Amun (also spelt Amon, Amoun, Amen, and
rarely Imenand, and spelt in Greek as
Ammon, and Hammon) was the name of a deity,
in Egyptian
mythology, who gradually rose
to become one of the most important, before
disappearing back into the shadows.
God of Air
Originally, he was simply nothing
more than a deification of the concept
of air, and thus wind, one of the four
fundamental concepts held to have composed
the primordial universe, in the Ogdoad
cosmogeny, whose cult was strongest in
Heliopolis.
His name reflects this function,
since it means the hidden one, reflecting
the invisibility of the air, and of the
wind. Like all other members of the Ogdoad,
his male aspect was usually depicted as
a frog, or frog-headed. Symbolically,
invisibility was represented by the colour
blue, since it was the colour of the sky,
seen through the air, and so this was
the colour usually given to Amun's image.
As with the other concepts in the Ogdoad,
he was dualistically considered to have
a female aspect, referred to as Amunet
(also spelt Amentet, Amentit, Imentet,
Imentit, Amaunet, and Ament), which was
simply the feminine form of the word Amun.
The other female aspects of the Ogdoad
were all depicted as snakes, thus Amunet
was depicted likewise.
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 lead 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 Menthu,
the local war god of Thebes, Menthu'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 Menthu instead.
In later years, due to the shape of a
pool outside the sacred temple of Mut
at Thebes, Menthu was replaced, as their
adopted son, by Chons, the moon god.
King
With the eviction of the Hyksos rulers
from Egypt, by the armies of the Eighteenth
dynasty, Thebes, where the victors were
based, became the most important city,
and so Amun became nationally important.
To Amun the Pharaohs attributed all their
successful enterprises, and on his temples
they lavished their wealth and captured
spoil.
And so, when the Greeks reported back
on their visits to Egypt, Amun, as king
of the gods, became identified by the
Greeks with Zeus, and so his consort Mut
with Hera.
As the Egyptians considered themselves
suppressed during the period of Hyksos
rule, the victory under the supreme god
Amun, was seen as his championing of the
underdog. Consequently, Amun was viewed
as upholding the rights to justice of
the poor, being titled Vizier of the poor,
and aiding those who travelled in his
name, as 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, 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 had been born.
However, since rams, due to their rutting,
were considered a symbol of virility,
Amun became thought of as a fertility
deity, and so started to absorb the identity
of Min,
becoming Amun-Min. This association with
virility lead 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-Re as well, Amun
becoming considered the hidden aspect
of the sun (e.g. 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.
Thus the pharaoh, Amenhotep IV introduced
the worship of Aten,
the sun's disc itself, identifying it
as Amun-Ra.
Although Atenism, the worship of Aten,
had started out as standard henotheism,
it very quickly became, for reasons that
are not very clear, entirely monotheistic.
Indeed, it is even possible that this
is the first instance of monotheism in
the world. Subsequently, Amenhotep IV
started persecuting the worship of Amun,
and erased the name from monuments, even
changing his own name to Akhenaten in
favour of Aten.
However, this abrupt change was unpopular,
particularly with the previous priesthoods,
who had now suddenly found themselves
without power. Consequently, when Akhenaten
died, his name was struck out, and all
his changes undone, almost as if they
had not occurred. Worship of Aten was
replaced, and that of Amun-Ra restored.
Decline
After the Twentieth dynasty moved the
centre of power back to the old capital
from Thebes, the powerbase of Amun's cult
had been removed, and the authority of
Amun began to wane. 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, and 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 their wealth and culture were
not sufficient to effect much.
However, in the rest of Egypt, his cult
was rapidly overtaken, in popularity,
by the less devisive cult of the Legend
of Osiris
and Isis,
which had not been associated with Akhenaten's
actions. 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, Amun's fate was not as bad. In
Nubia, where his name was pronounced Amane,
he remained the national god, with his
priesthoods 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
an oracle of Amun in the 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 the
god. Even during this occupation,
Amun, identified as a form of Zeus,
continued to be the great god of
Thebes, in its decay.
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