The Search for God in Ancient Egypt

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.

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 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.

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.