Temple at Abu Simbel. Nothing seemed to prevent
African religious leaders from exploring all forms
of the sacred, and certainly if one examined the
record from the ancient times to the present times
in Africa this would seem to be the case. Altars
could be erected, and were erected, where the
people believed the sacred to be most manifest.
Molefi Kete AsanteSee alsoOffering
Further Readings
Asante, M. K. (2007).The History of Africa. London:
Routledge.
Asante, M. K., & Nwadiora, E. (2007).Spear Masters.
Lanham, MD: University Press of America.
AMEN
Amen (sometimes spelled Amun) is the name of
one of the principal supreme deities of ancient
Egypt. Alongside Ptah, Atum, and Ra, Amen is
considered one of the central deities in the history
of the Nile Valley civilization. Few deities have
had as long a reign in the human imagination as
Amen. Indeed, reverberations of the ancient
African name can be found in the Jewish, Islamic,
and Christian religions as each religious group
ends its prayers in the name of Amen. This entry
looks at the god and then describes his influence
in the New Kingdom.
Name and RepresentationThe origin of Amen is lost in antiquity. However,
Amen is one of the ancient Egyptian gods because
we know he appears in some of the earliest texts.
During the 5th dynasty, Amen was considered a
primeval God within the Pyramid Texts. These
were the texts written on the walls of some of
the 100 pyramids in Egypt. It is written in the
Pyramid Textsthat ascending into the sky, the per
aa (pharaoh in Hebrew) would, as the son of Geb,
sit “upon the throne of Amen.”
Even then, Amen was different in a sense from
the other deities in the fact that there was little
information about him. He was often described as
hidden, an unseen creative power central in the
Egyptian myth of world creation. Although the
name “Amen” means “hidden” and “unknown,”
this has not prevented human beings from seeking
to make representations of the great god.
Although it is true that the name suggests conceal-
ment, it could also mean invisible, hence Amen is
the invisible force that permeates the sky, the
Earth, and human beings and demonstrates his
universality by concealing his true identity behind
an epithet that means “hidden.” The ancient
Africans in the Nile Valley referred to Amen as
“asha renu” meaning “rich in names.”
The name Amen means “the hidden one” or
“the unknown one” in the ancient MdwNt_r, the
divine language of ancient Egypt. It is a meaning
that accompanied the name down the centuries.
When people say the name Amen, they are pro-
nouncing the most enduring name of a deity on
Earth. Worshipped as the power that stood behind
the achievements of the mightiest warriors of
antiquity such as Senursert, Thutmoses III, and
Rameses II, Amen takes his place as the war god
par excellence. But more so, because of the
numerous offerings made in his name in the Nile
Valley, Amen is the name most revered by the
ancient priests of Egypt.
Representations of Amen in an anthropomor-
phic sense suggest a figure like a king. He often
appears wearing a crown consisting of two high
plumes. Each feather is divided vertically in two
sections and horizontally in seven sections.
Indeed, other representations of Amen show him
as a man seated on a throne holding a scepter as a
symbol of life, as a man with the head of a frog,
as a man with the head of a uraeus, as an ape, or
as a lion on a pedestal. Sometimes Amen is seen as
a man with an erect phallus. His sacred animals
are the ram with curved horns and the Nile
Goose; both are animals associated with the
creative or procreative energies of the universe.
The greatest temples of Amen seem to have
been at Waset in Upper Egypt and at Gebel Barkal
in Nubia. Here the living god was worshipped
alongside his consort Mut and the child Khonsu,
giving us the trinity of deities that were based on
the original idea of Ausar, Auset, and Heru. In the
processional road to Amen’s temple stood crio-
sphinxes, ram-headed lions, each one with anAmen 37