Ancient Egyptian Religion: The Nature of the Monistic Cosmovision

ENRIQUE LUCO CONTESTIN
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION
The nature of the Ancient Egyptian cosmovision
Centro de estudios del Egipto
y del Mediterráneo Oriental - CEEMO

This interpretation essay intends to investigate the nature of the Egyptian
cosmotheology that underlies the theological discourse of the priestly texts of all
ages. We turn to the notion of the Egyptian demiurge as: “The one in the multiple”,
that we consider to be proper to the Egyptian monism of all its historical eras, which
contrasts with the cosmovision of the dualistic classical philosophy which poses a
different vision of the universe than the classical one that can be summed up in the
phrase: “The one and the multiple”; summary of an entire equivocal position with
regard to the Egyptian cosmovision, based on assigning an implicit platonic dualist
worldview. This situation is exacerbated by a radical difference, not always assumed,
founded in the contrast between the Egyptian inclusive multipurpose logic and the
western a disjunctive causal logic that flies over the interpretations of Egyptian
religion. What is striking in this cosmovision is that it presents a radicalized
immanentist ontology and transnatural significance of the demiurge, synthesizable
as a single substance; a single attribute of an eternal living one divided as their ways
and forms in the cosmos; a single ontology. One of their core foundations is the
concept of transformation–emanation as an expression of the demiurge and its
creation that poses an ontological continuum without rupture characteristic of this
cosmotheology and their religiosity. This essay is the attempt to revalue a paradigm
of interpretation of the ancient Egyptian religious cosmovision, the monistic or
unitarian cosmovision and its derivations, drafted in the 1980s by Nordic
Egyptologists -Symposia of Uppsala (1987) and Bergen (1988)- and that projects the
scholar to a divergent perception of the Egyptian experience of the sacred in respect
of the interpretations currently in vogue.
Key words: Egyptology; Symbolic Anthropology; Egyptian Religion; Geertz; Atum; cosmovision;
Morentz; sekhem; Deleuze, monism, Englund; emanation; Sorensen; neheb-kau; homology; Troy;
non-metaphysical significance; Finnestad; summotheism; Empedocles; reciprocal conditionals.
CEEMO – Essay
Enrique Luco Contestin graduated Licenciado en Estudios Orientales at the
Universidad del Salvador - USAL in Buenos Aires, and is the initiator of
Egyptological Studies at the EEO. Since the 1980, he has been a professor of
the Historia de la Cultura Egipcia, and Religión y Filosofía Egipcia since 1986.
Currently, he is a tenured emeritus professor at the USAL - Escuela de Estudios
Orientales. He is a founding member, and of the CD, and a researcher at the
Centro de Estudios del Egipto y del Mediterráneo Oriental – CEEMO. He is a
full member of the International Association of Egyptologists –AIE

I sb
Ancient Egyptian Religion
English translation
Marcelo Mazía

Enrique Luco Contestin
ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION
The Nature of the Ancient Egyptian Cosmovision
An interpretation essay
Professor Emeritus in Religión y Filosofía Egipcia
Universidad del Salvador - USAL
Facultad de Filosofía, Letras y Estudios Orientales - EEO
Centro de Estudios del Egipto y del Mediterráneo Oriental.
CEEMO

Luco Contestin, Enrique Jorge
Ancient Egyptian Religion : The nature of the Ancient Egyptian cosmovision / Enrique Jorge Luco
Contestin. - 1a ed. - Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires : Enrique Jorge Luco Contestin, 2022.
DVD-ROM, PDF
Traducción de : Marcelo Mazía.
ISBN 978-987-88-4588-3
1. Antropología. 2. Cosmovisión. I. Mazía, Marcelo, trad. II. Título.
CDD 306.6
© Enrique Jorge Luco Contestin, [ejluco@gmail.com]
Original title in Spanish: La Religión del Antiguo Egipto, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
1° Edición en Español, Mayo 2020.
COVER IMAGE
Justified Sennefer holds the Sekhem scepter in his right hand
which represents the power of divine life.
Here it indicates that the deceased is in possession
of all the life capacities of him in the underword.
after the judgment of Osiris.
New Kingdom, din XVIII-XIX
All rights reserved for all countries. The total or partial reproduction of this work, nor its transmission or reproduction
in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying or other formats without the permission of the
publisher is not permitted. The infraction is penalized by laws 11,723 and 25,446.

CENTRO DE ESTUDIOS DEL EGIPTO Y DEL MEDITERRÁNEO
ORIENTAL - CEEMO
COMISIÓN DIRECTIVA
Presidente: Prof. Javier M. Paysás
Vicepresidente: Dr. Ernesto R. Quiroga Vergara
Secretario: Lic. Enrique J. Luco Contestin
Tesorero: Sr. Emilio Contartesi
Protesorero: Lic. Raúl Franco
Vocales: Abg. Diego M. Santos – Prof. Juan V. Estigarribia
Vocal suplente: Anl. Prog. Martha Torres
Miembros Fundadores (In memoriam)
Prof. Celia E. Bibé – Prof. Estela Biondi
Comisión Revisora de Cuentas:
Titular: Lic. Andrea Remete
Suplente: Lic. Susana Romero

COMMON ABBREVIATIONS
AK – Ancient Kingdom
BD – Book of the Dead
CT – Coffins Texts
MK – Middle Kingdom
NK – New Kingdom
PT – Piramid Texts

To spread something is to open paths,
to question it is to open conscience

In memoriam
Dr. Ismael Quiles S.I.
Founder of the Universidad del Salvador
and the Escuela de Estudios Orientales.
My teacher

I dedicate this essay to my daughter Sofia, companion since her childhood in the
fascination that Egypt exerts on me, and especially to my wife Ana who has
accompanied me since our youth in this adventure that is Egypt; she always
encouraged me to writethis essay and also with her advice on anthropological theory.
And also the Teacher Celia Bibé,
lifelong fellow student.
Dr. Siegfried Morentz, his writings were and are
a permanent source of inspiration.
I want to thank my colleagues and friends, the professors and researchers at
CEEMO, Susana Romero and Ernesto Quiroga Vergara for their dedication in
reading this essay, and particularly Juan Estigarribia who devoted his time to reading
this study and put at my disposal his vast knowledge of Egyptian culture with wise
advice.
Also my acknowledgment and special gratitude to Professor Javier Paysás, EEO-
USAL and CEEMO, who with infinite patience read the Egyptological and style
contents of the preliminary studies; certainly a chiaroscuro in his beginnings, its
advice was of great value for the development of this essay. I cannot fail to mention
my appreciation to Professor Diego Santos, UBA, UNIPE and CEEMO, who
verified the transliterated and translated texts in this essay and for providing me with
the article The Book of Snakes, from the tomb of Iufaa at Abusir, which corroborates
in good part of the invariable serpentine nature of the demiurge proposed in this
essay; his technical and linguistic suggestions were invaluable. My renewed gratitude
to Professor Javier Paysás, who has dedicated his time to reading these pages in
English.
I extend my gratitude to Dr. Carlos Rúa, director of the EEO, for his patience with
my arguments about Egyptian culture, a distant subject from Sinology but to whom
Egypt is also attracted. To Dr. Bernardo Nante, dean of the Facultad de Filosofía,
Letras y Estudios Orientales, USAL-EEO, for his interest in this project from the
beginning.
Thank you all.

Note to the Reader
Considering that the Egyptian language is part of the Afro-asiatic stock, which introduced writing without
vowel support and that we do not know its exact pronunciation, in this study, we annotate the words and
phrases of that origin with the scientific transliteration that includes only the consonants and
semiconsonants. Below we place the technical transcription with a vowel "e" between consonants, according
to standards accepted by academic Egyptology, with the sole purpose of facilitating the reader who does
not know the ancient Egyptian language, a technical vocalization that allows a bearable reading of this study.
It is necessary to make it clear that the vocalizations thus obtained are artificial and have no relation to
ancient Egyptian language. Also, we note that the reference bibliography is cited according to the Chicago
standards, with certain modifications, for reasons of economy of editing space. Finally, the attentive reader
will notice that some words of the Egyptian texts translated into Inglish are in italics. We warn that it is a
resource of ours, to highlight the relationship of its meaning with the affirmations that we make in this
essay; they should not be taken as part of the original translation of said texts, under any circumstances.

1
CONTENTS
Preface 2
FIRST PART. The cosmovision: an approach to the religious
thought of the ancient Egyptian culture.
1. Introduction 6
2. Approach to the concept of cosmovision 8
3. The Egyptian cosmovision 10
4. The cosmovision properties 13
5. Some methodological assumptions 16
6. Egyptian beliefs as a religious system 17
7. The study of Egyptian religious thought and its conditions 18
Addendum: The ontological-theological component in the ancient Egyptian cosmovision 20
SECOND PART. Homology and complementarity: nature and
attribute of the divine in the monistic cosmovision of Ancient Egypt.
Section 1 24
Section 2 35
Section 3 46
Section 4 59
Section 5 63
Section 6 89
Section 7 102
Section 8 109
Section 9 Some reflections by way of synthesis 127
PART THREE. Epilogue. 137
Colophon 145
Index of illustrations 146
Bibliography 147
The author 156

2
Preface
The goal is to reach conclusions, starting
of small facts but of dense texture,
and lend support to general statements.
C. Geertz
To study the religious experience of Pharaonic Egypt is to try to approach
the interpretation of its cosmovision from the values of its own conception of
the world, understanding this thought as an original and unrepeatable cultural
construction of Egyptian society, matured in a long-term temporality. In simple
words, with this essay we try to unravel the profound meaning of the ancient
Egyptian religious cosmovision, made explicit in the theological, liturgical and
wisdom texts that supported it. These are presented to us unclear in their
meaning because they are usually commented on from a dualistic cosmovision
and a disjunctive causal logic typical of our classical cultural heritage, which
prevents us from attributing their own meanings, and without filters coming
from our interpretation of the divine, the cosmos and humanity.
With these principles in mind, this interpretation essay aims to investigate
the conceptualization of the Egyptian cosmovision that underlies the
theological discourse of the priestly texts of all its times. We resort to the notion
of the Egyptian demiurge as: "The one in the many", which we consider to be
typical of Egyptian monism of all its historical periods and which contrasts with
the cosmovision of classical dualistic philosophy that poses a vision of the
universe that can be synthesized in the phrase: "The one and the many". This
disjunctive phrase sums up an entire equivocal position regarding the
interpretation of the Egyptian cosmovision, by implicitly assigning it the
dualistic cosmovision of classical philosophy.
It is important to note that this essay constitutes an attempt to revalue a
paradigm of interpretation of the Egyptian religious cosmovision, monism,
which is not new and which poses to the scholar a divergent perception of the
Egyptian experience of the sacred, with respect to what is currently in force. In
this study I also intend to recover the contributions of the distinguished Dr.
Siegfried Morentz, particularly that of consubstantiality, which he brilliantly
developed in his work La Religion Égyptienne – essai d'interprétation, a

