The Search for God in Ancient Egypt

Assmann's wonderfully easy, careful writing reveals all the features of Egyptian religion a way no other book achieves. He explores religion in two terms: 'divine presence.' These terms meaning sacred (transcendent), and mundane (immanent) realms. The distinction extends Durkheim's distinction of sacred and profane, because divinity was present in the world for the Egyptians. 'Divine presence' for the Egyptians meant realizing plenty (ma'at) over against lack (isfet) both in the divine order by pacifying the gods and in the mundane order by instituting ethical conduct. He studies the 'narrow view' of religion: pacifying the gods. He leaves the wide view - ethical conduct - aside a task of sociology. To arrive at the Egyptian 'narrow view,' Assmann distinguishes 'implicit theology' from 'explicit theology.' Implicit theology is his theory of how the Egyptians thought that he drives from interpreting texts. Explicit theology means whatever theory the Egyptian natives may have had, but the Egyptians 'never referred to [explicit theology] in practice.' His 'implicit theology' is not 'reading into' the liturgies, but summarizing their consistent literary devices. An example of 'implicit theology' is the consistent progress in the ancient liturgies from names, to embodiments, to statues. Such consistent liturgies reveal civil, natural, and mythical levels of religion. Studying implicit theology in the liturgies over the 3,000 or so years of the dynastic periods reveals that polytheism played the particles to waves of monotheism. A transition from localized polytheism to national monotheism occurred over the course of Egyptian history. During the transitions from Old to Middle to New Kingdoms, immanence in local cults of city gods transmuted to ruler god, primeval god, creator god, sun god, and to the ethical authority of personal devotion. The solar cult of the Amarna period, so often portrayed as Enlightenment, was a conservative repression that persecuted any personal experiences of the older religions of Ammon by interposing the royal couple between the Aten and people. The unexpected consequences of the persecution was the 'breakthrough' to the 'fourth dimension' of personal ethical consciousness, the same general development that describes the 'axial age,' the appearance everywhere of the historic religions at the end of the ancient world. Assmann's communicates the consistent beauty of the major hieroglyphic liturgies by demonstrating the logic of the litanies. Egyptian 'polytheism' was simply the symbolization of transcendence in immanence -- all the 'forms' (cheperu) of immanent experience are manifestations of searching for transcendent God. 'Search' in this context does not mean conscious theologizing.

I found what I was looking for.

This is an excellent and informative book about Egyptian religion that goes beyond the usual discussion of the Book of the Dead and the various stuff that was done to make Pharaohs immortal, along with their various hangers-on. Religion needs to play a part in an attempt to bless and safeguard the state as well as help with the day to day concerns of individuals. These matters are described and discussed. The book, however, is translated from the German and is not intended for a popular audience. It is something of a slog to get through it. But if you are interested in the subject it is essential.

First published in 1984, this book is finally available in English. The author offers his views on Ancient Egyptian religion, theology and piety. In the various chapters (The Cosmos, Myth, The New Gods, Theodicy and Theology), he explains the difficulties when discussing Ancient Egyptian thought, rituals and cultic beliefs. This book attempts to compare religions based on what is known about the Ancient Egyptian religion. Well researched, this is most definitely a serious book for scholars and students interested in the subject. Recommended reading for all.

I have read much on Egypt, I have studied Egypt and Comparative religions at university. That was a long time ago and this is my first introduction to Jan Assmann. At first I found the text aggravatingly dry and academic and wanted more Egyptian soul. However, I persevered and was rewarded by an enthralling new way of looking at Egypt, which IS all about soul and religion and a mystical way of seeing life. I would have liked more illustrations/pictures, which is why I only gave 4 stars. I look forward to reading some more of this author.

The book's binding is substandard, with numerous pages misaligned, several adhering together, and some detaching entirely.

