Did a major portion of Egyptians believe in monotheism?

[Rakovsky]

Egypt's civilization is considered to have begun about 5000 BC, and its writing is dated to have begun in 3500-3100 BC. The First Egyptian Dynasty dates from 3100 BC.

Scholars debate the extent of monotheism in ancient Egypt, and those who find monotheism in their religion may point to the following:

A famous Egyptologist of the early 20th century, EA Budge, found the word God (NTR) written by itself numerous times without reference to a specific deity of the Egyptian pantheon, and he concluded that this showed a belief in a one true God:

Budge writes in TUTANKHAMEN: AMENISM, ATENISM AND EGYPTIAN MONOTHEISM:

But in the Collections of Moral Aphorisms, or "Teachings," composed by ancient sages, we find several allusions to a divine power to which no personal name is given. The word used to indicate this power is NETER or NETHER. Many have tried to assign a meaning to this word and to find its etymology, but the original meaning of it is at present unknown. The contexts of the passages in which it occurs suggest that it means something like "eternal God." The same word is often used to describe an object, animate or inanimate, which possesses some unusually remarkable power or quality, and in the plural neteru, it represents the beings and things to which adoration in one form or another is paid. The great God referred to in the Moral Aphorisms is also spoken of as pa neter, "the God,"

Budge then cites the Precepts of Kagemna (IVth dynasty) and the Precepts of Ptah-hetep (Vth dynasty):

1. The things which God, (neter), doeth cannot be known.
2. Terrify not men. God, (neter), is opposed thereto.
3. The daily bread is under the dispensation of God, (neter).
4. When thou ploughest, labour (?) in the field God, (neter), hath given thee.
5. If thou wouldst be a perfect man make thy son pleasing to God, (neter).
6. God, I 1, loveth obedience; disobedience I is hateful to God, (neter).
7. Verily a good (or, beautiful) son is the gift of God, (neter).

You can read Budge's chapter here:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/tut/tut12.htm
He cites hymns and poems to God. For example, he cites the Teaching of Amenemapt, the son of Kanekht, c. XVIIIth dynasty:

1. Leave the angry man in the hands of God . . . God knows how to requite him (Col. V).
2. Carry not away the servant of the God for the benefit of another (Col. VI).
3. Take good heed to Nebertcher, (Lord of the Universe) (Col. VIII).
4. Though a man's tongue steers the boat, it is Nebertcher who is the pilot (Col. XIX).
5. Truth is the great porter (or bearer) of God (Col. XXI).
6. Seat thyself in the hands of God (Col. XXII).
7. A man prepares the straw for his building, but God is his architect.
It is he who throws down, it is he who builds up daily.
It is he who makes a man to arrive in Amentt (the Other World) [where] he is safe in the hand of God (Col. XXIV).
8. The love of God, praised and adored be he is more than the respect of the Chief (Col. XXVI).

Budge notes that in Chapter CXXV of the Egyptian Book of the Dead,

the deceased says in his declaration before the Forty-two gods, "I have not cursed God," and "I have not contemned the god of my city 1. The distinction between "God" and "god of the city" was quite clear in the mind of the Egyptian. The passages from the Moral Papyri quoted above show that the Egyptian priests and learned men were monotheistic, even though they do not proclaim the oneness of the god to whom they refer.

Wikipedia's entry on "Ancient Egyptian Deities" notes:

Scholars have long debated whether traditional Egyptian religion ever asserted that the multiple gods were, on a deeper level, unified. Reasons for this debate include the practice of syncretism, which might suggest that all the separate gods could ultimately merge into one, and the tendency of Egyptian texts to credit a particular god with power that surpasses all other deities. Another point of contention is the appearance of the word "god" in wisdom literature, where the term does not refer to a specific deity or group of deities.[118] In the early 20th century, for instance, E. A. Wallis Budge believed that Egyptian commoners were polytheistic, but knowledge of the true monotheistic nature of the religion was reserved for the elite, who wrote the wisdom literature.[119] His contemporary James Henry Breasted thought Egyptian religion was instead pantheistic, with the power of the sun god present in all other gods, while Hermann Junker argued that Egyptian civilization had been originally monotheistic and became polytheistic in the course of its history.

The Canadian Anthropologist Arthur Custance argued that Egyptians were originally monotheistic in that each local Egyptian community worshiped one particular god and it was only later as Egyptian society and its cities united that it began to bring them into a pantheon with many gods. He noted:

Sir Flinders Petrie, in an excellent little book on the subject of Egyptian religion, wrote as follows:

• There are in ancient religions and theologies very different classes of gods. Some races, as the modern Hindu, revel in a profusion of gods and godlings which continually increase. Others . . . do not attempt to worship great gods, but deal with a host of animistic spirits, devils, or whatever we may call them. . . . But all our knowledge of the early positions and nature of the great gods shows them to stand on an entirely different footing to these varied spirits. Were the conception of a god only an evolution from such spirit worship we should find the worship of many gods preceding the worship of one god. . . . What we actually find is the contrary of this, monotheism is the first stage traceable in theology. . . . Wherever we can trace back polytheism to its earliest stages, we find that it results from combinations of monotheism. In Egypt even Osiris, Isis, and Horus, so familiar as a triad, are found at first as separate units in different places: Isis as a virgin goddess, and Horus as a self-existent God.

Several pharaohs acknowledged God in the Bible without equating Him with any specific pagan deity. For example, in Genesis 41, Joseph explained Pharaoh's dreams:

• 38 And Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom is the Spirit of God?”
• 39 Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Inasmuch as God has shown you all this, there is no one as discerning and wise as you.

Joseph in the Bible

Some Egyptologists propose that the Egyptians used synchretization of gods to merge them into one God (eg. Amun + Ra = Amun-Ra), or that they saw many gods as being in reality emanations, aspects or portrayals of the one true God.

