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Amun (also spelled Amon, Amoun, Amen, and rarely Imen, Greek Ἄμμων Ammon, and Ἅμμων Hammon, Egyptian Yamanu) was the name of a deity, in Egyptian mythology, who gradually rose to become one of the most important deities in Ancient Egypt, before fading into obscurity.

Amun in hieroglyphs

<hiero>i-mn:n-C12</hiero>

Origin of name

Amun's name is first recorded in Egyptian records as ỉmn, meaning "The hidden (one)". Since vowels were not written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Egyptologists have reconstructed the name to have been pronounced *Yamānu (/jamaːnu/) originally. The name survived in Coptic as , Amoun.

Creator

Gradually, as god of air, he came to be associated with the breath of life, which created the ba, particularly in Thebes. By the First Intermediate Period this had led to him being thought of, in these areas, as the creator god, titled father of the gods, preceding the Ogdoad, although also part of it. As he became more significant, he was assigned a wife (Amunet being his own female aspect, more than a distinct wife), and since he was the creator, his wife was considered the divine mother from which the cosmos emerged, who in the areas where Amun was worshipped was, by this time, Mut.

Amun became depicted in human form, seated on a throne, wearing on his head a plain deep circlet from which rise two straight parallel plumes, possibly symbolic of the tail feathers of a bird, a reference to his earlier status as a wind god.

Having become more important than Menthu, the local war god of Thebes, Menthu's authority became said to exist because he was the son of Amun. However, as Mut was infertile, it was believed that she, and thus Amun, had adopted Menthu instead. In later years, due to the shape of a pool outside the sacred temple of Mut at Thebes, Menthu was replaced, as their adopted son, by Chons, the moon god.

King

When the armies of the Eighteenth dynasty evicted the Hyksos rulers from Egypt, the victors' city of origin, Thebes, now held the mantle of the most important city in Egypt. Therefore, Amun became nationally important. The Pharaohs attributed all their successful enterprises to Amun, and they lavished much of their wealth and captured spoil on the construction of his temples.

Because of the adoration now given to Amun, visiting Greek travelers to Egypt would report back that Amun, king of the Egyptian gods, was one in the same, and therefore became identified with, the Greek king of the gods Zeus. As did Amun's consort Mut become associated with Zeus's consort Hera.

As the Egyptians considered themselves oppressed during the period of Hyksos' rule, the victory under the supreme god Amun, was seen as his championing of the less fortunante. Consequently, Amun was viewed as upholding the rights of justice to the poor, and became titled Vizier of the poor, and by aiding those who travelled in his name, he became the Protector of the road. Since he upheld Ma'at, those who prayed to Amun were required first to demonstrate that they were worthy, by confessing their sins.

Fertility God

When, subsequently, Egypt conquered Kush, they identified the chief deity of the Kushites as Amun. This deity was depicted as Ram headed, more specifically a woolly Ram with curved horns, and so Amun started becoming associated with the Ram. Indeed, due to the aged appearance of it, they came to believe that this had been the original form of Amun, and that Kush was where he had been born.

However, since rams, due to their rutting, 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 Bull of his mother, in which form he was often found depicted on the walls of Karnak, ithyphallic, and with a scourge.

Sun God

Amun-Ra in hieroglyphs

<hiero>i-mn:n-ra:Z1-C1</hiero>

As Amun's cult grew bigger, Amun rapidly became identified with the chief God that was worshipped in other areas, Ra-Herakhty, the merged identities of Ra, and Horus. This identification led to a merger of identities, with Amun becoming Amun-Ra. As Ra had been the father of Shu, and Tefnut, and the remainder of the Ennead, so Amun-Ra was likewise identified as their father.

Ra-Herakhty had been a sun god, and so this became true of Amun-Ra as well, Amun becoming considered the hidden aspect of the sun (e.g. during the night), in contrast to Ra-Herakhty as the visible aspect, since Amun clearly meant the one who is hidden. This complexity over the sun led to a gradual movement towards the support of a more pure form of deity.

During the eighteenth dynasty, the pharaoh Akhenaten (also known as Amenhotep IV) introduced the worship of the Aten, a god whose power was manifested both literally and symbolically in the sun's disc. He defaced the symbols of the old gods and based his new religion upon one new god: the Aten. However, this abrupt change was very unpopular, particularly with the previous temple priests, who now found themselves without any of their former power. Consequently, when Akhenaten died, his name was striken from the Egyptian records, and all of his changes were swiftly undone. It was almost as if this monotheistic sect had never occurred. Worship of the Aten was replaced and worship of Amun-Ra was restored. The priests persuaded the new underage pharaoh Tutankhaten, whose name meant "the living image of Aten", to change his name to Tutankhamun, "the living image of Amun".

Decline

After the Twentieth dynasty moved the center of power back to Thebes, the powerbase of Amun's cult had been revivified, and the authority of Aten began to weaken. Under the Twenty-first dynasty the secondary line of priest kings of Thebes upheld his dignity to the best of their power, and the Twenty-second favoured Thebes.



As the sovereignty weakened, the division between Upper and Lower Egypt asserted itself; thereafter, Thebes would have rapidly decayed had it not been for the piety of the kings of Nubia towards Amun, whose worship had long prevailed in their country. Thebes was at first their Egyptian capital, and they honoured Amun greatly, although neither their wealth nor culture were sufficient to affect much change.

However, in the rest of Egypt, the popularity of his cult was rapidly overtaken by the less divisive cult of the Legend of Osiris and Isis, which had not been associated with the heretical Akhenaten. And so there, his identity became first subsumed into Ra (Ra-Herakhty), who still remained an identifiable figure in the Osiris cult, but ultimately, became merely an aspect of Horus.

In areas outside of Egypt where the Egyptians had previously brought the worship of Amun, his fate was not as dreadful. In Nubia, where his name was pronounced Amane, he remained the national god, with his priests at Meroe and Nobatia, via an oracle, regulating the whole government of the country, choosing the king, and directing his military expeditions. According to Diodorus Siculus, they were even able to compel kings to commit suicide, although this behaviour stopped when Arkamane, in the 3rd century BC, slew them.

Likewise, in Libya there remained a solitary oracle of Amun in the Libyan Desert at the oasis of Siwa. Such was its reputation among the Greeks that Alexander the Great journeyed there after the battle of Issus and during his occupation of Egypt in order to be acknowledged the son of Amun. Even during this occupation, Amun, identified as a form of Zeus, continued to be the great god of Thebes throughout its decay.

Derived terms

Several words derive from Amun via the Greek form Ammon: ammonia and ammonite. Ammonia, as well as being the chemical, is a genus name in the foraminifera. Both these foraminiferans (shelled Protozoa) and ammonites (extinct shelled cephalopods) have/had spiral shells resembling a ram's, and Ammon's, horns. The regions of the hippocampus in the brain are called the cornu ammonis – literally "Amun's Horns", due to the horned appearance of the dark and light bands of cellular layers.

References

• Adolf Erman, Handbook of Egyptian Religion (London, 1907)
• David Klotz, Adoration of the Ram: Five Hymns to Amun-Re from Hibis Temple (New Haven, 2006)
• Ed. Meyer, article "Ammon" in W. H. Roscher's Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie
• Pietschmann, articles "Ammon" and "Ammoneion" in Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopädie.

External links

• Ancient Egypt: the Mythology - Amon
• Wiki Classical Dictionary: Ammon
• Leiden Hymns to Amun
• Leiden Hymns to Amun
• Strong's H0528 Amon in the Bible

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