Amun
Amun was a major ancient Egyptian deity who appears as a member of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad. Amun was attested from the Old Kingdom together with his wife Amunet. His oracle in Siwa Oasis, located in Western Egypt near the Libyan Desert, remained the only oracle of Amun throughout. With the 11th Dynasty, Amun rose to the position of patron deity of Thebes by replacing Montu.
Initially possibly one of eight deities in the Hermopolite creation myth, his worship expanded. After the rebellion of Thebes against the Hyksos and with the rule of Ahmose I, Amun acquired national importance, expressed in his fusion with the Sun god, Ra, as Amun-Ra. On his own, he was also thought to be the king of the gods.
Amun-Ra retained chief importance in the Egyptian pantheon throughout the New Kingdom. Amun-Ra in this period held the position of transcendental, self-created creator deity "par excellence"; he was the champion of the poor or troubled and central to personal piety. With Osiris, Amun-Ra is the most widely recorded of the Egyptian gods.
As the chief deity of the Egyptian Empire, Amun-Ra also came to be worshiped outside Egypt, according to the testimony of ancient Greek historiographers in Libya and Nubia. As Zeus Ammon and Jupiter Ammon, he came to be identified with Zeus in Greece and Jupiter in Rome.
Early history
In 1910 René Basset suggested that the cult of Amun first developed in ancient Libya before spreading to ancient Egypt. But this is just an unproven hypothesis since Amun was "irst attested in the tomb of Pharaoh Unas" in Egypt, and not in Libya.Amun and Amaunet are mentioned in the Old Egyptian Pyramid Texts.
The name Amun meant something like "the hidden one" or "invisible", which is also attested by epithets found in the Pyramid Texts "O You, the great god whose name is unknown".
Amun rose to the position of tutelary deity of Thebes after the end of the First Intermediate Period, under the 11th Dynasty. As the patron of Thebes, his spouse was Mut. In Thebes, Amun as father, Mut as mother, and the Moon god Khonsu as their son formed the divine family or the "Theban Triad".
Temple at Karnak
The history of Amun as the patron god of Thebes begins in the 20th century BC, with the construction of the Precinct of Amun-Ra at Karnak under Senusret I. The city of Thebes does not appear to have been of great significance before the 11th Dynasty.Major construction work in the Precinct of Amun-Ra took place during the 18th Dynasty when Thebes became the capital of the unified ancient Egypt.
Construction of the Hypostyle Hall may have also begun during the 18th Dynasty, though most building was undertaken under Seti I and Ramesses II. Merenptah commemorated his victories over the Sea Peoples on the walls of the Cachette Court, the start of the processional route to the Luxor Temple. This Great Inscription shows the king's campaigns and eventual return with items of potential value and prisoners. Next to this inscription is the Victory Stela, which is largely a copy of the more famous Merneptah Stele found in the funerary complex of Merenptah on the west bank of the Nile in Thebes. Merenptah's son Seti II added two small obelisks in front of the Second Pylon, and a triple bark-shrine to the north of the processional avenue in the same area. This was constructed of sandstone, with a chapel to Amun flanked by those of Mut and Khonsu.
The last major change to the Precinct of Amun-Ra's layout was the addition of the first pylon and the massive enclosure walls that surrounded the whole Precinct, both constructed by Nectanebo I.
New Kingdom
Identification with Min and Ra
When the army of the founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty expelled the Hyksos rulers from Egypt, the victor's city of origin, Thebes, became the most important city in Egypt, the capital of a new dynasty. The local patron deity of Thebes, Amun, therefore became nationally important. The pharaohs of that new dynasty attributed all of their successes to Amun, and they lavished much of their wealth and captured spoil on the construction of temples dedicated to Amun. The victory against the "foreign rulers" achieved by pharaohs who worshipped Amun caused him to be seen as a champion of the less fortunate, upholding the rights of justice for the poor. By aiding those who traveled in his name, he became the Protector of the road. Since he upheld Ma'at, those who prayed to Amun were required first to demonstrate that they were worthy, by confessing their sins. Votive stelae from the artisans' village at Deir el-Medina record:File:Min, Egyptian fertility deity.jpg|thumb|Min in a relief from the reign of Thutmose III from Deir el-Bahari.
