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1. T
his introduction
to ancient Egypt-
ian religion pro-
poses three conceptual
foundations for all that
follows: (1) ma’at (cos-
mic order); (2) duality,
the balance of binary
aspects of a whole; and
(3) heka (divine magic),
which makes everything
possible. As we go, we
will cover the major
theologies, Creation
myths and associated
deities, resurrection and
eternity, and the religion
as it is expressed in
temple and tomb archi-
tecture, ritual, art and
writing.
Egyptian religion can seem overwhelming.To comprehend
this immensity of thought and expression over such a vast span
of time, where do we begin? The answer: begin with ma’at.
It may seem frivolous to suggest that a culture as long and
complex as ancient Egypt’s can be captured in a word, but from a
fundamental understanding of ma’at we can proceed to every-
thing else — the social and civil order, the Egyptians’ concepts
of the natural and supernatural worlds, and above all, the reli-
gion. In fact, every aspect of their culture was rooted in religion.
It was so central to the Egyptians’ very being that they didn’t
even have a word for “religion” per se, as something distinct
from their daily lives. And religion was grounded in ma’at and
its balancing concept, chaos (isfet).
Religions seek to address some universal questions that occur
to people as human intelligence matures and they begin to con-
template the natural world and their own destiny, both here and
beyond. How did it all begin? Are we alone? Surely not — there
had to be some first being larger than ourselves with the power
to create the heavens and the Earth, and also with the will to do
so. What does it all mean? What is our relationship with this
Ancient Egyptian Religion
Part 1: The Conceptual Foundations
By Brian Alm
Author’s Note: This six-part primer on the religion and culture of ancient Egypt was originally published in
2011-12 in the online journal Egyptological.com, London, which has ceased publication. This revised and some-
what shortened version is offered now as an accessible introductory resource for all who are interested in Egyp-
tology. My series, “Read Like an Egyptian” — Art and Architecture in Ancient Egypt, also available at
Academia.edu, delves more deeply into those matters specifically and serves as a companion to this discussion.
great being? How
can we avail our-
selves of that super-
natural power and
prevail over natural
forces and even our
own destiny? Is
there something be-
yond this life for
us? What should we
be doing while
we’re here in order
to secure our future
in that world be-
yond?
And so religion
and ethics take root
in thought. Only a
divine being, it
seems certain,
could possess both
the power and the will to do all that obviously had been done.
Ma’at: Cosmic Order
In ancient Egypt, the wonder and questioning begin with a con-
cept of chaos. For the Egyptians, chaos was close at hand: the
desert was a deadly place, without water or shade. Fierce and
deadly creatures lurked there. But the River Nile — which they
called simply iteru, “the river,” since they had only one — had
carved a narrow strip of hospitable land through the hostile
desert. They called the land in the river valley Kemet (the Black
Land), where abundant water and fertile soil meant life. Deshret
(the Red Land) — the desert beyond the valley — meant death.
And the transition from fertility to desolation is not gradual. You
could almost draw a line between where the green agricultural
land stops and the desert starts.
So in this very basic observation of the natural world, order is
defined by its polar opposite, chaos. That philosophical under-
standing of order over chaos then becomes the basis of theology.
[Figure 1]
Figure 1. The deadly desert and the life-giving Nile: a natural metaphor of ma’at

2. Books on ancient Egypt intended for the general public often
reduce the idea of ma’at to a simple, single term, “justice” or
“truth” or “order.” And indeed it is all three, but it is much more
than that: it is cosmic order, the order of the universe, and the
maintenance of that is paramount.
Order holds back chaos and the disintegration of all that is.
More immediately and practically, without cosmic order the Nile
doesn’t flood, new silt and nourishing water do not come, drought
leads to famine and death, the social and civil order is lost, and
Egypt is left vulnerable to forces beyond its control.
To upset order in the earthly sphere is to imperil everything, the
universe itself. Therefore it is the duty of humankind (that is,
Egyptians) to uphold the civil and social order through their devo-
tion to the king.
And as the semi-divine son of the sun god Ra and the living
Horus, the king’s primary function is to maintain the order of the
universe by maintaining order on Earth. The king has an apostolic
responsibility: the divine forces that had formed the universe put
Egypt at its center and left the king in charge.
