Ancient Egypt consisted of 42 nomes or provinces. Each had a local god or goddess, or deity. Most nomes had a variety of local deities. Some deities had a regional following among several nomes. Others eventually became national deities. In some cases a deity from one nome would be identified as similar to or equivalent to a deity from another nome, and their identities would blur together. At different times various of these deities would be more "in favor" than at others.  For the Egyptians, the best thing to do was to let every province have its own gods and have peaceful co-existence. Simply honor and acknowledge all of them, simultaneously, and ignore any contradictions.

CREATION MYTHS (OR COSMOGONY)
The Egyptians believed that in the beginning there was water. Out of the water there eventually rose a mound of earth (sometimes called the Ben-Ben). It became the world as we know it. Certain primordial forces of nature emerged. These were the gods of chaos, or the Heh gods (Kuk and Kauket, the male and female consort who embodied or personified darkness) and Huh and Hauhet (the male and female consort) who personified formlessness or endlessness or boundlessness); Nun and Naunet (the male and female personification of the watery abyss).

The nomes differed as to who was the god of creation. Four stand out. They were

Atum:  "The All", the creator god (per Heliopolis)
Amun or Amen: hidden-ness, invisibility, the air (but creator god for Thebes)
Ptah-creator god per Memphis,
Khnum (ram-headed god); associated with the city of Elephantine (Aswan)

What is distinctive in these legends is the way that creation comes about. Atum, the creator god of the legends of Heliopolis, ejaculates or spits out the other gods. Since he had no female consort, how else could the other gods arise? Memphis was sacred to Ptah. Ptah conceives of an idea with his heart but then speaks, using hu or divine utterance or command. The god speaks, and the act of speech causes creation to occur. The Egyptians also identified divine knowledge (sia) and divine energy (heka). Speech is the uniquely divine and human characteristic. Khnum is the potter god. He shapes the body from wet clay. Here two metaphors of creation are contrasted: speaking versus shaping from clay or matter. Another early, primordial god was Shu, identified with air or the atmosphere (and his consort Tefnut, identified with moisture, as in dew).

So we suspend the question of creation, and let the gods coexist and let people believe whichever version they like in their own locality.

OSIRIS
One of the most widespread myths involved Osiris (Asar in Egyptian). He is a son of the creator god. Initially he was the god of vegetation, which died in the fall and was reborn in the spring. Abydos was the sacred city of Osiris. Osiris had a sister, Isis, depicted as having wings. She was also his wife or consort. Likewise Osiris and Isis had a brother Seth, who was the god of the desert, and storms and disorder. They had a sister, who was Nephthys, and is sometimes depicted as the consort or wife of Seth. Notice that Osiris is the god of vegetation, and Set or Seth is the god of the desert. The two are antagonistic. The advance of the desert always threatens the vegetation in the Nile Valley, and the vegetation spreads at the expense of the desert in the summer. According to the myths, Seth was jealous of his brother Osiris. In some versions, Seth is angry because Osiris had intercourse with Nephthys and bore him a child, the jacjal-headed god Anubis (god of embalming and guardian of the tomb and the afterlife). In other versions of the myth, Nephthys deceived Osiris by magically transforming herself so as to look like Isis, and Osiris did not know until it was too late. The angry Seth then murdered Osiris and hacked up his body into 12 or 13 parts and hid them in various places. Isis and Nephthys gather together the parts. Isis then fans the divine breath of life into his body and revives him long enough for him to impregnate her. He then dies. Isis and Nephthys wrap the body of Osiris with strips of cloth, or bandages, and he is alwsys shown as a mummy. He is usually black in color (suggesting the night) or green. Osiris, however, is immortal, and reigns in the afterlife or underworld as the lord of the dead. Osiris is no longer on earth or in our dimension of life. He is "alive" in the spirit world, not in the "real" material world that we inhabit. Especially in the early centuries, Osiris was the most important deity. He is the god of the afterlife, and the Egyptians are the first people in the world who recorded a belief in an afterlife. This is sometimes seen as a pre-figuration of the idea of resurrection, or rebirth to a new life after death. Osiris is the symbol of the cycle of death and rebirth. Perhaps more precisely, Osiris is regenerated or revived. His body lives again. So he still has the same body, repaired and renewed and healed, as if new again. It is not a NEW body. This differs from the later Chrisitan idea of resurrection, in which even if we were cremated we would have a new, spiritual body.

