did is where we stop agreeing.
FAQ
Was ancient Egypt monotheistic?
Mostly no. Egyptologists describe Egyptian religion as polytheistic for about three thousand years, with Akhenaten’s worship of the Aten (around 1353 to 1336 BCE) as the main monotheistic episode. Echoes of History does not claim strict monotheism, but argues that a hidden supreme God stood behind the many gods and was known to educated Egyptians.
Who was the first monotheist in Egypt?
The pharaoh Akhenaten is usually named. He elevated the Aten, the sun disc, as sole god, suppressed the cult of Amun and founded a new capital at Amarna. The book suggests belief in one God is older still, pointing to the unnamed “great god” in the Pyramid Texts of Unas and to the Qur’an’s account of monotheists in Joseph’s Egypt.
What is henotheism?
Henotheism is devotion to one god as supreme without denying that other gods exist. Many scholars use it for Egyptian and Mesopotamian hymns that praise one deity, such as Amun-Re or Marduk, as the greatest. In Echoes of History I go further and read many Egyptian gods as names for one Creator’s aspects or as deified humans.
What does netjer mean?
Netjer is the ancient Egyptian word usually translated “god.” It was applied to major deities, deified kings, spirits and sacred animals alike. Following E. A. Wallis Budge, the book argues that this single word hid a distinction between the one God and lesser divine beings that Egyptian writing could not easily express.
Sources
- James P. Allen, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts (2005)
- Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many (1982)
- Jan Assmann, Moses the Egyptian (1997)
- E. A. Wallis Budge, The Gods of the Egyptians (1904)
- Shabaka Stone, British Museum EA 498
- Geraldine Pinch, Egyptian Myth: A Very Short Introduction (2004)
Keep Reading
- Ancient Egyptian Religion: Gods, Afterlife and a Hidden Unity
- Who Was Enoch? Idris, Hermes and Thoth as One Man
- Joseph in Egypt: Which Pharaoh Ruled When Joseph Arrived?
- Do Jews, Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God?
The full reading of the Unas texts, the Budge passage and the Joseph verses is in the chapter “The Religion of Egypt” in Echoes of History. It is my attempt to read Egypt’s gods with the monotheistic scriptures open beside them.
Go deeper: explore our full guide in this topic hub, read a free sample, or get the complete argument in Echoes of History.