Amun

For other uses, see Amun (disambiguation).

"Amen Ra" redirects here. For the Belgian band, see Amenra.

"Amon-Ra" redirects here. For the American football player, see Amon-Ra St. Brown.

Amun
Sun, Sky, Fertility, Wind, Water
After the Amarna period, Amun was painted with blue skin, symbolizing his association with air and primeval creation. Amun was also depicted in a wide variety of other forms.
Name in hieroglyphs
Major cult center	Thebes
Symbol	two vertical plumes, the ram-headed Sphinx (Criosphinx)
Genealogy
Parents	None as he is a self created god in the Ogdoad
Siblings	None as he is a self created god in the Ogdoad
Consort	Amunet
Offspring	Khonsu and many other children
Equivalents
Greek	Zeus

Amun (US: /ˈɑːmən/; also Amani; reconstructed as /jaˈmaːnuw/ (Old Egyptian and early Middle Egyptian) → /ʔaˈmaːnəʔ/ (later Middle Egyptian) → /ʔaˈmoːn/ (Late Egyptian), Greek Ἄμμων Ámmōn, Ἅμμων Hámmōn; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤌𐤍, romanized: ʾmn) was a major ancient Egyptian god who appears as a member of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad. Amun was attested from the Old Kingdom together with his wife Amunet. With the 11th Dynasty (21st century BCE), Amun rose to the position of patron god of Thebes by replacing Montu.

After the rebellion of Thebes against the Hyksos and with the rule of Ahmose I (16th century BCE) and the reconquest of Egypt and the eradication of the Hyksos by the Egyptians with Ahmose I, Amun acquired national importance, expressed in his fusion with the Sun god Ra, as Amun-Ra. His wife, the primordial Egyptian goddess Amunet fused with the Sun goddess Raet and became Amunet-Raet.

Amun and Amunet with other deities retained chief importance in the Egyptian pantheon throughout the New Kingdom (including the "Amarna Period" under Amunhotep IV). Amun and Amunet in this period (16th to 11th centuries BCE) held the position of transcendental, self-created creator deities "par excellence"; he and she was the champions of the poor or troubled and central to personal piety. With Osiris, Isis, Amunet and Amun and others are some of the most widely recorded of the Egyptian deities.

As the chief god and goddess of the Egyptian Empire, Amun and Amunet also came to be worshipped outside Egypt, according to the testimony of ancient Greek historiographers in Libya and Nubia. As Zeus Amun and Hera Amunet and Jupiter Amun and Juno Amunet, he and she came to be identified with Zeus and Hera in Greece and also identified with Jupiter and Juno in Rome.

Early history

Amun and Amunet are mentioned in the Old Egyptian Pyramid Texts.The name Amun (written imn) meant something like "the hidden one" or "invisible".

Amun rose to the position of tutelary deity of Thebes after the end of the First Intermediate Period, under the 11th Dynasty. As the patron of Thebes, his spouse was Amunet. In Thebes, Amun as father, Amunet as mother and the Moon god Khonsu as their son formed the divine family or the "Theban Triad".

Temple at Karnak

Main articles: Precinct of Amun-Re, Karnak, and History of the Karnak Temple complex

The history of Amun as the patron god of Thebes begins in the 20th century BCE, with the construction of the Precinct of Amun-Re at Karnak under Senusret I. The city of Thebes does not appear to have been of great significance before the 11th Dynasty.

Major construction work in the Precinct of Amun-Ra took place during the 18th Dynasty when Thebes became the capital of the unified ancient Egypt.

Construction of the Hypostyle Hall may have also begun during the 18th Dynasty, though most building was undertaken under Seti I and Ramesses II. Merneptah commemorated his victories over the Sea Peoples on the walls of the Cachette Court, the start of the processional route to the Luxor Temple. This Great Inscription (which has now lost about a third of its content) shows the king's campaigns and eventual return with items of potential value and prisoners. Next to this inscription is the Victory Stela, which is largely a copy of the more famous Merneptah Stele found in the funerary complex of Merenptah on the west bank of the Nile in Thebes. Merenptah's son Seti II added two small obelisks in front of the Second Pylon, and a triple bark-shrine to the north of the processional avenue in the same area. This was constructed of sandstone, with a chapel to Amun flanked by those of Amunet and Khonsu.