 HORUS
The impregnated Isis then bears a child, Heru, the son of Osiris. The Greeks call him Horus. When Heru grows up, he fights his uncle Seth and defeats him, thus avenging the murder of his father. Horus then rules over the world, with his wife Hathor. Horus is depicted as a falcon. Hathor is a mother goddess, a cow. In some legends the sun is described as the right eye of Horus, and the moon as his left eye. It was injured during the fight with Seth, which is why it is not as bright as the sun. The sun is Re. The moon is Thoth (at Hermopolis). More generally, Thoth is the scribe of the gods and the god of writing and wisdom. He is the patron of the priests. He is depicted with the head of an ibis. Heru was the protector of the monarch. In a sense, this deity symbolized the divine kingship and the monarchy as an institution.

The Egyptian myths suggested that the sun grew old as the day progressed, and died each night at sunset, and then was restored or reborn and rose again as a new, regenerated being. The dawn or first light of the new sun was personified as Khep-Re or Khepre. He was represented as a beetle (scarab) because he seemed self locomoting, or he moved by his own energy. Another myth envisioned the sun as being raised into the sky on the wings of a falcon.

Narmer and Horaha claimed to be sons of Horus. This is why at the top of Narmer's palette are the two heads showing the cow-headed goddess Hathor. If Narmer is the son of Horus, then mythologically Hathor is his mother. And the same would hold for all the pharaohs. In Dynasty IV the pharaohs also claim to be sons of Re as well. Later they become sons of Amun as well. The pyramids were thought of as representing the mound of creation, and as stairways to the sun. Pharoah, in a sense, was the incarnation of Heru (Horus) on earth. In death, pharaoh became the sun in the sky and Osiris in the underworld.

 ANUBIS AND MAAT
Two other deities who bear a relationship to Osiris are Anubis and Maat (Maet), sometimes pronounced Ma-hat. Anubis is the jackal-headed god, or African wild dog. He is the embalmer. He is the guardian of the tomb. He usually accompanies Osiris.

Maat is the goddess of order; right and wrong; everything in its proper place or relationship. It is balance. It is justice. She is the personification of the principle of balance. To the Egyptians, she personifies what is right, or that which is right, in contrast to what is wrong or improper.

THE DAY OF JUDGEMENT
The Egyptians believed each person had a spiritual double, or vital force, called a Ka. It was disembodied. Our human, mortal, earthly bodies are made of matter. The Ka is of a spiritual substance. We are matter. The Ka is spirit. At death, the individual goes before lord Osiris for judgement. The person's heart is placed in a scale. In the other scale is placed a feather, which is the symbol of the goddess Ma'at. If you have led a righteous life, the scales should balance, and your heart should not weigh more than the feather. The scales should be perfectly balanced. If you are judged righteous, Osiris grants to you the gift of immortality and eternal life. You go on to the afterlife, where Osiris reigns as lord of the dead. The Egyptians referred to it as Duat, the land of the righteous dead. But if you were not righteous, you might be devoured by a monstrous animal (Ammut, the Devourer) and cease to exist. Some people suffered in a lake of fire, others floated as drowned beings in water. Eventually they would cease to exist. In the Egyptian religion we do not have an immortal soul. Eternal life is a gift granted only to the righteous. There is no hell where the soul suffers for eternity. Instead, the punishment for evil is extinction or oblivion. One ceases to exist at all. Osiris performs the judgement, and Thoth, the scribe of the gods, records the verdict. Anubis places the heart in the scale.
 