Subsequently, when Egypt conquered Kush, they identified the chief deity of the Kushites as Amun. This Kush deity was depicted as ram-headed, more specifically a woolly ram with curved horns. Amun thus became associated with the ram arising from the aged appearance of the Kush ram deity, and depictions related to Amun sometimes had small ram's horns, known as the Horns of Ammon. A solar deity in the form of a ram can be traced to the pre-literate Kerma culture in Nubia, contemporary to the Old Kingdom of Egypt. The later name of Nubian Amun was Amani, attested in numerous personal names such as Tanwetamani, Arkamani, and Amanitore. Since rams were considered a symbol of virility, Amun also became thought of as a fertility deity, and so started to absorb the identity of Min, becoming Amun-Min. This association with virility led to Amun-Min gaining the epithet Kamutef, meaning "Bull of his mother", in which form he was found depicted on the walls of Karnak, ithyphallic, and with a "flail", as Min was.
As the cult of Amun grew in importance, Amun became identified with the chief deity who was worshipped in other areas during that period, namely the sun god Ra. This identification led to another merger of identities, with Amun becoming Amun-Ra. In the Hymn to Amun-Ra he is described as
Amarna Period
During the latter part of the Eighteenth dynasty, the pharaoh Akhenaten advanced the worship of the Aten, a deity whose power was manifested in the sun disk, both literally and symbolically. He defaced the symbols of many of the old deities, and based his religious practices upon the deity, the Aten. He moved his capital away from Thebes, but this abrupt change was very unpopular with the priests of Amun, who now found themselves without any of their former power. The religion of Egypt was inexorably tied to the leadership of the country, the pharaoh being the leader of both. The pharaoh was the highest priest in the temple of the capital, and the next lower level of religious leaders were important advisers to the pharaoh, many being administrators of the bureaucracy that ran the country.The introduction of Atenism under Akhenaten constructed a monolatrist worship of Aten in direct competition with that of Amun. Praises of Amun on stelae are strikingly similar in language to those later used, in particular, the Hymn to the Aten:
When Akhenaten died, Akhenaten's successor, Smenkhkare, became pharaoh and Atenism remained established during his brief 2-year reign. When Smenkhkare died, an enigmatic female pharaoh known as Neferneferuaten took the throne for a brief period but it is unclear what happened during her reign. After Neferneferuaten's death, Akhenaten's 9-year-old son Tutankhaten succeeded her. At the beginning of his reign, the young pharaoh reversed Atenism, re-establishing the old polytheistic religion and renaming himself Tutankhamun. His sister-wife, then named Ankhesenpaaten, followed him and was renamed Ankhesenamun. Worship of the Aten ceased for the most part and worship of Amun-Ra was restored.
During the reign of Horemheb, Akhenaten's name was struck from Egyptian records, all of his religious and governmental changes were undone, and the capital was returned to Thebes. The return to the previous capital and its patron deity was accomplished so swiftly that it seemed this monolatrist cult and its governmental reforms had never existed.
Theology
The god of wind Amun came to be identified with the solar god Ra and the god of fertility and creation Min, so that Amun-Ra had the main characteristic of a solar god, creator god and fertility god. He also adopted the aspect of the ram from the Nubian solar god, besides numerous other titles and aspects.As Amun-Ra, he was petitioned for mercy by those who believed their suffering had come about as a result of their own or others' wrongdoing.
In the Leiden hymns, Amun, Ptah, and Re are regarded as a trinity who are distinct gods but with unity in plurality.
This unity in plurality is expressed in one text:
Henri Frankfort suggested that Amun was originally a wind god and speculating pointed out that the implicit connection between the winds and mysteriousness was paralleled in a passage from the Gospel of John:
A Leiden hymn to Amun describes how he calms stormy seas for the troubled sailor: