The Encyclopedia of World Religions

132 S Egyptian religion

a living god. The same word was also applied to important nobles. In general, the Egyptians thought human beings had three different parts that we might call “souls.” The ba was a bird like spirit that went up into the sky at death. The ka was a spirit that resided in an image of the person after death. The akh went to the realm of the dead and sometimes returned as a ghost. A famous illustration from the so-called Book of the Dead shows the heart of a dead person being weighed in a balance against a feather. The feather is the sign of Maat, goddess of truth and justice. PRACTICES Egyptian WORSHIP centered on temples. Temples were buildings that housed images of the gods. The RITUALS of the temples helped maintain the harmony of the universe and of human beings within it. A series of reliefs from a temple in Abydos shows what happened in these temples every day. A privileged group of priests entered the chamber where the image lived. They bathed it, clothed it, fed it, and praised it. As they left the chamber, they were careful to remove every trace of their footsteps. On special occasions called festivals the images would leave their temples and travel. Dur ing festivals the gods were visible to ordinary people. Many temples also had places at the backs of their sanctuaries where common people could consult the gods. ORGANIZATION The distinction between religion and politics that is common in North America was unknown in Egypt. In theory the king was the chief priest of all Egyptian temples. The reliefs at Abydos show the king worshipping the gods. In practice priests worshipped the gods on the king’s behalf. Only the highest priests could enter the gods’ cham bers. Priests who were experts in writing produced the many texts that are found in Egyptian tombs. Temples also had many lower order priests that we might call servants.

annexed the region around the time of J ESUS . The Ptolemies lavishly sponsored Egyptian religion. In particular, they built great temples. Their temples at Edfu, Dendera, and Philae are especially well known. During this period the “mysteries” of the Egyptian GODDESS Isis spread throughout the region of the Mediterranean Sea ( see MYSTERY RELIGIONS ). C HRISTIANITY came to Egypt as early as the first century C . E . It thrived there, but some Egyptians continued to practice the traditional religion. In the fourth century C . E . Christianity became first a legal religion, then the required religion. Some Egyptians persisted in traditional ways. In 415, Christians stoned an Egyptian woman philosopher and mathematician named Hypatia. By the end of the fifth century, the last functioning non-Christian temple in the Roman Empire, the temple of Isis at Philae, had shut down. BELIEFS Many writings tell us about Egyptian beliefs. They include writings from tombs: the Pyramid Texts (Old Kingdom), the Coffin Texts (Middle King dom), and the so-called Book of the Dead. These and other writings often portray Egyptian gods with the heads of animals. The heads helped distinguish one god from another. There is little evidence that Egyptians actually worshipped animals. Most Egyptian gods began as the gods of par ticular places. When Egypt became unified, priests at different temples tried to fit all the gods together. Different temples developed different systems. One influential system was the “ennead,” or group of nine gods, which developed during the Old Kingdom at Heliopolis. According to this sys tem, the first god, Atum, produced two others, the god Shu (air) and the goddess Tefnut (mois ture). These two produced the god Geb (the earth) and the goddess Nut (the sky). Geb and Nut gave birth to two couples, Osiris and Isis, and Seth and Nephthys. The EVIL god Seth killed his brother Osiris. Osiris’s son Horus avenged his father by killing Seth. Horus ruled as the living god of Egypt; Osiris was the god of the dead. The Egyptian language did not sharply sep arate gods from human beings. The king was