MANIFESTATIONS OF THE SUN

The Egyptians had multiple, subtle, contradictory, overlapping views of the sun. For them, the sun had multiple manifestations or guises or aspects. In the early centuries the sun-god was Re, especially the noon or midday sun. The dawn was Kheper or Khepre. Atum was the setting sun. Originally Amun was a primordial force of nature. He was hidden-ness. He was invisible. He was the Hidden One. But the Thebans eventually personified their god Amun as the sun. They argued that Amun, the Hidden One, made himself visible and manifest to man as the sun, or Re. Thus the sun is the visible manifestation of a force which is actually invisible. Amun is the invisible force that stands behind visible reality. An analogy would be the wind, which we cannot see. It is known by its effects. We feel the breeze, we see the leaves of the trees move, we hear the rustle. So we know it is there. But we cannot see it. Likewise, according to this theology about Amun, the sun is merely the most visible manifestation of the invisible Amun. By the time of Amenemhet and Dynasty 12 Amun and Re were being incorporated together as if a single deity. This Amun-Re was especially identified with the noon or midday sun, which is the sun at its brightest. Dynasty 18, which was Theban, exalted Amun, and by Dynasty 18 Amun-Re was regarded as the "king of the gods." The great temple of Amun-Re was at Karnak, near Thebes. The Egyptians also imagined that the sun rose in the sky in the morning on the wings of a falcon, and this representation of the sun was Re-Harakhty. The disk of the sun was called the Aten. In the beginning it was thought of simply as a thing or object, not a deity. Aten is not the midday sun, Amun-Re.

The purpose of mummification was to preserve the body so that it could be regenerated in the afterlife.  No body, no afterlife. The internal organs and brain were removed. The body was preserved in a natural salt called natron (calcium carbonate) for 60-70 days and filled with aromatic ointments and bandaged. The organs were placed in canopic jars. The body of wealthy people was placed in a wooden coffin, which was then placed in a stone sarcophagus. The Egyptians took food, wine, their jewelry, clothing, etc. with them into the grave or tomb. They would need it in the afterlife. King Tut even took his chariot with him. It is not that the Egyptians were obsessed with death. It is estimated that infant mortality was about 50 percent, and most people were dead by age 25. Surrounded by so much death, life was precious and precarious. The Egyptians  loved life, they wanted to extend it indefinitely. But mummification and taking grave goods with one does not make much sense unless one believes in an afterlife. The Egyptians also turned to the gods for the healing of sickness, and fortune in love and marriage. They prayed and made offerings, and sacrificed animals. They maintained funerary shrines for departed family members and ancestors.

 AKHENATEN, THE HERETIC (1350-1334 B.C.) [16 years]
I have discussed the orthodox religion of Egypt. But Akhenaten saw things differently. He seems to have hated the priests of Amun. Especially he hated the stranglehold that he felt the priests of Amun held over pharaoh. He hated their power. Instead of Amun, Akhenaten chose to worship another aspect of the sun. This was the Aten. Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaten, to give honor to Aten. This name means "Servant of the Aten." (Clayton, p. 120). The Aten is the disk of the sun, or the solar globe or disk. He depicted the Aten as a deity, the supreme deity, indeed the one and only deity. Akhenaten portrayed the Aten as protective rays of light reaching down to the earth, and terminating as hands holding the sacred ankh, or symbol of life. (Clayton, p. 122).

