What do you think?
Rate this book
The Search for God in Ancient Egypt
"What, for the ancient Egyptians, was the nature of the world's governing spirits'... With the evidence of ancient texts, Assmann considers Egyptian theology,... and cults and rites.... This deep, analytic book is of the greatest interest not only for specialists in matters Egyptian but also for comparative studies. "
―Antiquity, September 2001 First English-language edition, with revisions and additions by the author. This classic work by one of the world's most distinguished Egyptologists was first published in German in 1984. The Search for God in Ancient Egypt offers a distillation of Jan Assmann's views on ancient Egyptian religion, with special emphasis on theology and piety. Deeply rooted in the texts of ancient Egypt and thoroughly informed by comparative religion, theology, anthropology, and semiotic analysis, Assmann's interpretations reveal the complexity of Egyptian thought in a new way. Assmann takes special care to distinguish between the "implicit" theology of Egyptian polytheism and the "explicit" theology that is concerned with exploring the problem of the divine. His discussion of polytheism and mythology addresses aspects of ritual, the universe, and myth; his consideration of explicit theology deals with theodicy and the specifics of Amarna religion.
―Antiquity, September 2001 First English-language edition, with revisions and additions by the author. This classic work by one of the world's most distinguished Egyptologists was first published in German in 1984. The Search for God in Ancient Egypt offers a distillation of Jan Assmann's views on ancient Egyptian religion, with special emphasis on theology and piety. Deeply rooted in the texts of ancient Egypt and thoroughly informed by comparative religion, theology, anthropology, and semiotic analysis, Assmann's interpretations reveal the complexity of Egyptian thought in a new way. Assmann takes special care to distinguish between the "implicit" theology of Egyptian polytheism and the "explicit" theology that is concerned with exploring the problem of the divine. His discussion of polytheism and mythology addresses aspects of ritual, the universe, and myth; his consideration of explicit theology deals with theodicy and the specifics of Amarna religion.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
5 people are currently reading
517 people want to read
About the author
Jan Assmann
123 books102 followersAssmann studied Egyptology and classical archaeology in Munich, Heidelberg, Paris, and Göttingen. In 1966-67, he was a fellow of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo, where he continued as an independent scholar from 1967 to 1971. After completing his habilitation in 1971, he was named a professor of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg in 1976, where he taught until his retirement in 2003. He was then named an honorary professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Constance, where he is today.
In the 1990s Assmann and his wife Aleida Assmann developed a theory of cultural and communicative memory that has received much international attention. He is also known beyond Egyptology circles for his interpretation of the origins of monotheism, which he considers as a break from earlier cosmotheism, first with Atenism and later with the Exodus from Egypt of the Israelites.
In the 1990s Assmann and his wife Aleida Assmann developed a theory of cultural and communicative memory that has received much international attention. He is also known beyond Egyptology circles for his interpretation of the origins of monotheism, which he considers as a break from earlier cosmotheism, first with Atenism and later with the Exodus from Egypt of the Israelites.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 19, 2012
I have rarely been so conflicted about a book, and it was difficult to assign a meaningful star rating.
The field of Egyptian religion is exceedingly sparse. There are not many books to start with, and of those that have been written, many are out-of-date or plagued by very serious problems.
In part, this is due to the nature of the material. As Assmann points out in this volume, Herodotus was astonished when he visited Egypt and found that its people were uninterested in seriously entertaining theories about the basic natural facts of the land that had so much bearing on their own survival, such as the cause of the swelling of the Nile. He himself wasted no time devising such theories.
The Egyptians, in contrast to the Greeks, were generally not interested in offering accounts of things. And so, with their religious writings, overwhelmingly, what we have is fragments, rituals, spells, hymns, and engravings bound to particular events. We lack systematic accounts, narratives, and myths. In fact, the best-known of the Egyptian myths, the story of Osiris, came down to us in its best-known form in a version written by Plutarch.
For a religious historian like Jan Assmann, who is interested in systematic theology, this poses serious problems, and I found his solution to be totally unacceptable.
Assmann attempts to infer or extrapolate what he calls an implicit theology, which is in effect a tacit systematic theology, that he believes forms a conceptual fore-structure to the beliefs the Egyptians articulated in the various forms that have come down to us.
In a methodological omission of grave proportions, Assmann leaves the status of such a conceptual fore-structure completely unproblematized. To what degree are we in a position to declare on the basis of individual pieces of evidence that a collective set of suppositions must have existed that is coherent with the articulated evidence? What are the horizons of such an implicit ideology? How was it transmitted and enforced among individuals? To what degree were individuals free to constitute their own implicit theologies? How long did such structures persist? Why should we assume coherence implies a tacit structure?