Great historian

Assmann is verbose and has a habit of making sweeping statements that may not stand up to deeper analysis. Nevertheless, this is one of the most important books about ancient Egyptian religion. After the introductory chapter, Assmann devotes a chapter to each of three aspects (or "dimensions") of divinity in Egyptian thought. One discusses the beliefs surrounding the Egyptian temple (the "local" dimension that connected deities to specific places in Egypt), the continuous and cyclical actions of deities in the cosmos (the "cosmic" dimension), and the way people talked about the gods in language (the "verbal" dimension). A separate chapter describes the most important form of verbal religious expression, myth. According to Assmann, these aspects of the gods made up an "implicit theology" that did not describe the gods' nature directly but illustrated it by detailing their interactions with each other. The second part of the book describes the more explicit theology that was found in certain religious texts. Assmann argues that in the course of their history, mostly during the New Kingdom, the Egyptians who wrote these texts developed a fundamentally different conception of divinity, in which a single divine power governs and encompasses everything. Whereas the older ideas about gods focused on their continuous activities in maintaining the world, some New Kingdom texts emphasize how a god intervened in specific moments in history, adding a "historical dimension" to religious thought. The emphasis on divine intervention produced the dramatic growth of personal prayer and offerings to the gods during the New Kingdom. The conflict between this concept of divinity and traditional polytheism prompted Akhenaten's religious revolution, which rejected polytheism entirely. When Akhenaten's ideas were abandoned, Egyptian priests emphasized the notion that all the gods were aspects of the single divine power. During the New Kingdom that power was most often equated with Amun, but it could apply to any other deity, particularly after the New Kingdom. Thus, this book argues that a monotheistic conception of divinity coexisted with Egyptian polytheism, countering Erik Hornung's argument in Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt that it didn't. Most scholars seem to side with Hornung, although James P. Allen's Genesis in Egypt and, following him, Richard H. Wilkinson's The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt put Assmann's argument in less grandiose terms. Really, both sides are on more solid ground than the extremes of the monotheism-versus-polytheism debate were in the 19th century, and the difference between their positions is now so small that the only way to determine which is right would be to read an ancient Egyptian priest's thoughts. More significant than that debate are Assmann's remarks on the way to his conclusion, on all of the topics he discusses. They're worth reading, though not accepting uncritically, for anyone who wants to delve into the depths of Egyptian thought.

Assmann is a very talented and intelligent scholar. This is a great in-depth oververiew with lots of invaluable references.

Un libro meraviglioso. Nella sua analisi Assmann indaga l'io più profondo degli antichi egizi, la paura della morte intesa come la fine di tutto e in che modo essi hanno sconfitto questa paura. Sebbene Assmann spieghi meticolosamente ogni cosa, consiglio di avere almeno una infarinatura sulle pratiche funerarie egiziane

Jan Assman has written many books on Egyptian religion, and this one explores several different dimensions of this field. The major divisions within the book cover firstly "implicit theology", in other words how personal and social religious practice reveal attitudes and habits of thought that are not directly discussed, and secondly "explicit theology", where ideas and themes are brought into the arena of public discussion and debate. Both aspects accommodate diversity of belief, and by allowing divergent views of religion to be brought face to face with each other enrich the human experience. Assman spends a considerable time exploring the dual aspect of the divine in Egypt - on the one hand a culture believing in and devoted to many different gods, but on the other hand a sense that "the divine" could be referred to in the singular, not the plural. These twin themes are revealed in many different areas, such as temple practice, views of the cosmos, the power of individual speech, and the expectation of a real divine presence encountered by men and women. Much of the focus towards the end of the book concerns the New Kingdom, and in particular the way that the specific religious views of Akhenaten both copied and diverged from traditional Egyptian practice. He sees this Amarna period as an interruption that threatened the development of religious thought rather than helping it, and some readers will part company from him here. The book itself was written in 1984 in German, but this 2001 translation by David Lorton reads smoothly and naturally - it is in fact very easy to forget that it is a translation. Assman's detailed analysis and years of study of the field permeate the book and are clearly set out in this very readable text.

Jan assmann è sempre Jan assmann, all'inizio è un po' ostico, ma quando ci prendi la mano la lettura diventa scorrevole, e dice sempre cose interessanti. D'altronde è uno degli Egittologi più eminenti per quel che riguarda la religione.