To many of us we find it hard to comprehend ancient religions, with our Judaeo-Christian Monotheism view. I recently had a lecture on Ancient Egyptian religion and it was really interesting, so i thought I would share what I learnt.

The Osirian Cycle, Solar cycle and the idea of Syncretism.

The Osirian cycle is the most well know due to a ancient Greek writer called Plutarch

The Osirian cycle is about death and rebirth.

Osiris


To the Ancient Egyptians Orisis was the first King of Egypt, he was meant to of been murdered by his brother Seth, who was jealous of his success, all was not lost however since Osiris had a powerful magican for a wife and sister in
Isis who with her sister Nephtys collected all his pieces together and mumified him, Isis even managed to concieve a child.





This child was Horus


Horus avenged his father's death by fighting Seth. The fight got pretty nasty because Seth ripped out Horus's eye and in revenge Horus tore off Seth's testicals. To cut a long story short, Horus was awarded Egypt, the land of Kemet while Seth was given the desert. The battle between Horus and Seth is about the battle between order and disorder, the Egyptians lives were pratically governed by the Nile and they led a pretty conservative life.

Another part of Ancient Egyptian religion was the Solar Cycle and Syncretism, the Ancient Egyptians believed the sun traveled on a barge across the sky. There were three different suns though they were:


Kheper-Ra - This was the sunrise, the egyptians believed the sun was pushed out by a dung beetle

Midday was Ra-Horakhty

As you can see Ra-Horakhty is on a barge with the sun disk on his head traveling across the sky

Sunset was seen as an old ram, he was then called Atum-Ra


Atum-Ra then went to the far off world where he was merged with Orisris. The Solar cycle merged with the Osirian cycle.

Nephtys and Isis