The time before the world was created (“The First Time”) was
an infinity of darkness, silence and chaos. The universe was a pri-
mordial ocean called Nun, and just as in Genesis, it was without
form, and void. The first land to emerge from this water was
Egypt.
The Egyptians knew that water was both above and below
Earth: rain came down and well water came up, so the dark noth-
ingness that was beyond the habitable realm had to be water, and
so the sun traveled through the sky and the underworld in a boat.
Now with the Creation, order took form and Egypt appeared.
Order on Earth and order in the universe are binary and comple-
mentary; and in diversity there is unity, so a thing can be both
many and one. This will explain much, as we delve into the reli-
gion of Egypt and encounter contradictions that, to our modern
minds, might otherwise seem mysterious.
Duality
Chaos and order are the first of many dualities that inform the
Egyptian way of thinking. “The concept that harmony was
embodied in balanced opposites was fundamental in Egyptian
thought” (Wilkinson 2008, p. 70), and so dualities abound. The
diurnal cycle of the sun is balanced as day and night. Male and
female together produce life. Temple pylons, always in pairs.
[Figure 2]
Principles, or natural laws, are set in balance, deified, often
anthropomorphized, and explained mythologically. The sun,
which ruled the day, was balanced by the moon at night, and
these heavenly bodies were deified as Ra and Thoth (Djehuty),
and also as the two eyes of the falcon Horus, originally a god of
the solar pantheon and
later regarded as the son of
Osiris and Isis. Gods and
goddesses were paired as
husbands and wives — the
Egyptians were always
mindful of family relation-
ships and sexual union —
or, more cerebrally, as the
binary representation of a
principle or natural law. A
deity might have dual as-
pects: Nephthys (Nebthet)
was the goddess of both
fertility and barrenness;
kindly and loving Hathor,
enlisted by her father Ra to
wreak havoc on rebellious
mankind, became the
vengeful lionness
Sekhmet; Serket, the scor-
pion goddess, could be
deadly but also provided
protection from scorpions.
The Egyptians were as-
tute observers of nature, and their land was an ideal place for ob-
servation. Philosophy and theology followed these observations.
Water sustains life, but you can also drown in it; the annual flood
brings fertility to the valley, but too much water destroys the
crops, so Hapy, god of the Inundation, is opposed by Anuket,
who keeps the river in its banks. The positive and negative as-
pects inherent in vicious animals like the crocodile are simply bi-
naries of the indivisible whole and are consistent with the natural
order. “Ambivalence was characteristic of Egyptian thought …
Egyptians conceived of nature as an unchanging whole whose
components were necessary” (Traunecker 2001, p. 16).
As a way of understanding order, duality made sense. Two
things in balance meant equilibrium, and a binary whole was in-
separable — with one important exception: stasis versus change.
The Egyptians were the ultimate conservatives; they wanted sta-
bility because stability meant order, whereas change meant un-
certainty. Order was paramount. This dualistic reckoning of
reality led the Egyptians to understand their relationship to the
divine, and to understand the deities’ relationships to each other;
it also explained how a god or goddess could possess both 2
Figure 2. The Nile god
Hapy appears in
mirror-image dual
form, binding
together the plants of
Upper Egypt, the
lotus (left), and Lower
Egypt, the papyrus
(right), around a
hieroglyph for
sema-tawy, “the union
of the Two Lands,”
which depicts two
lungs attached to one
trachea. There is a
great deal of symbol-
ism in this scene
at Luxor Temple, but
the essential message
is the duality that in-
forms the order of
Egypt, and therefore
the universe as well.

3. positive and negative aspects and be both benign and malevolent.
Duality does not, however, require a polarity of positive and
negative aspects; it is simply an orderly pairing of things. Bal-
ance inheres in binary association, and therefore duality in any
sense is a function of ma’at — divinely established and humanly
preserved cosmic order.
Duality also addresses the ultimate human question about life
after death. Death was not the end of life, but simply a portal
through which one went from life in this world to a continuation
of life in the next. For both the present, physical life on Earth and
the afterlife in the spiritual realm, the Egyptians used the same
word, ankh. Both were aspects of one reality: life.