Wikipedia notes:

A god could be called the ba of another, or two or more deities could be joined into one god with a combined name and iconography... This linking of deities is called syncretism[, which] acknowledged the overlap between their roles, and extended the sphere of influence for each of them. Syncretic combinations were not permanent; a god who was involved in one combination continued to appear separately and to form new combinations with other deities.[114] But closely connected deities did sometimes merge. Horus absorbed several falcon gods from various regions...
...
Jan Assmann maintains that the notion of a single deity developed slowly through the New Kingdom, beginning with a focus on Amun-Ra as the all-important sun god.[124] In his view, Atenism was an extreme outgrowth of this trend. It equated the single deity with the sun and dismissed all other gods. Then, in the backlash against Atenism, priestly theologians described the universal god in a different way, one that coexisted with traditional polytheism. The one god was believed to transcend the world and all the other deities, while at the same time, the multiple gods were aspects of the one. According to Assmann, this one god was especially equated with Amun, the dominant god in the late New Kingdom, whereas for the rest of Egyptian history the universal deity could be identified with many other gods.[125] James P. Allen says that coexisting notions of one god and many gods would fit well with the "multiplicity of approaches" in Egyptian thought, as well as with the henotheistic practice of ordinary worshippers. He says that the Egyptians may have recognized the unity of the divine by "identifying their uniform notion of 'god' with a particular god, depending on the particular situation."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egyptian_deities

Professor Richard A Gabriel writes in Gods of Our Fathers: The Memory of Egypt in Judaism and Christianity,

The tendency toward monotheism in Egyptian religion was very old... found first in the Ptah and heliocentric texts of the Memphite Drama... The Egyptians understood that the local gods were very different from the major gods in the same way, perhaps, that Christian saints differ from the deity. The Egyptians arrived at the proposition early on that all gods were but different manifestations or permitted forms of the same one god. Thus the observance of the many gave rise to the belief in the One god and to the Egyptian idea that One is All... The same common elements of the one god first identified in the old texts reappear during the New Kingdom as the characteristics of Amun-Re. .. He is a god whose birth is secret, whose place of origin is unknown, whose birth is not witnessed, who created himself by himself, and who keeps his nature concealed from all who come after him. He is "the Hidden One." Yet He exists and is the source of all else...

The singularity of the trinity was reflected linguistically by the Egyptian use of the singular pronoun He when applied to god as trinity, in much the same way as the Christian God is referred to as He... The oldest known Egyptian trinity iis that of Ptah, Osiris, and Sokaris, the latter being the local god of Memphis. In an Egyptian trinity, like the Christian Trinity, the unity of the parts constitutes a genuine singularity, that is, one god. Each of the persons within the Egyptian and Christian trinity has an independent existence, is distinct in nature, is equally divine, and has its own powers even as, at the same time, each is part of the singular monotheistic unified god.

Ra-Horakhty, a synchretization of Ra and Horus

 

[Rakovsky]

The Egyptologist Hornung proposes that according to Egyptian mythology there was originally an uncreated Creator god, and that other gods came later, a scheme that he sees as having a monotheistic stage.

The Routledge Companion to Theism by Charles Taliaferro says:

... there is also evidence of an original monotheism in their belief system, specifically in the cosmogonic myth of origin. The creator god Atum is the "undifferentiated one" who came into being without being created, generated the dirst divine couple, Shu and Tefnut, without copulation... Hornung concludes that "the monotheism of the Egyptians consists in the belief that in the beginning the divine was one, and that in the cosmogony that was the work of the one, the one became many"

Across the board, Egyptologists agree that the Pharaoh Akhenaten imposed a period of monotheism dedicated to the sun's disc, the "Aten".

This Utah State University outline by Mark Damen gives basics on Akhenaten's rule:

Born Amunhotep (IV), Akhenaten ruled Egypt for a mere fourteen years (ca. 1352-1338 BCE), a relatively short reign by the standards of the day... The unique and peculiar phase of Egyptian history he represents is known today as the Amarna Period—the modern Egyptian village of El-Amarna lies near the site that was once Akhenaten's capital city—although the Amarna Period extends beyond his reign, including not only Akhenaten's regency but several of his successors':

• Smenkhare (1338-1336 BCE)
• Tutankhuaten (later, Tutankhamun ["King Tut"], 1336-1327 BCE),
• and finally the very elderly Ay (1327-1323 BCE).

By the time the next series of pharaohs held the throne—Horemheb (1323-1295 BCE) and the Ramessids, a dynasty that included the famous Ramses II... Akhetaten [was] the city [Akhenaten] built for himself and his religion... Later rulers antagonistic to Amarna culture.... intentionally destroyed Akhetaten... Akhetaten, means in Egyptian "the Horizon of the Sun-disk." ... Lodged in a recess in the highlands flanking the Nile, the site provides spectacular dawns, and indeed, at certain times of year the sun appears to rise from a yoke in the mountains which embodies beautifully the solar iconography seen in much of the artwork created during the Amarna period. ...[He] adopted a new title... Akhenaten which means in Egyptian "he is agreeable (Akhen-) to the sun-disk (-aten)."

http://www.usu.edu/markdamen/1320hist&civ/chapters/10AKHEN.htm

Wikipedia's Entry on Akhenaten says:

Some of his court changed their names to remove them from the patronage of other gods and place them under that of Aten (or Ra, with whom Akhenaten equated the Aten)... Some scholars do identify Mummy 61074, found in KV55, an unfinished tomb in the Valley of the Kings, as Akhenaten's. If so—...its measurements tend to support the theory that Akhenaten's depictions exaggerate his actual appearance. ... the skull is long and has a prominent chin, and the limbs are light and long...

