The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

140 The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia

In the Theban period, accordingly, Amon is no longer a simple
god. He is Amon-Ra, to whom all the attributes of Ra have been
[151] transferred. The solar element is predominant in his character;
and, since the other gods of the country are but subordinate forms
of Amon, in their characters also. Most of the religious literature
of Egypt which we possess belongs to the Theban period or is
derived from it; it is not astonishing, therefore, if Egyptologists
have been inclined to see the sun-god everywhere in Egyptian
theology.
The Theban trinity was modelled on the orthodox lines. Mut,
“the mother,”a local epithet of the goddess of Southern Egypt,
was made the wife of Amon, while Khonsu, a local moon-god,
became his son. But in acquiring this relationship Khonsu lost
his original nature.^127 Since the divine son was one with his
divine father, he too became a sun-god, with the solar disc and
the hawk's head. As the designer of architectural plans, however,
he still preserved a reminiscence of his primal character. But he
was eventually superseded by Mentu, a result of the decadence
of Thebes and the rise of Erment to the headship of the nome. It
is needless to say that Mentu had long before become Mentu-Ra.
We can trace the evolution of Amon, thanks to the multiplicity
of the texts which belong to the period when his city was supreme.
We can watch him as he rises slowly from the position of an
obscure provincial deity to that of the supreme god of all Egypt,
and can follow the causes which brought it about. We can see
him uniting himself with the sun-god, and then absorbing the
rest of the Egyptian gods into himself. The theological thought,
of which he was the subject and centre, gradually but inexorably
passes from a narrow form of polytheism into a materialistic
pantheism. There, however, it ends. It never advances further
[152] into a monotheism in which the creator is separate from his
creation. With all its spirituality, the Egyptian conception of

(^127) A stela of AntefIV.{FNS, found by M. Legrain in 1900, shows that Khonsu
was preceded by Pta%as the third member of the trinity. See above, p. 90.