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Ancient Egyptian Religion: An Interpretation
Fascinating book explores the underlying concept of the changeless as the basis of Egyptian religion, and how it unifies what scholars had believed to be an unrelated jungle of weird myths, doctrines, and practices generated by local cults. Relation of the idea of the changeless to moral and political philosophy, Egyptian government and society, literature and art. ". . . one of the finest elucidations of these materials that we have anywhere." — American Historical Review . Chronological Table. Index. Preface. 32 halftones.
224 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1948
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 5, 2015
I'm surprised that there are no reviews for this book. In general, I liked it. It was well researched, obviously, not overly reliant on footnotes (I've read some books where there's more text in footnotes than the actual prose), and fairly easy to read without getting into too much detail. I'ts a good mid-level book for those interested in ancient Egypt. Though, the only thing lacking (which is not the fault of the author or anyone), is that it's old (1948) and there are a lot better books out there because our technology has greatly improved over the past 60 years.
All in all, a short quick read (150 pages), which is well written in a non-academic way which keeps the pace light and fast.
All in all, a short quick read (150 pages), which is well written in a non-academic way which keeps the pace light and fast.
September 16, 2018
Henri Frankfort's Ancient Egyptian Religion: An Interpretation was first published in 1948 and is a slim volume at 180 pages. The work assumes that the reader has some degree of familiarity with ancient Egyptian culture, history, and geography. I would not recommend it as an introduction to this topic. However, although in an academic vein, it is very readable and Frankfort does a good job of defending his thesis that the basis of ancient Egyptian religion is a belief in an unchanging universe. According to Frankfort, the key to interpreting the tangle of various city-cults along the Nile, weird myths, and overly complex religious texts is to understand that the lodestar of Egyptian culture was a desire for permanence in the natural and political world.
March 8, 2017
Henri Frankfort's "Ancient Egyptian Religion: An Interpretation" is not a long book, but it has a lot to say. I recall hearing one of my college professors discuss how, when writing her book, she knew that she wanted another chapter but didn't know what she wanted to say in it. In the end she came up with a sort of half-baked theory and stuck it in there. Henri Frankfort, on the other hand, seems to have written this book only when he knew exactly what he wanted to say.
He approaches the question of ancient Egyptian religion from several angles. There was no Bible or Qur'an that recorded Egyptians' beliefs and practices. Instead Frankfort gathers evidence from inscriptions, art, literature, and even architecture. In the end he builds a compelling case that the essential focus of Egyptian religion and thought was the changelessness of the universe. Things that seem to be changing--the sun's motion through the sky, the Nile's ebb and flow--follow eternal cycles.
Since this book was written in 1948, I imagine there have been new discoveries and advances in our understanding of ancient Egypt. I'm no expert on the subject, but to me "Ancient Egyptian Religion" still bears reading for the clarity of its thought and argument. I look forward to reading more of Frankfort's work in the future.
He approaches the question of ancient Egyptian religion from several angles. There was no Bible or Qur'an that recorded Egyptians' beliefs and practices. Instead Frankfort gathers evidence from inscriptions, art, literature, and even architecture. In the end he builds a compelling case that the essential focus of Egyptian religion and thought was the changelessness of the universe. Things that seem to be changing--the sun's motion through the sky, the Nile's ebb and flow--follow eternal cycles.
Since this book was written in 1948, I imagine there have been new discoveries and advances in our understanding of ancient Egypt. I'm no expert on the subject, but to me "Ancient Egyptian Religion" still bears reading for the clarity of its thought and argument. I look forward to reading more of Frankfort's work in the future.
November 24, 2021
I found this book extremely interesting. Never before have I gotten a vibe of what Maat truly is until reading this. Difficult to thank Mr. Frankfort for his contributions, since he died in 1954. Oh well. This is definitely a good addition to my collection.
March 10, 2026
I will review Henri Frankfort's Interpretation and Adolf Erman's Handbook of Egyptian Religion concurrently, and copy this text into my reviews of both books, as I think they compliment each other well.
