Amen-Ra, the God of Empire
Amen-Ra is a significant deity in ancient Egyptian mythology, embodying the fusion of two distinct gods: Amen, originally a wind and lunar deity worshipped in Thebes, and Ra, the sun god revered in Heliopolis. Emerging during Thebes' rise to prominence, Amen-Ra became known as the "great father of all gods," representing immense power and authority. He is often depicted as a formidable figure adorned with an ornate headdress and ram's horns, symbolizing fertility and strength.
The unification of Amen and Ra had profound implications for ancient Egyptian politics and spirituality. As pharaohs aligned themselves with Amen-Ra, they utilized his worship to consolidate power and legitimize their rule, leading to military successes and the construction of grand temples, such as the one at Karnak. The merging of the two deities facilitated the political dominance of Thebes, allowing for a more cohesive religious framework across Egypt, where rulers were seen as incarnations of Amen-Ra.
This synthesis of political and religious power not only reinforced the pharaohs' authority but also contributed to a form of monotheism, with Amen-Ra becoming central to Egyptian worship. The intertwined nature of Amen-Ra's mythology and the history of Egypt illustrates how religion served as a vital tool for governance and societal unity in ancient times.
Amen-Ra, the God of Empire
Author: Traditional
Time Period: 5000 BCE–2500 BCE
Country or Culture: Egypt
Genre: Myth
PLOT SUMMARY
Amen (Amun or Amon) is a wind deity and a god of the Egyptian city of Thebes. He is also a deity of the moon and the son of the night goddess, Mut-Apet, the mother of all gods. While Amen is an important god in Thebes, in the city of Heliopolis, the people instead worship the sun god, Ra (Re).
Over the centuries, Thebes becomes the most important city in Egypt. During its rise to prominence, Amen also becomes more powerful, marrying his mother, Mut, and becoming both son and husband at once. Just as he fuses the entities of father and son in this marriage, so too he unites with Ra. Gaining Ra’s solar characteristics and parting ways with his lunar association, he becomes Amen-Ra, the great father of all the gods and the most powerful deity in Egypt. As Amen-Ra, he is a formidable, bearded man in an ornate headdress. The red, blue, and green of his outfit symbolize the flowing rivers of Egypt and the growth of the nation, and he sometimes wears powerful ram’s horns on his head as well.
With Amen-Ra as their patron deity, the warriors and rulers of Thebes complete many successful military campaigns. They use the spoils of these wars to build huge temples in tribute to the god. It is in this tradition that Amenhotep I and his wife, Aahmes-Nefertari, rise to power. As pharaoh, Amenhotep unites many cities under the worship of Amen-Ra and orders the construction of a massive temple, located in Karnak, celebrating both the military victories of the rulers and the legend of the god. Nefertari even believes herself to be the wife of Amen-Ra, and as she sleeps in the temples dedicated to him, the people begin to believe that her children are the children of the god.
After Amenhotep and Nefertari die, the next ruler of Egypt, Thothmes I, likewise spends great wealth celebrating Amen-Ra, building massive pylons at the temple of Karnak. Thothmes prays to the god, asking that his daughter Hatshepsut become queen. Although Thothmes II and Thothmes III both briefly reign over Egypt, Hatshepsut gains the support of the priesthood of Amen-Ra and eventually seizes power with their assistance. For fourteen years, she rules alone, fetching rare animals and exotic trees to build the god one of the most beautiful gardens the people of Egypt have ever seen.
Hatshepsut, however, does not engage in military campaigns as previous rulers had, and so she does not increase the wealth and influence of Amen-Ra. Seeing this to be the case, the priests shift their support back to Thothmes III, who reclaims power and begins devastating military campaigns, conquering cities in the area now known as Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine.
Thothmes III is so successful that the priests of Amen-Ra compose a song for him. The hymn is sung from the voice of Amen-Ra, and in it, the god gives the pharaoh his blessing. “Like to a great young bull,” he sings through the bodies of his priests, “I have made them behold thy power, Fearless and quick to strike, none is so bold to resist thee” (Mackenzie 292). With this blessing, Thothmes III rules for many years, expanding the influence of Egypt and the worship of his god, Amen-Ra.
SIGNIFICANCE
As can be seen in the story of Amen-Ra, the history of the gods of ancient Egypt is often inseparable from the political and military history of the nation. The priests of various temples held political power that, while not equal to that of the pharaohs, often granted them the influence to overthrow rulers and direct military campaigns; the temple of Karnak, built for Amen-Ra, even had its own navy. Likewise, for military and political leaders, promotion of the worship of a particular god was a powerful tool that assisted them in uniting cities and overthrowing rulers who supported less popular gods and goddesses.
The unification of Amen-Ra had particularly wide-ranging political consequences. While there were certainly similarities between the sun god Ra and the moon god Amen, the two were largely distinct for centuries, their respective worship in Heliopolis and Thebes comprising two distinguishable religions. This began to change in the sixteenth century BCE, when the rulers of the Eighteenth Dynasty claimed power in Egypt and expelled the previous rulers, the Hyksos, a West Asian people who had settled in Egypt two centuries before. The Eighteenth Dynasty’s seat of power was in Thebes, and so with their rise to power, the worship of Amen likewise became more prominent.
When the government of Thebes overtook the governments of different regions, one tactic used to secure power in the new cities was to merge Amen with whichever god was currently worshipped there. In taking over the African kingdom of Kush, for instance, the leaders of Thebes began to promote the belief that the horned ram god of the region was a manifestation of Amen himself. The people of Kush ultimately shifted their worship to the god of Thebes, while Amen absorbed that god’s attributes (the ram’s horns, for instance, as well as an association with fertility). The unification of Amen with Ra appears to have been a similarly advantageous political move: as Ra and his cult were extremely powerful in other parts of Egypt, the sun god was redefined as another aspect of Amen, allowing the political and religious power associated with his worship to remain in place as they were subsumed into the government of Thebes. This was particularly important because pharaohs had previously been considered descendants of Ra. In the new religion, they were incarnations of Amen-Ra himself.
Eventually, the worship of Amen-Ra became effectively monotheistic, with the Egyptian people roughly unified under a single god and a single political leadership. The worship itself took many different forms, and Amen-Ra appeared under different names and in different bodies. Nevertheless, the spread of Egyptian power throughout the ancient world came hand in hand with a united mythology and the joined traditions of Amen and Ra, the politics and religion of the kingdom so subtly intertwined that neither can be truly understood without the study of both.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Garry, Jane, and Hasan El-Shamy, eds. “Creation Myth: Cosmogony and Cosmology, Motifs A600–A899.” Archetypes and Motifs in Folklore and Literature: A Handbook. Armonk: Sharp, 2005. 24–31. Print.
Lawler, Andrew. “Karnak.” Humanities 31.1 (2010): 24. Print.
Mackenzie, Donald. Egyptian Myth and Legend. London: Gresham, 1907. Print.
Pinch, Geraldine. Egyptian Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Goddesses, and Traditions of Ancient Egypt. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. Print.
Shaw, Ian. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. Print.