At first Akhenaten merely built a temple to Aten outside the gate of the Temple of Amun at Thebes. But he could not tolerate the continued veneration of Amun-Re. It is alleged that he closed the temples of Amun and proscribed or forbade the worship of Amun. He may even have shut down the temples of the other gods as well. He cut off the priests of Amun from receiving the revenues and tax receipts from the estates dedicated to Amun (Clayton, p. 122). Religiously, this was a declaration of war. Akhenaten asserted that he was the son of Aten, and only he, as pharaoh, could commune with Aten. There was no need for priests. He was the high priest. He was, in a sense, divine, and Aten-on-earth. For the priests of Amun, of course, all of this was heresy. It was sacrilege. It was war. So this is both a religious struggle and a political struggle for power. In Year 6 of his reign, Akhenaten even transferred the capital from Thebes, which was the holy center of the cult of Amun, to a virgin site called Akhetaten. There he built a new capital city. This name of Akhetaten meant The Horizon of the Aten. Today it is called el-Amarna. Perhaps we can understand why the priests of Amun hated him. Akhenaten gives us a peculiar early form of the idea of monotheism. There is only one god, and everything else is simply a manifestation of the one god. But if Atenism is monotheism, it is a modified monotheism, with Akhenaten as the only individual able to communicate with the deity. And Akhenaten as pharoah is divine. This is not monontheism as we know it, but it is a step away from polytheism (multiple gods). Also, the Egyptians thought of their gods as gods of Egypt. What other peopl ehad in other countries was their business and their problem. It is debatable whether the Egyptians thought of their gods as "universal." They may have simply felt that every society has its own gods, and that is that.

The opponents and enemies of Akhenaten said that he was crazy. He was mad or insane. What we cannot determine is whether they said this because it was true or if they said it because they opposed him for religious reasons and were trying to defame him, discredit him, assassinate his character. But he became the most controversial, the most hated, the most reviled of all the pharaohs. But he was the living son of god, and therefore there was nothing they could do to him. So long as the army obeyed his commands, and did not depose him, there was nothing that anyone could do even if he was insane.

 Queen Tiye lived for several years into the reign of her son, at least 9 and possibly as many as 12 years (Clayton, p. 119). Nefertiti was his Great Wife, or Principal Wife.  The famous statue of the queen's head, or bust, is shown in Clayton on p. 123. It is now in a museum in Berlin. Nefertiti is the most famous queen of Egypt after Cleopatra. He also had an obscure wife named Kiya. Nefertiti's father was Ay, who was a high civil official and advisor to pharaoh. He is the father-in-law of Akhenaten. Evidently he was vizier or prime minister in fact, if not in name. With or without the title, he was the power behind the throne. There is also the suggestion (see Clayton, p. 121) that Ay was a brother of Queen Tiye. Nefertiti also had a sister, Mutnodjme. She married General Horemheb. Thus Horemheb is the son-in-law of Ay and brother-in-law of Akhenaten. We know that Akhenaten and Nefertiti had several daughters, possibly six. The older three were Meritaten, Meketaten, and Ankhesenpaaten.

In Akhenaten's reign Canaan was attacked. The local princes of the towns in Canaan sent letters or dispatches (actually clay tablets, see Clayton p. 126). begging for help. There is no record of any response from Akhenaten and the government in Egypt. The impression is conveyed that Akhenaten was busy composing songs and hymns and poetry to Aten. His Hymn to Aten survives. Akhenaten is portrayed as someone who was lost in his own mysticism, so wrapped up in and obsessed with Atenism that he was oblivious to what was happening around him. In his reign Canaan slips from the grasp of Egypt. Egypt is internally divided by religious dissension, and pharaoh is distracted in mysticism.

There is no indication that Nefertiti had any sons.

Next, there is the issue of the statues and drawings of Akhenaten. They show him as if he were androgynous. His face is long, his neck is long, and he had very broad hips. We do not know if this was some sort of deformity, or if he is portrayed this way to make some kind of statement that as the earthly manifestation of the Aten he embodied both male and female within himself. It is a mystery. [the music of Prince]
 

SMENKHARE (1336-1334 B.C., mostly co-regency)

Akhenaten's successor was Smenkhare. But we do not yet know whether Smenkhare was a younger son of Amenhotep III, and therefore the brother of Akhenaten, OR if Smenkhare is a son of Akhenaten. We do know three things for certain. 1. There is a close physical resemblance bewteen Smenkhare and Queen Tiye. 2. Examination of the skulls of Smenkhare and Tutankhamun shows they are very close relatives.  3. Smenkhare married Princess Meritaten. Akhenaten designated Smenkhare as his successor by making him co-regent in 1336 B.C. Two years later, in 1334 B.C., Akhenaten died. Smenkhare succeeded to the throne. Within months, in 1334 B.C., he too was dead. He seems to have died from a blow to the head. He probably was not yet twenty years old. It is difficult to avoid the suspicion of foul play. Meritaten seems to have predeceased him. The mummy which we believe to be the body of Smenkhare is definitely a close relative of Tutankhamun. There is also a theory that the name Smenkhare was a name for Nefertiti.

