Egyptian Gods

The Egyptians' ideas of the origin and nature of the cosmos help us to understand the ultimate decline of their deities - for the inherent vulnerabil­ity of the gods is an integral part of Egyptian mythology and one which has important ramifica­tions for our understanding of the ancient religion. Perhaps as Egypt's gods were progressively anthro­pomorphized they increasingly took on the weaknesses and limitations of their human sub­jects. However, according to Egyptian theological speculation, the gods themselves could, and would, eventually die - though the evidence for this must be carefully assessed and understood in context.

Picture: Despite his divinity, the death of the god Osiris plays a central role in Egyptian mythology. He is mourned by his sister Nephthys and Isis as he lies on a funerary bier in this detail of a Roman Period gilt coffin. Graeco-Roman Period, c. 1st Century BC. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

A number of Egyptian texts show that although the Egyptian gods were not considered to be mortal in the usual sense, they could nevertheless die. This is clearly implied in the so-called 'Cannibal Hymn' of the Pyramid Texts, and is of great importance in development of even some of the greatest cults of Egyptian religion - particularly those of the nether-world god Osiris and the sun god Re. Although the Egyptian texts do not ever specifically say that Osiris died - almost certainly because such a statement would be believed to magically preserve the reality of the god's death - they, and later Classical commentators, do clearly show that Osiris was slain at the hands of his antagonist Seth, and was mummified and buried. The great sun god Re was thought to grow old each day and to 'die' each night (though for the same reason, specific mention of god's death is not found), and then to be born or resurrected each day at dawn. This concept is clearest in late evidence such as texts found in temples of Ptolemaic date, but it was doubtless an idea long speculated on by the Egyptians and is implicit in many of the representations and texts found in New Kingdom royal tombs. It is also found in several Egyptian myths which describe the sun god as immensely old and clearly decrepit. One spell from the Coffin Texts includes an overt threat that the sun god might die (CT VII 419), showing that the idea of his demise extends at least as far back as Middle Kingdom times.

Divine Demise
The principle of divine demise applies, in fact, to all Egyptian gods. Texts which date back to at least the New Kingdom tell of the god Thoth assigning fixed life spans to humans and gods alike, and Spell 154 of the Book of the Dead unequivocally states that death (literally "decay" and "disappearance") awaits "every god and every goddess". Thus, when the New Kingdom Hym to Amun preserved in "Papyrus Leiden" I 350 states that "his body is in the west", there can be no doubt that this common Egyptian metaphorical expression refers to the god's dead body. Scholars such as Francois Daumas and Ragnhild Finnestad have shown that there are clues in late Egyptian temples that the innermost areas were regarded as the tombs of the gods. There are also various concrete references to the "tombs" of certain gods with some sites - such as western Thebes - being venerated as such from New Kingdom times at least. But all this evidence must be viewed in its proper context, for death need not imply the cessation of existence. From the Egyptian perspective life emerged from death just as death surely followed life and there was no compelling reason to exempt the gods from this cycle. This idea was aided by the fact that the Egyptians distinguished two-views of eternity: eternal conti­nuity (djet) and eternal recurrence (neheh). This is clear in statements such as that found in the Coffin Texts, 'I am the one Atum created - I am bound for my place of eternal sameness - It is I who am Eternal Recurrence' (CT 15). The gods could thus die and still remain in the ongoing progression of time. As Erik Hornung has stressed, the mortality of Egyptian gods 'enables them to become young again and again, and to escape from the disintegra­tion that is the inevitable product of time'.

The end of time
Ultimately, a final end did await the gods. In Egypt­ian mythology it is clear that only the elements from which the primordial world had arisen would even­tually remain. This apocalyptic view of the end of the cosmos and of the gods themselves is elaborat­ed upon in an important section of the Coffin Texts in which the creator Atum states that eventually, after millions of years of differentiated creation, he and Osiris will return to 'one place', the undifferen­tiated condition prevailing before the creation of the world (CT VII 467-68). In the Book of the Dead this 'end of days' is even more clearly described in a famous dialogue between Atum and Osiris in which, when Osiris mourned the fact that he would eventually be isolated in eternal darkness, the god Atum comforted him by pointing out that only the two of them would survive when the world eventually reverted to the primeval ocean from which all else arose. Then, it is said, Atum and Osiris would take the form of serpents (symbolic of unformed chaos) and there would be neither gods nor men to perceive them (ED 175). Despite their seemingly endless cycles of birth, ageing, death and rebirth, the gods would finally perish in the death of the cosmos itself, and there would exist only the poten­tial for life and death within the waters of chaos.