[Akhenaten] "disbanded the priesthoods of all the other gods...and diverted the income from these [other] cults to support the Aten". [He] changed his name from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten or 'Living Spirit of Aten.' ...Initially, Akhenaten presented Aten as a variant of the familiar supreme deity Amun-Re (itself the result of an earlier rise to prominence of the cult of Amun, resulting in Amun becoming merged with the sun god Ra),

Akhenaten and the Aten

A final piece of evidence is the native Yoruba religion of Nigeria, which is monotheistic. It shows some strong similarities to ancient Egyptian religion and a theory goes that it was strongly influenced by it in ancient times. Therefore, its monotheism could also come from ancient Egypt.

The Routledge Companion to Theism by Charles Taliaferro says:

How about using the personal names of Egyptians to determine the monotheism or polytheism of their belief system? As in Yoruba traditional religious thought in Nigeria, Egyptian names reflected their belief in God or gods. Hornung cites a collection of personal names from the period between 3000 and 2600 BCEL for example, Jrj-ntr: whom God created; Jht-ntr whom God saves, both of which could be evidence of a belief in one abstract God that is not particular to a locality and which may therefore be evidence of a monotheistic belief. But there are also references to personal names that suggest belief in particular gods: Jnd-n-Hnm: whom Khnum has saved, referring here to the god Khnum. So we might conclude that there is a belief in one abstract or absolute God just as there are beliefs in other particular gods. This might be similar again to the Yoruba where ... Olubunmi means God gives me this and Sangobunmi means Sango (a specific deity) gives me this, recognizing both the Suoreme Being and the lesser deity, Sando.

Olodumare is the supreme Creator in the Yoruba religion

Words and Meaning in Yoruba Religion: Linguisstic Connections in Yoruba, Ancinet Egyptian and Semitic by Modupe Oduyoye

Another book discussing the Yoruba connection to ancient Egypt

Some photos and discussions showing the Yoruba- Egyptian connection:
http://historum.com/middle-eastern-...egypt-nile-valley-origins-bantu-speakers.html

 

[Mindmaster]

I think it is inaccurate to portray ancient Egyptian religion as some sort of cohesive thing. It was more like a bunch of cults than some over-arching standardized mythology. You had cults of Set, Aten, and other gods and goddesses all throughout the region, and the local gods were favored and paid homage to by all that passed -- even foreigners. (As was the custom, in the past.)

 

[The Emperor of Mankind]

Egypt's civilization is considered to have begun about 5000 BC, and its writing is dated to have begun in 3500-3100 BC. The First Egyptian Dynasty dates from 3100 BC.

Scholars debate the extent of monotheism in ancient Egypt, and those who find monotheism in their religion may point to the following:

A famous Egyptologist of the early 20th century, EA Budge, found the word God (NTR) written by itself numerous times without reference to a specific deity of the Egyptian pantheon, and he concluded that this showed a belief in a one true God:

Budge writes in TUTANKHAMEN: AMENISM, ATENISM AND EGYPTIAN MONOTHEISM:
Budge then cites the Precepts of Kagemna (IVth dynasty) and the Precepts of Ptah-hetep (Vth dynasty):


You can read Budge's chapter here:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/tut/tut12.htm
He cites hymns and poems to God. For example, he cites the Teaching of Amenemapt, the son of Kanekht, c. XVIIIth dynasty:



Budge notes that in Chapter CXXV of the Egyptian Book of the Dead,


Wikipedia's entry on "Ancient Egyptian Deities" notes:


The Canadian Anthropologist Arthur Custance argued that Egyptians were originally monotheistic in that each local Egyptian community worshiped one particular god and it was only later as Egyptian society and its cities united that it began to bring them into a pantheon with many gods. He noted:



Several pharaohs acknowledged God in the Bible without equating Him with any specific pagan deity. For example, in Genesis 41, Joseph explained Pharaoh's dreams:

• 38 And Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom is the Spirit of God?”
• 39 Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Inasmuch as God has shown you all this, there is no one as discerning and wise as you.

Joseph in the Bible

Some Egyptologists propose that the Egyptians used synchretization of gods to merge them into one God (eg. Amun + Ra = Amun-Ra), or that they saw many gods as being in reality emanations, aspects or portrayals of the one true God.

Wikipedia notes:


Professor Richard A Gabriel writes in Gods of Our Fathers: The Memory of Egypt in Judaism and Christianity,

Ra-Horakhty, a synchretization of Ra and Horus

I seriously doubt the Egyptians as a culture were truly monotheistic - even under Akhenaten. They just went along with his decrees because he was Pharaoh - not because they believed. The moment he died they unmade what he had accomplished - they abandoned the Aten cult and reopened all the temples to their other gods. They even chiselled his name off the walls out of a desire to forget him.

As for merged deities like Amun-Ra: this isn't an example of monotheism. It's an example of one local cult absorbing or over-powering another. That's one way monotheism can emerge but is not in and of itself monotheism as it doesn't preclude the worship of other deities. Further, the Egyptians believed the Pharaoh was Horus reborn - this wouldn't have sat well with the Egyptians who didn't adhere to Horus' cult and they wouldn't have accepted his rule or claims to divinity if they really were monotheists.

The Canadian Anthropologist Arthur Custance argued that Egyptians were originally monotheistic in that each local Egyptian community worshiped one particular god and it was only later as Egyptian society and its cities united that it began to bring them into a pantheon with many gods. He noted:



Several pharaohs acknowledged God in the Bible without equating Him with any specific pagan deity. For example, in Genesis 41, Joseph explained Pharaoh's dreams:

• 38 And Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom is the Spirit of God?”
• 39 Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Inasmuch as God has shown you all this, there is no one as discerning and wise as you.

What Custance fails to recognise here is that Genesis in the Torah was written by Jews and its target audience would have been Jews so the writing would have been framed within the context of Jewish culture. It's certainly not reliable evidence that the Egyptians worshipped One God. It's only reliable evidence that those writing the Torah were only capable of perceiving the divine as the One.

 

[Rakovsky]

I think it is inaccurate to portray ancient Egyptian religion as some sort of cohesive thing. It was more like a bunch of cults than some over-arching standardized mythology. You had cults of Set, Aten, and other gods and goddesses all throughout the region, and the local gods were favored and paid homage to by all that passed -- even foreigners. (As was the custom, in the past.)