3
definition that implicitly implies the concept of monism although without
mentioning it. Dr. Morentz's thesis on the nature of the Egyptian divine is
complemented by the original contributions of the participants in the Symposia
of Uppsala (1987) and Bergen (1988), who explicitly introduce the concept of
cosmo-anthropological-theological monism. In those conferences, Dr. Gertie
Englund introduces him to what she calls a totalizing conception of the world
and attributes homologies to be the core of the logic of the Egyptian system of
thought. Dr. Bjerre Finnestad outlines the same theme, but from an ontological
context, by posing the problem of Egyptian logic, inflection in the innovative
and accurate proposal of the lack of essential ontological separation between
being, things and existences with a marked biological character as a unifying
factor. These concepts naturally complement each other with Dr. Lana Troy's
studies on the theological work of the priesthood. She calls the “reduction
formula” of the multiple to the One that defines them as “homologous
prototypes” and categorizes them admirably. She confirms that the reduction
of the multiple to the One was one of the methods of theological elaboration
of the Egyptian priesthood; that implied the concept of homology and that in
fact is opposed to the analogies of philosophy and theology of the Western
world.
I do not want to fail to mention the beneficial influence of the prolific Dr.
Jan Assmann, very present throughout the essay, and I particularly highlight his
fine interpretation of Amarna theology and later Ramesside Summodeism. But
it is also worth noting the essential and positive influence on this essay of the
contemporary writer and philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and his rigorous
interpretation of Spinoza's ontological thought, which gave me part of the
intellectual support to articulate, in a coherent whole, the loose threads of
cosmotheism. Egyptian monism. His work allows me to present a believable,
though hopelessly incomplete canvas of this very particular culture, foreign to
Western thought. I must reveal that, without the contributions of Espinosa's
philosophy through the profound Deleuzian gaze, the realization of this work
would have been impossible.
But it is important to express that these distinguished authors have formed
the core of my interpretation of this religious experience for quite some time.
His works constitute the basic bibliography -among many others- of the
program of the chair "Egyptian Religion and Philosophy" of the School of
Oriental Studies of the University of Salvador, of which I am currently a
consulting professor and have been a professor for the last twenty five years

4
. All of them made it possible for me to form an alternative interpretation to
the conventional ones, which qualify the religious experience in various ways:
monotheism, monolatry, henotheism, polytheism, pantheism, among others
that are crowded in the academic bibliography. Sometimes we are presented
with several interpretations the same title charging this religious cosmovision
with ambiguity.
This essay, in the context outlined so far, constitutes a low-level theory of
culture, since the descriptions and affirmations that we will make are theoretical
and do not intend to reconstruct or clone the original cosmovision, the object
of interpretation, in our study case, on the nature of the religious cosmovision
of Ancient Egypt (Geertz, c.1). This affirmation implies recognizing that no
hermeneutics is definitive, that the questions we ask ourselves are more
important than the answers we give, always provisional (Ciurana, 26 ss.).
In conclusion to these words addressed to the unsuspecting reader, I point
out that this essay is an open and inconclusive study, which only intends to
bring the most comprehensive and systematic approach to the complex
cosmovision and ancient Egyptian religiosity, to expose it, in the most
comprehensive way, possible, that is, thematized and, as far as possible,
highlight its nature. This is nothing other than the attempt to try a description
and transfer to our gnoseological system the cosmo-religious thought of the
ancient Egyptian culture, considered as a whole from its first written
testimonies until its disappearance (Braudel, c. 1 - iii). Thus, this essay intends
to glimpse the deep meaning of life proposed by the Egyptian cosmovision, in
its most permanent founding principles, for the society of ancient Egypt in its
complex, tumultuous and long duration.
Completed in Buenos Aires, May 2020.
֍

5
FIRST PART
THE COSMOVISION
Souls and Shadows greet the demiurge - light.
Tausert Tomb - 19th Dynasty

6
The cosmovision: an approach to the religious thought
of the ancient egyptian culture
Cosmovision is the portrait of the way things
are in their sheer effectiveness, their conception
of nature, of the person, of society.
C. Geertz
1. Introduction.
The concept of cosmovision, which we intend to introduce in the studies of
Egyptian religion, as a methodological framework for approaching its study, is
typical of cultural anthropology and especially of the ethnography of culture
[Geertz, c. 1]. It refers to the multiple and complex forms of "apprehension of
the world" that human societies enunciate in their cultural diversity. [Cervelló,
c. 1 int.]. This concept encompasses the totality of the social experience of any
culture, both in its tangible and intangible aspects [1.- Assmann, c. 1], and it can
be defined as a complex system of social experiences, due to the multiple edges
that penetrate and articulate the cultural expressions of societies [Geertz, c. 1]
and that mark their particular identity. Also Braudel, from historical studies,
raised something of similar importance but more restricted to his concept of
"mental tools", language [Braudel, c. I and II] and other categories of social
analysis, that are the sustaining core of the cultural identity of any society.
The study on the nature of religious beliefs and ancient Egyptian religiosity
was reconsidered, in the second half of the 20th century at the Uppsala and
Bergen Symposiums, with a bias of renewed interpretation, different from the
conventional proposals of this cultural problem in the field of Egyptology. In
these meetings, the concepts of bionatural cosmological monism and
cosmovision were given relevance for their elucidation, among others referring
to the logic of this thought [Pedermann Sorensen and Finnestad, 1989, int. and
alii. / Ferrater Mora, 287]. These two concepts - monism and cosmovision - are
the conceptual frame of this work of interpretation. All the social disciplines to
which we refer are bound to unravel, with different methodologies, the religious
thought and the perception of the world of societies and cultures, addressing
their religious thought and logic that are characteristic of them.

7
[Geertz, c. 1]. In this essay we make Geertz's concept of "cosmovision" our
own: "The ethos of a culture is the tone, character, quality, and style of its moral and
aesthetic life, the disposition of its mind, the underlying attitude that a people has before
itself and before the world. His "cosmovision" is the portrait of the way things are, in their
pure effectiveness, his conception of nature, of the person, of society" [Geertz in Reinoso,
p. 3]. Thus we try to enter the center of the thought about the divine in the
religion of Ancient Egypt. We will do so respecting, at all times, the non-
Aristotelian logic that is its own, as the central reference of our reflections given
that, according to Finnestad, Professor Hornung in his studies the egyptian
logic: “abrogates the logical ‘yes – no’, alternative and presupposition of a ‘non-
Aristotelian’ logic: ‘a given X can be A and not A and can be not-A: tertium datur (5).
Hornung view on this matter differs from evolutionary theories about ‘primitive thought’,
which quantum physics refers to as a modern example of a field dealing with paradoxical
phenomena that are held in high esteem by this logic.” (6) [Finnestad, 29-
30].Furthermore: U. Benner pointed out that the problem is really more
complex and can be expressed as follows: “X can be A and not be A, but if X can be
A and B, and this is not incompatible with Aristotelian logic, that is to say that X it can be
B, but that X cannot be said to be A and B and not A and B at the same time’”. [Finnestad,
note 5 and 6]. In general, we can affirm that Egyptian logic is polyvalent and
inclusive, different from our Aristotelian causal and disjunctive deductive logic,
inherited from the classical world. This definition of Egyptian logic will be the
general framework and the thelos of our interpretation of the nature of the
ancient Egyptian religious reflection.
The complexity of the Egyptian religious thought -unitas multiplex- is of
such magnitude that it deserves to strip us, in some way, of the principle of the
Aristotelian excluded third in the interpretation of its cultural and symbolic
universe, to avoid the simplification that produces the fragmentation of classical
logic in its treatment. Because, in a certain way, the whole is included in the parts, and
the parts are included in the whole, as the guiding principle of the theological
speculation of the Egyptian priesthood in all its epochs. It can be affirmed that
the part, no matter how small it may be in the Egyptian cosmovision, could be
taken to a universal level and suitable for interpreting the whole [Gadamer; pp.
360-61]. Therefore, it is about weakening classical logic as a principle of
interpretation, by an articulating-integrating look, rather than replacing it, if we
want to understand the complex processes of this cultural entity and this
cosmological thought, so alien to our perspective of the world.
If we consider the preceding statements, the Egyptian cosmovision, as a
cultural expression, conveys the experiences, social and symbolic relationships

8
shared by society. They are doctrines and systems of thought transmitted from
age to age, encompassing the entire spectrum of its social history. This is made
visible in their sacred texts and institutions, which transcend their historical eras
and periods. They go through them and give a sense of continuity and identity
to their bearers at each historical moment [1- Assmann, c. 4-7]. They are beliefs
and knowledge, useful behaviors and artifacts that, as a people, they share in all
their social strata, [Braudel, c. III] delimiting and articulating a subjective vision
-a cosmovision– of the world, which is a factor of differentiation and originality
with respect to other societies and cultural systems [Piulats, c.1].
2.- Approach to the concept of cosmovision.
Without culture there would be no human beings.
C. Geertz
It is important to clarify that the Egyptian religion –the cosmovision- is the
core of the cultural “identity” and the common thread of Egyptian society in
its long historical evolution [4.- Assmann / 1 Bilolo, 2-3]. Therefore, to
understand this culture in global terms, it is necessary to identify its founding
cosmotheological nuclei, in order to try to capture its complex “singularity”,
which differentiates it from other cultural expressions [Finnestad, 3-4]. To
achieve this goal, it is important to identify and examine the core concepts that
are resistant to change and relate their modifications, which are slow over time
[Hornung, c. 5, excursus].
The study of these components must be understood in the context of "Long
Duration processes" [Braudel, c. 3] that: “it is neither of a certain economy nor a
certain society, but what persists through a series of economies and societies and what
is barely allowed to be diverted” [Braudel, c. 3, 42]. They are those most resistant
elements of a culture, -its hard core-, which change very slowly; it is their
religious beliefs and doctrines, and their cosmological systems derived from
them, which are present in all their epochs. Sometimes, identical to themselves
and other times, subtly mutated or reinterpreted, according to their historical
vicissitudes [1.-Assmann, c. 8].
The concept of cosmovision that we support in this essay, from the
perspective of "long-term processes", is very close to what Braudel calls "the
mentality of a culture", and is what: "...distinguishes them best, is this set of core
values of psychological structures. These mentalities are also insensitive to the passage

9
of time. They vary slowly, only transform after long incubations…” [Braudel, c. 2, 32].
Therefore, this religious experience must be approached in a systematic way,
using appropriate methods of interpretation and thematization [2- Bilolo, I–II],
to penetrate the vision of the world, -cosmovision-, built by the Egyptian
society in its three thousand years of history. We understand the culture of a
people, in this case the Ancient Egypt, as: “a set of texts that anthropologists strive
to read over the shoulders of those to whom these texts properly belong. For this, it is
necessary to try to look at these symbolic systems as forms ´that say something about
something, and say it to someone´” [Geertz in Reinoso, p. 4], “societies contain within
themselves their own interpretations; the only thing that is needed is to learn how to
access them” [Reinoso, 4].
If we look at the religious sources available to the scholar, we notice that
there are five intimately interconnected nuclear rituals [Morentz, c. x]. These
structure the deep thought of Egyptian society and validate its vision of the
universe, organized around a monarchy considered divine, both because of its
pre-existence in the cosmos and because of its presence in the cosmos itself,
and which, like an axis-mundi, traverses and articulates all the periods of
Egyptian culture [Cervelló, c. iii/ 1. Frankfort, part I].
The originality of the Egyptian cosmovision was explicitly stated as a
doctrine of the divinity of the monarch, in the Pyramid Texts, and was never
abandoned, despite its dogmatic variants from different times. We transcribe it
because of its importance, decisive in the formulation of the divine monarchy
and the Egyptian theocratic state, which is a watershed at the moment of
interpreting this cosmo-religion and clearly differentiating it from other cultural
experiences of the sacred;
… The king was formed by his father Atum
before the sky existed,
before the earth existed,
before humanity existed,
before the Netjeru (nTr.w) were born,
before death existed...
PT 1466, 1-Allen.
The five rituals mentioned that reinforce this belief and justify the purpose
and finality of the humanity, both in its installation in the world and in its
passage through it, which is the core of its thelos, are: 1- The ritual of divine birth
of the monarch, 2- The coronation ritual of the monarch, 3- The “Sed” ritual,
of recovery of energy of life and power; 4- The daily ritual of preservation

10
of life, 5- The funerary ritual [1- Frankfort, Part III]. All of them have in
common the purpose of promoting "life", hand in hand with a ruler, precious
of total divinity, guarantor of the generation and preservation of it, of its land
maintenance [Anthes, 145 /Morentz, c. vi] and, finally, of its circulation from
the visible terrestrial dimension to the invisible dimension of the cosmos [2.-
Assmann., c. 3]. The study of Maat as a rule of order that justifies the circulation
of life from the visible and tangible dimension of the cosmos to its invisible and
intangible dimension is central. In short, Maat bases the permanent passage of
life and its multiple forms, from the natural dimension to the transnatural or
“hidden” dimension, the ineffable realm of the One sacred [3 - Assmann, c. iii–
iv].
The incidence of the holy festival as a social articulator and collective
participation in the sacred, surrounds the Egyptian as an impalpable mesh of
the sacred, which surrounds him and governs his existence from its beginning
to its end and justifies its continuation in the invisible dimension of the cosmos.
[1- Assmann, c 1, 32 and ss. / 1- Rosenvasser, 2]. At this point, it is imperative
to affirm the importance of written language, central to the rituals mentioned,
for being the articulator of thought as "mental tools" [Braudel, c. 2] and a means
to convey the “cosmovision” of Egyptian culture. In other words: writing is
one of the systems of organization, interpretation and adaptation of society to
the surrounding universe, in all spheres of social and cultural life. For the study
of Egyptian religion, language is decisive for the constant canonization of
religious, cosmological and sociopolitical concepts, which made them resistant
to rapid changes, fixing the mentality, cultural and religious identity of Egyptian
society [1. - Assmann, c. 4-6].
3. - The Egyptian cosmovision.
“Societies contain within themselves their
own interpretations, all that is needed
is to learn how to access them”
C.J. Reinoso
The cosmovision is nothing more than the constellation of inherited beliefs,
values and ways of proceeding, it is the result of complex historical processes.
It is a system of symbols, some historically constructed and internalized
individually by the members of a social group, and applied socially as a means

11
of cohesion that constitutes it as a socialized group with its own identity. We
call this “tradition” or “cultural memory”, which is not a superstructural
ornament, but the human condition in its fullness.
This constellation, in the Egyptian case, is expressed in a double dimension
[1-Englund; 8]. The visible -tangible culture-, rich in codified forms of
production, such as literary and architectural ones of all kinds, which are the
tangible emergent of a particular vision of the universe [Guideon, 251-280 and
304-321]. The invisible dimension of society -intangible culture- [1.-Asmann, c.
1] that brings together the basic and resistant components of the "cosmovision"
of this culture. It is presented to us in religious, cosmological, moral, ethical and
legal beliefs expressed in canonized doctrines, which justify the actions of
society and its individuals in the world.
Many of these cultural traits -both visible and intangible- are what guide
societies to know how to "interpret and be in the world" and, especially, how
to "live the world" [Laveque, 4-5- 8], expounded in the wisdom texts of all ages.
They are shared, to a greater or lesser degree and in different dimensions, with
other cultural groups. Sometimes, they are related by a common origin or by
simple geographical contiguity. Others, more broadly, because they are part of
archetypal forms of the collective unconscious of humanity.
But some of these traits are more complex, underlying forms or patterns –
archetypes- of repetitive images and symbols, which appear in different ways in
all societies and which represent the collective unconscious that all human
beings share, regardless of each culture. It is what we commonly designate as
“the human condition”. The implicit concept of "archetype" that we use is
opposed to the notion of Platonic "idea", although they may seem close to us,
because ours belongs exclusively to the sphere of human nature, and the
Platonic, to the sphere of speculation of the divine [Scrimieri Martin, part 2 and
3].
Therefore, we will proceed with caution, avoiding seeking relationships by
simple analogy between cultures by basing ourselves on some isolated traits,
similar or common to human nature, which can be misleading and lead to gross
confusion of interpretation. [Cervelló, c. 1]. Thus, we renounce to any
intercultural comparison where everything is mixed and the institutions lose
their local color, and the documents, their deep significance. Both are
decontextualized and installed in the ambiguity of cultural relativism.
The cosmovision, in addition to everything already mentioned, constitutes a
set of beliefs that a person or a group has by inheritance about its reality, and
constitutes a set of complex presuppositions, which a group receives from its

12
ancestors, assumes and practices, explains in doctrines, rites and paradigmatic
texts of wisdom, and transmits them to their offspring for their particular
immersion in the natural environment. The cosmovision as a model explains to
the society that supports it, how the natural and social cosmos works, guiding
nd justifying personal and collective behavior, indicating how this reality should
be assumed in mutual reciprocities, most of the time, canonized as sacred model
behavior of the past and, therefore, indubitable and necessarily repeatable [4.-
Assmann, c. i / Mauss, part I, c. 3 and 4].
In the case of Egypt, these presuppositions are not western-style
philosophical or scientific constructs [Morentz, c. viii]. Egyptian culture is not
the result of the reflections of a group of select sages who impose on society a
way of interpreting the world, but quite the opposite. They are experiences of
the sacred and collective customs that find, in ritual and doctrine, the ideal
means for the canonization of their subjectivity, carried out and managed by a
college of expert priests [1.-Assmann, c. 4]. In short, the cosmovision is the
means that the Egyptian culture has to perceive, interpret and explain the world.
It is not simply an intellectual conceptualization but, rather, an experiential
dimension of collective participation of all social classes, administered by a
college of expert priests. [Morentz, c. v].
The cosmovision of a society guides the person to respond, from cultural
subjectivity, to the questions that everyone asks: What is real? What makes
things be or exist? What is divinity or only sacred nature? What is the truth?
What is the human being? What happens when you die and after? How should
we live? [4.- Assmann, c. 1] among other questions that all societies ask
themselves in relation to the precariousness and finitude of the human
condition, and they are the ones that we should try to answer from an academic
perspective. As can be seen, the questions that the scholar must ask allude to
the profound nature of the person immersed in society and its culture. In our
particular case, the Egyptian, understanding that: “problems, being existential,
are universal; their solutions, being human, are diverse” [Geertz in Reinoso, 4].
These answers must be sought in their symbolic elements that are resistant
to change, in dense and concentrated descriptions, in small points that can be
universalized due to their centrality [Geertz. c., 1], and which encompass wide
temporal spaces. Practically, we refer to the total duration of this system of
thought until its extinction as a culture that is, treated as a whole and almost
from a methodological perspective close to Frankfort-Morentz-Braudel

13
[Cervelló, int.].
We are not satisfied with the mere description of our object of reflection and
its particular temporal inflection. As an example, we can say that we are
interested in knowing "what" they mean in their polysemic complexity, both
sacred texts and funerary monuments, as ceremonial centers. Unveil "what"
they mean, in their own cosmovision, the beliefs conveyed by the sacred texts
and “what” is put into play in the performance of divine liturgies or funerary
rituals [Goyon, c. 1 and 2 / Giedion, 103-109 and 317-321].
We are interested in trying to dwell on the centrality of our object of
reflection, and the words we take from Goethe are a clear explanation of our
proposed approach to the cosmovision of Ancient Egypt:
How, when, where? The gods remain silent!
You pay attention to because and don't ask why.
W. Goethe, Sentences,
Lavapeur, 129.
In other words, we are interested in avoiding questions that allude,
excessively, to the Greek tekné, to "how", since, according to our criteria, it does
not solve the possibility of penetrating deep Egyptian thought, and by way of
example, accessing the multiple meaning of funerary complexes as ceremonial
centers, only with the mere description of the monuments as an architectural
object [Giedion, 324-330 and 380-428]. The exclusive “how” alludes to a
diachronic axiality that can avoid the cultural meaning that arises from the
synchrony, for example, between the rites put into play in the liturgies and the
associated monuments, charging tangible heritage with meaning. So that the
mere course of something, whether phenomenon or event through time, does
not necessarily provide the answers of "what" they mean in their relational
complexity, which is what we intend to find, and that most of the time obscures
them with descriptions elliptical, recurrent or peripheral descriptions.
4. - The cosmovision properties.
The concept of cosmovision is complex, multivalent and reaffirms the
cultural uniqueness of the Egyptian civilization by a double distinction. The first
is an I-we as a cultural subject, which distinguishes one cultural-we from the
others–they as strangers, in individual terms and in collective participation
[Bastide, part I and II]. The other-them as otherness is, above all, a stranger–

