cxxii
RELIGION.
temple at Heliopolis, and there too the goddess Sefkhet-ebui in¬
scribed the years of the coming reign on the leaves of the sacred
tree. The exalted position thus accorded to the sun-god naturally
gave a wide currency to the doctrines taught by the priests of Helio¬
polis concerning him. The local sun-gods were promptly identified
with Re and were thenceforth regarded as special forms of the
national deity. The same thing happened even with other gods
who were not sun-gods at all, such as the water-god Sobk and the
harvest-god Ammon, and they were invested with the symbol of Re,
viz. the sun-disk with the poisonous royal serpent (uraeus) coiled
round it. This amalgamation of local deities with Re, which began
under the Middle Empire and was carried to great lengths under
the New Empire, was a fertile source of confusion in the Egyptian
religion. Attempts indeed were made to draw a distinction among
the various forms of Re, Khepre for example being regarded as the
morning-sun and Atum as the evening-sun, but nothing like a
systematic scheme was ever achieved.
In the same way a number of female local deities were con¬
verted into goddesses of the sky, in so far as they were not so al¬
ready. Thus the goddess Hathor of Dendera, who revealed herself
as a cow, was considered to stand over the earth in the shape of
that animal, supporting the sun-god on her back. — This tendency
to amalgamate different deities, especially when they had similar
characteristics, prevailed in other cases from a comparatively early
period. Thus Hathor was identified with Isis, Ammon of Thebes
with Min of Koptos, Bastet with Sekhmet and Pakhet, Sekhmet
with Mut, etc. That this added to the confusion is obvious.
When after the 12th Dyn. the centre of the empire was carried
farther to the S. and Thebes became the capital in place of Mem¬
phis, the importance of Ammon, the local god of Thebes, steadily
increased. At the beginning of the New Empire he was the head
of the Egyptian pantheon. The great campaigns against Nubia and
Asia were waged in his name by the Theban kings, temples were
erected to him in the conquered lands, and the lion's share of the
spoil fell to his shrines in Egypt, especially to the temple at
Thebes. Ammon, in short, became the national god, the success¬
ful rival of his predecessor Re-Harmachis. It was not to be ex¬
pected that the priests of Heliopolis should tamely submit to this
weakening of their influence. They therefore eagerly seized the
first opportunity of overthrowing Ammon and of restoring the sun
god to his former official dignity. When Amenophis IV. succeeded
to the throne, the sun-god of Heliopolis (Harmachis) regained the
position of supreme deity, and shortly afterwards the sun itself
(Egypt. Aton) was announced as the one and only god. This re¬
volution was doubtless to some extent prompted by the king's
desire to put a stop to the prevailing religious confusion at a blow,
and to make practice square with theory, for theoretically all the
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