The Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt
In the Ancient Egyptian religion, there are over 3000 gods and goddesses (collectively known as the Netjer).
On these pages, some Netjer are described. Some are not.
To try and describe all of them, even with brief descriptions, would be a monumental task,
and there are already many websites filled with minor descriptions of various deities.
What IS Netjer?
Netjer is One and the Many. This concept is extremely foreign to many folks, but is akin
to how in Catholicism, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are separate, yet the same.
Netjer is both plural and singular. I can talk about a particular Netjer, Sekhmet, as an individual deity.
Or I can write about Netjer as a whole concept.
In some pagan relgions, you hear the concept of "facets". How the Goddess has many facets to herself, but
She is still the Goddess showing facets to different people. The One and the Many concept is nothing like that analogy.
The best analogy to date I have heard is one of a huge ball of yarn that is thousands of colors,
with many threads going into different spindles. Each spindle is a different color.
And on those yarn filled spindles, there are two threads: one coming from the ball, and one going to the ball.
Which thread is feeding the ball, and which is feeding the spindle is unknown.
Jan Assman refers to the One and the Many concept as 'cosmotheism'
|
|