14
personal and collective- that must be observed, prevented and conjured. Most
of the times it is perceived as a source of multiple dangers, distinguishable in
the rituals of execration of the enemies of Egypt [Wilson, c. x, 266 c], identified
with the evil entities that cause diseases, death and attack the mummified body
that must be preserved, especially the heart and genitals, from the assaults of
the malignant entities [Goyon, part iii c. 2, 255-256 / LM c. 27, 28, 29c, 30c].
But the presence of the strange has a positive face: the possibility of
understanding one's own cultural self-us, identifying one's own as supportive
neighbors, co-participants of the tangible and intangible social components,
inherited and shared from generation to generation [Cervelló, c. 1 int.]. The
relationship I – others reaffirms ties of cultural identity with one's own, which
are experienced by differentiation with the others-they perceived, socially and
culturally, as strangers and, therefore, different and dangerous [Moreno García,
c. 7, 267-280].
The use of the concept of cosmovision enables the specific view of a
particular aspect of a culture, without losing the appreciation of its complex
multiformity and universality, which must be accounted for. In other words,
the notion of cosmovision allows exploring the ways of being of the subjects
immersed in their culture, of their ways of perceiving and reading the
surrounding social and natural cosmos, where both are only parts of a dynamic
and complex unit that we call culture. , and that represents the world view as a
social construction for those who hold it. The cosmovision as a global concept
contains a constellation of specific ways of being, which allow us a perception
of the interiority of the Egyptian culture in central themes. We will mention
some, significant for our reflections:
- The cosmovision leads us to conceptualize how the people of a culture, the
Egyptian in our case, in their social interaction understood how and why events
occur, which enabled them to enunciate ethical and moral values in relation to
exemplary sacred events of their cultural heritage, considered models of
desirable and repeatable social procedures [Morentz, c. vi]. It allows us to
interpret the meaning of the geographical environment for the individuals of a
particular culture, -the environment as habitat and sacred space- and also, of
other humans, and things that are peripheral to them [Forde, int.]. The latter,
due to the differentiation of physical features, of different cultural, material and
symbolic forms, which enable the apprehension of the cultural identity studied.
- It enables us to access the conceptualization of time in that culture, providing

15
us with significant information about what they conceive of as time: cyclical or
linear; combined or processual; or multiple and simultaneous [Tobin, concl.].
Also, how they perceive the passage of time [McBride, c. 15]: if as past, present,
future or, simply, a perfect present of the sacred, totalizing, where past and
future have almost no real existence, they present themselves as the mere
anteriority and posteriority of a sacred and eternal present that subsumes
everything [2- Bilolo, c. 2].
- Temporality is manifested in the structure of the Egyptian language, which
emerges in the peculiar conformation of the existential verb [Gardiner, §107-
110] and the maturation of the perfect forms, which are its own until the
appearance of the imperfect verbal form or continues in Middle Kingdom
[Gardiner, § 67], marking an important inflection in the Egyptian cosmovision,
establishing a dialogical relationship between epochs, observable in sacred and
sapiential literature.
The cosmovision allows us to understand the Egyptian perception of the
cosmos as a system, which allows us to reason how they interpreted the physical
environment; either as subject or as object; its origin and constitution, its
spatialization process and its permanence. This implies the need to understand
its sacred and profane meanings -mountains, sea, far, near, much- and its
toponymy of terrestrial and celestial geography. Identifying the profound nature
of the universe makes it easier for us to understand how and in what framework
they externalize nature and the transnatural in their cosmo-religious
conceptions. [Naydler, c. 2]. This makes it possible to elucidate whether the
cosmos is constituted by a single substance or principle, -arche of the pre-
Socratic monist philosophers-, which encompasses everything in a
consubstantial totalizing "continuum" (monism) without ontological rupture,
or if it is constituted by two (dualism) or more substances or principles
(pluralism), that discontinue the universe and the entities that populate it
[Ferrater Mora, 287], establishing the latter a defined polytheistic religiosity.
Differential Cosmovisions:
The cosmovision pays attention to the differential perception of the cosmos
as a means of avoiding self-referential ethnocentrism, and it is what must be
taken into account when facing the study of Egyptian religion. We get it by

16
observing what the ancient Egyptians saw when looking at their surroundings:
things very different from our perception of the universe, which we will
exemplify with the following comparison:
OBSERVED THING WHAT WE SEE WHAT THE EGYPTIANS SAW
Daytime sky luminous sky space iron vault
Horus with outstretched wings
Nighttime sky sky with stars Nut unfurled
residence of the Netjeru (NTr.w),
pharaohs and justified
Earthquake tectonic plates the earth Ta (t3) moved
moving by Geb his Ba-soul (b3)
Diseases Natural causes transnatural causes
virus or bacteria an evil netjer
5.- Some methodological assumptions.
If culture is compared to a text, anthropology
should be understood as a hermeneutic,
as an attempt to understand the social expressions
that are enigmatic on the surface.
C. Geertz in Reinoso
The cognition shared by a society, which we define here as “cosmovision”,
is the culture. The behavior of a society is partially conditioned and limited by
the norms of interpretation -whether religious or philosophical- and of
valuations -political, ethical and legal- that culture provides to the society that
contains it to settle in the world. This partiality enables and justifies the cultural
changes that occur within them, in their historical evolution.
The cosmovision is constructed by the social experience of the culture, and
can be discerned by the ways in which its members speak, describe and explain
their vision of the world and of themselves. These ways of perceiving reality are
expressed in concepts and evaluations of themselves, which can be extracted
from written, monumental and archaeological sources, although certain texts of

17
the cultural heritage of Ancient Egypt could be treated as true oral testimonies,
contained in some examples of the biographical genre and of wisdom [Morentz,
c. x].
The interpretation of the Egyptian cosmovision, -in the terms that we
affirmed before-, implies an ethnography of the culture whose field passes in
the past time. It is a low level theory, since the descriptions and statements are
theoretical and do not intend to reconstruct or clone the original cosmovision
object of interpretation, in our case, the nature of the religious cosmovision of
Ancient Egypt [Geertz; c. 1]. Only a description based on a network of
meanings, images, metaphors and historical institutions, comprehensively
interpreted from its complex interiority/subjectivity, to expose it as fully as
possible. That is, thematized and modeled to highlight its nature, significance
and permanence over time [Costilla; 2 part]. It would be an explanation
translated into our epistemological categories of a culture that takes place in the
past, the primary object of Ethnohistory and also of the History of Religions.
The study of the Egyptian religion from this perspective is "emic", that is, it
tries to penetrate the point of view or cosmovision of the acting subject and
not the point of view of the observer. This methodological position excludes
the projection of the interpreter's self-referential values, an attitude commonly
designated as “ethnocentrism” [Geertz, c. 1]. People's experience should not be
stripped of the context that surrounds it. This form of approach is called a
holistic or systemic approach. In other words, when the Egyptian religion is
studied, the experience of the faithful is being studied, be it them the ruling and
priestly elites or the simple believer, because it is a shared experience.
6. - Egyptian beliefs as a religious system.
At this point in our discussion, we are in a position to affirm that Egyptian
beliefs about the sacred [Otto, c. 1 to 3], have the components that every belief
system must have to be considered a religion [Puech, foreword].
The first component is the intellectual, which is manifested in the complex
theological elaborations of all its historical periods, with the particularity that
each priestly college deepened an attribute of particular power, generally
identified with the dominant forces of the universe deposited in the Creator, to
show its omnipotent and totalizing nature. This existence is a dominating power
of the cosmos and of its secondary manifestations, identified as part of itself
[Piulats, c. 2]. This cosmovision generated a vast doctrinal and ritual

18
corpus [Morentz, c. v and x/ Molinero Polo, c. vi]. Sacred stories, mythical
cycles and liturgies that are characterized by descriptive detail in their detailed
iconographic and textual forms that have come down to us fragmentary, and
with great faults, caused, both by the disappearance of innumerable texts whose
past existence we know, as well as by the deliberate concealment, by the
priesthood, from the common people of that literature considered powerful.
The second component is the emotional one linked to the experience of the
sacred, originating in the feeling of annihilation and dependence that they
experienced with respect to those holy, powerful and dominant forces.
[Derchain, c. 1], which operated on the natural universe, the transnatural
universe and on themselves. They were conceived as an invisible presence that
permeated all created reality, powers that they tried to explain, placate and direct
through complex ritualism. These feelings originated a corpus of propitiatory
and piety rituals regarding the sacred, with the express purpose of establishing
a relationship with the invisible divinity [Morentz, c. iii], collaborate with the
maintenance of the natural order of creation, always threatened by the forces
of primordial chaos, and fight against evil; which is the expression of cosmic
disorder and the cause of death caused by the rebellious acts of humanity, by
marginalizing itself from divine designs. The consequence was the formulation
of an elaborate ethic, the Maat [2- Assmann, c ii, 1-2-3].
The third component is social reciprocity, the result of the maturation of this
complex and refined system of beliefs, which had its maximum expression in
the formulation of an ethic, the Maat, the alter ego of the demiurge [3- Assmann
/ Karenga, c. 5 and 7]. These rules articulated the relationships between men
through social and individual norms of high moral content. The obligations
towards society, the family and the person had their compensation, both in the
visible natural world and in the invisible transnatural universe or beyond [BD,
c. 125, 2-Faukner]. The compensation of living in Maat was the transcendence
by survival or immortality of the components [3- Assmann, J., III /1.-
Frankfort, c. 13] immaterial aspects of the person after death and rebirth and
permanence together with the Creator in the Duat, in his inner
dimension/space. [Naydler; c. 12 / Frankfort, c. 4]
7. - The study of the Egyptian religious thought and its
conditions.
The limitation in the study of the Egyptian religious cosmovision is the
impossibility of accessing, in a comprehensive and detailed way, its cosmo-
ontological conceptions, from the first stages of its formative and archaic