The downfall of Akhenaten came in family relations. In succession he evidently married his first three daughters. Meritaten seems to have given birth to a daughter by her father. According to Clayton, this was Meritaten Tasherit (Tashery), which means Meritaten the Younger. Later on, the oldest daughter, Meritaten, would be given in marriage to Smenkhare. Akhenaten also married his second daughter, Meketaten. From Year 12 of his reign there is a carved or relief drawing showing Akhenaten and Nefertiti and their retinue with hands raised in despair, standing over the inert body of a body, believed to be Meketaten. Also in the drawing a nurse carries away an infant. This appears to be a drawing of the death of Meketaten in childbirth. Meketaten died, but we do not know if the child lived or died. (Clayton, p. 124).
Subsequently Akhenaten married his third daughter, Ankhesenpaaten. She is the most abused figure of the 18th Dynasty. Some historians once thought she too bore a child by Akhenaten, but opinion is very divided.

TUTANKHAMUN (1334-1325 B.C.)

Following the death of Smenkhare, the marriage of Ankhesenpaaten to Tutankhamun was arranged. For Ankhesenpaaten, this was her second marriage. There are two theories about Tutankhamun.The first theory is that he is a much younger son of Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. This would make him a brother of Akhenaten. In the tomb of Tutankhamun is a little coffinette, sort of like a box for jewelry. It is inscribed with the names Amenhotep III and Queen Tiye. In the box was found a locket of hair. It appears to be the hair of Queen Tiye, and is identical to the hair of the mummy believed to be Queen Tiye. Clearly Tutankhamun is a descendant of Queen Tiye. But if Tiye is his mother, she bore him after she was forty--possible but not likely. The second theory, which is more plausible, is that Tutankhamun is the son of Akhenaten and Queen Kiya, a lesser queen, and so Tutankhamun is not a son of Nefertiti. Records refer to Kiya as "Greatly Beloved Wife" of Akhenaten, in Year 9 of his reign. After Year 11 she disappears (Clayton, p. 130). In this case Tutankhamun is the son of Akhenaten and Kiya and the grandson of Tiye, and married his half-sister.

Tutankhamun reigned from 1334-1325 (9 years). He was a child of about nine when he succeeded to the throne. At death he was perhaps 18. In his brief reign Atenism was abandoned and the worship of Amun was restored. The temples of Amun were re-opened. By the time Tutankhamun came to the throne Tiye, Nefertiti, and Kiya were all dead. His wife, Anhkesenpaaten, was now renamed Ankhesenamun, giving honor to Amun rather than Aten. She was older than he, since she was already of childbearing age and already had a child. Nevertheless, in the tomb of Tutankhamun have been found the mummified remains of two female babies, sometimes referred to as fetuses. It is possible they were stillborn or miscarried. Examination of the skull of Tutankhamun shows an area where the bone is smashed in, as if from a blow or injury. Maybe it was an accident and he was thrown from his chariot. Maybe he was murdered. In any event, at about age 18, with no surviving male heir, the last male descendant or blood relative of Akhenaten was dead, too.

There are documents that purport to show a queen of Egypt asking a foreign ruler to send one of his sons to ne her husband, as she does not wish to be married to one of her servants (subjects). Scholars have presumed that this alludes to Anhkesenamun, and this depicts her as the "thrice married" queen (married to her father Akhenaten, her half-brother Tutanhkamun, and then perhaps Ay (her own grandfather?). But not all scholars agree that the queen who supposedly sent these letters was Ankhesenamun. What if it was Nefertiti, still alive at the time of the death of Ahkenaten but seeking a new, foreign husband? The scholars will continue to debate this, and until we have more definitive evidence there is just a lot of speculation.