As I was reading “Egypt in the Memory of the World” by Fekri A. Hassan, I was struck by the connections that the author drew between deities in the Greek/Roman pantheon and the deities of ancient Egyptian traditions. From the equation of Osiris to Zeus/Jupiter and Isis being associated with Hermes/Mercury and Hera/Juno, a lot of parallels were being drawn between Egyptian deities and Greek/Roman deities (Hassan, 260). Of course, the stories of these gods and goddesses are not perfectly aligned and the links between them may simply be the result of visiting Greek and Roman scholars in Egypt trying to make sense of the new cultures/traditions they found themselves in.
In some of my previous classes, I have learned about syncretism and the way that deities were exchanged between different religious/spiritual traditions during the time of worldwide polytheism. However, I never considered that the same concept of syncretism could be applied to the monotheistic religions of Judaism and Christianity and the polytheistic religions of ancient Egypt and ancient Greece. Hassan points out that many figures in the Hebrew and Christian Bibles can be equated with deities from ancient Egypt. For example, Jesus Christ was identified with the Egyptian god Horus, as well as the Egyptian goddess Bes. Similarly, Moses was considered to be a counterpart of the Greek god Hermes (Hassan, 261).
I was also interested in the way that Hassan brought up the destruction of the pagan statues and temples in Egypt. He talks quite extensively about how the Greeks, Romans, and later Europeans venerated ancient Egypt as a land of scientific wisdom and biblical importance (Hassan, 261). However, he quickly transitions into talking about how Christian and Jewish peoples scorned the religion of ancient Egypt and wanted all of the pagan idols and architecture destroyed. I was aware that a similar event had occurred in Rome during the rise of Christianity in the West, but I was unaware that there had been another incident prior to it in Egypt. Hassan is also very blunt about the (mostly Christian) attitude towards this purge of paganism:
“Only on the ruins of Egyptian temples could churches celebrate and and legitimize the new religion that replaced the old” (Hassan, 262).
I had never learned about this destruction of Egyptian polytheistic idols in school leading up to this point, but I feel like it would have been an important thing to know. Not only is it an important shift in the religious and cultural history of Egypt, but it also may have an effect on the archaeology of the region. While there is sufficient surviving evidence of who the Egyptian deities were and what they represented, evidence of their importance may not be entirely accurate. For example, a god or goddess may not be considered to be all that important by archaeologists today (based on the surviving evidence), but it also possible that they were incredibly important to the ancient Egyptians, but the evidence signifying their importance was destroyed by the Christian and Jewish incursions. Whatever the case may be, it must be considered there may be significant gaps in what we think we know about the religious traditions of ancient Egypt.
I found your analysis of Hassan’s article, “Egypt in the Memory of the World,” to be incredibly thought provoking, particularly concerning your discussion of syncretism. You mentioned that in your previous courses you had been made familiar with the term, and while some of my past courses have touched on the concept, I was not aware of the specific term until now. I found this particular article to be very interesting, and I was surprised by many of the same things that you mentioned being surprised by when reading it. First, I was aware of the parallels some scholars try to draw between Greek and Roman deities and Egyptian deities, however I did not know that there have been similar attempts to equate Egyptian deities with Christian and Jewish mythologies. Second, I also did not know about the destruction of pagan symbols and practices in Egypt, only of this happening in Europe as organized religions grew larger and more powerful. Reading this article and your analysis of it made me think about how much of history is ignored or modified when it is taught in classrooms or written about in literature. While it is of course important to learn about the architecture, writings, and religions of a nation or a culture, it is also important to recognize that these understandings shouldn’t occur by trying to create 1:1 parallels between the practices, religions, etc. of one country or culture with those of another. Countries and cultures are unique and must be understood as they are, not by what other societies they are comparable to. Your analysis was quite interesting, and I very much enjoyed reading it.
I think that you make some really great points during this post. I am Jewish, and I never knew (or forgot) that Moses was compared to Hermes, the messenger of the Greek gods and goddesses. I found that section really interesting because I never would have thought that monotheistic religions could be compared to polytheistic religions. I also did not know that there was a destruction in Egypt of their gods’ statues, though it does not surprise me (especially since things such as the Crusades were a thing, though I honestly could not tell you when they happened in relation to the Egyptian religious statues being destroyed). I totally agree about not learning about the destruction of their religious idols being destroyed; when I had read that part in the article, I had just assumed I had not learned about it due to where I live being incredibly Christian and not wanting their religion to be shown in a bad light or seen as destructive. I think that this goes to show how vital it is to show everything in both a good and bad light in schools. Otherwise, we will not be able to get the full picture of history, much like when Professor Watrall told us about all of the good things one guy did….while still advocating for eugenics. I agree with you that this would be a massive factor in Egyptian archaeology. Did they keep records of what was destroyed? Are there any remains left? This may skew the archaeological record because some gods or goddesses who may have been more popular at one point might not be shown in the record because of this destruction.
I found your blog post to be very intriguing with the connections between Ancient Egypt traditions with Greek/Roman traditions along with religious cultures and traditions. Its fascinating to know that there could be a relation between the two different deities and how they could have came to be. What I found so crazy was how you were able to connect syncretism to two different spectrums of religion of polytheism of ancient Greece and Egypt and monotheism of Judaism and Christianity. It is interesting and also surprising to be able to compare certain figures of each such as Moses who is a messenger in Christianity to the Greek god Hermes. Before reading your response, I never knew about how other religious views destroyed such historic pieces of records of other cultures and traditions because they wanted to rid of other religious values.
I found your response to “Egypt in the Memory of the World” very interesting, especially since I also chose to respond to the same article, just to a slightly different topic discussed in it. However, I do think that both of our topics connect easily to each other and can be used in tandem to further discuss the role of Western society in morphing modern perceptions of Egypt. In particular, your post makes me curious as to what effect this syncretism between the Greek/Roman pantheons, monotheistic religions, and the Egyptian polytheistic pantheon has had on the domination of Western ideas about Egypt into the modern day. As you discuss, it is very likely that large amounts of evidence for Egyptian polytheism has either been lost, in which the syncretism of the Roman and Greek polytheistic religions could have played a large role in, or destroyed through the erection of monotheistic, often Christian, places of worship as a means to legitimize and assert the dominance of this newer monotheistic religion. Through this we can see that the domination of Western ideas and perceptions of Egypt has been a long process and one that, considering its long history, will not be easy to change. Then, when coupled with the lack of evidence due to this syncretism and blatant destruction, it becomes even clearer that these modern-day western perceptions of Egypt will continue to propagate as the evidence available for archaeologists is going to remain limited to European descriptions and artifacts influenced/effected by historical Western contact and manipulation.