It can be difficult to grasp that a belief system can incorporate
two apparently contradictory ideas simultaneously. We under-
stand that both positive and negative charges are necessary in
magnetism and electricity, but when faced with polarized ideas,
we see the matter as elective: it can’t be both, so you have to
choose. But the Egyptians didn’t have to choose one over the
other; they could accept both at once as complementary aspects
of the same reality.
And so we find oddities that would otherwise seem bewilder-
ing, such as kings named after Seth, the principle of disorder,
who murdered his brother Osiris and threatened the rightful order
of succession by trying to seize the throne from his nephew
Horus. A papyrus says of a man who can’t control his drinking
and temper, “Seth is the god within him.” But Seth was also the
stalwart protector of Ra, defending him from the serpent Apep
who lurked in the waters of the night, intent on swallowing the
sun and annihilating divine order. For all of Seth’s faults, he also
represented strength, courage and determination, which were
much admired in Egypt. Joann Fletcher argues that “Seth cannot
be dismissed as ‘evil,’ for his presence was seen as an essential
counterweight to the order represented by Horus” (Fletcher 2009,
p. 67). Seth is one of many binary ideas in ancient Egypt.
Even the language accommodated the notion of duality: the
idea of two things was
expressed with a dual
form, ending in -wy or
-y. For more than two
there was a plural
form. Upper and
Lower Egypt were
unified in about 3100
B.C., but nevertheless
kings always pro-
claimed themselves
rulers of “the Two
Lands.” The unifica-
tion was celebrated in
the term sema-tawy, a
“binding of the Two
Lands,” which was
also a sculptural ren-
dering of the lotus
(water lily) of Upper
Egypt and the papyrus
of Lower Egypt, tied
together by Hapy, the
god of the Nile inun-
dation, in dual form; the sema-tawy image itself depicted two
lungs attached to one trachea — a union of duality.
The king was called Lord of the Two Lands (Neb Tawy) and
Ruler of the Sedge and the Bee (Nesu-Bity), referring to the
sedge plant of Upper Egypt and the bee of Lower Egypt. Among
the five names in the king’s full titulary was the Two Ladies
(Nebty) name, pairing the vulture goddess Nekhbet of Upper
Egypt and the cobra goddess Uadjet of lower Egypt. The
sekhemty crown was a combination of the white crown (hedjet)
of Upper Egypt and the red crown (deshret) of Lower Egypt. All
these dualities are affirmations of ma’at: eternal truth, justice
(balance) and order.
Certainly at some subconscious level the concept of duality
was always with the ancient Egyptians. Their engagement with
the desert — a circumstance that for them was unavoidable —
and their survival attest to their recognition of order bound with
chaos, and their obligation to deal assertively with that reality.
Whether religion was cause or effect is something to ponder, but
clearly this practical involvement with chaos was pervasive in
their lives.
The uses of the desert — mining the Sinai for precious stones
and the Eastern Desert for gold, tending animals on desert mar-
gins, taking advantage of the oases of the Western Desert for
water and agriculture — also reflect order (i.e., the good, the
valuable) in the midst of chaos. It is easy to see in the simplicity
of the Nile Valley juxtaposed against the desert beyond, but the
duality of positive and negative, good and bad, fertility and bar-
renness, life and death, order and chaos, applies to many practi-
cal relationships and experiences. An arduous trek through the
Sinai leads to turquoise, precious to Hathor; in the Eastern
Desert, gold, the flesh of the gods; in the wasteland of the West,
islands of green fertility. Dualities helped support and explain
order, but still Creation and the natural and supernatural forces
were mysterious and beyond human understanding. So now we
come to magic.
Heka
The Egyptians believed
totally in divine magic
(heka), which, according to
the Coffin Texts of the
Middle Kingdom, existed
in the primordial nothing-
ness; therefore heka was
the force that empowered
Creation. Now, if they re-
cited the right spells, peo-
ple could put the power of
heka at their disposal.
There was, as Joann
Fletcher says, “no distinc-
tion between religion and
magic. The Egyptians be-
lieved it was possible to
alter their world by direct-
ing unseen forces”
(Fletcher, 2009, p. 110).
[Figure 3]
3
Figure 3. The divine magic of ritual puts mortals in command of destiny.

4. Numbers were magical. Not just the number two, but other
numbers also put things in order. Seven and some of the multi-
ples of seven were especially imporetant. Ra had seven Bas and
14 Kas (the Ba and the Ka were aspects of the spiritual being of
an individual, manifestations of the self). Seth chopped Osiris
into 14 pieces. There were 14 false doors in Djoser’s pyrami. Iin
the Hall of Two Truths, or Hall of Double Justice, the dead pre-
sented themselves for Judgment and addressed the 42 petitions of
the Negative Confession to 42 judges. Egypt had 42 nomes
(provinces, Egyptian sepatu). Seventy days were required for the
embalming and mummification process and the accompanying
rituals. And 70 days after the death of the king, the new king was
crowned.
The Egyptians’ favorite star was Sirius (in Egyptian Sopdet,
Greek Sothis). Some stars were always there, fastened in place.
These were the circumpolar stars, “the imperishable ones.” Some
stars wandered; they were the five known planets. But one in
particular — Sirius — disappeared, and then magically returned,
every year, after 70 days. Its reappearance signaled the new year,
which began about July 20, but also testified to the regularity of
heavenly events, which — in addition to the diurnal cycle of the
sun — confirmed the truth of order, magic, and, as we will see
later on, resurrection.
Other numbers with great symbolic meaning were four, eight
and nine, which will figure importantly in the theologies to come
in the next section, and three, which deserves special note now.
Three expressed plurality; three times three, nine, was the “plural
of plurals” and took on mythic meaning: the Nine Bows were a
symbol of Egypt’s foreign adversaries, often used to decorate the
king’s footstool and sandals, so he could trample them and
demonstrate his dominion over them; imposing order on Earth
had cosmic significance. Richard H. Wilkinson has a fascinating
discussion of various number systems in The Complete Gods and
Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, 2003, pp. 74-79. Among his obser-
vations, for example, is that the number four expressed totality,
so 4 [totality] + 3 [plurality] = the magic number 7.
Magic was seen as a real operator in the cosmic scheme of
things, and a real presence in earthly life and human destiny. It
was the foundation of art and, especially, writing. Reality was
created by the magic of words and art. In a tomb an inscription
that praised a person’s deeds magically made it all true (unless it
was defaced). Kings could claim victory in battles no matter
what the real outcome was; a scribe could write down something
that never happened and it became fact.
Everywhere you see two hieroglyphs, one the familiar ankh
sign, “life,” and the other an upside-down V, or lambda-like sign,
which together stamp the foregoing statement as a living fact: di
ankh, “given life.” Such was the power of the written word.
And in art, picturing something was tantamoiunt to creating
the thing itself. Draw a pitcher of wine, and it’s wine. Form
loaves of bread out of stone and place them in the tomb and they
will sustain the Ka of the dead forever; or simply write the word
and let it alone be bread. Paintings in the tombs show youthful,
trim and handsome people, full of vigor. Women have perfect
figures, trim and flowing in diaphanous dresses. Some kings
lived to be old men, but there they are, young, fresh and virile.
Magic was everywhere, from cradle to grave, and beyond.
Amulets protected people in life, and later in death — especially
the heart scarab, which was wrapped in the mummy’s bindings
right over the heart to keep the heart (the seat of mind, memory
and will) from betraying the dead at the time of Judgment by
blurting out some dark secret. Magic could prevent such embar-
rassments. And if something happened to the actual heart, the
heart scarab could substitute for it, magically given the power to
do so.
Little mummiform statues called shabtis (“answerers”) were
placed in the tomb to serve the dead in Eternity. A picture of a
snake or scorpion would protect people from snakes or scorpi-
ons. Apotropaic (protective) knives and wands protected people
from evil spirits. Deities were pictured wielding knives in de-
fense of the those who counted on their magical protection.
Everything was possible through magic, but only if words were
used to give the magic its power. “Hieroglyphs” is a Greek term.
The Egyptians themselves called their written language medu-
netjer, “the words of god.”
Order, duality and magic.
In the parts to come, we will see how these three concepts in-
form virtually all aspects of the ancient Egyptian culture.
4
References
Fletcher, Joann. 2009, The Egyptian Book of Living & Dying, Duncan Baird, London
Traunecker, Claude. 2001, The Gods of Egypt, Cornell U.P., Ithaca, N.Y.
Wilkinson, Richard H. 2003, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, Thames & Hudson, New York
Photos by the author.