Everything about Amun totally explained
Amun (also spelled
Amon,
Amoun,
Amen, and rarely
Imen,
Greek Ἄμμων
Ammon, and Ἅμμων
Hammon, reconstructed
Egyptian Yamānu) (earlier
Ra) was the name of a
deity, in
Egyptian mythology, who gradually rose to become one of the most important deities in Ancient Egypt, before fading into obscurity.
Origin of name
Amun's name is first recorded in Egyptian as
ỉmn, meaning "The hidden (one)". Since vowels were not written in
Egyptian hieroglyphs,
Egyptologists have reconstructed the name to have been pronounced *Yamānu (/jamaːnu/) originally. The name survived in
Coptic as, .
Creator
Gradually, as god of air, he came to be associated with the
breath of life, which created the
ba, particularly in
Thebes. By the
First Intermediate Period this had led to him being thought of, in these areas, as the creator god, titled
father of the gods, preceding the
Ogdoad, although also part of it. As he became more significant, he was assigned a wife (Amunet being his own female aspect, more than a distinct wife), and since he was the creator, his wife was considered the divine mother from which the cosmos emerged, who in the areas where Amun was worshipped was, by this time,
Mut.
Amun became depicted in
human form, seated on a throne, wearing on his head a plain deep circlet from which rise two straight parallel plumes, possibly symbolic of the tail
feathers of a
bird, a reference to his earlier status as a wind god.
Having become more important than
Montu, the local
war god of Thebes, Montu's authority became said to exist because he was the son of Amun. However, as Mut was infertile, it was believed that she, and thus Amun, had adopted Montu instead. In later years, due to the shape of a pool outside the sacred temple of Mut at Thebes, Montu was replaced, as their adopted son, by
Khonsu, the
moon god.
King
When the
armies of the
Eighteenth dynasty evicted the
Hyksos rulers from Egypt, the victors' city of origin, Thebes, now held the mantle of the most important city in Egypt. Therefore, Amun became nationally important. The
Pharaohs attributed all their successful enterprises to Amun, and they lavished much of their wealth and captured spoil on the construction of his temples.
Because of the adoration now given to Amun,
visiting Greek travelers to Egypt would report back that Amun, king of the Egyptian gods, was one and the same (and therefore became identified) with the Greek king of the gods,
Zeus. Likewise, Amun's consort
Mut become associated with Zeus's consort
Hera.
As the
Egyptians considered themselves oppressed during the period of Hyksos' rule, the victory under the supreme god Amun was seen as his championing of the
less fortunate. Consequently, Amun was viewed as upholding the rights of justice for the poor. By aiding those who traveled in his name, he became the
Protector of the road. Since he upheld
Ma'at, those who prayed to Amun were required first to demonstrate that they were worthy by confessing their sins.
Fertility God
When, subsequently, Egypt conquered
Kush, they identified the chief deity of the Kushites as Amun. This deity was depicted as
Ram headed, more specifically a
woolly Ram with curved
horns, and so Amun started becoming associated with the Ram. Indeed, due to the aged appearance of it, they came to believe that this had been the original form of Amun, and that Kush was where he'd been born.
However, since rams, due to their
rutting, were considered a symbol of
virility, Amun also became thought of as a fertility deity, and so started to absorb the identity of
Min, becoming
Amun-Min. This association with virility led to
Amun-Min gaining the
epithet Kamutef, meaning
Bull of his mother, in which form he was often found depicted on the walls of
Karnak,
ithyphallic, and with a
scourge.
Sun God
As Amun's cult grew bigger, Amun rapidly became identified with the chief God that was worshipped in other areas,
Ra-Herakhty, the merged identities of
Ra, and
Horus. This identification led to a merger of identities, with Amun becoming
Amun-Ra. As
Ra had been the father of
Shu, and
Tefnut, and the remainder of the
Ennead, so Amun-Ra was likewise identified as their father.
Ra-Herakhty had been a
sun god, and so this became true of Amun-Ra as well, Amun becoming considered the
hidden aspect of the sun (for example during the night), in contrast to Ra-Herakhty as the
visible aspect, since Amun clearly meant
the one who is hidden. This complexity over the sun led to a gradual movement towards the support of a more pure form of deity.
During the
eighteenth dynasty, the pharaoh
Akhenaten (also known as Amenhotep IV) introduced the
worship of the Aten, a god whose power was manifested both literally and symbolically in the sun's disc. He defaced the symbols of the old gods and based his new religion upon one new god: the
Aten. However, this abrupt change was very unpopular, particularly with the previous
temple priests, who now found themselves without any of their former power. Consequently, when Akhenaten died, his name was striken from the Egyptian records, and all of his changes were swiftly undone. It was almost as if this
monotheistic sect had never occurred. Worship of the Aten was replaced and worship of Amun-Ra was restored. The priests persuaded the new underage pharaoh
Tutankhaten, whose name meant "the living image of Aten", to change his name to
Tutankhamun, "the living image of Amun".
Decline
After the
Twentieth dynasty moved the center of power back to Thebes, the powerbase of Amun's cult had been revivified, and the authority of Aten began to weaken. Under the
Twenty-first dynasty the secondary line of priest kings of Thebes upheld his dignity to the best of their power, and the
Twenty-second favoured Thebes.
As the sovereignty weakened, the division between Upper and Lower Egypt asserted itself; thereafter, Thebes would have rapidly decayed had it not been for the piety of the kings of
Nubia towards Amun, whose worship had long prevailed in their country. Thebes was at first their Egyptian capital, and they honoured Amun greatly, although neither their wealth nor culture were sufficient to affect much change.
However, in the rest of Egypt, the popularity of his cult was rapidly overtaken by the less divisive cult of the
Legend of Osiris and Isis, which hadn't been associated with the heretical Akhenaten. And so there, his identity became first subsumed into Ra (
Ra-Herakhty), who still remained an identifiable figure in the
Osiris cult, but ultimately, became merely an aspect of
Horus.
In areas outside of Egypt where the Egyptians had previously brought the worship of Amun, his fate wasn't as dreadful. In Nubia, where his name was pronounced
Amane, he remained the national god, with his priests at
Meroe and
Nobatia, via an
oracle, regulating the whole government of the country, choosing the king, and directing his military expeditions. According to
Diodorus Siculus, they were even able to compel kings to commit suicide, although this behaviour stopped when
Arkamane, in the
3rd century BC,
slew them.
Likewise, in
Libya there remained a solitary oracle of Amun in the
Libyan Desert at the
oasis of
Siwa. Such was its reputation among the Greeks that
Alexander the Great journeyed there after the
battle of Issus and during his occupation of Egypt in order to be acknowledged the son of Amun. Even during this occupation, Amun, identified as a form of
Zeus, continued to be the great god of Thebes throughout its decay.
Derived terms
Several words derive from Amun via the Greek form Ammon:
ammonia and
ammonite. The Romans called the
ammonium chloride deposits they collected from near the Temple of Jupiter Amun in
ancient Libya 'sal ammoniacus' (salt of Amun) because of proximity to the nearby temple. Ammonia, as well as being the chemical, is a genus name in the
foraminifera. Both these foraminiferans (shelled
Protozoa) and ammonites (extinct shelled
cephalopods) have/had spiral shells resembling a ram's, and Ammon's, horns. The regions of the
hippocampus in the
brain are called the
cornu ammonis literally "Amun's Horns", due to the horned appearance of the dark and light bands of cellular layers.
Further Information
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