1. Ancient Egyptian Religion
Berk Barlak

2. Ancient Egyptian Religion
• Religion provided the Egyptians with a sense of
security and timelessness. They had no word for
religion. For them, religious ideas represented an
inseparable part of the entire world order. The
Egyptians were polytheistic. They had a number
of gods associated with heavenly bodies and
natural forces. Two groups, sun gods and land
gods (including river gods), came to have special
significance in view of the importance of the sun
and the fertile land along the Nile to Egypt’s wellbeing.

3. Ancient Egyptian Religion
• The sun, the source of life, was worthy of
worship. The sun god took on different forms
and names based on his role. The Egyptian
ruler took the title “Son of Re.” The rulers
were seen as an earthly form of Re, one of the
sun god’s names.

4. Ancient Egyptian Religion
• River and land gods included Osiris and Isis. A
famous myth told of the struggle between Osiris,
who brought civilization to Egypt, and his evil
brother Seth. When Seth cut Osiris into pieces
and tossed them into the Nile, Isis, Osiris’s wife,
found the pieces. With help from other gods, she
brought Osiris back to life. Osiris became a
symbol of resurrection, or rebirth. By identifying
with Osiris, Egyptians hoped to gain new life after
death. The dead were placed in tombs (in the
case of kings, in pyramid tombs) and through
rituals would become Osiris. Like Osiris, they
would then be reborn. The flooding of the Nile
and the new life that it brought to Egypt were
symbolized by Isis’s bringing all of Osiris’s parts
together each spring in the festival of the new
land.

5. Source
• World History-Student Edition (2007) pg.(3536)