The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

138 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

As the wordamonmeant“to conceal,”the priests discovered
in the god an embodiment of a mysterious and hidden force which
pervades and controls the universe, and of which the sun is as it
were the material organ. But such discoveries were the product
of a later day, when the true meaning of the name had been long
since forgotten, and Theban theology had become pantheistic.
What Amon really signified the priests did not know, nor are we
any wiser.
Amon was, however, the local god of Thebes, or rather of
Karnak, and he seems from the first to have been a sun-god. But
[149] he had a rival in the warrior deity Mentu of Hermonthis, who
also probably represented the sun. At any rate, Mentu had the
head of a hawk, and therefore must have been a local form of
Horus—of that Horus, namely, of whom the Pharaonic Egyptians
were the followers.^125 Like Horus, too, he was a fighting god,
and was accordingly identified in the texts of the Nineteenth
Dynasty with the Canaanitish Baal,“the Lord of hosts.”But he
was also incarnated in the sacred bull which was worshipped at
Erment, and of which I have spoken in an earlier lecture. He thus
differed from Amon, who was identified with the ram, the sacred
animal of the aboriginal population, not at Karnak only, but in
the whole of the surrounding district.^126
But Amon was usually of human form, with two lofty feathers
rising above his crown. Under the Theban dynasties he became
the supreme god, first of Egypt, then of the Egyptian empire.
All other gods had to give way before him, and to lose their
individuality in his. His supremacy began with the rise of the
Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties; it was checked for a moment by

(^125) Professor Wiedemann has suggested that the name of Men-tu or Mon-tu is
connected with that of A-mon. It is, however, more reasonable to associate it
with that of the Mentiu or Semitic nomads of the Sinaitic Peninsula.
(^126) Hence the ram-headed sphinxes that lined the roads leading to the temple
of Karnak. The flesh of the ram was tabooed at Thebes, an indication that the
animal was originally a totem (cf. Herod. ii. 42).