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THE MANY FACES OF GOD: DIVINE

IMAGES AND SYMBOLS IN ANCIENTNEAR EASTERN RELIGIONS

Egypt

EGYPTIAN DEPICTIONS OF DEITIES

1. GENERAL

In the same way that Tacitus was amazed by the Jews, who made no images of

their god, Juvenal (Satire XV)sneered at theEgyptians:

. '. what monsters themad Egyptians worship. Some ofthem honour the

crocodile,others bowdownto theibis bulging with snakes; thelong tailed

apeis sacred ....

The iconography of the Egyptian deities was a multi-coloured palette of forms

and faces, as is illustrated by the "divine catalogue" in the Persian period Hibis

temple at Charge. No wonder that Hornung observes that in the Egyptian

language there are more than twentywords for ourterms "picture" or "image".

A depiction in the Louvre has the goddess Hathor (goddess of music, dance, joy,

fertility and birth)in four forms: as a womanwith a sistrum (a musical instrument)on

herhead, a cow, a serpent anda lion-headedfemale. Basically, there are three ways of

representingdeities visually:

(i) Some gods, such as Ptah (god of

craftsmen and architects) , are

depicted only anthropomorphically;

(ii) The protectress of women and children,

Taweret, was only depicted zoomorphically;

(iii) The mostcommon formseems to be a

mixture ofthe two, theranthropic,

with a human body and the head of ananimal. Sekhmet (goddess of war and

healing) as a divine statue in the temple at

Karnak, is shownas a woman with thehead

ofa lioness.

One hasto bear in mind that thereis no one-to-one relationshipbetweena divinename

and its representation; onedeity could be represented in manyforms.The godAmen (or

Amun sun god) has been depicted in human form, sometimes as a human with theheadofa ram,asa ram,andevenas a human withthehead ofa crocodile.

Conversely, one image can represent many deities. The so-called tree goddess can be

identified as the goddesses Isis, Nephtys, Nut, Hathor and Maat. Sometimes we have a

combination of these types. There are cases where a deity is depicted in two forms onthe same object, as on the Hildesheim stela which represents Mahes both as a lion and

as a man with t he head of a l ion. The goddess H athor is a classic example of t he

complexity of the representation of Egyptian deities: in theOld Kingdom sheis depicted

asa womanwithcowhorns, whilstat Deir el Bakhrishe isshownas a cow

givingsuck to the divine pharaoh.

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There were also other possibilities. In Egypt, for

instance, the deities were sometimes represented bysymbols, as on standards and staves. The divine

standards were carried to the battlefield by Ramses

III and his army (MedinetHabu), just as the Assyrian

armies did with their divine standards. In the Abydos

temple the standards were worshipped in a shrine.

The god Osiris, who is commonly depicted as a

mummified human, could also be an

anthropomorphised djed-pillar (connected to a

fertility cult) . The "tree goddess" is depicted as a

woman, although she is sometimes "reduced" to

only a breast with arms, as in the tomb of

ThutmosesIII.

What is typical of the Egyptian deities is that they did

not carry their specific attributes in their hands (the

was-, the plant sceptre, and the life symbol [ankh]

occur with all major deities). Their divinity "went to

their heads" - their specific divinity is depicted on their

heads in the form of symbols, or as a specific type of

head (usually the head of an animal rather than that of

a human).Thoth (god of wisdom, writing, numbers, the

arts and astronomy) has the head of an ibis and Isis

(goddess of motherhood, fertility and magic) has a

throne on her head, the latter also being used as a

hieroglyphic sign in writing. The goddess Maat

(goddess of harmony, justice and truth) wears a

feather; a bronze ostrich feather, which might have

belonged to a statue of the goddess Maat, was found

at Lachish. Much in the same way as some deities had

no specific cultic location, other deities had no

independent iconography either. There was, in fact no

real iconography of the old creator and sun god of

Heliopolis Ra and Ra is represented visually (to take

one example) as the falcon-headed god with sun-disk -

Ra-Harakhty("Horus of the horizons).

2. AMARNA

In the same way that Akhenaten's theology

was revolutionary and not an example of

reform or natural evolution, the

"representation" of his god was also new.

Instead of the older anthropomorphic-

theriomorphic representations of the

traditional deities, Akhenaten's single god was

worshipped not as a three-dimensional statue

but rather in the form of the sun-disk only. The

reliefs emphasize the radiating rays connecting

the sun in heaven with the earth and ending in

small hands, administering life symbols (ankhor was symbols = power) to the holy family.

Here we have a unity with the sun-disk

providing a connection between the different

figures. It is an elaborated form of the

hieroglyphic sign for sunshine or light. The

same representation is depicted on seal

impressions from Amama.

The god of Akhenaten is not just another form of the

sun god, or the sun-disk, but the living s un best

described as the light. The new concept of god could

not be captured by means of iconic representations.

The traditional gods were made of precious stones

and the craftsmen were highly skilled in making them.

In contrast, the god of Akhenatenis his own maker

and therefore inaccessible to human iconography; he

is the one "who produced himself by himself, no

craftsman knows him. The living sun, like the living

god, transcends the indirect life of statues or cult

images.

Akhenaten launched a systematic programme of

iconoclasm destroying the images of the deities,obliterating particularly the images of Amun, defacing

his name and even going so far as to erase the plural

"gods,, altogether.

To conclude: in ancient Egypt thedeities were mostly representediconically, the

mixed form (anthropomorphic body with zoomorphic head) being typical.

Something totally unique happened in the Amama period with the

representation of Akhenaten's god.