Religion guided every aspect of Egyptian life. Egyptian religion was based on polytheism, which means the worship of many deities, except for during the reign of Akenaton. During the reign of Akenaton, more than 3,000 years of development, Egyptian religion underwent significant changes of emphasis and practice, but in all periods religion had a clear consistency in character and style. The Egyptians had as many as 2000 gods and goddesses. Some, such as Amun, Isis, Osiris, and Horus, were worshipped throughout the whole country, while others had only a local following.
There were two essential foci of public religion: the king and the gods. Both are among the most characteristic features of Egyptian civilization. The king had a unique status between humanity and the gods, partook in the world of the gods, and constructed great, religiously motivated funerary monuments for his afterlife. The Egyptian "Book of the Dead" contains the major ideas and beliefs in the ancient Egyptian religion. Because their religion stressed an afterlife, Egyptians devoted much time and wealth to preparing for survival in the next world. Tombs were placed if possible in the desert. Vast resources were expended on creating prestigious burial places for absolute rulers or wealthy officials. Tombs contained elaborate grave goods (mostly plundered soon after deposition), representations of “daily life,” or less commonly of religious subjects, and some texts that were intended to help the deceased attain the next world and prosper there. The texts came increasingly to be inscribed on coffins and stone sarcophagi or deposited in burials on papyrus. Some royal tombs included long passages from religious texts.
When a person died, the priests recited prayers and a final attempt was made to revive the deceased. The body was then washed and purified in a special shelter called an ibu. The body was then taken to the wabet, which was the embalmer's workshop. A cut was made in the left side, and all the organs were removed and stored in containers known as canopic jars. The body was then packed with a salt called natron for a period of forty days. After the forty days had passed, the insides were filled with linen or sawdust, resin, and natron. The body was wrapped in bandages with jewelry and amulets between the layers. A portrait mask was placed over the head of the deceased by the Chief Embalmer, who wore a jackal mask to represent Anubis. The wrapped body, or mummy, was then put into a coffin.
After a period of about 70 days, in which the mummification process took place, the mummy was placed in a decorated coffin. Furniture, carved statues, games, food, and other items useful for the next life were prepared to be buried with the mummy. The last ritual performed by the priest on the mummy was called the "Opening of the Mouth." This ceremony was to magically give the deceased the ability to speak and eat again, and to have full use of his body. After placing the mummy in the sarcophagus, the tomb was sealed.
Egyptian gods are renowned for their wide variety of forms, including animal forms and mixed forms with an animal head on a human body. The most important deities were the sun god, who had several names and aspects and was associated with many supernatural beings in a solar cycle modeled on the alternation of night and day, and Osiris, the god of the dead and ruler of the underworld. With his wife, Isis, who is the goddess of motherhood, magic and fertility, they gave birth to Horus who became dominant in many contexts during the 1st millennium when solar worship was in relative decline.
The characters of the gods were not neatly defined. Most had a principal association, such as that of Re with the sun or that of the goddess Hathor with women, but there was much overlap, especially among the leading deities. In general, the more closely circumscribed a deity’s character, the less powerful that deity was. All the main gods acquired the characteristics of creator gods. A single figure could have many names; among those of the sun god, the most important were Khepri (the morning form), Re-Harakhty (a form of Re associated with Horus), and Atum (the old, evening form). There were three principal “social” categories of deity: gods, goddesses, and youthful deities, mostly male.
Gods had regional associations, corresponding to their chief cult places. The sun god’s cult place was Heliopolis, Ptah’s was Memphis, and Amon’s was Thebes. These were not necessarily their original cult places. The principal cult of Khnum, the creator god who formed people from clay like a potter, was Elephantine, and he was the lord of the nearby First Cataract. His cult is not attested there before the New Kingdom, however, even though he was important from the 1st dynasty (c. 2925–2775 bce). The main earlier sanctuary there belonged to the goddess Satet, who became Khnum’s companion. Similarly, Mut, the partner of Amon at Thebes, seems to have originated elsewhere.
