From this richly rewarding and provocative book we learn just how central the sun and its veneration were to ancient kingship and religion in the Valley of the Nile. Did the ancient Egyptians believe in many gods, or one god in many guises? The key lies in the special relationship between the sun god Ra and the king, in his central role as 'son of Ra'.The book draws together for the first time the recent advances in our understanding of the cult of Ra, from the 3rd millennium BC to the Roman conquest of Egypt and the rise of Christianity. Select inscriptions and manuscripts uncover the innermost mysteries of the cult and the reader enters the closed world of the king as he carries out his principal function, to maintain life itself.
The epicentre of the cult was the greatest religious complex of ancient Egypt. Scattered excavations across this vast site - now all but inaccessible within the urban sprawl of modern Cairo - have offered a glimpse of vanished magnificence. Quirke also examines the better-preserved sites such as Karnak and Tanis, and the remains of monuments now dispersed across the world, to show how they reflected the glory of the sun cult. Pyramids and obelisks represent the outstanding architectural and engineering achievements of ancient Egypt, and here their precise links to the sun cult are analysed.
Quirke closes with a new account of Akhenaten, the most exclusive son of Ra, who transformed the Ra cult into a tightly channelled royal worship of the sun disk, Aten.
(0 Comentarios)