19
development [Wengrow, c. 9]. When we access this conception of the world,
we find it elaborated in a complex way [Morentz, c i], expressed in a
monumental literary-religious documentation, highly developed with respect to
its predynastic origins. I am referring to the corpus of the oldest religious texts
of humanity, the Texts of the Pyramids, -PT-, and support of the entire later
religious and liturgical system, which largely provides the bases for the
reflections of this interpretation essay. This belief system has its origins in the
Egyptian Neolithic, and its basic conformation is consolidated in protohistoric
times, in the final Gerzean period / Naqada III, approx. 3600-3000 BC
[Wengrow, c. 8 and 9 / Jiménez Serrano, c. 1 and 2 / Castillos]. In its later
development there are multiple, more complex reworkings, which occurred in
the Old Kingdom and in later historical times. They are based on very archaic
beliefs, to which we access very partially, through archaeological sources and
then through monumental sources, the Texts of the Pyramids -PT- among
others.
The PT were written on the inner walls of pyramids from the 5th to the 6th
dynasties [1 – Allen/Gideon, 301-324]. Many of their speeches date back to the
end of the protodynastic period and are the expression of an astral religiosity.
A second series of texts is the elaboration of the first Heliopolitan theological
speculation, referring to the non-solarised demiurge Atum, which takes place
early, probably, between the First Dynasty and the beginning of the Third,
finding their speeches encrypted in the PT. The latest theological elaboration is
the result of the triumph of solar theology, also Heliopolitan, from the
beginning of the III dynasty, made explicit in the PT. Non-solarized theological
texts are well preserved in Funerary Rituals from ancient and middle ages
[Goyon, part. 1 and 2].
The Pyramid Texts -PT- have been bequeathed to us by the funerary
monuments of the last dynasties of Ancient Times, in such a way that they
appear highly developed and, for us, confusedly mixed. Due to their diverse
origins, it is difficult to establish the chronology of certain texts and, therefore,
also makes them difficult to interpret and elucidate [1- Allen, c. int.]. This belief
system was enriching its textual heritage with subsequent theological
elaborations such as the Texts of the Coffins -TA- to which is added the Book
of the Dead -BD-, among other subsequent rituals and liturgies, formulated
during successive historical epochs, until its extinction as a religion in Roman
times [MacBride, part. iii].
One of the main characteristics of Egyptian religious beliefs, is that they
coexist in the internal structure of the doctrines of historical times, ancient

20
forms of Neolithic thought with the strong imprint of a Mesolithic pastoral
socioeconomic substrate [1.- Frankfort, c. 14] of large cattle breeders. This is
reflected in its iconographic forms and expressions of its sacred literature [1-
and 2.- Wendorf and Schild] perpetuated, in all its historical periods, [Brass] by
a complex symbology of its theocratic political system, -divine royalty- ,
articulated by a practical and concrete language, synthetic and descriptive, very
symbolic language [Cervelló, c iii/ Campagno, 33 ss.]. A language capable of
subtle scriptural combinations, which lacked any tendency to abstraction,
generating a polyvalent and holistic logic, very different from the causal logic
of the classical world, of which we are cultural heirs. This archaism was
maintained throughout the existence of the pharaonic culture, strengthened by
the peculiar conservatism regarding the permanent use of a language of
canonized images and symbols, complementary and non-contradictory for the
Egyptians that describe their religious thought and protect their sacredness
through textual canonization. [Tobin, int. – concl. / 1 -Assmann, c 1].
Modern studies seek to unravel the nature of this cosmo-religious thought,
appealing to conceptions that have been extensively studied by ethnography
and, in particular, Africanism. It was compared, during the first half of the 20th
century, with the religious systems of various ethnic groups of Nilotic origin,
from Lake Victoria and the upper Nile basin, on issues related to the function
of the ancestors in relation to the king, and their intimate link with agricultural
and livestock prosperity [1- Frankfort, c. 8 / Evans-Pritchard, c. 10–11]. The
Egyptian royalty, considered divine [Cervelló, iv-2], has in common, with some
current African populations, the belief in the divinity of the ruler and the
perception of a two-dimensional monistic universe, in a cosmological context
full of invisible entities, among other founding aspects of great socio-cultural
importance [Cervelló, c. i and ii / Naydler, c. 10-11/ Evans Pritchard, c. i, ii, iii,
ix].
Addendum. The ontological - theological unity in the ancient
Egyptian cosmovision
Whatever the method that is implemented to address the ancient Egyptian cosmovision, it is
necessary to admit that the ways of interpreting the ordering of that cultural universe, are
limited to a restricted number of possibilities and it is of vital importance to identify the
cosmovision of this society and its possible secondary combinations. All societies have some
specific way of perceiving the sacred or numinous in the immediate environment, and

21
interpreting it as part of the universe and of each person, within the framework of their
cultural subjectivity, and the ancient Egyptians were no exception. Our task will be to identify
their perception of the surrounding environment as a cultural reality. Their particular
cosmovision, in the context of an unrevealed religion, was the center and pivot of their
immersion in the world, and provided them with the justification of human existence and a
special life experience, both individual and participatory [Eliade, v II]. In religious texts, one
of them is repeatedly presented to us, sometimes combined with significant aspects or notes,
in other complementary ways. We present them below, in a schematic and synthetic way,
without the pretense of constituting a precise study on the subject, but they are the
framework and permanent general reference guide for our interpretation and modelling.
Theistic: belief in a God who is a person. He is an androgynous originator and orderer of all
that exists, both visible and invisible. He, thus, is simultaneously immanent and transcendent;
consubstantial and trans-substantial. He is a being in whom all the attributes coincide, an
absolute and dominating existence, in which wanting as will coincides with execution. In
other words, he is in all things and existences, but he is not the totality of them, yielding, by
his own will, autonomy and transcendence, to some kind of existence. The universe is part
of his person, created by metamorphosis of himself and, also, a direct modality of the first
divinity, but without being the cosmos in its entirety, despite his presence in everything that
exists as the soul of that cosmos. It was a dynamic cosmovision of the world that was
perceived as its hypostatic emanation. It implies the historical evolution of an unrevealed
demiurge and, therefore, the beginning of a sacred natural history, which is theological-
cosmological.
Pantheistic: it is the belief in a God who is an androgynous person and absolute Creator and
ruler of the cosmos and, as in the previous case, an absolute in whom the will coincides with
the execution. It is a conception that maintains that the universe is his creation and, also, his
person is fully present in totality, in the same world. Thus, the Creator is the soul of the
universe and everything created is nothing more than a dynamic and direct modality of the
divine nature or, more properly, its corporeal prolongation, for being in totality, the same
cosmos. The totalizing divine is manifested and exteriorized in the fractioned cosmos, and
dispersed in the things and beings that compose it, ultimately converting them into its only
reality, which dissolves into things and existences. Pantheism, in its most extreme position,
can understand that the sacred world is the only reality. The divine, in this case, is reduced
to the multiplicity of the world, making the Creator the self-awareness of the universe. It
implies the historical evolution of an unrevealed demiurge and, therefore, the beginning of a
sacred natural history, which is theological-cosmological.
Deist: belief in an absolute and androgynous God, diffuse and impersonal, which is reduced
to a force, an energy or, simply, an abstract philosophical-theological system. He is not a
person, with all that the concept means; he can only be called an entity that is reduced to a
supra-organic principle of the natural. He is an imprecise entity that has created the universe
and lets it run at its own pace. He is impersonal and does not listen to people's pleas and
complaints. He is not careful with what he has created, he does nothing with his creation,
delegating his demiurgic capacities to a mediator. It implies the historical evolution of an
unrevealed impersonal demiurge and, therefore, the beginning of a sacred natural history that

22
is theological-cosmological.
Naturalistic: The universe is a closed system and the humanity is alone within it. There is
nothing supernatural or transnatural; there is only subsistence, only matter and its constant
re-convertibility process exist. There is only what is seen, and death is the extinction of the
person.
֍

23
PART II
THE HOMOLOGY
Souls and Shadows greet the demiurge - light.
Tausert's tomb - 19th Dynasty.

24
Homology and complementarity: nature and attribute
of the divine in the monistic cosmovision of Ancient Egypt.
The universe is an interval of multiplicity,
of differentiation, between the One and the One.
J. Assmann
The Egyptian cosmotheology is the political doctrine
of the divine monarchy and
the pharaonic state.
The author
1
The demiurge is presented in theological and liturgical texts, as the personal
existence of a One, "he who generates himself" passionately, Sekheper djsef, -
in Egyptian an active participle- (sxpr Ds=f) [Morentz, c. viii 226 – 227/ 1-
Faulkner, 163]. A universal and omnipresent Being, without beginning or end,
endowed with absolute power over creation, due to the fact that it integrates
the multiplicity of the universe into its corporeality and disposes of it. Faced
with this reality, it is worth asking:
Where does the conception of the nature of the Creator come from in
Egyptian religiosity, as the divine One in the multiplicity of the cosmos,
and inversely?
This definition was introduced into Egyptian religious studies, with great
success, by Hornung in his work: "The one and the many, Egyptian conceptions of
divinity"; meticulous study referring to Egyptian ontology, published in the
seventies of the last century, although it was not the first to use this definition
of the divine [Hornung, c. 2 ss.]
To answer this question, in principle, it is necessary to recognize that this
definition of the sacred was adopted by Mircea Eliade and the School of History
of Religions, and spread in his youth book: Mephistopheles and the Androgyne [3-
Eliade, c. 2]. But it is important to note that the original definition of the sacred,
as Eliade's coincidentia oppositorum, does not belong to him. This conception has
its modern origin in the theological proposals of the philosopher and theologian
Nicolás de Cusa, who, greatly influenced by hermeticism [D'Amico, 110 ss.],
and the Neoplatonism of Proclus and Plotinus [Gonzales, doctrine], asked
himself the following:

25
“How is the plurality of the One understood without multiplication? Or: How do you
understand the multiplication of the One without multiplication (of the One”)?”
Cusa, Learned ignorance.
Murillo i and iii
He also stated:
"The unity of elusive truth is known in conjectural otherness, and the very conjecture of
otherness in the simple unity of truth."
Cusa, De conieucturis,
Murillo, b. 11 and Malgaray, 69.
Cusa's theologian affirms that the divinity is not separated from the world,
but is also in everything that is and in what is, not-yet. The Creator is found,
simultaneously, in the two dimensions mentioned, being -all one and multiple
at the same time- and, also, administrator of all the possible oppositions in
beings and things, because it is the point of synthesis of all the possibilities of
existences and non-existences [1- Soto Bruna, pt. III ss]. But in addition, the
theologian of Cusa is categorical about the presence of divine power, and
affirms:
“God is all in all and at the same time
an All above all”
Cusa, The Beryl.
González, 17 ss.
In this sentence he makes explicit the previous definition of God, outside of
all disjunction and reason [Peña, points 2, 7 ss.], affirming that "Everything"
contains in its person the totality of the elements of the universe, also includes
the possible existences as complementary reality of Everything, because the
divine dominates the totality of existences and not-yet existences. In other
words: “Everything in everything” alludes to its immanence in the world and,
“above all”, to its transcendence to the world [2- Soto Bruna, 137 ss.], reasoning
that we can outline as follows;
God
He is
all possibilities and all non-possibilities
simultaneous

