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APRIL 14, 1923] 
Is 
HE recent discovery of Tut‘enkhamiin’s tomb has 
naturally aroused a great deal of interest in the 
attempt made by that king’s father-in-law, Okhnaton, 
to establish a monotheistic form of sun-worship as the 
State religion of Egypt, and indeed of the whole 
Egyptian empire. Properly to appreciate this very 
striking phase of Egyptian religious thought, it is 
necessary to have some knowledge of the old “ ortho- 
dox ” sun-cult, the State religion of Egypt, since at any 
rate the sixth, and possibly the third dynasty—a cult 
which can be traced back to the very dawn of Egyptian 
history. 
The centre of this ancient sun-cult was On, the 
Heliopolis of the Greek writers, a city which lay close 
_ to Memphis and the site of modern Cairo. Heliopolis 
was almost certainly the political centre of a united 
Egypt in the predynastic period, though at a time not 
necessarily long anterior to the beginning of the first 
dynasty and the founding of Memphis by Menes. The 
 predynastic king of Heliopolis was high-priest of his 
city-god, the sun-god Ré“-Atum, and was also regarded 
as his embodiment. Immense influence was exercised 
by Heliopolis upon Egyptian theology and ideas in 
general, and even when Heliopolis ceased to be the 
actual capital of Egypt, the Egyptian king was still 
regarded as the embodiment of the sun-god and his 
_high-priest, and Ré‘-Atum still maintained his place as 
the State-god. Owing to the religious and political 
ascendancy of Heliopolis, a number of the local pro- 
vincial gods were identified with the sun-god by their 
priests in order to enhance their prestige. Of course, 
- this identification was particularly likely to take place 
when what was once a provincial town became the 
centre of government, as did Heracleopolis at the 
_ beginning of the ninth, and Thebes at the beginning of 
the eleventh dynasty. 
_ As a result of their being identified with the Helio- 
_ politan sun-god, and owing to the great prestige, and, 
no doubt in early times, superior culture, of Heliopolis, 
the temples erected for the worship of the solarised 
local gods were copies of the Heliopolitan sun-temple ; 
moreover the liturgy celebrated therein in honour of 
these divinities was that celebrated in honour of their 
Heliopolitan prototype. In course of time the Helio- 
politan form of temple was universally adopted in 
Egypt, and also, by a natural process, the Heliopolitan 
liturgy came to be celebrated in honour of every im- 
portant god and goddess throughout the length and 
breadth of the land. This remarkable uniformity in 
temple architecture and in worship seems to have 
prevailed so far back as the old kingdom, about 2900 
to 2475 B.C. 
The king of Egypt, as we have seen, was the high- 
priest of the sun-god. He was also high- priest of all 
the local divinities of Egypt, and in this capacity he 
celebrated, or rather was supposed to celebrate, the 
liturgy in every Egyptian temple. His relations with 
the solarised divinities were of course practically the 
same as his relations with the Heliopolitan sun-god 
himself, a circumstance which naturally must have 
NO. 2789, VOL. 111] 
NATURE 
| or that sacred pool. 
499 
The Sun-Cult in Ancient Egypt. 
By Aytwarp M. Brackman, D.Litt. 
influenced his relations with other divinities and must 
have helped forward greatly the solarisation of all 
Egyptian temple-worship. 
What, it may be asked, were the ideas of these ancient 
sun-worshippers as to the nature and character of their 
god? The most outstanding of all the qualities attri- 
buted to the sun-god by the Heliopolitan priests is his 
righteousness. The sun-god is not only represented 
as loving righteousness and truth and hating iniquity, 
but also it was said that he it was who “ fashioned 
righteousness.”’ Righteousness is so much a part of 
the god’s being that he is said to live (i.e. feed) on it, 
just as Hapi the Nile-god is said to live on fish! This 
righteous god demanded righteousness in his worshippers 
also, and before the Osirianisation of the Egyptian 
conceptions of the life after death, a process which they 
underwent in the period between the end of the Old 
and the beginning of the Middle Kingdom (about 2475 
to 2160 B.c.), the sun-god was regarded as the judge of 
the dead, in which capacity certain texts represent him 
as weighing righteousness in a balance, 7.e. testing the 
/righteousness of the dead. 
Now the king of Egypt (in the first instance the king 
of Heliopolis) was thought to be, as we have seen, the 
embodiment of the sun-god. Accordingly, like his 
divine prototype he was supposed to be the upholder 
of righteousness, truth, and justice. But the close 
association of the king with the god not only associated 
the god’s righteousness with the king : it also associated 
the kingship with the god. Thus the sun-god, who is 
represented in the myths as the first king of Egypt, 
came to be regarded as the prototype of all Egyptian 
sovereigns, the ideally righteous king, the pattern of all 
would-be righteous Pharaohs. In a literary composi- 
tion of the Feudal Age, describing the miserable plight 
of Egypt under the rule of a weak Pharaoh, a sage 
contrasts the prevailing unhappy conditions with the 
state of affairs in that far-off golden age when the sun- 
god, the ideal king, ruled over Egypt. He speaks of 
the sun-god as “the shepherd (lit. herdsman) of all 
men, with no evil in his heart.’’ ‘‘ Where is he to- 
day?” he asks. ‘ Does he sleep perchance ? Behold 
his might is not seen !” 
Purity, and particularly physical purity, was another 
attribute of the sun-god. Everything connected with 
him must, it was maintained, be pure, and only those 
who were pure could approach him. Consequently 
lustral washing was a marked feature of the sun-cult, 
no priest being able to enter the sun-temple (eventually 
any temple) to officiate until he had undergone purifica- 
tion. Even the sun-god himself is represented as 
washing or being washed every morning in some mytho- 
logical lake or pool before appearing above the eastern 
horizon. 
Now according to one conception, the sun-god was 
reborn every morning, having been born in the first 
instance, be it noted, out of the waters of the celestial 
ocean, Naturally enough, therefore, his daily rebirth 
came to be associated with his daily lustration, and he 
was supposed to be reborn every day at dawn as the 
result of washing or being washed in the waters of this 
In accordance with this concep- 
