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Egypt info - Amen Ra

Amun, reconstructed Egyptian Yamānu (also spelled Amon, Amoun, Amen, Zeus Amun, and rarely Imen or Yamun, Greek Ἄμμων Ammon, and Ἅμμων Hammon), was a god in Egyptian mythology who in the form of Amun-Ra became the focus of the most complex system of theology in Ancient Egypt. Whilst remaining hypostatic, Amun represented the essential and hidden, whilst in Ra he represented revealed divinity. As the creator deity "par excellence", he was the champion of the poor or troubled and central to personal piety.

Amun was self created, without mother and father, and during the New Kingdom he became the greatest expression of transcendental deity in Egyptian theology. He was not considered to beimmanent within creation nor was creation seen as an extension of himself. Amun-Ra did not physically engender the universe. His position as King of Gods developed to the point of virtualmonotheism where other gods became manifestations of him. With Osiris, Amun-Ra is the most widely recorded of the Egyptian gods. He was also widely worshipped in the neighboring regions of Ancient Libya and Nubia.

Family

Amun created himself alone. His first wife was Wosret, but he later married Amunet and Mut. With Mut he is a father of the moon god Khonsu.

Rise of god after expulsion of Hyksos

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 their successful enterprises to Amun and they lavished much of their wealth and captured spoil on the construction of temples dedicated to Amun.

As the Egyptians considered themselves oppressed during the period of the Hyksos rule, the victory accomplished by pharaohs who worshipped Amun, brought him to be seen as a champion of the less fortunate. Consequently, Amun was viewed as 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 upheldMa'at (truth, justice, and goodness), 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-Medinarecord:

[Amun] who comes at the voice of the poor in distress, who gives breath to him who is wretched..You are Amun, the Lord of the silent, who comes at the voice of the poor; when I call to you in my distress You come and rescue me...Though the servant was disposed to do evil, the Lord is disposed to forgive. The Lord of Thebes spends not a whole day in anger; His wrath passes in a moment; none remains. His breath comes back to us in mercy..May your ka be kind; may you forgive; It shall not happen again.

Much later, because of the evidence of the adoration given to Amun in many regions during the height of his cult, Greek travellers to Egypt would report that Amun—who they determined to be the ruler of the Egyptian pantheon—was similar to the leader of the Classical Greekpantheon, Zeus, and therefore they became identified by the Greeks as the same deity. Likewise, Amun's consort Mut became associated by these Greeks with Zeus's consort in the Classical pantheon, Hera.

Praises of Amun on stelae are strikingly similar in language to those later used in the reign of Akhenaton, in particular the Hymn to the Aten:

"When thou crossest the sky, all faces behold thee, but when thou departest, thou are hidden from their faces.. When thou settest in the western mountain, then they sleep in the manner of death..The fashioner of that which the soil produces,...a mother of profit to gods and men; a patient craftsmen, greatly wearying himself as their maker..valiant herdsman, driving his cattle, their refuge and the making of their living..The sole Lord, who reaches the end of the lands every day, as one who sees them that tread thereon..Every land chatters at his rising every day, in order to praise him."