26
This paradoxical phrase takes for granted the inclusive presence of the divine in
all existences and all non-existences. Therefore, we are in the presence of a
unified and transcendent conception of the Creator, in his relationship with the
cosmos. For Cusa, God is absolute above any ontological duality that human
thought can outline about the multiplicity of the universe, in its desire to know
it directly.
It is important to note that he makes a thoughtful use of the copulative
conjunction –AND- in conjunctive function, proposing an entitative and
contracted unity of human intelligence and cosmic diversity in divine
intelligence [Peña, part 2, 13], with an Aristotelian dualistic cosmological garb,
where the cosmovision of his time is installed, from which the theologian tries
to get rid of. Cusa presents us with a transcendent monistic ontology [Soto, 752
ss.] in a dualistic guise, which he inherits from the neoplatonic philosophy of
Plotinus and Proclus, among others. By applying the philosophical principle of
coincidentia oppositorum to his theology, he explicitly calls into question the
Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction [Núñez, part 4, 1 ss.].
The use of analogies and mirror projections, as a tool to understand the
creation of the multiple from the One, is the necessary result of the dualistic
cosmology that he inherits from classical philosophy, which he tries to modify.
Nicholas of Cusa: “he wonders rather how to unite the one and the many? How to
understand that God, in his simple unity, has created a multiple and complex world? The
founding question of his thought is analogy” [Hubert, 423]. It is a very sensible
methodological answer to a classical dualistic cosmology. Cusa's theologian
directly posits a particular relationship between humanity and the Divine, which
completes the circle of possibilities in the God-Humanity relationship, where
God is ineffable and particularly unknowable, from reason rejecting all
disjunction. This affirmation is evident in the definition that we have mentioned
previously, and that can be appreciated with more precision in the following
fragment of the same author:
“To see God is to see all things as God,
And to God in all things, in this way we know…
that He cannot be seen by us.”
Cusa, Apology of docta ignorantiae.
12-13, Nuñez, 111.
The divine goes beyond the cosmic or natural, ensuring its ineffability. We

27
can only perceive of God fragments of his totality because he is infinite and,
therefore, it is the only thing that human reason allows us to apprehend of his
totality, given the finite nature of humanity.
§
The coincidentia oppositorum is rescued, at the beginning of the nineteen forties,
by Eliade, from the school of History of Religions, in his early work,
enigmatically titled: Mephistopheles and the androgyne, [3 – Eliade, 98 and ss.] for his
studies of the divine in world religions. He agrees with Nicholas of Cusa in the
theological definition of God as "coincidentia oppositorum", held by the theologian
as the least imperfect synthesis to define the nature of the divine, the absolute
Being that is: "diversity in unity and unity in diversity” [3- Eliade, 101].
The correct inclusive definition of the divine of the theologian of Cusa,
supported by the rigorous interpretation of Judeo-Christian philosophical and
theological sources, and a correct separation from Aristotelian logic, was taken
by Eliade, who imprinted profound conceptual modifications on it, influenced
by the work of Jung. Years before Eliade's work, Jung attaches, to the definition
of the theologian of Cusa, his psychological conceptions referring to the
collective unconscious and its archetypes, defined by Jung himself as complex
oppositorum, mysterium coniuctionis or the mystery of totality. The Jungian
reinterpretation makes an inflection in the conscious and the contents of the
unconscious, as opposites articulated in a duality, in the interiority of the human
person, which, at some point, must unite, even if briefly. He calls this process
the mystery of totality [3-Eliade, 102].
It is important to draw attention to the interpretation of the coincidentia
oppositorum, which Eliade tries to take to universal terms, to warn that it has great
conceptual limitations for being biased, insufficient and partial when defining
the nature of the demiurge in world religions. His work is based exclusively on
classical and Indo-European sources, with a marked dualistic bias close to
Zurvanist and Manichean approaches, among other cases. Eliade takes for
granted the disjunctive the character of the nature of the divine in the religious
beliefs studied in his work: "Mephistopheles and the androgyne”, and then tacitly
transfers it to the level of the entire religious universe. The reinterpretation of
the coincidentia oppositorum in the nature of the divine that Eliade raises, is strongly
installed in the studies of the History of Religions, favored by the encompassing
ambiguity of its formulation. He affirms, in fact, the existence of an irreducible
ontological and cosmological dualism, implicit in all religions, an argument
derived from sources of clear dualistic content used in his essay, and in the
comparison that he posits between the divine and the diabolical [3- Eliade, 105].

28
It should be noted that this promoted dualism is not reflected in the Egyptian
cosmovision, in the relationship between the divine, the cosmos and humanity,
nor does it represent African sacred beliefs in general. Academic studies of
Egyptian religion had to wait until the late 1990s for the abysmal difference
between Indo-European cosmovisions and those of today's African world and
ancient Egypt, in particular, to be elucidated. This difference was clarified by
the studies of Cervelló Autuori, in his theory of the pan-African cultural
substratum and divine kingship, in contrast to the sacred kingship of the Indo-
European and Oriental peoples. His thesis, based on the erudite study of the
nature of the Egyptian-African divine monarchies, marks the profound
differences with the cosmovisions of non-African cultures [Cervelló, c. ii and
iii].
In the fifties of the last century, independently of Eliade, the nature of
Egyptian religion in the relationship of the demiurge with the cosmos, began to
be discreetly studied [Hornung, int. / 2- Frankfort, int.], from an ontological
and theological perspective, treated, for the first time, in an integral and
encompassing way in Morentz's emblematic and precursory work: La Religion
Égyptienne – essai d'interprétation [Morentz, c. viii]. Until that moment never
examined from that perspective, it affirms the importance of "the one and the
multiplicity" in the creative divinity, from an independent position to that of
Eliade. The approach of this distinguished author is tacitly close to the Cusean
criticism of the logic and cosmology of Aristotelian philosophy, already
mentioned [Núñez, part 3]. Morentz affirms, with great clarity, that the
Egyptian understanding of the cosmos in its relationship with the divine is
strongly inclusive, an ontological continuum that manifests itself in the
consubstantiality between both poles, when he affirms:
“(Egyptian) theology is the fruit of the Egyptian's relationship with God (nTr), to the
extent that it makes the multiplicity enter into the one adored by the believer and
is everything for him in that act. As for historical-political situations, they are, to
speak with Goethe, nothing more than the conditions in which a phenomenon
appears. [Morentz, c. vii, 188]…Our intention was rather to show on this side the
topicality of the problem of the unity of the divine behind the multiplicity of the
pantheon” [Morentz, c. vii, 198].
The author devotes a chapter to it [Morentz, c. vii 192], to explain his thesis
of the conception of the "creation and advent of the world", with that
framework of interpretation, and that, according to his opinion, was the
procedure used by the priesthood in its theological speculations. The method
of the Egyptian theologians consisted in thinking of the plurality of the world,

29
reducing it to a ternary that synthesizes its multiplicity in the One-demiurge,
which this author reduces to three theological formulas: modalism, tritheism
and trinitarianism [Morentz, c. vii 194 and ss.]. This method is justified with a
game of words and meanings that consists of using expressions that apparently
involve contradiction. In the Egyptian language and, above all, in sacred texts,
there are three ways of writing the plural in the same text: the first with the
phoneme .w that indicates it and its feminine wt, for example, Netjeru divinities
(nTr.w) [Gardiner § 71 ss.]; and the second form, very common, is with the
numeral three jentu (xntw) [Gardiner, §260]. The third is written with three
strokes or the triple repetition of a main sign. Thus, divinities nTr.w is written in
three different ways, with the same result. The plural phoneme, the numeral
three and the hieroglyphic writing ideogram reveal the multiplicity of nature and
the cosmos as a collective plurality.
It is important to highlight that the plural and the numeral "three", in
Egyptian, can also mean the collective "many", expressible equally with the
numeral phoneme and the plurals for "three" already seen, in the sense of an
"apparent" plural, or “abstract”, with the meaning of “totality”, since in essence
it is “many” [Bergman, part. 2 et ss. /Gardiner, § 77]. In the Egyptian
cosmovision, totality is nothing more than the maximum possibilities of
something or someone, in our example, the Creator. Therefore, the abstract
plural is “totality of modes of existence”, that is, the multiplicity of the
“universe”, represented in the Netjeru, which, as a collective, is significantly
“everything”, transformable into the One-demiurge. Because "totality" is the
multiple form –jepru- of the One-demiurge in Egyptian thought [Morentz, c vii
192 ss.].
It is the first great paradox of theological speculation founded on the
Egyptian language. This paradox is based on a false plural, or apparent plural,
also abstract or intensive, that marks a tension between two poles: unity-diversity
with an inclusive meaning [Bergman, 12-13 / Zabkar, c. ii]. For the Egyptian,
"totality", despite being One, does not cease to mean, at the same time, a
collective and plural "many", which our author in his study reduces to three
models: modalism, tritheism and trinitarianism [Morentz, c. viii]. It is important
to point out that this complex meaning of the plural between the one and the
multiple, as a totality and its tensions, is also seen in ontological-anthropological
conceptions such as ba-bau, ka-kau and sekhem-sekhemu of the Egyptian
religion [Bergman, point 2 / 2- Frankfort, c. 5].
But how does the author resolve the possible ontological jump between
unity and diversity, or between the singular absolute demiurge and the
plurality of the universe in the Egyptian priestly theological speculation,
that kept the Greek dualist philosophers so awake?

30
This question has its answer provided by Morentz, based on his thesis on the
community of substance between "the multiplicity of the universe in the One-
demiurge" or "the One-demiurge in the multiplicity of the universe". He called
it "consubstantiation" of the original unity or first existence with the cosmos;
unity preserved in natural multiplicity after becoming [Morentz, c. i 30 and c vii
211.]. This intimate relationship is articulated through the explicit or tacit use
of the predicative preposition "m" of the Egyptian language, whose
meaning: "in", "within", is markedly inclusive in the theological formulas of all
epochs, a model that is found everywhere in Egyptian sacred literature, and
poses the problem of "the uniqueness of the divine in the multiplicity of the
pantheon" [Morentz, c. vii 209 ss/ Jacq, 31, n. 31 and 36].
Now we can affirm the second great paradox of Egyptian ontology, almost in
terms of priestly theology referring to the demiurge as Atum, which is the logic
of inclusion according to Bergman, and which we model as: The One is in the
multiple and the multiple is in the One simultaneously. This inclusion is, moreover,
analogous to the proposal of Cuse's ontology. Morentz's analysis, which we
have described, can be seen in one of the several examples he uses to explain
the methodological foundations of the theological formulations of the Egyptian
clergy [Gardiner, §162 /Grandet and Mathiae, point 3.4 - 45 and 4.4 - 56 H.H.]:
he is like one
who became three
unn=f m wa
xpr=f m xntw
CT II 39 sp 80, Morentz,
c. vii - 195 no. 35.
The regular use of the inclusive function of the Egyptian preposition m for the
priesthood, in theological formulations, [Morentz, c vii 208 - 213], bridges any
ontological break between the divine and the universe, and lays the groundwork
for modern study of Egyptian ontology, within the framework of a unified
cosmology, typical of the theological thought of ancient Egypt. This is the great
discovery of Morentz, perhaps never fully recognized, and which makes this
work an essential starting point for studies of Pharaonic Egyptian religion. Then
we can affirm that: “Consequently, the reader will be wise to try from the beginning,
to assimilate the “additive-inclusive” way of looking at things, so characteristic of the
ancient Egyptians, that it does not present abrupt definitions, or better, proposes

31
several possible solutions corresponding to a multiplicity of approaches to the problem,
using the classic Frankfort formulation” [Bergman, part. 2]. In the Alexandrian world,
the diversity of Egyptian theological formulas, used to express the One in the
multiplicity of existences, were reduced to the Enneads, Ogdoads and the
ternaries that will be the ones that will perfect as a method of theological
elaboration, which is profusely observed in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism
[MacBride, c. 6].
Then, the Gnostic and official Christianity will adopt the ternaries of the
Egyptian clergy in the forms of: modalism, tritheism, trinitarianism and, especially,
hermeticism [García Bazán, c. 8, 9 and concl.], projecting all its influence on the
later European world: "It must be borne in mind that the most recent interpretations
of Egyptian religious thought, including those of Frankfort and Hornung (see the
introduction) have also been based on the ritual texts that (the hermetic author) has
presented in epistemological terms, pointing out the "ritual effectiveness" as a
determining feature. Our hermetic author is more faithful to the raw material of bases
for the generalization that modern interpreters make of ancient Egyptian thought... Yet,
the belief in ritual efficacy does not constitute a philosophy or a structured religious
thought” [Pedermann Sorensen, 42].
The multiplying effect of the Morentz work will be effective in the seventies
of the last century, with the affirmation of the existence of an Egyptian
philosophy -restricted to a complex ontology-, in an emblematic thesis outlined
in the Hornung work: "The one and the Multiple...", widely accepted in the field of
religious studies of academic Egyptology. The work of this author, nodal for
the studies of Egyptian religiosity, does not delve into the nature of the cosmos
in its relationship with the demiurge from within, which would imply treating
the cosmos with a broader perspective. This author precisely defines the
existence of an Egyptian ontology and, therefore, a restricted Egyptian
philosophy [Hornung c. 5, 159 ss.], settling for adhering to a traditional
position: the much-discussed henotheism. He concludes his investigation with
a synthesis of the various existing positions which, in fact, leaves open the
problem of the nature of Egyptian religion [Hornung, c. 7, 213].
This historical situation of Egyptology was raised by Englund in the Uppsala
Symposium (1987) affirming: “The essence of Egyptian religion is not easy to grasp.
This has been a problem for scholars for as long as Egyptology has existed. Different
generations of scholars have tried different categories, such as monotheism, polytheism,
pantheism, henotheism” [1-Englund, 7]. This problem was also observed by
Bergman when he stated: "The simple question of polytheism or monotheism, in the

32
study that occupies us, should yield to rather more nuanced evaluations of a given
religion. Concepts such as henotheism, kathenotheism and monolatry manifest
knowledge of a much more complex reality, even if these last terms have not enjoyed as
great a popularity as the first two. [Bergman, 12]. Closer to us, Volokhine updates
this complex problem, giving it a different slant by introducing the Egyptian
cosmovision as an aspect to be taken into account. Thus, for them: “…the world
is dynamic and capable of updating itself in a name (whether) numerous tangible forms
or not. …in the world, the Netjeru cannot be learned if the fluctuating aspects of their
bau manifestations (b3w), their kau forms (k3w) and their jepru transformations (xprw)
are not taken into account…The pharaonic Egyptian religion has, not only a vision of the
world, but also a kind of power over it” [Volokhine, 64 and 65]. These last two
arguments are what drive us to try to build a different interpretation of the
nature of Egyptian religion and its foundations, based on the concepts of
cosmovision, monism and the methodological use of Geertz's thick description,
which we try to apply in this essay.
Together with Hornung's affirmation about the existence of a restricted
Egyptian philosophy -in the strict sense, an ontology-, the thesis of the existence
of a precise ethics and theodicy around the Maat arises almost at the same time
and is currently recognized as the articulating center of the religious
cosmological thought of ancient Egypt, outlined in Assmann's distinctive work:
"Maat, l'Egypte Phraonique et la idée de justice sociale". This author gives an account
of the transcendent relationship between the divine, the humanity and the
cosmos, and places the Maat at the center of Egyptian theological and
cosmological thought, which poses a totally original Egyptian anthropology,
and which will leave its mark on all its historical epochs.
This thesis, currently widely accepted, fills a gap in this subject, which was
the need for a comprehensive study of the Maat, insistently claimed by Anthes,
in the fifties of the last century: "it should be a company that would lead to a history
of Egyptian wisdom, and hence a description of their philosophical thought” [Morentz, c.
6 n. 15]. I vehement wish fulfilled in the extensive study: "Maat, The Moral Ideal
in Ancient Egypt" by M. Karenga, where the author analyzes and describes, in
depth, the relationships of the divine with humanity in ancient Egyptian
religion. This work proposes a new comprehensive look at Egyptian ontology,
anthropology and theodicy from the centrality of Maat, positioning itself as one
of the most complete works on Maat in recent years.
§
In the Eliadian interpretation of the Coincidentia Oppositorum, outlined above,

33
we observe in it a manifest partiality in the attempt to universalize its proposal,
showing a lack of knowledge of the nature of cosmovisions in current African
cultures, and the ancient Egyptian in particular, focusing its works in the
Eastern dualistic cosmovisions [Valk, 46 and ss.]. Eliade's proposal, from the
beginning, is biased and insufficient and, therefore, inapplicable in universal
terms. It can only be acceptable if it is limited to the cultural sphere for which
it was raised, according to the sources used, which is the Eastern world, as well
as the Indo-European world, and its philosophical, cosmological and religious
dualisms, which put an inflection in the disjunctive opposition of aspects of the
natural reality: to be–not to be; father-son; good-bad; male-female; time-divinity
and so on [Duch, 247 ss.]. In other cultural cosmovisions, such as the Egyptian
and, in general, the African ones, on the contrary, they can be compatible
counterparts because they are consubstantial, typical of a cosmovision that
includes the multiplicity of the universe in a First Existence.
Eliade's paradigm emphasizes a dualistic bipolarity of the divine, which he
then transfers to nature. Thus, he fully commits the constitutive substance of
the cosmos, assigning a substantive differential status to the varied reality of
things and existences in the universe, which ultimately implies considering them
as terms that will never be homologated [3-Eliade, 107 ss.]. Eliade's vision, by
reworking the deep meaning of Cuse's inclusive definition of the Divine as
coincidentia oppositorum, artificially colors it with an explicit orientalizing dualism,
where the cosmos and the sacred are the tacit coniunctionis of the activity of two
naturally irreducible principles and, sometimes, opposed by their very nature.
We can conclude that Eliade's reinterpretation of the mystery of totality is
essentially idealistic, dualistic and substantially disjunctive because of the
oriental sources on which he bases his work. His study is far from the Egyptian
cosmovision, -in our opinion-, eminently inclusive and, also, close to the
proposal of the theologian of Cusa, who reaffirms his idea of the divine
inclusive unity in the cosmos and its totalizing, ineffable and transcendent
nature, even supporting and transcribing fragments of the Corpus Hermeticum,
as we will see below:
"Since God is the universality of things, then no proper name is its own, since either
it would be necessary for God to be named with every name, or all things with his
name"
Corpus Hermeticum, Codex 10054-56,
Brussels 10054-, Nuñez, 125.

34
§
The field of academic Egyptology dedicated to the study of the Egyptian
religion, in an integral way as a cosmovision, soon perceived the dualistic
meaning of Eliade's coincidentia oppositorum, with which he tried to explain, in a
global way, the profound phenomenon of the divine in the religions of the
world, in terms of two irreducible principles, including by default the Egyptian
religion.
The position of the Egyptological field was varied and succinctly explained
in the Uppsala (1987) and Bergen (1988) symposiums to clarify the nature of
ontology, Egyptian cosmotheology and, also, to guide future research [Uppsala
and Bergen Symposiums, int.]. In these conferences, three central concepts for
textual interpretation were raised. The first: that homologies are the principle
of the logic of deep thought and of the Egyptian theological elaboration system,
typical of a monistic cosmovision: “In this monistic thought, everything in life is
interrelated in a great all-encompassing network. In this network, certain evolutionary
patterns are continually repeated. Everything that is experienced as similar or
homologous is considered to be related to the prototype, and not only to the prototype
itself, but to any other reiteration of the same prototype” [1-Englund, 26].
The second: is that these systems of integration by reduction, as originally
proposed by Morentz, are authentic prototypes or broader regular patterns,
used to formulate and: “categorize Egyptian cosmotheological thought; the
representative variety of a Prototype have a homologous relationship with each other,
and they can also have a hierarchical relationship that provides useful structural
relationships for the expression of the Microcosm idea. For example, the states of chaos
and creation… have counterparts, like day and night within the created world [Troy, 61].
The third: is that the prototypes indicate that what follows or precedes it,
depending on the case, briefly summarizes or synthesizes the complexity of
what it intends to explain, sometimes ineffable; in this cass, the demiurge, his
nature ambiguous, attributes and becoming in the cosmos. Our conclusion is
that the basic method of synthesis from the one to the multiple and vice versa,
studied by Morentz -modalism, tritheism and trinitarianism- is incomplete and
should be extended with other analogous reduction formulas, which are part of
a broader model of theological elaboration, used by the priesthood to reduce
the multiplicity of the universe and identify it, in a consubstantial way with the
One demiurge. The ternary and dual formulas originally studied by Morentz are
part of a broader methodology, implemented by the Egyptian priestly college
for millennia, to theologically categorize the One-demiurge [Troy, 57].

