Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt Quotes

“Whatever the nature of the gods may or may not be, in whatever system of concepts or network of associations we may place them, all attempts to 'explain' them have been attempts to express the information they convey in a different, less ambiguous language. We sense that they say something valuable about the world and about mankind. But no language has been found whose expressive richness can compare with that of the gods themselves. Again and again they refer us back to themselves, revealing to us the limits of our conceptual universe. If we are to comprehend the world we still need the gods.”
― Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many

“Inexorably history destroys all 'eternal' and 'absolute' values and demonstrates the relativity of every absolute point of reference which we seek to establish. Hence the fanatical opposition to anything historical—or scorn for it which takes the form of unscrupulous distortion—on the part of those who wish to establish definitive, binding norms.”
― Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many

“Whatever the nature of the gods may or may not be, in whatever system of concepts or network of associations we may place them, all attempts to "explain" them have been attempts to express the information they convey in a different, less ambiguous language. We sense that they say something valuable about the world and about mankind. But no language has been found whose expansive richness can compare with that of the gods themselves. Again and again they refer us back to themselves, revealing to us the limits of our conceptual universe. If we are to comprehend the world we still need the gods.”
― Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many