|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
Statuette of Ra or Ra-Harakhte 1st millennium B.C. Cast bronze Height: 9.3 cm Solar gods always played a dominant role in Egyptian religion. This can be explained by the special significance of the Egyptians' concepts of vision. What we see exists, therefore vision creates the world. Light is a vital precondition for vision, therefore the Sun that gives it is by its very nature the creator of the world and the permanent source of life. The oldest and foremost solar deity was the god Ra (whose name means "Sun"). His main cult place was the city of Iunu, which the Greeks called Heliopolis (now within the Cairo metropolitan area). Ra was considered a creator god, the king of the gods and the father of the Egyptian ruler. He was imagined as sailing in a ship across the sky by day and through the underworld by night and depicted in a host of different guises - in human form, as the solar disk and as a man with the head of a falcon. Many gods were identified with him, but the most natural were syncretic forms in which Ra was combined with other solar deities such as Harakhte ("Horus of the Horizon") and Atum - the gods of sunrise and sunset. Of exceptional importance too was his identification with Amun. During his nocturnal voyage he merged with Osiris.
Copyright © 2011 State Hermitage Museum
|
|
||||||