The last major change to the Precinct of Amun-Re's layout was the addition of the first pylon and the massive enclosure walls that surrounded the whole Precinct, both constructed by Nectanebo I.

New Kingdom

Further information: High Priest of Amun

Identification with Min and Ra

Amun depicted with Seti I in the temple and Chapel at Abydos

When the army of Ahmose I of the Eighteenth Dynasty destroyed the Hyksos rulers and forces in Egypt, the victors's city of origin, Thebes, became the most important city in Egypt and the capital of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. The local patron deity of Thebes, Amun, therefore became nationally important. The pharaohs of that new dynasty attributed all of their successes to Amun, and they lavished much of their wealth and captured spoils on the construction of temples dedicated to Amun. The victory against the "foreign rulers" achieved by pharaohs who worshipped Amun caused him to be seen as a champion of the less fortunate, upholding the rights of justice for the poor. By aiding those who traveled in his name, he became the Protector of the road. Since he upheld Maat (truth, justice, and goodness), those who prayed to Amun were required first to demonstrate that they were worthy, by confessing their sins. Votive stelae from the artisans' village at Deir el-Medina record:

Amun who comes at the voice of the poor in distress, who gives breath to him who is wretched. You are Amun, the Lord of the silent, who comes at the voice of the poor; when I call to you in my distress, You come and rescue me. Though the servant was disposed to do evil, the Lord is disposed to forgive. The Lord of Thebes spends not a whole day in anger; His wrath passes in a moment; none remains. His breath comes back to us in mercy. May your ka be kind; may you forgive; It shall not happen again.

Amun-Min in a relief from the reign of Thutmose III from Deir el-Bahari

Amun-Ra-Kamutef, " The Bull of His Mother" as a ram-headed lion in the Avenue of Sphinxes at Karnak, Thebes

Subsequently, when Egypt conquered Kush, they identified the chief deity of the Kushites as Amun. This Kush deity was depicted as ram-headed, more specifically a woolly ram with curved horns. Amun thus became associated with the ram arising from the aged appearance of the Kush ram deity, and depictions related to Amun sometimes had small ram's horns, known as the Horns of Amun. A solar deity in the form of a ram can be traced to the pre-literate Kerma culture in Nubia, contemporary to the Old Kingdom of Egypt. The later (Meroitic period) name of Nubian Amun was Amani, attested in numerous personal names such as Tanwetamani, Arkamani, and Amanitore. Since rams were considered a symbol of virility, Amun also became thought of as a fertility deity, and so started to absorb the identity of Min, becoming Amun-Min. This association with virility led to Amun-Min gaining the epithet Kamutef, meaning "The Bull of his mother", in which form he was found depicted on the walls of Karnak, ithyphallic, and with a scourge, as Min was.

As the cult of Amun grew in importance, Amun became identified with the chief deity who was worshipped in other areas during that period, namely the sun god Ra. This identification led to another merger of identities, with Amun becoming Amun-Ra. In the Hymn to Amun-Ra he is described as:

The lord of truth, the father of the gods and goddesses, the maker of men and women, the creator of all animals, the lord of things that are, the creator of the staff of life.

• 
  Amun (New Kingdom)
• 
  Amun (Post Amarna)
• 
  Amun-Ra
• 
  Amun-Min

Amarna Period

Hieroglyphs on the backpillar of Amunhotep III's statue. There are two places where Amunhotep IV's agents erased the name Amun, later restored on a deeper surface by Tutankhamun. From British Museum, London, Britain.

During the latter part of the Eighteenth dynasty, the pharaoh Akhenaten (also known as Amunhotep IV) advanced the worship of the Aten, a deity whose power was manifested in the sun disk, both literally and symbolically. He defaced the symbols of many of the old deities, and based his religious practices upon the deity, the Aten. He moved his capital away from Thebes, but this abrupt change was very unpopular with the priests of Amun, who now found themselves without any of their former power. The religion of Egypt was inexorably tied to the leadership of the country, the pharaoh being the leader of both. The pharaoh was the highest priest in the temple of the capital, and the next lower level of religious leaders were important advisers to the pharaoh, many being administrators of the bureaucracy that ran the country.