I agree. This is why in the poll I only questioned if a major portion of Egyptians felt this way at some time. Akhenaten's worship of the Aten had its detractors and after he died, maybe within a few generations, worship returned to Amun.

 

[Rakovsky]

I seriously doubt the Egyptians as a culture were truly monotheistic - even under Akhenaten. They just went along with his decrees because he was Pharaoh - not because they believed. The moment he died they unmade what he had accomplished - they abandoned the Aten cult and reopened all the temples to their other gods. They even chiselled his name off the walls out of a desire to forget him.

This is kind of like asking whether Russians under Stalin supported his totalitarianism or just went along because he was the leader, since after he died they took down his statues.
The Egyptians believed that the pharaoh was the "son of god", with a direct connection to god like a shaman or prophet. So a major portion of Egyptians would have bought into what he said, and not just pretended to. He had a major cult of worship of Aten with a famous city dedicated to this called Amarna, which he built. Large numbers of Egyptians participated in his project and worship.
But you are also right that after he died, the Egyptians went back to worshiping Amun. That could have been done by the priests and leaders, not by a referendum, so it's hard to say today what fraction of people felt either way.

As for merged deities like Amun-Ra: this isn't an example of monotheism. It's an example of one local cult absorbing or over-powering another. That's one way monotheism can emerge but is not in and of itself monotheism as it doesn't preclude the worship of other deities. Further, the Egyptians believed the Pharaoh was Horus reborn - this wouldn't have sat well with the Egyptians who didn't adhere to Horus' cult and they wouldn't have accepted his rule or claims to divinity if they really were monotheists.

I need to better explain how some scholars see merging of deities as leading to monotheism. A merged deity like Amun-Ra is a single deity, but it has aspects of both. Merged deities could include more than two that have become a single deity. Hornung explains that Egyptian mythology taught that originally there was one uncreated god and then other gods appeared, so the end result is multiple gods. Syncretization works in the opposite way. Egyptians had numerous gods, but they merged them into one god, so the ultimate result of the process is syncretization into Monotheism.

You are right that this merging can happen through local cults absorbing each other, and as you said, it's a way that monotheism can emerge.
You are also right that this doesn't preclude worship of other deities, but this is because the other deities have been merged into one deity. How can they in their own minds theoretically justify merging deities? It's because they can see the deities as aspects or portrayals of the one true ultimate deities. So in a sense there are no "other" deities, all the deities are really emanations or faces of the one true God.

This is a belief among many Hindus as well - that their various gods are faces of the one true god. So those Hindus will say that Krishna, Vishnu, etc. are all emanations of the one true god. Futher, Hindus have a system that is open to worship of gods that are new to them. So if those Egyptians who were not originally Horus-worshipers felt the same way as Hindus on belief in multiple gods, they would not have a problem accepting a claim that the pharaoh was Horus reborn - for them it would be just one more title or aspect of the pharaoh.

What Custance fails to recognise here is that Genesis in the Torah was written by Jews and its target audience would have been Jews so the writing would have been framed within the context of Jewish culture. It's certainly not reliable evidence that the Egyptians worshipped One God. It's only reliable evidence that those writing the Torah were only capable of perceiving the divine as the One.

Sorry if my quoting was not clear - Custance only wrote about the argument that there was originally one god that multipled into several (I didn't quote him on this) and made the argument that local cities originally could be monotheistic, each thinking that their own city's god (eg. Amun in Thebes) was the one true god.
The part about Genesis was my own observation.

It's not evidence directly provided by the Egyptians. However the Jews in 1500-1000 I think might have been the Egyptians' vassals. King Hezekiah was found with an ankh at his burial site by archeologists. The Old Testament was written contemporaneously with their neighbors, the Egyptian empires, and the mentions of pharaoh talking about God sympathetically span from Genesis into the story of Pharaoh the Lame in the 7th c. B.C., over hundreds of years. That is, it shows not only that the Torah writers saw the divine as the One, but that those Old Testament writers and their audiences believed that those pharaohs had a concept of a one ultimate God.

 

[1137]

They were very clearly dualistic and polytheistic.

 

[GoodbyeDave]

Firstly, we have to think what we mean by monotheist. If monotheism is believing that only one being is properly called a god, then it is confined to Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, and (stretching it a bit) Christianity. If monotheism is believing in a creator, then it includes Hinduism and the indigenous religions of Africa. Classing Hinduism and Islam together doesn't seem very useful! The Yoruba believe in a creator, but they also worship multiple gods. Disbelief in a creator is actually rather unusual: modern (but not ancient) Chinese religion, Shinto, early (but not later) Hellenism, ancient Eastern (but not Western) Semites, etc.

Secondly, we have to consider where the Egyptian stood. It's important not to rely on early authors, like Budge, for a start: obviously we have learned moreover the last century! It's also important to read the scholars directly, and not to rely on potted versions given by Wikipedia. For example, the Egyptologist Erik Hornung never said that the Egyptians were monotheists: I know, because I own his book! He is the most prominent opponent of the idea that the Egyptian were polytheists. It's equally important not to use the Bible as a source: they story of Moses in Egypt is myth, not history.

Egyptian texts do often just refer to "god" but so do even the earliest Greek writers. This can mean "the god in question" or "any god". One also has to be careful of translation. Classical Egyptian had no articles: like Russian, there is no distinction between "the god" or "a god". Thus "I have not cursed God" could equally be translated "I have not cursed a god".

Akhenaten's cult was a very personal thing: the speed with which it was abandoned after his death is proof of that. It was emphasised by early Egyptologists like Budge because they were Christians and wanted to put Egypt in what they considered a good light.

 

[Rakovsky]

David,

Thank you for the discussion on the interesting topic.

Firstly, we have to think what we mean by monotheist. If monotheism is believing that only one being is properly called a god, then it is confined to Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, and (stretching it a bit) Christianity.

Things are not really so clear with Judaism and Christianity as they might appear as far as never calling multiple real beings "gods". The name Elohim (God) actually means "gods" and Genesis 6:4 talks about the "sons of God" taking women as mates. And then in Jeremiah there is the prophecy that God will make the Israelites "gods".

And further, we have to ask what is the real difference between the angels (even in Islam) and "spirits" like Wisdom/Sofia and "gods"? Angels seem to much more automatically obey God and have much less independence than gods in other religions.
But in ancient Chinese religion the altar was divided in three layers like a cake - the top layer was for the Supreme God, Shang Di, and the "spirits" got the lower layers of the cake.

If monotheism is believing in a creator, then it includes Hinduism and the indigenous religions of Africa. Classing Hinduism and Islam together doesn't seem very useful!

I know what you mean. I understand that Islam emphasizes God's oneness or homogenity much more than Hinduism or Christianity. And so different classifications can be made.

But on the other hand that doesn't mean that they can't share any classifications together at all or that no shared classification is useful.
Here is an example: One major school in Hinduism, Advaita, teaches something resembling pantheism, which Islam rejects. I read an Islamic essay against this.
But another major school in Hinduism, the Dvaita, teaches that God is distinct from the creation, and this Islam would agree with.

To say something more about Hinduism, there is the issue of Monism. That is, the belief that the "gods" are in fact emanations or faces of only one true god. And in this belief we can see the same basic character of Islam's monotheism, the belief in one true god.

Wikipedia explains:

Vedas

According to Sehgal, "the Vedas and the Upanishads preach and propagate neither pantheism nor polytheism but monotheism and monism".[52] There are many Gods, but they represent different aspects of the same Reality.[53] Monism and monotheism are found intertwined. In many passages ultimate Reality is represented as immanent, while in other passages ultimate Reality is represented as transcendent.[54] Monism sees Brahma as the ultimate Reality, while monotheism represents the personal form Brahman.[54][need quotation to verify]

Jeaneane D. Fowler too discerns a "metaphysical monotheism"[55] in the Vedas. The Vedas contain sparse monism. The Nasadiya Sukta of the Rigveda speaks of the One being-non-being that 'breathed without breath'. The manifest cosmos cannot be equated with it, "for "That" is a limitless, indescribable, absolute principle that can exist independently of it - otherwise it cannot be the Source of it."[56] It is the closest the Vedas come to monism,[56] but Fowler argues that this cannot be called a "superpersonal monism",[56] nor "the quintessence of monistic thought",[56] because it is "more expressive of a panentheistic, totally transcendent entity that can become manifest by its own power. It exists in itself, unmanifest, but with the potential for all manifestations of the cosmos".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monism#Hinduism

C.S. Lewis gave a similar quote about how he thinks Hindus have a concept of the ultimate God.

 

[Rakovsky]

David,

The Yoruba believe in a creator, but they also worship multiple gods.

Kofi Johnson, Ph. D. of Fayetteville State University and Raphael Tunde Oyinade, Ph. D. of Claflin University explain how Yoruba religion is monotheistic because the supreme God is placed in a separate, higher category, analogous to a chief. Other supernatural beings are like his ministers, which the scholars find similar to the concept of God and supernatural beings in Judaism:

Monotheism in Traditional Yoruba Religion
... the paper will critique the views of some scholars, followed by descriptions of the attributes of the Supreme Being concluding with a discussion of Olodumare as monotheistic God comparable to the Judeo-Christian concept of God.
...
Both scholars emphasized that the “African concept of God rightly fits the model of Judeo-Christian monotheism" (Ibid.). Bolaji Idowu in Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief presents evidence that the concept of the Supreme Being is a Monotheistic principle of the Yoruba religion. According to Idowu, Yoruba religion is a "diffused monotheism" in that the many Yoruba divinities are "no more than conceptualizations of attributes of Olodumare" the Yoruba Supreme God (qtd. in Ray). As Ray points out in African Religions: Symbol, Ritual and Community ", Idowu based his interpretation on the fact that Yoruba religion conceives Olodumare as the ruler (Oba) and the lesser gods can be thought of as his ministers, analogous to the political hierarchy of the tradition in which the Yoruba king rules through subordinates of his ministers (see Awolalu, p. 17-18; Ray 2000, p. 26). Another different perspective that supports Idowu’s observations is offered by Philip John Niemark’s work: The Way of Orisha which regards Olodumare as a supreme God of the Yoruba religion which means that the Yoruba God is monotheistic. He perceives many orisha or deities as "energy" forces or intermediaries to Olodumare, who deal with human beings in their everyday affairs or frustrates the fulfillment of destinies on earth (See Neimark, p.14 and Ray. p. 26). In order to put the argument of whether the God of Yoruba is monotheistic to rest, Ray writes:

• 
  
• Like a Yoruba ruler, or oba, Olodumare reigns supreme in the distant sky and rules the world through his intermediaries, the orisha The sky dwelling Olodumare is transcendent, all knowing, and all-powerful. Unlike the orisha, he has no temples or priests, and no sacrifices or offerings made to him because his will cannot be influenced or changed. Yet Olodumare may be invoked by anyone, anywhere, at any time and let him know their needs (Ibid. p. 10).

Opoku (1978) supports Ray’s position that it is erroneous to describe the Yoruba religion as polytheism. According to Opoku,

• 
  
• . . . ‘polytheism’ is grossly inadequate as a description of African traditional religion, for a religion cannot be said to be polytheistic merely because there exist many divinities in that religion. The key question with regard to polytheism remains the relationship between the gods in the pantheon, and here, the religious beliefs of the Egyptians, Babylonians and Greeks, which are examples of classical polytheism, can throw considerable light on our understanding of the term. In classical polytheism, the gods in the pantheon were all independent of one another. One of the gods might be regarded as the chief, but he was never regarded as the creator of the other gods.

In African traditional religion, however, the picture is quite different. God, or the Supreme Being, is outside the pantheon of gods. He is the eternal Creator of all the other gods, and of men and the universe. This makes Him absolutely unique, and He is differentiated from the other gods in having a special name. This name is always in the singular, and it is not a generic name, like Obosom (Akan) or Orisha (Yoruba). All the other divinities have a generic name in addition to their specific names. This is the Africans’ way of showing the uniqueness of God (p. 5).

http://organizations.uncfsu.edu/ncrsa/journal/v03/johnsonoyinade_yoruba.htm

Iawani, a Yoruba practitioner, argues against using Christian and Muslim standards to judge Yoruba religion as non-monotheistic. He writes:

Ifa - The Yoruba Monotheism

...
Christians and Muslims want to force us to look at our culture from their perspective, so they say our Orisas, Eeguns and etc are gods because we bow down and worship them, offering sacrifice, but what then is Olodumare who is never offered sacrifice despite being the owner of the Ashe or the creative force being used by all? Whose name ends all prayers? We must not allow people who are challenged with getting their acts together, who fight and kill themselves distort our reality. There is only one God, not several, in the Yoruba culture, and that God is gentleman God, not a jealous God, which makes the spiritual practice monotheistic, it does not mean polytheism is wrong either, but the Yoruba culture is monotheistic in the strictest sense of it. Olodumare, the Olu of Ogotun reigns in his realm at the headship of 400 irunmales, totalling 401 irunmales. Olodumare is the owner of all Ashe. Most West African cultures are similarly modelled.

The Yoruba invoke, manipulate, worship and try to influence all the deities including orisas and Eeguns for either good or evil using the Ashe of Olodumare. Infact, the normal condition was that deities would outnumber humans in any Yoruba city as all sorts of personal, family, lineage, national deities are proliferated by people but no one attempts to influence Olodumare.

An Ifa priest prays to Olodumare for clarity before making a divination with the understanding that Olodumare supports truth and honesty. Also, Olodumare wants everybody to be a diviner, at least to a reasonable extent. If you are not a diviner, you are like an internet modem without an internet subscription. The highest calling is to be a knowledgeable diviner with a vast knowledge of Ifa, with the assurrance that nothing is impossible for Olodumare. Ifa can solve any problem a human being may encounter. A group of Babalawos or Ifa diviners who are equivalents of Professors can come together to create a charm to do anything the mind can conceive, to solve any problem then package it to prescribe and sell to people to solve those problems. They will not call it miracle, to them it is the condensation of the power of Olodumare by the Awo through imule or covenant. In the modern world, there should be millions of Babalawos working together to solve various problems, sharing knowledge and etc. This is what Christianity and Islam are trying to stop from becoming a reality with their strange monotheism.

The Yoruba monotheism in short is an ancient form of monotheism that encourages deifying everything without exception and without restrictions. It encourages everybody to become diviners. What is a miracle to Muslims and Christians, the Awos achieve by harnessing the power of Olodumare.

http://www.nairaland.com/2823616/ifa-yoruba-monotheism

Disbelief in a creator is actually rather unusual: modern (but not ancient) Chinese religion, Shinto, early (but not later) Hellenism,

I suppose we might consider whether proto-Indo European mythology had the idea of a God Creator, because that is what early Greek mythology came out of. And in proto-Indo-European mythology, we do find the idea of Dyeus Pater, who became in Latin Jupiter, a reference to a "Deity Father", that is a Father-God. This in turn contains an idea of a creating god, a fatherly one.

ML West writes in Indo-European Poetry and Myth:

A more basic Indo-European verb for divine creation is dheh, which means to set in place, lay down, or establish. In early Greek it appears as tifimi, for example in Hes. Op. 173d 'and Zeus created another race of men'.... 'Zeus made three seasons'. In Alcman's idiosyncratic cosmogony Theis, those name can be analysed as dheh- with an agent suffix but who is otherwise a sea nymph, appears to have played a demiurgic role, as if a female counter-part of Dhatr.

The idea of a created world is untypical of early greek thinking. Hesiod and other theogonists spoke rather of the world coming into being through a series of births of cosmic deities.

• First Chaos was born geneto and then broad breasted Earth.... From chaos Erebos and dark Night were born, and from Night in turn Aither and Day were born, whom she bore in union of love with Erebos. (Hes. Th. 116-25)

Plato wrote in the 5th century BC about a creator, but this is the Classical, rather than Archaic period.

it is in the cosmology of the Timaeus that Plato carries out the project of showing the explanatory and causal power of the Good. .... For the semi-mythical figure of the creator god or Demiurge plays an essential role in this teleological scheme.

SOURCE: Early Greek Philosophy edited by Joe McCoy

 

[1137]

Sorry for the short reply. First I recommend this, as I can't match the detail here: http://www.religiousforums.com/threads/the-mysteries-of-horus-and-set-parts-i-iv.188913/


Since the dawn of history Egyptian thought shows dualistic/polar thinking, as made clear in both their use of counterparts, opposites, composite deities, etc. The whole reason Atenism freaked everyone out is because it made no sense to believe in only one god. There was always a balancing of forces.

 

[Rakovsky]

David,

Egyptian texts do often just refer to "god" but so do even the earliest Greek writers.

I've heard a theory by some scholars that there is Greek literature that references various gods, but that at other times in the same work it will invoke "god" without referring to a specific deity, which the writer takes to refer to the ultimate God Himself.

This can mean "the god in question" or "any god". One also has to be careful of translation. Classical Egyptian had no articles: like Russian, there is no distinction between "the god" or "a god". Thus "I have not cursed God" could equally be translated "I have not cursed a god".

You are right, but sometimes the intent can be shown by context. For example, common phrases in Russian are "Glory to God"(Slava Bogu) or Spasibo, from the phrase "God Save You".

I think it's much easier to conceive of this as referring to an ultimate God. A person can talk about a kind of good luck they had and say "Glory to God" in Russian, and by not referencing any deity, it means glory to the God that controls the affairs of the cosmos, the ultimate God.

Likewise, we can look at the context to find something similar in ancient religions. When the Chinese used the word "Tien" and equated Tien with Shang Di, the Supreme God, then Tien does not mean just any God but the supreme one. Likewise when in Budge's passages there are repeated references to the/a god with no specific deity named except for the title "Nebertcher, (Lord of the Universe)", then one can think that praises to the unspecified "God" are also references to the ultimate supreme God.

Or take for example the verse "It is he who makes a man to arrive in Amentt (the Other World) [where] he is safe in the hand of God (Col. XXIV)."
Does this verse mean that a man in the afterlife is safe in the hand of just "any god"? There were multiple beings called "god" in hieroglyphics, and they were not all pleasant. But an ultimate, supreme God would be in control of the afterlife and would be clearly identified as able to guarantee safety.

Akhenaten's cult was a very personal thing: the speed with which it was abandoned after his death is proof of that. It was emphasised by early Egyptologists like Budge because they were Christians and wanted to put Egypt in what they considered a good light.

In ancient Chinese religion, the worship of Shang Di was also very personal between the emperor and the Supreme God. As I understand it, only the emperor sacrificed to Shang Di, and the emperor was considered a "son of heaven." But this did not mean that respect or recognition of Shang Di was limited to the emperor. Nonetheless, there is a similarity I see: In restricting worship of Shang Di to the emperor, I think that over time Shang Di became less personalized in the eyes of Chinese society over the centuries, until Tien began to be used much more in the sense of "heaven" than in the sense of the "god of heaven", even though its sign is written as a person. 天
Worship of Aten was not really successful in spreading itself in an entrenched way in Egyptian society.

Regarding the emphasis on Akhenaten, I can see that Budge would emphasize him because he was a monotheist. But Akhenaten receives much emphasis in Egyptology also because so much writing has been discovered about him and about his son Tutankhamen. I've read that Egyptology has a major emphasis on written understanding of Egypt in a way that, say, Peruvian and Incan archeology does not, due to the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Additionally the focus on Akhenaten as monotheistic is not limited to Budge as the non-Christian Sigmund Freud thought him important enough to propose that Moses had a major influence from him in formulating Israel's monotheism.

 

[1137]

Freud was interested in Akhenaten because he believed the destruction of his name showed that his children wanted to kill, remove, or overthrow their fathers. Freud kind of had an obsession with that sort of thing.

 

[Rakovsky]

Secondly, we have to consider where the Egyptian stood. It's important not to rely on early authors, like Budge, for a start: obviously we have learned moreover the last century! It's also important to read the scholars directly, and not to rely on potted versions given by Wikipedia. For example, the Egyptologist Erik Hornung never said that the Egyptians were monotheists: I know, because I own his book! He is the most prominent opponent of the idea that the Egyptian were polytheists. It's equally important not to use the Bible as a source: they story of Moses in Egypt is myth, not history.

David,
I don't agree with a perception that since Budge wrote 80 years ago he is not a serious authority on Egyptian religion. Egyptology does not have a consensus that he was wrong in his understanding that NTR when left unspecified could refer to an ultimate or supreme God, and he was working with primary texts. Trends in Egyptology can change in time, it's true, but the latest theories can have their own biases.

Some scholars used to think that the pyramids at Giza were grain silos. Then they began to consider them to be tombs for the pharaohs. Now Smithsonian Magazine is mentioning a new theory:

Applying his archaeological sleuthing to the surrounding two-square-mile Giza plateau with its pyramids, temples, quarries and thousands of tombs, Lehner helped confirm what others had speculated—that some parts of the Giza complex, the Sphinx included, make up a vast sacred machine designed to harness the power of the sun to sustain the earthly and divine order.
...
“The Egyptians didn’t write history,” says James Allen, an Egyptologist at Brown University, “so we have no solid evidence for what its builders thought the Sphinx was....Certainly something divine, presumably the image of a king, but beyond that is anyone’s guess.” Likewise, the statue’s symbolism is unclear, though inscriptions from the era refer to Ruti, a double lion god that sat at the entrance to the underworld and guarded the horizon where the sun rose and set.
...

Exactly what Khafre wanted the Sphinx to do for him or his kingdom is a matter of debate, but Lehner has theories about that, too, based partly on his work at the Sphinx Temple. Remnants of the temple walls are visible today in front of the Sphinx. They surround a courtyard enclosed by 24 pillars. The temple plan is laid out on an east-west axis, clearly marked by a pair of small niches or sanctuaries, each about the size of a closet. The Swiss archaeologist Herbert Ricke, who studied the temple in the late 1960s, concluded the axis symbolized the movements of the sun; an east-west line points to where the sun rises and sets twice a year at the equinoxes, halfway between midsummer and midwinter. Ricke further argued that each pillar represented an hour in the sun’s daily circuit.

Lehner spotted something perhaps even more remarkable. If you stand in the eastern niche during sunset at the March or September equinoxes, you see a dramatic astronomical event: the sun appears to sink into the shoulder of the Sphinx and, beyond that, into the south side of the Pyramid of Khafre on the horizon. “At the very same moment,” Lehner says, “the shadow of the Sphinx and the shadow of the pyramid, both symbols of the king, become merged silhouettes. The Sphinx itself, it seems, symbolized the pharaoh presenting offerings to the sun god in the court of the temple.” Hawass concurs, saying the Sphinx represents Khafre as Horus, the Egyptians’ revered royal falcon god, “who is giving offerings with his two paws to his father, Khufu, incarnated as the sun god, Ra, who rises and sets in that temple.”

