Amun
:''For the people in the Bible, see
Ammon. For the extinct mollusc see
Ammonite. For the game by
Reiner Knizia, see
Amun-Re (board game)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 deities, before fading into obscurity.
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
Hermopolis. 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
color blue, since it was the color of the
sky, seen through the air, and so this was the color 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.
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
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.
|
Bas-relief depicting Amun as 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 oppressed 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.
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.
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 (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.
During the
eighteenth dynasty, the pharaoh
Akhenaten (also known as Amenhotep IV) introduced the worship of
Aten, the sun's disc itself, identifying it as Amun-Ra. He defaced the symbols of the old gods and based his new religion around one new god, the Aten, the great solar disc. However, this abrupt change was unpopular, particularly with the previous
priesthoods, who 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. The correct form of mentioning Akhenaten were figures akin to 'crazy one from Akhenaten'. Worship of the Aten was replaced, and that of Amun-Ra restored. The priests persuaded the new underage pharaoh
Tutankhaten (most likely Akhenaten's son), whose name meant "the living image of Aten", to change his name to
Tutankhamun, "the living image of Amun".
After the
Twentieth dynasty moved the centre of power back to Thebes, the powerbase of Amun's cult had been renewed, and the authority of Amun 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, 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 affect much.
However, in the rest of Egypt, his cult was rapidly overtaken, in popularity, by the less divisive 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.
Several words derive from Amun via the Greek form Ammon:
ammonia and
ammonite. 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. Ammonia the chemical derives its name in a more round-about way – see end of article
ammonia. 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.
*
Adolf Erman,
Handbook of Egyptian Religion (London, 1907)
*
Ed. Meyer, article "Ammon" in
W. H. Roscher's
Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie*
Pietschmann, articles "Ammon" and "Ammoneion" in
Pauly-Wissowa,
Realencyclopädie.*
Wiki Classical Dictionary: Ammon*
Leiden Hymns to Amun