The Erman is a text for beginners (yet it's a very hefty 300 pages, intended to serve as a guide for an exhibit at a 1920s Berlin Imperial Museum exhibition) and covers all the basic facts engagingly, but in a manner which makes clear Erman's great erudition. The most interesting parts of the book for me were discussions of the areas where the Egyptians' deeply held beliefs ran counter to the conditions of scarcity they laboured under. Example: they believed that the maintenance of the body after death was key to autonomy and a good afterlife. To this end, the rich ones paid a caste of mortuary priests (and then later on a stratum of graveyard entrepreneurs) to continually give offerings to their tomb and maintain the place. Of course, it costs a lot of to do this for lots of dead people, so you'd end up with many situations where, say, a man would decide to transfer the contract he had inherited with the priests to look after a venerated ancestor over to his recently passed wife. This was probably a pretty terrible thing to do to your venerated ancestor, but needs must, and it wasn't necessarily frowned upon - after all, that's your wife! Most of these contracts didn't last beyond a couple of generations.
Some problems with the text: Erman is entertainingly convinced that he would have made a much better priest of Egyptian religion than the actual priests, who he considers to have dreadfully botched the whole thing. He takes a firmly declinist view of Egyptian religion, which descends from a solemn glory in the Old and Middle Kingdoms to a pantheistic mush in its later years. He does not hide his disdain for the delight the Egyptian theologians took in taking Re or Horus or Osiris' characteristics and ascribing them to each other or some other gods, and he finds the repetitiveness of the religious literature grating. He's especially harsh on the homogenising effect the Egyptians' fascination with the Osiris-Set-Isis myth had on the diversity of their mythology. His undisguised irritation with the Egyptians makes the book much more fun than a dry introduction would be, but as a good value-neutral historian I can't condone it.
A criticism of Erman's book that Frankfort makes is that Erman does not really attempt to systematise the religion and so ends up with a 300-page cabinet of curiosities. This is an overstated criticism - Erman's narrativisation of the religion's decline provides a throughline for the book - but there is something to it. Frankfort provides an antidote.
In his An Interpretation of Egyptian Religion, Frankfort's main argument is that the Egyptians believed that what was significant in the universe was that which was unchanging. For them, the daily inundation of the Nile, the progress of the sun through the sky, the eternal political regime, etc. were metaphysically decisive. It was the place of the virtuous human to live harmoniously integrated in this unchanging natural order. This explains some of the things Erman was irritated by. The repetitiveness of Egyptian religious literature mirrors the repetitiveness of the universe. It also helped me understand why studying change in Egyptian history can be rather difficult. It's very hard to divine any traces of a Pharaoh's personality in his (or her!) statues and art, because what is good in Pharaohs and thus worth immortalising in art is unchanged from the previous one. Last pharaoh was a good warrior and a good mediator between nature and humanity, by all accounts, and so was this one (by all accounts!). Of course, this love of stasis made social change utterly traumatising for the Egyptians.
Another important part of Frankfort's argument is the Egyptians' use of a 'multiplicity of approaches', which rescues them from Erman's accusations of nonsensical pantheism. The natural world did not confront the Egyptians as a mindless thing, but as a host of people and agents. A person has many faces, and many people look alike. One person does not always appear to you in the same guise. There's no essential contradiction in believing the sun is Re in a boat or a dung beetle pushing its load. In the end, these are different approaches to understanding the same sacred universal repetitiveness.
I have an intuition that Frankfort goes too far in welding coherence out of the Egyptian doctrines, especially in the chapter on death. The dead are their bodies in the tomb that need maintaining and who will be utterly lost without their offerings, they are birds who can leave the tomb, they are stars in the sky in the entourage of the gods... Frankfort asserts these are compatible beliefs, and clearly they were, because plenty of Egyptians believed all three at the same time, but he isn't able to explain how in a theoretically satisfying manner.
My final comment is that I am glad my country's in a religious tradition where they figured out a way to cope with death without having to be paranoid about the state of the body after death, because all that work the Egyptians did was very stressful for them.
The Erman is a text for beginners (yet it's a very hefty 300 pages, intended to serve as a guide for an exhibit at a 1920s Berlin Imperial Museum exhibition) and covers all the basic facts engagingly, but in a manner which makes clear Erman's great erudition. The most interesting parts of the book for me were discussions of the areas where the Egyptians' deeply held beliefs ran counter to the conditions of scarcity they laboured under. Example: they believed that the maintenance of the body after death was key to autonomy and a good afterlife. To this end, the rich ones paid a caste of mortuary priests (and then later on a stratum of graveyard entrepreneurs) to continually give offerings to their tomb and maintain the place. Of course, it costs a lot of to do this for lots of dead people, so you'd end up with many situations where, say, a man would decide to transfer the contract he had inherited with the priests to look after a venerated ancestor over to his recently passed wife. This was probably a pretty terrible thing to do to your venerated ancestor, but needs must, and it wasn't necessarily frowned upon - after all, that's your wife! Most of these contracts didn't last beyond a couple of generations.
Some problems with the text: Erman is entertainingly convinced that he would have made a much better priest of Egyptian religion than the actual priests, who he considers to have dreadfully botched the whole thing. He takes a firmly declinist view of Egyptian religion, which descends from a solemn glory in the Old and Middle Kingdoms to a pantheistic mush in its later years. He does not hide his disdain for the delight the Egyptian theologians took in taking Re or Horus or Osiris' characteristics and ascribing them to each other or some other gods, and he finds the repetitiveness of the religious literature grating. He's especially harsh on the homogenising effect the Egyptians' fascination with the Osiris-Set-Isis myth had on the diversity of their mythology. His undisguised irritation with the Egyptians makes the book much more fun than a dry introduction would be, but as a good value-neutral historian I can't condone it.
A criticism of Erman's book that Frankfort makes is that Erman does not really attempt to systematise the religion and so ends up with a 300-page cabinet of curiosities. This is an overstated criticism - Erman's narrativisation of the religion's decline provides a throughline for the book - but there is something to it. Frankfort provides an antidote.
In his An Interpretation of Egyptian Religion, Frankfort's main argument is that the Egyptians believed that what was significant in the universe was that which was unchanging. For them, the daily inundation of the Nile, the progress of the sun through the sky, the eternal political regime, etc. were metaphysically decisive. It was the place of the virtuous human to live harmoniously integrated in this unchanging natural order. This explains some of the things Erman was irritated by. The repetitiveness of Egyptian religious literature mirrors the repetitiveness of the universe. It also helped me understand why studying change in Egyptian history can be rather difficult. It's very hard to divine any traces of a Pharaoh's personality in his (or her!) statues and art, because what is good in Pharaohs and thus worth immortalising in art is unchanged from the previous one. Last pharaoh was a good warrior and a good mediator between nature and humanity, by all accounts, and so was this one (by all accounts!). Of course, this love of stasis made social change utterly traumatising for the Egyptians.
Another important part of Frankfort's argument is the Egyptians' use of a 'multiplicity of approaches', which rescues them from Erman's accusations of nonsensical pantheism. The natural world did not confront the Egyptians as a mindless thing, but as a host of people and agents. A person has many faces, and many people look alike. One person does not always appear to you in the same guise. There's no essential contradiction in believing the sun is Re in a boat or a dung beetle pushing its load. In the end, these are different approaches to understanding the same sacred universal repetitiveness.
I have an intuition that Frankfort goes too far in welding coherence out of the Egyptian doctrines, especially in the chapter on death. The dead are their bodies in the tomb that need maintaining and who will be utterly lost without their offerings, they are birds who can leave the tomb, they are stars in the sky in the entourage of the gods... Frankfort asserts these are compatible beliefs, and clearly they were, because plenty of Egyptians believed all three at the same time, but he isn't able to explain how in a theoretically satisfying manner.
My final comment is that I am glad my country's in a religious tradition where they figured out a way to cope with death without having to be paranoid about the state of the body after death, because all that work the Egyptians did was very stressful for them.
December 20, 2018
Interesting but out of date.
