Ancient Egyptian Monotheism (If All Peoples Received a Prophet, What Happened to Egypt?)

I’m reading a book I picked up at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in the fall, in connection with an exhibition of Egyptian artifacts. This exhibit was generally interesting, but there was one element that really struck me, which neither the docent nor anyone else from the museum could illuminate: among the royal artifacts there were items found buried with Akhenaten, the ‘heretic pharaoh.’ Among these were shabtis and other items with traditional symbolic significance (which I do not unfortunately remember exactly). These items were part of the traditional system of Egyptian worship which Akhenaten largely rejected in favor of worship of the One God, represented as the sun disc Aten. But why were these items included in his grave goods? Did Akhenaten allow them to be prepared for his tomb, or were they a last-minute addition by someone close to him who never fully accepted his ideas?

Akhenaten is a fascinating person, and the degree to which he was actually a monotheist (and not a pantheist) is debatable, though many see him as a precursor to monotheism, or suggest he was strongly influenced by the religion of the Hebrews during their time in Egypt. But this book suggests that a type of monotheism existed in Egypt long before Akhenaten championed the concept of one God. (The book, originally published in 1899, is “Egyptian Religion: Egyptian Ideas of the Future Life,” by E.A. Wallis Budge. Budge was a respected Egyptologist at the British Museum for many years; I would trust, then, that this book is well-researched and accurate, for the late 1800s at least.)

The author begins the book by stating that, long before the polytheistic system we are familiar with developed, Egyptians believed in a single God, “self-existent, immortal, invisible, eternal, omniscient, almighty…the maker of the heavens, earth, and underworld; the creator of the sky and sea, men and women, animals and birds…and the incorporeal beings who were the messengers that fulfilled his wish and word” (p. 1). This idea of the High Creator God is found, he says, in the literature of every period of Egyptian history, including during the height of the polytheistic priesthood system. He identifies this Deity by the name or attribution ntr (which he Anglicizes to Neter for ease of pronunciation, though the vowels are actually unknown). While there is no agreement on the exact meaning of this word, he does point to the ancient Coptic Nuti, which likewise referred to the One God and is translated as ‘God’ or ‘Lord’. (Coptic grew out of the same root language as Egyptian and other Middle Eastern languages and dialects; the author calls ancient Coptic an Egyptian dialect.)

Tracing the development of Egyptian religion (as limited as our knowledge of early beliefs and practices is), the author then links ntr (as the One God) with the named god Ra, and describes the deities that developed within the Egyptian religious system – the neteru, translatable as ‘gods’ – as “only forms, manifestations, and phases” of the One God, Ra (p. 17).

The relationship between Ra and the other gods he describes is very much like the Hindu system: One Self-Existent Creator God (Brahma) whose attributes and activities are gradually accreted into the form of what seem to be separate gods, but which are actually emanations of, and one with, the One God. To outside observers and to lay worshipers, particularly as this system developed a formal priesthood and temple culture, these named attributes of God lost their symbolic nature and became understood as a pantheon of separate beings, although the core idea of Oneness is still present, known to those who deeply study the religion.

The idea that Egypt, long before the religion we all (think we) know, was primarily monotheistic, albeit with folk practices that tended toward recognition of lesser city or household gods, overturns the Western tendency to think of ‘primitive’ peoples as being solely, and simplistically, polytheistic, and ‘advanced, civilized’ peoples as having adopted the morally-superior idea of monotheism.

Of course I have no idea how true these hypotheses are, but I’m intrigued to think that perhaps Egypt did receive prophets early in history, and that the idea of monotheism and the Unity of God that these prophets brought was not wholly lost after all.