These are the kinds of questions that have pressing and continual relevance to his approach, but he prefers to leave them aside, opting to play a game that is very popular in the German- and French-speaking worlds. I call it "Let's pretend something has been clearly established, when in fact we've not even looked at it." It's the kind of intellectual sleight-of-hand that Theodor Adorno rakes across the coals in "The Jargon of Authenticity," where he blasts Heidegger and the German Existentialists for continually playing that game. I find it tedious in the extreme.
So the book is filled with assertions of this kind: "The whole - and this is critical in understanding a polytheistic religion - was conceived not as a unity, but as a multiplicity...." As someone who lives on Earth, and not in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, I kept asking questions like "Conceived - by who? When? How do you know this? What is your evidence?" And the more I asked questions of this kind, the less patient I became.
Ultimately, Assmann's exposition of an implicit theology is primarily in the service of arguing for the epochal importance of the brief monotheistic worship of Akhenaten in the New Kingdom, which only made the whole game that much more tiresome to me. Assmann believed some kind of great breakthrough occurred in that brief period, as evidenced by the degree to which monotheistic worship of Aten the Sun Deity contradicted the tenuous implicit theology he'd been trying to establish.
This is a conclusion of a tremendously anachronistic character, and gives the strong impression of an author arguing backwards from his thesis. I am not impressed by the revolutionary importance of monotheism, and see no reason on its face why this development should be regarded as more significant than any other major transformation in the religious landscape of Egypt - say, the so-called "democratizaton" of the Cult of the Dead that occurred with the dramatic spread of the Osiris Cult in the Middle Kingdom. Unless, of course, what you're really interested in is monotheism.
And this is what disappoints me most about this book - so many works of Egyptology re-create the culture in terms amenable to the author's favored project or interest. To the feminist, it's all about Hathor. To the monotheist, it's all about Aten. To the comparativist, it's all about Osiris.
With the kind of material we have at our disposal, any number of persuasive underlying systems can be discerned or imputed to the highly-transitive and ever-shifting landscape of symbols and images that characterize Egyptian religion. In my view, the effort to read an underlying basis in it all is a fool's errand.
Since I have criticized this book rather sharply, I should mention the other side, which left me ambivalent about the book. Although I think his thesis borders on dim-witted and his method is atrocious, Assmann is clearly a brilliant and insightful scholar, and by reading this book I've enhanced and clarified my understanding of the material immensely. I may well have learned more about Egyptian religion from this volume than from any other single book, because so many of his off-hand observations and passing comments are extremely illuminating.
This book was a frustrating and difficult read and it left me deeply dissatisfied, but also better off.
The field of Egyptian religion is exceedingly sparse. There are not many books to start with, and of those that have been written, many are out-of-date or plagued by very serious problems.
In part, this is due to the nature of the material. As Assmann points out in this volume, Herodotus was astonished when he visited Egypt and found that its people were uninterested in seriously entertaining theories about the basic natural facts of the land that had so much bearing on their own survival, such as the cause of the swelling of the Nile. He himself wasted no time devising such theories.
The Egyptians, in contrast to the Greeks, were generally not interested in offering accounts of things. And so, with their religious writings, overwhelmingly, what we have is fragments, rituals, spells, hymns, and engravings bound to particular events. We lack systematic accounts, narratives, and myths. In fact, the best-known of the Egyptian myths, the story of Osiris, came down to us in its best-known form in a version written by Plutarch.
For a religious historian like Jan Assmann, who is interested in systematic theology, this poses serious problems, and I found his solution to be totally unacceptable.
Assmann attempts to infer or extrapolate what he calls an implicit theology, which is in effect a tacit systematic theology, that he believes forms a conceptual fore-structure to the beliefs the Egyptians articulated in the various forms that have come down to us.
In a methodological omission of grave proportions, Assmann leaves the status of such a conceptual fore-structure completely unproblematized. To what degree are we in a position to declare on the basis of individual pieces of evidence that a collective set of suppositions must have existed that is coherent with the articulated evidence? What are the horizons of such an implicit ideology? How was it transmitted and enforced among individuals? To what degree were individuals free to constitute their own implicit theologies? How long did such structures persist? Why should we assume coherence implies a tacit structure?
These are the kinds of questions that have pressing and continual relevance to his approach, but he prefers to leave them aside, opting to play a game that is very popular in the German- and French-speaking worlds. I call it "Let's pretend something has been clearly established, when in fact we've not even looked at it." It's the kind of intellectual sleight-of-hand that Theodor Adorno rakes across the coals in "The Jargon of Authenticity," where he blasts Heidegger and the German Existentialists for continually playing that game. I find it tedious in the extreme.