Read
May 16, 2020(cover image of the copy i read. ISBN: 0061300772)
January 29, 2025
Such a great book, I loved it!
January 17, 2024
It's difficult to rate this book because its historical importance and its usefulness today are different things. Interpretations of Egyptian religion in the early 20th century were dominated by a rationalistic school of thought that tended to dismiss myth as nonsense or to explain contradictory beliefs as the product of political conflicts. Bringing in insights from anthropology, Frankfort changed that. He laid out his general approach in Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man in 1946 and then explored it in depth in two books from 1948: this one and Kingship and the Gods. Because he interpreted gods and myths primarily as metaphors, he explained how seemingly contradictory ideas could so easily coexist. That insight laid the groundwork for a huge amount of the study of Egyptian religion that has taken place since. The phrase Frankfort coined to sum up this coexistence, "multiplicity of approaches", is now practically an Egyptological slogan.
Frankfort wasn't right about everything. He relied on anthropological descriptions of modern East African peoples to gain insight into ancient Egyptian thought, assuming that those peoples were closely culturally related to the Egyptians of the predynastic period. But as more recent works have shown (such as Ancient Egypt in Africa, edited by David O'Connor and Andrew Reid), it's not nearly that simple. Frankfort thought kings were absolutely and at all times considered gods, a belief that has now been challenged many times. And he posited a dramatically different mentality, "mythopoeic" or symbolic thought, to explain the way peoples before the development of Greek rationalism interpreted the world. The Egyptologist Herman te Velde, giving a generally positive evaluation of Frankfort's legacy, once said that the mythopoeic mentality "must now be dismissed as superfluous fiction." Modern Western culture is still shaped to a large extent by myths and symbols, and the Egyptians were probably more pragmatic than their religious symbolism makes them seem.
Fortunately, in this book Frankfort doesn't dwell on those subjects too much. His easily readable discussions of the thought processes behind Egyptian religion still make a decent introduction to the topic. The first chapter insightfully describes the gods; anyone who's read Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, the fundamental book on Egyptian theology, will notice how much it owes to Frankfort. The second is about the Egyptian conception of the king and the state, and the third discusses the concept of Maat and its relationship to morality. Afterlife beliefs and funerary customs come next, and the last chapter discusses how religion shaped literature and art. Many of the details are outdated, and I'd prefer that somebody new to the subject would read a more recent book like Stephen Quirke's Ancient Egyptian Religion, but not many of the recent books speak in this much depth about how profoundly religion shaped Egyptian culture.
Frankfort wasn't right about everything. He relied on anthropological descriptions of modern East African peoples to gain insight into ancient Egyptian thought, assuming that those peoples were closely culturally related to the Egyptians of the predynastic period. But as more recent works have shown (such as Ancient Egypt in Africa, edited by David O'Connor and Andrew Reid), it's not nearly that simple. Frankfort thought kings were absolutely and at all times considered gods, a belief that has now been challenged many times. And he posited a dramatically different mentality, "mythopoeic" or symbolic thought, to explain the way peoples before the development of Greek rationalism interpreted the world. The Egyptologist Herman te Velde, giving a generally positive evaluation of Frankfort's legacy, once said that the mythopoeic mentality "must now be dismissed as superfluous fiction." Modern Western culture is still shaped to a large extent by myths and symbols, and the Egyptians were probably more pragmatic than their religious symbolism makes them seem.
Fortunately, in this book Frankfort doesn't dwell on those subjects too much. His easily readable discussions of the thought processes behind Egyptian religion still make a decent introduction to the topic. The first chapter insightfully describes the gods; anyone who's read Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many, the fundamental book on Egyptian theology, will notice how much it owes to Frankfort. The second is about the Egyptian conception of the king and the state, and the third discusses the concept of Maat and its relationship to morality. Afterlife beliefs and funerary customs come next, and the last chapter discusses how religion shaped literature and art. Many of the details are outdated, and I'd prefer that somebody new to the subject would read a more recent book like Stephen Quirke's Ancient Egyptian Religion, but not many of the recent books speak in this much depth about how profoundly religion shaped Egyptian culture.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews