Egyptian Religion

1. Egyptian Religion

2. Nile and Desert • The contrast between the lush river valley and the deserts on either side became a physical reminder of the contrast between life and death.

3. A Desert Storm • The early Egyptians began to assume that there were invisible forces, normally beneficent, but which could become hostile, or that there were other forces which were always ill disposed.

4. Luxor • Much of Egyptian religion is concerned with how to infuse the temporal with the eternal, how to turn the mortal into the immortal, and how to explain the birth of the universe itself.

5. Pyramids • In the records of ancient Egypt it is clear that not only were the phenomena of the sky observed and noted, but that the same phenomena were ascribed to a being living in the sky.

6. Osiris • A further extension of this creed was to see in the resurrection of Osiris and the defeat of Set the eventual triumph of good and justice over evil.

7. Ma’at • Ma’at refers to the Law or Harmony of the Universe, reminding me of what the Chinese mean by Tao or the Hindu philosophy means by dharma. Ma’at is divine order and Egyptians were to lead their lives in accordance with this divine order, the same order found in nature.

8. Egyptian Temple • The temples were not places to which men resorted to make individual prayers, rather they existed to serve the gods, providing them with daily sustenance and necessities in return for which the gods would maintain world order.

9. Akhenaten and Aton • Akhenaten promulgated the worship of Aton, the sun disc, at the same time proscribing the worship of Amun-Re.

10. Ba • The Ba performed the pilgrimage in the underworld. The Ba was judged by Osiris for the conduct of the man it inhabited in this world. It was usually represented as a bird, especially as a human-headed sparrow-hawk.

11. Giza • Plato is thought to have traveled through Egypt while a young man. One can only wonder how much of his philosophy was influenced by what he learned there.