Table of Contents
Articles on the ancient Egyptian Religion
Egyptian Fusion of Gods and Goddesses
Egyptian theology does not show, in general, any clear tendency towards system. The great mass of religious texts in Egypt is marked by vagueness and even inconsistency. Individual gods are very rarely clear and well-defined personalities. Indeed, it is a feature of Egyptian theology that nearly every one of its gods is capable, in one way or another, of being fused with others.
This fusion takes place, usually, as a result of the popularising of cults over wide areas. In the earliest period each district was under the almost exclusive patronage of the local deity but, as the intercommunications of the various districts became in course of time more intense, and as one or other dynasty or district became especially powerful in the political life of Egypt, or, as certain cults, of their nature universal, or, at least, national, became more prominent, fusions of all kinds took place among the Egyptian gods. The local cult of each district generally showed itself ready to identify its god with the more powerful and popular god of a wider area. Thus, it might happen that a god like Re, or Atum, or Ptah could be identified with practically every divinity in Egypt. And when fusion of local deities with gods of wider influence had taken place all over the country, it was easy, as a next step, to interfuse the local divinities with each other.
We must not, therefore, be surprised to find that local gods of apparently slight importance, often appear decorated with the titles of the great cosmic deities, or that these great cosmic deities often appear to be particularly related to some local cult. There is the case of Set, who, from being a local god -probably a storm-god - - was raised to the rank of enemy in-chief of the powers of light.
The existence of solar divinities with varying attributes in different, and often widely separated districts pf Ancient Egypt, is probably due also to the fusion of local cults with similiar cults of their nature there were more widely known. The policy of identifying the divinities of local cults with the greater gods of Egypt led to each local god could assume the qualities, and activities of any or all of the great cosmic creative divinities. In this way any local god might become, through the ambition or zeal of his priests and worshippers, the primitive god, the creator of the world.
Not only was there much fusion in Egypt of local gods with the cosmic deities, but the latter also tended to become interfused with each other. It is not strange, therefore, to find that Thoth, who stands forth among the great ancient gods as the wise and learned one, should appear as a wise creator, or as a sort of demiurgic Reason, or Logos. This may be due to the familiar tendency, just mentioned, to attribute to the god of a local shrine the activities of a primitive divinity. It might, of course, on the other hand, be the product of a genuinely speculative turn of ancient thought, taking Thoth, or Reason, as a creatively active mode of appearance of the primitive deity.
Isis is a prime example of fusion of Goddesses in Egypt. During the Old Kingdom her cult was localized in only two districts and hardly known outside her areas. During the Middle Kingdom she was associated (by being the wife of Osiris), a Goddess of Women and a Mother Goddess, but was still unknown in much of Egypt. During the New Kingdom her reputation rises in Egypt as the mythology surrounding Osiris, Isis and the others becomes more and more popular. It wasn't until the Late Period and Greco-Roman period when Isis really took off being fused with other Goddesses. This was mainly, not because of the native population desiring more functions for Isis but by the Greek settlers who became enamoured with her and attributed just about every function of the other Egyptian Goddesses unto her. Hence, Renenutet at Medinet Madi (the Harvest Goddess, Food Goddess, Protector of children and fate) became associated and fused to Isis by the Greeks (and the fusion became Thermonthis). The same with Neith, the only Egyptian Goddess to wear a veil until the Greeks adopted it to Isis during the Greco-Egyptian period.