Historical period began in Egypt at the turn of the third and fourth millennia BC.The ancient cultural tradition, undergoing influence of the invaders and internal upheavals, lasted until the adoption of Christianity in the fourth century AD.For almost three and a half thousand years, and a list of features Egyptian gods is undergoing significant changes.Egyptian gods acquired traits and names that are typical of its neighbors - the Assyrians, Hittites, Hyksos, the Greeks.
After the unification of Egypt under the rule of a single ruler of many gods and tribes of individual regions of the country entered the pantheon of the total, but most of them worshiped only in an environment where the origins of their religion.Some gods gradually acquired obscheegipetskoe value.Goddess Bastet, the cat has a head, no doubt, has grown from a cult of worship of cats as custodians of grain reserves from mice.Agriculture has played a huge role in Egypt as opposed to, for example, from Greece, risen mainly due to the trade and military conquests.Anthropomorphic Egyptian gods are often endowed with the head of the animal, based on the worship of which originated a particular cult.For example, the god Thoth was the head of an ibis, the goddess Sekhmet (Sekhmet) - a lion's head, Anubis - the dog's head.
As soon as the rose or another region of the country, there was a change of dynasties or "transfer" of the capital to a new location, changing and Egyptian gods "first tier."An interesting feature of ancient Egyptian religion was the presence of a large number of cosmological myths (that is, versions of the origin of the world), and in each area the main role in this delicate matter diverted to the local deity.
Egyptian gods in such large numbers, becoming the basis for the local separatism, no doubt, did not need a single country.Besides the many cults require spending a large amount of material means that with a much greater benefit could be spent on the interior fittings of the country, for the army and so on.And with great wealth and influence of the priestly clans are directly threatened by the sole power of the pharaoh.
All things considered, the pharaoh Amenhotep IV, took the name Akhenaten, introduces the cult of minor regional deity Aten (the deified solar disc) as obscheegipetskoy religion.But the inertia of tradition was too strong, and Akhenaten dies before reaching the age of forty and.According to the most plausible explanation, he was poisoned.However, the persecution did not affect the family, and his wife (the famous Nefertiti) remained alive, and many years after her husband's death.
After the Persian, Hellenistic and later the country's occupation of Egyptian gods and goddesses gradually begin to lose its influence, are in decline.They coalesce with the gods invaders.For example, Alexander the Great was worshiped in Egypt as the son of Zeus-Ammon, a syncretic Egyptian-Hellenistic deities.
When Egyptian gods whose names were both local and mixed origin, began to give way to a new religion - Christianity gradually began and oblivion of ancient Egyptian writing.During the reign of Emperor Constantine died last native Egyptian religious tradition, and then for many centuries the names of ancient Egyptian gods were known only from the works of Greek and Roman historians.But those and others met with the Egyptian culture at a time when it is already on the wane, and hardly priests devoted strangers (often aggressive) into the mysteries of their religion.
Trying to decipher ancient hieroglyphics have been many times as the Arab scholars, and the Europeans, but to no avail.And only in the early nineteenth century, a brilliant linguist Francois Champollion was able to find the key to deciphering Egyptian texts.From that moment began the era of modern history and culture of ancient Egypt.