Deities had principal manifestations, and most were associated with one or more species of animal. For gods the most important forms were the falcon and bull, and for goddesses the cow, cobra, vulture, and lioness. Rams were widespread, while some manifestations were as modest as the millipede of the god Sepa. Some gods were very strongly linked to particular animals, as Sebek was with the crocodile and Khepri with the scarab beetle. Thoth had two animals, the ibis and the baboon. Some animal cults were only partly integrated with specific gods, notably the Ram of Mendes in the Delta and the Apis and Mnevis bulls at Memphis and Heliopolis, respectively. Animals could express aspects of a deity’s nature: some goddesses were lionesses in their fiercer aspect but were cats when mild.
The king was the centre of human society, the guarantor of order for the gods, the recipient of god-given benefits including life itself, and the benevolent ruler of the world for humanity. He was ultimately responsible for the cults of the dead, both for his predecessors in office and for the dead in general. His dominance in religion corresponded to his central political role: from late predynastic times (c. 3100 bce), state organization was based on kingship and on the service of officials for the king. For humanity, the king had a superhuman role, being a manifestation of a god or of various deities on earth.
The king’s principal original title, the Horus name, proclaimed that he was an aspect of the chief god Horus, a sky god who was depicted as a falcon. Other identifications were added to this one, notably “Son of Re” (the sun god) and “Perfect God,” both introduced in the 4th dynasty (c. 2575–2465 bce), when the great pyramids were constructed. The epithet “Son of Re” placed the king in a close but dependent relation with the leading figure in the pantheon. “Perfect God” (often rendered “Good God”) indicated that the king had the status of a minor deity, for which he was “perfected” through accession to his office; it restricted the extent of his divinity and separated him from full deities.
In his intermediate position between humanity and the gods, the king could receive the most extravagant divine adulation and was in some ways more prominent than any single god. In death he aspired to full divinity but could not escape the human context. Although royal funerary monuments differed in type from other tombs and were vastly larger, they too were pillaged and vandalized, and few royal mortuary cults were long-lasting. Some kings, notably Amenhotep III (1390–53 bce), Ramses II (1279–13 bce), and several of the Ptolemies, sought deification during their own lifetime, while others, such as Amenemhet III (1818–c. 1770 bce), became minor gods after their death, but these developments show how restricted royal divinity was. The divinized king coexisted with his mortal self, and as many non-royal individuals as kings became deified after death.
The gods, the king, humanity, and the dead existed together in the cosmos, which the creator god had brought into being from the preexistent chaos. All living beings, except perhaps the creator, would die at the end of time. The sun god became aged and needed to be rejuvenated and reborn daily. The ordered cosmos was surrounded by and shot through with disorder, which had to be kept at bay. Disorder menaced most strongly at such times of transition as the passage from one year to the next or the death of a king. Thus, the king’s role in maintaining order was cosmic and not merely social. His exaction of service from people was necessary to the cosmos.
The concept of maat (“order”) was fundamental in Egyptian thought. The king’s role was to set maat in place of isfet (“disorder”). Maat was crucial in human life and embraced notions of reciprocity, justice, truth, and moderation. Maat was personified as a goddess and the creator’s daughter and received a cult of her own. In the cult of other deities, the king’s offering of maat to a deity encapsulated the relationship between humanity, the king, and the gods; as the representative of humanity, he returned to the gods the order that came from them and of which they were themselves part. Maat extended into the world of the dead: in the weighing of the heart after death, shown on papyri deposited in burials, the person’s heart occupies one side of the scales and a representation of maat the other. The meaning of this image is deepened in the accompanying text, which asserts that the deceased behaved correctly on earth and did not overstep the boundaries of order, declaring that he or she did not “know that which is not”—that is, things that were outside the created and ordered world.
This role of maat in human life created a continuity between religion, political action, and elite morality. Over the centuries, private religion and morality drew apart from state concerns, paralleling a gradual separation of king and temple. It cannot be known whether religion and morality were as closely integrated for the people as they were for the elite, or even how fully the elite subscribed to these beliefs. Nonetheless, the integration of cosmos, king, and maat remained fundamental.
These variable forms relate to aspects of the person that were common to gods and people. The most significant of these were the ka, which was the vital essence of a person that was transmitted from one generation to the next, the ba, which granted freedom of movement and the ability to take on different forms, principally in the next world, and the akh, the transfigured spirit of a person in the next world.