So the book is filled with assertions of this kind: "The whole - and this is critical in understanding a polytheistic religion - was conceived not as a unity, but as a multiplicity...." As someone who lives on Earth, and not in Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, I kept asking questions like "Conceived - by who? When? How do you know this? What is your evidence?" And the more I asked questions of this kind, the less patient I became.
Ultimately, Assmann's exposition of an implicit theology is primarily in the service of arguing for the epochal importance of the brief monotheistic worship of Akhenaten in the New Kingdom, which only made the whole game that much more tiresome to me. Assmann believed some kind of great breakthrough occurred in that brief period, as evidenced by the degree to which monotheistic worship of Aten the Sun Deity contradicted the tenuous implicit theology he'd been trying to establish.
This is a conclusion of a tremendously anachronistic character, and gives the strong impression of an author arguing backwards from his thesis. I am not impressed by the revolutionary importance of monotheism, and see no reason on its face why this development should be regarded as more significant than any other major transformation in the religious landscape of Egypt - say, the so-called "democratizaton" of the Cult of the Dead that occurred with the dramatic spread of the Osiris Cult in the Middle Kingdom. Unless, of course, what you're really interested in is monotheism.
And this is what disappoints me most about this book - so many works of Egyptology re-create the culture in terms amenable to the author's favored project or interest. To the feminist, it's all about Hathor. To the monotheist, it's all about Aten. To the comparativist, it's all about Osiris.
With the kind of material we have at our disposal, any number of persuasive underlying systems can be discerned or imputed to the highly-transitive and ever-shifting landscape of symbols and images that characterize Egyptian religion. In my view, the effort to read an underlying basis in it all is a fool's errand.
Since I have criticized this book rather sharply, I should mention the other side, which left me ambivalent about the book. Although I think his thesis borders on dim-witted and his method is atrocious, Assmann is clearly a brilliant and insightful scholar, and by reading this book I've enhanced and clarified my understanding of the material immensely. I may well have learned more about Egyptian religion from this volume than from any other single book, because so many of his off-hand observations and passing comments are extremely illuminating.
This book was a frustrating and difficult read and it left me deeply dissatisfied, but also better off.
March 25, 2016
Assman is a difficult author to read, especially because the book is a (very good) translation from German. Greek and Latin phrases are plentiful, especially in the final chapter.
Assman's analysis of Egyptian religion is informative, and although I don't always agree with his methods or conclusions, it was certainly worth the read. Anyone serious about Egyptian religion needs to grapple with Assman.
Assman's analysis of Egyptian religion is informative, and although I don't always agree with his methods or conclusions, it was certainly worth the read. Anyone serious about Egyptian religion needs to grapple with Assman.
April 1, 2021
If I'm honest, I suspect that Assmann leans a bit too heavily on the philological and analytic, as opposed to the archaeological and historical, but this book is such a rewarding triumph (as far as this total non-expert can judge) that it is impossible to feel any sense of regret about that.
March 29, 2021
Jan Assmann is amazing. This is the fifth or sixth book of his I've read, and he seems incapable of writing an intellectually boring work. To me (who knows virtually nothing of Ancient Egypt, apart from a few cliches stemming from an American middle school of the 1970s) Assmann presents a more than credible account of the evolution of "religious" thinking throughout the three kingdoms; his interpretations gives shape to whole intellectual culture that fills in the missing gaps that come from my mostly Judaeo-Christian and Greco-Roman educational exposure. I'm seeing connections between elements of the post-Amarna Egyptian thought, pre-Socratic Greek thinking, and elements of Jewish and, later, Christian theology. A marvelous experience. Highly recommended.
April 9, 2021
Yes, it can be a slog if a book. But by taking the time to digest the information, it provides a useful, informative, and date I say it, enjoyable journey. This text is informative and dense in information. And does provide a valuable (if somewhat nuanced) insight into the Egyptian relationship with the Divine. However, given the breadth of time being covered, it will always leave the reader wanting more. This does not detract from the value that this book has to the reader interested in this important feature of Ancient Egyptian life, philosophy, and belief.
November 5, 2021
On the plus side: There are bits and pieces of ancient ideas that definitely look like precursors to Judaeo-christian ideas.
On the negative side: But whether the ideas Assmann claims are there really are there is not at all clear to me. Partly due to the paucity of significant source material, but also because I find his writing style to be quite atrocious, including his marshalling of evidence from various periods of history. Maybe this makes more sense to someone with the necessary background knowledge.
