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This remark from editor Barbara Porter's Introduction made me smile: "such assertions [of monotheism] do not typically result in any significant depopulation of the divine sphere at all - but simply in a reclassification of its still numerous inhabitants." (p 2) Those inhabitants include gods, demigods, spirits, and the dead, who "are not constrained by normal laws of causality and have vastly extended lifespans." (p 15)
In his chapter, "Egyptian Gods in Context", John Baines notes that there was no genre of Ancient Egyptian texts which talked about the nature of deities, comparable to Western theology. Rather, the gods were described "in terms of models and groupings" in devotional writing and images.
The gods could be "manifest in numerous forms", including "physical phenomena", statues, animals, and have more than one ka. "Multiplicity of manifestations is a sign of a deity's potential." They could "relate to each other in complex, overlapping ways". Deities' names were joined "partly to form new divine entities but much more often to express aspects of existing deities", with gods temporarily inhabiting or merging with each other, or "qualifying" or "determining" the character of another god, with the second god's name acting as an "epithet" of the first god.
Baines also points out that while human-animal combinations are commonplace amongst the gods, "combinations across the boundaries of sex hardly occur" (off the top of my head I can only think of Sekhmet-Bast-Ra) and that the goddess of a particular temple could only "outrank" a god of that temple if she was his mother.
(More to come.)
__
Porter, Barbara N. (ed) One God or Many: Concepts of Divinity in the Ancient World. Chebeague ME, Casco Bay Assyriological Institute, 2000.
In his chapter, "Egyptian Gods in Context", John Baines notes that there was no genre of Ancient Egyptian texts which talked about the nature of deities, comparable to Western theology. Rather, the gods were described "in terms of models and groupings" in devotional writing and images.
The gods could be "manifest in numerous forms", including "physical phenomena", statues, animals, and have more than one ka. "Multiplicity of manifestations is a sign of a deity's potential." They could "relate to each other in complex, overlapping ways". Deities' names were joined "partly to form new divine entities but much more often to express aspects of existing deities", with gods temporarily inhabiting or merging with each other, or "qualifying" or "determining" the character of another god, with the second god's name acting as an "epithet" of the first god.
Baines also points out that while human-animal combinations are commonplace amongst the gods, "combinations across the boundaries of sex hardly occur" (off the top of my head I can only think of Sekhmet-Bast-Ra) and that the goddess of a particular temple could only "outrank" a god of that temple if she was his mother.
(More to come.)
__
Porter, Barbara N. (ed) One God or Many: Concepts of Divinity in the Ancient World. Chebeague ME, Casco Bay Assyriological Institute, 2000.