The chief form in which gods were represented was human, and many deities had only human form. Among these deities were very ancient figures such as the fertility god Min and the creator and craftsman Ptah. The cosmic gods Shu, of the air and sky, and Geb, of the earth, had human form, as did Osiris, Isis, and Nephthys, deities who provided a model of human society. In temple reliefs the gods were depicted in human form, which was central to decorum. Gods having animal manifestations were therefore shown with a human body and the head of their animal. The opposite convention, a human head and an animal body, was used for the king, who was shown as a sphinx with a lion’s body. Sphinxes could receive other heads, notably those of rams and falcons, associating the form with Amon and Re-Harakhty. Demons were represented in more extravagant forms and combinations; these became common in the 1st millennium.
Apart from major deities—gods who received a cult or had a significant cosmic role—there were important minor figures. Several of these marginal beings had grotesque forms and variable names. The most prominent were Bes, a helpful figure with dwarf form and a masklike face, associated especially with women and children, and Taurt, a goddess with similar associations whose physical form combined features of a hippopotamus and a crocodile. Among demons, the most important figure was Apopis, shown as a colossal snake, who was the enemy of the sun god in his daily cycle through the cosmos. Apopis existed outside the ordered realm; he had to be defeated daily, but, since he did not belong to the sphere of existence, he could not be destroyed.
The number of deities was large and was not fixed. New ones appeared, and some ceased to be worshipped. Deities were grouped in various ways. The most ancient known grouping is the ennead, which is probably attested from the 3rd dynasty (c. 2650–2575 bce). Enneads were groups of nine deities, nine being the “plural” of three (in Egypt the number three symbolized plurality in general); not all enneads consisted of nine gods.
The principal ennead was the Great Ennead of Heliopolis. This was headed by the sun god and creator Re or Re-Atum, followed by Shu and Tefnut, deities of air and moisture; Geb and Nut, who represented earth and sky; and Osiris, Isis, Seth, and Nephthys. This ordering incorporated a myth of creation, to which was joined the myth of Osiris, whose deeds and attributes ranged from the founding of civilization to kinship, kingship, and succession to office. The ennead excluded the successor figure, Horus, son of Osiris, who is essential to the meaning of the myth. Thus, the ennead has the appearance of a grouping that brought together existing religious conceptions but was rather arbitrary and inflexible, perhaps because of the significance of the number nine.
Other numerical ordering schemas included the Ogdoad (group of eight gods) of Hermopolis, which embodied the inchoate world before creation and consisted of four pairs of male and female deities with abstract names such as Darkness, Absence, and Endlessness. Here too the number was significant in itself, because at least six different pairs of names are known although eight deities are listed in any occurrence. The major god Amon, whose name can mean “He who is hidden,” was often one of the ogdoad with his female counterpart, Amaunet.
King Seti I offering a figure of maʿat to Osiris, Isis, and Horus; relief in the …
[Credit: Courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society; photograph, The Oriental Institute, Chicago]The most common grouping, principally in the New Kingdom and later, was the triad. The archetypal triad of Osiris, Isis, and Horus exhibits the normal pattern of a god and a goddess with a youthful deity, usually male. Most local centres came to have triads, the second and third members of which might be devised for the sake of form. Thus, one triad worshipped in the Greco-Roman-period temple at Kawm Umbū (Kôm Ombo) consisted of Haroeris (the “elder Horus”), the goddess Tsenetnofret (“the perfect companion”), and the youthful god Pnebtawy (“the lord of the two lands”). The last name, which is an epithet of kings, is revealing, because youthful gods had many attributes of kings. As this case indicates, triads resemble a minimal nuclear family, but deities were rarely spouses. The notion of plurality and the bringing together of the essential types of deity may have been as important to the triads as the family analogy.
Another important ordering of deities was syncretism, a term with a special meaning for Egyptian religion. Two or more names of gods were often combined to form a composite identity; many combinations included the name of Re. Prominent examples are Amon-Re, a fusion of Amon and Re, and Osiris-Apis, a fusion of Osiris with the Apis Bull. Although composite forms such as Amon-Re became the principal identities of some gods, the separate deities continued to exist and sometimes, as in the case of Re, to receive a cult. In part, these syncretisms expressed the idea of Amon in his aspect as Re; they were thus analogous to the multiple manifestations of individual deities. Through syncretism many major deities came to resemble one another more closely.
