3) Had elaborate beliefs in an afterlife and made many preparations for it
Can anyone argue that they were not religious? There is incomplete information on the subject but there seemed to be no central dogma, it's was a conglomeration of many beliefs which reflected pre dynastic beliefs in surrounding areas. The dogma is localized. Akenhaten made an attempt to unify religious beliefs but it wasn't accepted.
The word "symbol" has a different meaning to a religious person than it does to an atheist or someone who say they are "spiritual but not religious"
For example Quetzalcoatl is the Aztec wind God and is symbolized by a feathered serpent.
An atheist would agree Quetzalcoatl is symbolized by a feathered serpent. But when they say "symbolized" they believe that the God himself Quetzalcoatl doesn't exist he himself is also a artistic symbol for rain. So any praying, worship or ceremony will have no effect on the weather.
But when a religious person says the same thing that "Quetzalcoatl is symbolized by a feathered serpent" They might say that Quetzalcoatl may not actually look like a feathered serpent but the God himself Quetzalcoatl is real and that he may be communicated with or influenced by worship and ceremonies.
So if you say the Gods of ancient Egyptians were symbolic of nature can be misleading. It's the depiction of the Gods in human form that is the symbolism not that God itself is symbolic. If you say the Gods of ancient Egyptians were symbolic of nature it doesn't necessarily mean in the way we use the term "nature" in the modern day where natural events occur randomly according to the physics of the environment. In earlier times nature was seen as forces being controlled by intelligent beings not a set of random physical forces. -no separation between Gods and nature
Things that are strictly symbolic like certain fine art painting or sculpture have no innate power. You don't go into a gallery and start worshiping and doing ceremonies in front of an artwork.
But when religious people are worshiping in front of a sculpture they would say that they are not worshiping the sculpture or that the God necessarily looks like the sculpture, they are worshiping the being that controls the forces of nature. There's no point in worshiping the rain with priests involved unless it is believed that doing so could communicate with the being that controls the rain and attempt to influence him.
There is an attempt mad to say the ancient peoples would have checked a box on a dating application form which said "spiritual but not religious".
Religious people do not make a distinction. They say they are spiritual and religious.
Posts: 42935 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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I believe the degree to which they were religious is exaggerated. They were very spiritual and only somewhat religious. Much of our understanding of them comes from tombs and like foxholes there will be relatively few here who don't appear religious.
I also suspect that we don't well understand their religious aspect. We think that they worshipped many Gods but the Pyramid Texts seem more to say that the many Gods were almost like different facets of the same God.
They did have a strongly religious side though and it was this that caused them to express themselves in such unique ways. They didn't ascribe attributes to their Gods who were all heavily anthropomorphized and they didn't depict them in their actual state. There aren't drawings or paintings of the sun since this would be blasphemous. To draw a sun lit landscape they'd simply add the God Re' to the drawing. Rather than say Re' is bright they would say that Re' is good each day or that Re' makes the crops grow or illuminates the day.
I don't believe they were any more superstitious than modern people but they were superstitious in different ways and these look primitive to many people today.
Posts: 393 | From: NW Indiana, US of A | Registered: Aug 2006
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