Foreigners Coming to Egypt and Bringing
Their Own Deities
Taking your gods with you in
migration situations seems quite normal to us; indeed, it is well attested in
modern cases. For Egypt and its neighbors, there is a remarkable diversity. On
the one hand we have the Asiatics, especially those coming from the Levant and
speaking Semitic languages, who came to Egypt in considerable numbers during
the second millennium BCE, especially its second half.
The cult of Asiatic deities in
Egypt is therefore quite well-attested for the New Kingdom (ca. 1550–1070 BCE),
and there are numerous studies on the subject. It would be easy, indeed much
too easy, to simply present texts and images of these cults. It is far more
fruitful to separate the evidence into different categories. I would like to
separate those deities for which the documentation consists mainly of
intellectual adaptations from those where a cult in Egypt can be amply
documented by sanctuaries, votive stelae, and the like.
Some interesting observations can
be made on this subject: Firstly, the Asiatic deities freely enter into
combinations with traditional Egyptian deities, and more often than not both
are found together; for instance, the Asiatic deities Qudshu and Reshep are
very often shown together with the Egyptian Min as a triad. On an even
more complicated level, a stela from Giza depicts a foreign deity in
very un-Egyptian garb and with an outlandish name in the top register, while in
the register below it is said that the dedicator venerates the Egyptian goddess
Isis. The dedicator’s title makes it clear that he is attached to the cult of
an Asiatic deity, actually Hauron, while the image shows the Egyptian god
Horus; thus, as regards iconography and names, the “foreign” and “familiar” are
remarkably criss-crossed.
This leads us to the point that
some traditional Egyptian figures could be reinterpreted by the Asiatics in
light of their own religious traditions. Thus, the great Sphinx of Giza was
often understood at this time as representing the Canaanite god Hauron. An
alternative idea was to equate him with the Egyptian falcon-shaped god Horus—a
conception that was certainly aided by the phonetic similarity of the names.
In this specific case, it can even be demonstrated that the equation of the two
gods was not limited to a local Asiatic community but also adopted by the
Egyptian priestly elite. A recently published mythological manual from the
seventh century BCE provides a list of five different forms of Horus, one of
which is Hauron.
To what degree did this continue
in later times? To what degree are well-attested Asiatic deities from New
Kingdom Egypt still present in the religious system of the Graeco-Roman period?
The question seems all the more relevant as many Egyptologists, including
Assmann, have claimed that the Egyptians of the Late Period were increasingly
xenophobic. There is certainly a substantial drop in the documentation of
Asiatic deities in Egypt in the Late Period. Still, the deities of Asiatic
origin did not altogether vanish. On the one hand, they were still present in
communities with a strong Syrian background (even special colonies of
(As)syrians), who had a quarter of their own in Memphis. I would assume that
many of the Asiatics in Egypt assimilated after some generations but that the
old religious traditions were retained longer if there were large coherent
communities where the members supported themselves in their shared traditions.
On the other hand, there are those deities that were assimilated in the
Egyptian religious system mainly because they were responsible for specific
aspects of life for which there was no Egyptian deity at hand, like Astarte,
the patron of the horse. In addition, the deities still do occur as a component
in personal names. Some were even incorporated into Egyptian temple decoration.
(Joachim Friedrich Quack, "Importing and Exporting Gods? On the Flow of
Deities Between Egypt and Its Neighboring Countries," in Antje Flüchter
and Jivanta Schöttli, eds., The Dynamics of Transculturality: Concepts and
Institutions in Motion [Heidelberg: Springer International Publishing,
2015]: 255-77, here, pp. 263-64, emphasis in bold added)