35
The previous affirmations clearly define the Egyptian cosmology, but they
do not advance on the way of typifying the Egyptian religion, which is the
foundation of this essay.
2
The demiurge, in the context of Egyptian religiosity, is a First-Existing
Sekheper djesef (sxpr Ds=f)) “he who generates himself” [Morentz, c. vii, 227 ss.],
endowed with absolute power over the diversity of creation, due to the fact that
it integrates, in itself, the multiplicity of the universe in all its possible forms:
biological-physical-temporal. These aspects of the cosmos and nature are
perceived by the Egyptian cosmovision, therefore substantially homologous,
compatible and complementary to each other, arising in a strict order of bionatural
emanation, articulating a hypostatic order of transformations -chepru- of
existences in the cosmos, without substantial rupture with its author.
This cosmovision proposes an eminently monistic mode and model of
perception of the universe, organized around the forms -kau- derived from the
nature of the demiurge. A clear example of this integration, forming prototypes
based on homology, can be seen in the context of the feminine, where
overlapping and interchangeability based on the principle of substantial and
functional homology, partial or total, is evident, as Englund states: “The interrelation
of homologous situations leads to what is called ‘multiplicity of approximations’, to the
fact that various and different affirmations about one and the same thing are
simultaneously valid, such as the fact that Re is the son of Atum, of Nut, of Hathor, of
Neith… The indescribable cannot be enclosed in a single image, term or phrase, but by
approaching it through a multitude of converging angles, man reaches an approximation
to reality” [1- Englund, 26].
Speaking of homologies as the foundation of the nature of the divine, in its
relationship with the cosmos in Egyptian religion, implies considering the term
homologue as a key to interpreting the nature of the cosmovision in Egyptian
culture in all its historical periods and, in this context, we should ask ourselves
again:
What does the concept of homology, that we use to describe the Egyptian
vision of nature, point to, and how did they perceive the multifaceted
reality of the cosmos and the sacred, under the sieve of this conception
of the universe?

36
The concept of homology [Troy, 61], in this particular case, applied to the
Egyptian religion, means that one thing or existence is similar to another,
because they have in common their original nature–substance in common
between them-; by its class or the particular position that corresponds to it, with
respect to a larger group with archetypal and substantial characteristics, which
they share by way of emanation. They are hypostases that, in the Egyptian case,
become a cosmos -physical and bionatural- organized hierarchically, around
particular rules of generation. Maat, as the guiding principle of order [2-
Assmann, c. 1] and for the specific function of each existence or thing that
corresponds to it in the universe, due to its organic-natural-modal homology with
others, forming hypostatic, harmonic and complementary combinations, which
determine its position in the cosmos, and are established by the priestly
theological systematization.
Homologies ordered in prototypes, foundation of the Egyptian cosmovision
[Troy, 61], will be the hermeneutic orientation of this work, to access the
meaning of the texts in their contexts, to extract the ontological-cosmological
significance they convey, considering that: "the monistic approach must be
documented through the materials placed in correlation and in combination with each
other -´free of preconditions´-in order to see this particular conception of being”
[Finnestad, 32]. We will rely on these principles to try to penetrate the interiority
of Egyptian cosmotheology.
The Egyptian cosmovision, particularly inclusive, conceives the multiplicity of
the universe and its creation, entirely consubstantial and emanating from the
Creator in all its aspects, by conceiving the diversity of the world as complementary
counterparts, harmoniously integrated into a larger unit, which is the demiurge:
“There seems to be no essential ontological separation, there is a conceptual distinction
between species, human beings, animals, vegetation, cosmic constituents. Or, to put it
another way: The categories applied in Egyptian religious ontology do not accentuate the
differences between men and animals, or even between men and vegetative or cosmic
phenomena. Rather, we see the opposite interest: emphasizing affinities and connections
[Finnestad, 31].
The integrative capacity of the Creator constitutes the main attribute that
justifies his totalizing nature, which underlies cosmic and natural diversity [1-
Englund, 25]. This principle, expressed in another way, establishes an intimate
and natural consubstantial relationship between the divine, the cosmos and, by
extension, the first divinity is installed as organizer, integrator and administrator
of the varied diversity of nature in all its aspects, allowing it the demiurge to
incorporate all existences and things into its centrality [Morentz, c. vii, 200 et
ss. and Caron].

37
Thus, the power exercised by the One over creation and its multiplicity of
forms, natural and existing, arises as a direct consequence of its nature,
consubstantial to all reality, which goes so far as to treat liturgical objects as
"divine existents", netjerit (nTr.yt) [Morentz c. x]. Its self-engendering causes an
explosion of movement and life, beyond its own, which is the origin of the
cosmos itself: "there is no dichotomy between the animate and inanimate or personal
and impersonal objects" [Guglielmi, in Finnestad, 31 n. 11]. In short, all existences are
forms and transformations derived from the self-transformation of the
demiurge, in Egyptian Sekheper djesef – Kheper djesef (sxpr Ds=f – xpr Ds=f),), lit.
“He who generates himself-He who transforms himself”, indicating the sequence of the
theo-cosmogonic becoming [Morentz, c. vii, 227].
Says Re
I found power-sekhem (sxm) in my heart
and the new in me.
I know all the forms (xpr.w) at the moment of being alone.
I thought plans-sejer (sxr) in my heart
and I created other modes of existence and the modes of existence –kheper-
derive were crowd,
I modeled every being when I was one-wa (wa), I modeled living beings
like spirits.
Book of transformations of Re.
Bilolo, b. 63.
The traditional Egyptian cosmovision considers central the separation of
Atum, clear and fresh water, semen of primordial life (nww) [1- Faulkner, 93],
differentiating itself from Nun (nwn); -dark, inert and sterile water-, description
of the chaotic primordial ocean [2- Allen, 10]. They are both serpentine and
eternal, which leads us to the conclusion that Nun is their necessary
complementary counterpart. Nun, passive and amorphous mud, contains the
first “drowsy-lifeless” living being [TP 1146, 1- Allen / Nyedler, 54 and ss.],
which emerges actively from the opaque water, as active principle, “clear
water”, “fresh water”, equated to rain [TP 255, 2- Allen, 15 and Caron c. v].
Thus, this "primal living" (pAw.ty) [1- Faulkner, 76] is the receptacle
of fertility, life and all future cosmic and natural forms, guaranteed by its nature
as "giver of life" (di anx) and, therefore, supplier of the ka -“neheb-kau”- to the
cosmos (fig. 26).
Says Atum–Neheb-kau
I am the water that emerges from Nun (nw) the primordial flood,
I have sprung from the primordial waters.
i am neheb-kau-provider of life ka (nHb k3.w))
the many-ringed serpent.
PT 1146, 1-Allen.

38
Figure. 1. Atum
The primordial serpent begins its transformations in the midst of Nun.
It attracts the "becoming" -kheper- towards itself
Naydler, 57.
This trait of the demiurge Atum becomes evident in one of his oldest names
in the Pyramid Texts -PT-, which describes his nature at the time of the
theogony, “provider of life” or ka, –neheb kau- (nHb-k3.w) , [Gardiner,
sig. D30], and by extension, protector of the vital force kau like the breath and
the neck that represents it [Quaegebeur, 95 ss.]. It also alludes to the
concentration, in Atum, of all possible existences in itself, due to its pre-cosmic
and androgynous nature, denoted by the semantic determinative: the ka sign
with a stem suggests that it emerges from the depths of the lower sky or,
directly, of the Nun. It reminds us of the equal arrangement and function of
the stem of the seshen (sSn) lotus flower [Gardiner, sig. M9].
The demiurge Atum is a primeval First-Existing Being as his corporeity is
made up of water nuu (nww) [2- Allen, 9 and Caron c. iv], its principle that is
life-giving power-active-sehem, so that: water -nuu- as a substance is understood as
the simplest thing that makes up the demiurge and the cosmos, not-another meaning. The
"pure water" is the physical support of its ba, personified pre-cosmic
consciousness and that in the cosmogony will become, by emanation, in
particularized ka life energy in everything created. It is the closest word in
meaning to the pre-Socratic physis, the teleological principle of life, power, and
engendering energy of the cosmos, with which the pharaoh identifies himself
[MacBride, part iii] (fig. 1).
This way of describing the nature of the original unit-form of Atum as
"provider of life = ka" -neheb kau- (nHb-k3.w) of the TP, will be replicated later,
and with variations, in the Coffins Texts –CT- and attributed to the demiurge
under the theologized form of Ptah. It is a didactic variant of the One-demiurge
derived from the verb “to form” (PtH) lit. “Former or creator” [1- Faulkner, 84]
of the universe, which manifests itself as neheb-kau, “giver of kas”. Ptah is

39
belatedly identified as a quality of Atum. So Ptah: "(56) It came to be like the
heart and became like the tongue in the form of Atum.” [Memphite Theology,
Wilson, 1]
Ptah
..neheb kau-giver of kas
that says-creates the ba (b3.w) and the appearances (xa.w)
and the kas (k3.w) of the beginnings (s3a.w)..
nHb k3.w Dd b3.w
xaw, k3.w s3a.w...
CT 647, 1. - Barguet.
The emergence of the demiurge can be defined as a process of dissociation
from the One-Atum: active and personal, from Nun: passive and impersonal,
to nest in the primordial mud and, from its serpentine interiority, conceive and
give birth to the cosmos. Both Nun and Atum as neheb-kau, also called “The
first (of the) aqueous” nuit (nwjt), in the PT [2-Allen, 9 infra / PT 132c] we find
them homologated by the primordial aqueous substance –nuu - that both share
in an infinite eternity: “what characterizes this system is that there is no cut between
the potential and the manifest. On the contrary, there is complete identity between
them. They are arguably the two sides of the same coin. The emergence of the cosmos
does not put an end to chaos but both coexist.” [1- Englund, 25]. The connatural
relationship of Atum and Nun, is a binary coupling that will never disappear,
two aspects of the hidden One, and warns us that both are homologous-
complementary, that they share the eternal moist substance in an indissoluble
unit, understanding humidity as the element that gives life, in the sense of the watery-plasma-
germinating corporeity of the demiurge, not-another meaning or thing.
Atum from the PT, in his role as neheb-kau, personifies the activated
androgynous creative power and the container of all potential existences in Nun
that as demiurge, in his self-activity, will generate the cosmos and all existences
in it contained. Method that will be repeated in other interpretations, which are
its theological variants, such as Ptah and Amun, from MK onwards:
Ptah
What your mouth created ((irj)
what your hands modeled-engendered (msj),
you have taken it out (sdj) of the primeval waters-Nun.
Frankfort, c. 14, 183.
Amun who emerged
of Nun, guide of humanity...
Frankfort, c. 14, 182.

Ancient Egyptian Religion: The Nature of the Monistic Cosmovision

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