Equally intriguing, Lehner discovered that when one stands near the Sphinx during the summer solstice, the sun appears to set midway between the silhouettes of the pyramids of Khafre and Khufu. The scene resembles the hieroglyph akhet, which can be translated as “horizon” but also symbolized the cycle of life and rebirth. “Even if coincidental, it is hard to imagine the Egyptians not seeing this ideogram,” Lehner wrote in the Archive of Oriental Research. “If somehow intentional, it ranks as an example of architectural illusionism on a grand, maybe the grandest, scale.”

If Lehner and Hawass are right, Khafre’s architects arranged for solar events to link the pyramid, Sphinx and temple. Collectively, Lehner describes the complex as a cosmic engine, intended to harness the power of the sun and other gods to resurrect the soul of the pharaoh. This transformation not only guaranteed eternal life for the dead ruler but also sustained the universal natural order, including the passing of the seasons, the annual flooding of the Nile and the daily lives of the people. In this sacred cycle of death and revival, the Sphinx may have stood for many things: as an image of Khafre the dead king, as the sun god incarnated in the living ruler and as guardian of the underworld and the Giza tombs.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/uncovering-secrets-of-the-sphinx-5053442/#q6KGzqBO6EqGvfZR.99

You are right, Hornung never said that at any stage of their history, Egyptians were monotheists and taught there was only one God existing contemporary to them. Rather, the review of his book interpreted him as teaching that according to Egyptian mythology, at one stage in the history of the gods there was only one uncreated God and that other gods appeared later.

Israel's story of Moses can be a myth and yet tell us worthwhile things about Israelite and Egyptian religion, because it was written at a time when Israel was a neighbor, if not vassal, of ancient Egypt. In the Torah, do the writers ever assert before Moses is introduced that God is one and there is no God besides Yahweh? It seems that rather the schema, Hear of Israel the Lord your God the Lord is One, is introduced with Moses' story. And Moses is a general in Egypt. It seems therefore that geographically the belief in one God alone comes to the Land of Canaan from Egypt.

Further, the story of Joseph, which mentions Pharaoh's recognition of God, may be a myth too, but it could be a myth based on reality considering the close contact between the Hyksos, Apiru (Hebrews), and Egypt. And King Josiah's defeat by Pharaoh the Lame, who in the Tanakh's story recognizes God, is a factual event.

To give an analogy, imagine that there is some question about the Soviet Union's economic ideology, such as the question of co-ops, that later historians will not be sure about. That is, imagine that they will debate whether the Soviets included co-ops (like cooperative farms) in their system or if all businesses were fully owned by the state (like state farms). However, we have writings from the Yugoslavs over the course of several decades that the Soviets had collective farms, and we know that the Yugoslavs emphasized co-ops. And we know also that the Yugoslavs either lived near or were close satellites of the Soviets. Their opinion on the question could have a bias, but they also knew what they were talking about and lived contemporaneously. This would be a trace that would point us in the direction of the Soviets really having this kind of enterprise.

Something analogous could be said about the value of Israelites' views of the Egyptians' ideas as well. They have a bias, but they also have direct insight on the question and repeated this idea when talking about multiple pharaohs.

 

[Rakovsky]

Sorry for the short reply. First I recommend this, as I can't match the detail here: http://www.religiousforums.com/threads/the-mysteries-of-horus-and-set-parts-i-iv.188913/


Since the dawn of history Egyptian thought shows dualistic/polar thinking, as made clear in both their use of counterparts, opposites, composite deities, etc. The whole reason Atenism freaked everyone out is because it made no sense to believe in only one god. There was always a balancing of forces.

Well in Judaism you can also see a balancing of forces, with the devil. But this does not mean that the Jews did not believe in an ultimate supreme God.
Likewise, we find numerous references in Egyptian literature according to scholars about Amun-Ra being the "only" God, almighty, the "highest" god, etc. If they had an idea of an opposing force (eg. Osiris), it did not negate this.

How else to understand Najovits' explanation in his book Egypt, Trunk of the Tree, vol. II:

The inventive Heliopolitan clergy... decreed that Osiris was the night sun of Re and the ba soul of Re, thu creating another double sun deity... yet in typical Egyptian fashion, Osiris fully existed but he was also an aspect of Re. Re, combined with other gods, was Chief God, the self-existent creator/sun/incarnated-in-the-Pharaoh god, ruler of the sky, the world, and the Duat Other Land underworld.

In the thread you pointed me to, you wrote something similar, except you found dualism (two ultimate gods) instead of monism/monotheism (one ultimate gods, with the two gods you described being manifestations of the one):

. As Neteru/Forms, all other Neteru should be understood as manifestations of the two. Anubis, for example, is a lesser manifestation of Set, which explains why Set is understood as his “father” and the two are sometimes used interchangeably in texts. It is also why Ra has the same head as Horus, for Solar religion is a worship of Order/Horus, which the Egyptian state publically promoted.

My best guess is that the ancient Egyptians had different opinions on these questions just like Hindus do, or just like people would in other modern non-Islamic, non-Christian societies and milieus.

 

[The Emperor of Mankind]

If monotheism is believing that only one being is properly called a god, then it is confined to Judaism, Islam, Sikhism

Isn't Sikhism pantheist?

 

[Rakovsky]

The book African Traditional Religion in Biblical Perspective quotes from the Book of the Dead to show that the Egyptians had monotheism, like in this quote: "God is One and only and none other existeth with Him - God is the One, the One who hath made all things. - God is a Spirit, a hidden Spirit, the spirit of spirits..."

 

[Rakovsky]

I found this passage to reflect monotheism:

Another hymn [to Amen] stated the idea that there was one ultimate being who could be seen as a combination of Amen, Re, and Ptah:

• "Past knowing His nature as Amen, the hidden, He is Re in His features, in body is Ptah....
  
• Since each move of His lips is most secret, gods carry out what He commands.
  
• God's Word, it can kill or perpetuate, life or death for all men unfolds by means of it,
  
• "And He opens His countenance as Re, Ptah, or Amen, a trinity of unchanging forms"

SOURCE: Religion By Kathryn Hinds