Despite the importance of temples and their architectural dominance, the evidence for cult does not point to mass participation in temple religion. The archaeological material may be misleading, because in addition to major temples there were many local sanctuaries that may have responded more directly to the concerns and needs of those who lived around them. From some periods numerous votive offerings are preserved from a few temples. Among these are Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom provincial temples, but the fullest evidence is from New Kingdom temples of Hathor at Thebes and several frontier sites and from the Late and Ptolemaic periods (664–30 bce).
Although votive offerings show that significant numbers of people took gifts to temples, it is difficult to gauge the social status of donors, whose intentions are seldom indicated, probably in part for reasons of decorum. Two likely motives are disinterested pious donation for the deity and offering in the hope of obtaining a specific benefit. Many New Kingdom offerings to Hathor relate to human fertility and thus belong to the second of these categories. Late period bronze statuettes are often inscribed with a formula requesting that the deity represented should “give life” to the donor, without stating a specific need. These may be more generally pious donations, among which can also be counted nonroyal dedications of small parcels of land to temples. These donations are recorded on stelae from the New Kingdom onward. They parallel the massive royal endowments to temples of land and other resources, which resulted in their becoming very powerful economic and political institutions.
Apart from the donation of offerings to conventional cult temples, there was a vast Late period expansion in animal cults. These might be more or less closely related to major deities. They involved a variety of practices centring on the mummification and burial of animals. The principal bull cults, which gave important oracles, focused on a single animal kept in a special shrine. The burial of an Apis bull was a major occasion involving vast expenditure. Some animals, such as the sacred ibis (connected with Thoth), were kept, and buried, in millions. The dedication of a burial seems to have counted as a pious act. The best-known area for these cults and associated practices is the necropolis of northern Ṣaqqārah, which served the city of Memphis. Numerous species were buried there, and people visited the area to consult oracles and to spend the night in a temple area and receive healing dreams. A few people resided permanently in the animal necropolis in a state akin to monastic seclusion.
There are two further important groups of evidence for pious and reciprocal relations between people and gods. One is proper names of all periods, the majority of which are meaningful utterances with religious content. For example, names state that deities “show favour” to or “love” a child or its parents. From the end of the New Kingdom (c. 1100 bce), names commonly refer to consultation of oracles during pregnancy, alluding to a different mode of human-divine relations. The second source is a group of late New Kingdom inscriptions recounting episodes of affliction that led to people’s perceiving that they had wronged a god. These texts, which provide evidence of direct pious relations, are often thought to show a transformation of religious attitudes in that period, but allusions to similar relations in Middle Kingdom texts suggest that the change was as much in what was written down as in basic attitudes.
Egyptian culture, of which religion was an integral part, was influential in Nubia as early as predynastic times and in Syria in the 3rd millennium bce. During the New Kingdom, Egypt was very receptive to cults from the Middle East, while Egyptian medical and magical expertise was highly regarded among the Hittites, Assyrians, and Babylonians. The chief periods of Egyptian influence were, however, the 1st millennium bce and the Roman period. Egypt was an important centre of the Jewish diaspora starting in the 6th century bce, and Egyptian literature influenced the Hebrew Bible. With Greek rule there was significant cultural interchange between Egyptians and Greeks. Notable among Egyptian cults that spread abroad were those of Isis, which reached much of the Roman world as a mystery religion, and of Serapis, a god whose name probably derives from Osiris-Apis, who was worshipped widely in a non-Egyptian iconography and cultural milieu.

References
Baines, J. R. (2014, May 7). Egyptian Religion. Retrieved from Britannica Encyclopedia: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/180764/Egyptian-religion
Fadi, A. (2014). Retrieved from Ancient Egypt on a Comparative Method: http://www.aldokkan.com/
St. Petersburg Times. (1999). Ancient Egyptian Religion. Retrieved from St. Petersburg Times: http://www2.sptimes.com