The genesis of the Egyptian gods goes far back into prehistoric times. These earliest beginnings occurred long before Egypt’s existence as a nation state and the invention of writing, so we are forced to work with only non-written evidence, often from relatively uncertain contexts and settings. Although scholars of anthropology, prehistory and religion have struggled to analyze this formative stage in Egyptian religion, the available evidence remains difficult to interpret and is subject to differing opinions. Nevertheless, it would seem to suggest the presence of the concept of the sacred in the existence of apparent cult objects, in human and animal burials, and in areas where formal rituals appear to have been enacted. Whether such artifacts and sites actually reflect belief in a divine being or beings is unknown but, as various scholars have stressed, the care with which the dead were buried in the prehistoric period, and the afterlife belief implied by that care, certainly suggests that the necessary intellectual sophistication was present for such belief.
(Ixft) The ‘Great White’, an early baboon god from the Late Predynastic Period, c 3000 BC. Egyptian Museum, Berlin.
(Above right) The River Nik made the unification of Egypt possibk at an early date and spread the knowkdge and veneration of local deities over much greater areas. Western Thebes viewed from Luxor.
(Opposite) The cekbrated Narmer Paktte, obverse (right) and reverse (far right), shows that numerous zoomorphic deities and their symbols existed by the end of the Predynastic Period. The paktte also shows the formal carrying of divine standards in the upper register of the obverse. From Hierakonpolis, c. 3000 BC. Egyptian Museum, Cairo.
World History