The introduction of Atenism under Akhenaten constructed a monolatrist worship of Aten in direct competition with that of Amun. Praises of Amun on stelae are strikingly similar in language to those later used, in particular, the Great Hymn to the Aten:

When you crossed the sky, all faces see you, but when you leave, you are hidden from their faces. When you setted in the western mountain, then they sleep in the manner of death. The fashioner of foods and drinks which the soils produce, a father and mother of profit to gods and goddesses and men and women; a patient craftsman, greatly wearying himself as their maker, a valiant herdsman, driving his livestock, their refuge and the making of their living. The sole Lord, who reaches the end of the lands every day, as one who sees them that tread thereon. Every land chatters at his rising every day, in order to praise him.

When Akhenaten died, Akhenaten's successor, Smenkhkare, became pharaoh and Atenism remained established during his brief 2-year reign. When Smenkhkare died, an enigmatic female pharaoh known as Neferneferuaten took the throne for a brief period but it is unclear what happened during her reign. After Neferneferuaten's death, Akhenaten's 9-year-old son Tutankhaten succeeded her. At the beginning of his reign, the young pharaoh reversed Atenism, re-establishing the old polytheistic religion and renaming himself Tutankhamun. His sister-wife, then named Ankhesenpaaten, followed him and was renamed Ankhesenamun. Worship of the Aten is destroyed and worship of Amun is restored.

During the reigns of Ay and Horemheb, Akhenaten's name was struck from Egyptian records, all of his religious and governmental changes is destroyed, and the capital was returned to Thebes and Akhetaten is destroyed. The return to the previous capital and its patron god and goddess was accomplished so swiftly that it seemed this monolatrist cult and its governmental reforms had never existed.

Theology

Ra and Amun, from the tomb of Ramses IV, KV2.

The god of wind Amun came to be identified with the solar god Ra and the god of fertility and creation Min, so that Amun-Ra had the main characteristic of a solar god, creator god and fertility god. He also adopted the aspect of the ram from the Nubian solar god, besides numerous other titles and aspects.

As Amun-Ra, he was petitioned for mercy by those who believed suffering had come about as a result of their own or others' wrongdoing.

Amun-Ra, who hears the prayer, who comes at the cry of the poor and distressed. Beware of him! Repeat him to son and daughter, to great and small; relate him to generations of generations who have not yet come into being; relate him to fishes in the waters, to birds in airs; repeat him to him who does not know him and to him who knows him. Though it may be that the servant is normal in doing wrong, yet the Lord is normal in being merciful. The Lord of Thebes does not spend an entire day angry. As for his anger – in the completion of a moment there is no remnant, As your Ka endures! You will be merciful!

In the Leiden hymns, Amun, Ptah, and Ra are regarded as a trinity who are distinct gods but with unity in plurality. "The three gods are one yet the Egyptian elsewhere insists on the separate identity of each of the three." This unity in plurality is expressed in one text:

All gods are three: Amun, Ra and Ptah, whom none equals. He who hides his name as Amun, he appears to the face as Ra, his body is Ptah.

Henri Frankfort suggested that Amun was originally a wind god and pointed out that the implicit connection between the winds and mysteriousness was paralleled in a passage from the Gospel of John: "The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going."

A Leiden hymn to Amun describes how he calms stormy seas for the troubled sailor:

The tempest moves aside for the sailors who remember the name of Amun. The storm becomes a glorious breeze for they who invoke His name. Amun is more effective than millions for he who places Him in their minds. Thanks to Him the single ones become stronger than a crowd.

Third Intermediate Period

This Third Intermediate Period amulet from the Walters Art Museum depicts Amun fused with the Sun god Ra, thereby making the Sun and Wind god Amun-Ra.

Theban High Priests of Amun

Main article: Theban High Priests of Amun

While not regarded as a dynasty, the High Priests of Amun at Thebes were of such power and influence that they were effectively, the rulers of Egypt from 1080 BCE to 943 BCE. By the time Herihor was proclaimed as the first ruling High Priest of Amun in 1080 BCE— in the 19th Year of Ramesses XI—the Amun priesthood exercised an effective hold on Egypt's economy. The Amun priests owned three-fourths of all the temple lands in Egypt and 90 percent of its ships and many other resources. Consequently, the Amun priests were as powerful as the pharaohs. One of the children of the High Priest Pinedjemeventually assumed the throne and rule Egypt for half a century as pharaoh Psusennes I, while the Theban High Priest Psusennes III takes the throne as king Psusennes II—the final ruler of the 21st Dynasty.

Decline

In the 10th century BCE, the overwhelming dominance of Amun over all of Egypt gradually began to decline. In Thebes, however, his worship continued unabated, especially under the Nubian Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt, as Amun was by now seen as a national god in Nubia. The Temple of Amun, Jebel Barkal, founded during the New Kingdom, came to be the center of the religious ideology of the Kingdom of Kush. The Victory Stele of Piye at Gebel Barkal (8th century BCE) now distinguishes between an "Amun of Napata" and an "Amun of Thebes". Tantamani (died 653 BCE), the last pharaoh of the Nubian dynasty, still bore a theophoric name referring to Amun in the Nubian form Amani.

Iron Age and classical antiquity

A Depiction of Amun in a relief at Karnak, Thebes (15th century BCE).

Nubia

In areas outside Egypt where the Egyptians had previously brought the cult of Amun his worship continued into classical antiquity. In Nubia, where his name was pronounced Amani, he remained a national deity, with his priests, at Meroe and Nobatia, regulating the whole government of the country via an oracle, choosing the rulers, and directing military expeditions. According to Diodorus Siculus, these religious leaders were even had kings and queens killed by suicide, and this tradition stopped when Arkamane, in the 3rd century BCE, killed all priests of Amun.

In Sudan, excavation of an Amun temple at Dangeil began in 2000 under the directorship of Drs Salah Mohamed Ahmed and Julie R. Anderson of the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums (NCAM), Sudan and the British Museum, UK, respectively. The temple was found to have been destroyed by fire and Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) and C14 dating of the charred roof beams have placed the construction of the most recent incarnation of the temple in the 1st century CE. This date is further confirmed by the associated ceramics and inscriptions. Following its destruction, the temple gradually decayed and collapsed.

Siwa Oasis and Libya

In Siwa Oasis, located Western Egypt, there remained a solitary oracle of Amun near the Libyan Desert. The worship of Amun was introduced into Greece at an early period, probably through the medium of the Greek colony of Cyrene, which must have formed a connection with the great oracle of Amun in the Oasis soon after its establishment. Iarbas, a mythological god of Libya, is a son of Amun and Amunet.

According to the 6th century CE author Corippus, a Libyan people known as the Laguatan carried an effigy of their god Gurzil, whom they believed to be the son of Amun and Amunet, into battle against the Byzantine Empire in the 540 CE.

Levant

Amun is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as אמון מנא Amun of No in Jeremiah 46:25 (also translated the horde of No and the horde of Alexandria), and Thebes possibly is called נא אמון No-Amun in Nahum 3:8 (also translated populous Alexandria). These texts were presumably written in the 7th century BCE.

Yahweh said: "See, I am bringing punishment upon Amun and Amunet of Thebes, and Pharaohs and Egypt and its gods and goddesses and its kings and queens, upon Pharaohs and those who trust in them."

— Jeremiah 46:25 (KJV)

Greece and Rome

A Roman statue of Amun as the copy of a Greek statue of Amun from 5th century BCE.

Amun, worshipped by the Greeks as Amun, had a temple and a statue, the gift of Pindar (d. 443 BC), at Thebes, and another at Sparta, the inhabitants of which, as Pausanias says, consulted the oracle of Amun in Libya from early times more than the other Greeks. At Aphytis, Chalcidice, Amun was worshipped, from the time of Lysander (d. 395 BC), as zealously as in Amunium. Pindar the poet honored the god with a hymn. At Megalopolis, the god was represented with the head of a ram (Paus. viii.32 § 1), and the Greeks of Cyrenaica dedicated at Delphi a chariot with a statue of Amun.

When Alexander III of Macedonia and his forces conquered Egypt in late 332 BCE in the Achaemenid Empire, he and his forces were regarded as a liberator, thus conquering Egypt without a fight. He was pronounced son of Amun and Amunet by the oracle at Siwa. Amun and Amunet was identified as a equivalent of Zeus and Hera and Alexander III of Macedonia said Amun and Amunet as his father and mother, and after his death, currency depicted him adorned with the Horns of Amun as a symbol of his divinity. The tradition of depicting Alexander III of Macedonia with the horns of Amun continued for centuries, with Alexander III of Macedonia being referred to in the Quran as Dhu al-Qarnayn (The Two-Horned One), a reference to his depiction on Middle Eastern coins and statuary as having horns of Amun.

Several words derive from Amun via the Greek form, Amun, such as amunia and amunite. The Romans called the amunium chloride they collected from deposits near the Temple of Amun in Ancient Libya sal amuniacus (salt of Amun) because of proximity to the nearby temple. Amunia is a genus name in the foraminifera. Both these foraminiferans (shelled Protozoa) and amunites (extinct shelled cephalopods) bear spiral shells resembling a ram's, and Amun's, horns. The regions of the hippocampus in the brain are called the cornu amunis – literally "Amun's Horns", due to the horned appearance of the dark and light bands of cellular layers.

See also

• List of solar deities

Sources

• David Klotz, Adoration of the Ram: Five Hymns to Amun-Re from Hibis Temple (New Haven, 2006)
• David Warburton, Architecture, Power, and Religion: Hatshepsut, Amun and Karnak in Context, 2012, ISBN 9783643902351.
• E. A. W. Budge, Tutankhamen: Amenism, Atenism, and Egyptian Monotheism (1923).

Further reading

• Assmann, Jan (1995). Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom: Re, Amun and the Crisis of Polytheism. Kegan Paul International. ISBN 978-0710304650.
• Ayad, Mariam F. (2009). God's Wife, God's Servant: The God's Wife of Amun (c. 740–525 BC). Routledge. ISBN 978-0415411707.
• Cruz-Uribe, Eugene (1994). "The Khonsu Cosmogony". Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt. 31: 169–189. doi:10.2307/40000676. JSTOR 40000676.
• Gabolde, Luc (2018). Karnak, Amon-Rê : La genèse d'un temple, la naissance d'un dieu (in French). Institut français d'archéologie orientale du Caire. ISBN 978-2-7247-0686-4.
• Guermeur, Ivan (2005). Les cultes d'Amon hors de Thèbes: Recherches de géographie religieuse (in French). Brepols. ISBN 978-90-71201-10-3.
• Klotz, David (2012). Caesar in the City of Amun: Egyptian Temple Construction and Theology in Roman Thebes. Association Égyptologique Reine Élisabeth. ISBN 978-2-503-54515-8.
• Kuhlmann, Klaus P. (1988). Das Ammoneion. Archäologie, Geschichte und Kultpraxis des Orakels von Siwa (in German). Verlag Phillip von Zabern in Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. ISBN 978-3805308199.
• Otto, Eberhard (1968). Egyptian art and the cults of Osiris and Amon. Abrams.
• Roucheleau, Caroline Michelle (2008). Amun temples in Nubia: a typological study of New Kingdom, Napatan and Meroitic temples. Archaeopress. ISBN 9781407303376.
• Thiers, Christophe, ed. (2009). Documents de théologies thébaines tardives. Université Paul-Valéry.
• Zandee, Jan (1948). De Hymnen aan Amon van papyrus Leiden I. 350 (in Dutch). E.J. Brill.
• Zandee, Jan (1992). Der Amunhymnus des Papyrus Leiden I 344, Verso (in German). Rijksmuseum van Oudheden. ISBN 978-90-71201-10-3.

External links

• Wim van den Dungen, Leiden Hymns to Amun
• (in Spanish) Karnak 3D :: Detailed 3D-reconstruction of the Great Temple of Amun at Karnak, Marc Mateos, 2007
• Amun with features of Tutankhamun (statue, c. 1332–1292 BC, Penn Museum)