On the negative side: But whether the ideas Assmann claims are there really are there is not at all clear to me. Partly due to the paucity of significant source material, but also because I find his writing style to be quite atrocious, including his marshalling of evidence from various periods of history. Maybe this makes more sense to someone with the necessary background knowledge.
December 19, 2018
A truly great book.
May 26, 2021
I think I need some time away from Egyptian mythology, or mythology in general. This was a intellectual read, but it’s just too much :)
January 17, 2024
Assmann is verbose and has a habit of making sweeping statements that may not stand up to deeper analysis. Nevertheless, this is a very important book. After the introductory chapter, Assmann devotes a chapter to each of three aspects (or "dimensions") of divinity in Egyptian thought. One discusses the beliefs surrounding the Egyptian temple (the "local" dimension that connected deities to specific places in Egypt), the continuous and cyclical actions of deities in the cosmos (the "cosmic" dimension), and the way people talked about the gods in language (the "verbal" dimension). A separate chapter describes the most important form of verbal religious expression, myth. According to Assmann, these aspects of the gods made up an "implicit theology" that did not describe the gods' nature directly but illustrated it by detailing their interactions with each other.
The second part of the book describes the more explicit theology that was found in certain religious texts. Assmann argues that in the course of their history, mostly during the New Kingdom, the Egyptians who wrote these texts developed a fundamentally different conception of divinity, in which a single divine power governs and encompasses everything. Whereas the older ideas about gods focused on their continuous activities in maintaining the world, some New Kingdom texts emphasize how a god intervened in specific moments in history, adding a "historical dimension" to religious thought. The emphasis on divine intervention produced the dramatic growth of personal prayer and offerings to the gods during the New Kingdom. The conflict between this concept of divinity and traditional polytheism prompted Akhenaten's religious revolution, which rejected polytheism entirely. When Akhenaten's ideas were abandoned, Egyptian priests emphasized the notion that all the gods were aspects of the one unifying deity. During the New Kingdom the deity was most often equated with Amun, but it could apply to any other divinity, particularly after the New Kingdom.
Thus, this book argues that a monotheistic conception of divinity coexisted with Egyptian polytheism, countering Erik Hornung's argument in Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt that it didn't. Most scholars seem to side with Hornung, although James P. Allen's Genesis in Egypt and, following him, Richard H. Wilkinson's The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt put Assmann's argument in less grandiose terms. Really, both sides are on more solid ground than the extremes of the monotheism-versus-polytheism debate were in the 19th century, and the difference between their positions is now so small that the only way to determine which is right would be to read an ancient Egyptian priest's thoughts.
More significant than that debate are Assmann's remarks on the way to his conclusion, on all of the topics he discusses. They're worth reading, though not accepting uncritically, for anyone who wants to delve into the depths of Egyptian thought.
The second part of the book describes the more explicit theology that was found in certain religious texts. Assmann argues that in the course of their history, mostly during the New Kingdom, the Egyptians who wrote these texts developed a fundamentally different conception of divinity, in which a single divine power governs and encompasses everything. Whereas the older ideas about gods focused on their continuous activities in maintaining the world, some New Kingdom texts emphasize how a god intervened in specific moments in history, adding a "historical dimension" to religious thought. The emphasis on divine intervention produced the dramatic growth of personal prayer and offerings to the gods during the New Kingdom. The conflict between this concept of divinity and traditional polytheism prompted Akhenaten's religious revolution, which rejected polytheism entirely. When Akhenaten's ideas were abandoned, Egyptian priests emphasized the notion that all the gods were aspects of the one unifying deity. During the New Kingdom the deity was most often equated with Amun, but it could apply to any other divinity, particularly after the New Kingdom.
Thus, this book argues that a monotheistic conception of divinity coexisted with Egyptian polytheism, countering Erik Hornung's argument in Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt that it didn't. Most scholars seem to side with Hornung, although James P. Allen's Genesis in Egypt and, following him, Richard H. Wilkinson's The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt put Assmann's argument in less grandiose terms. Really, both sides are on more solid ground than the extremes of the monotheism-versus-polytheism debate were in the 19th century, and the difference between their positions is now so small that the only way to determine which is right would be to read an ancient Egyptian priest's thoughts.
More significant than that debate are Assmann's remarks on the way to his conclusion, on all of the topics he discusses. They're worth reading, though not accepting uncritically, for anyone who wants to delve into the depths of Egyptian thought.
Read
August 3, 2011This is a very difficult book to read. I had the feeling sometimes that it was deliberately written to obscure understanding. I would recommend it only for the most serious of students about Egyptian religion. Breasted's "Development of Religion And Thought in Ancient Egypt" is much more accessible and nearly as complete, even though it's quite a bit older.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews