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Gods and Men in Egypt: 3000 BCE to 395 CE. By FRANÇOISE DUNAND and CHRISTIANE ZIVIECOCHE. Translated by David Lorton. Ithaca: CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2004. Pp. xvii + 378, illus. $45.
Although much has been written about ancient Egyptian religion, there are few books devoted entirely to this important subject. Among these are S. Morenz, Egyptian Religion (Cornell Univ. Press, 1973); E. Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many (Cornell Univ. Press, 1982); S. Quirke, Ancient Egyptian Religion (British Museum, 1992); D. Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt (Princeton Univ. Press, 1998); D. Redford, ed., The Ancient Gods Speak: A Guide to Egyptian Religion (Oxford Univ. Press, 2002); and G. Pinch, Egyptian Mythology (Oxford Univ. Press, 2004). The many works by Jan Assmann deal with specific issues in religion, and so are not included among these comprehensive works.
The excellent book under review approaches the topic in new ways. First, the authors focus on the "big ideas," leaving the reader with a good sense of how religion worked within the society. second, the book covers the pharaonic period (Zivie-Coche), as well as the Ptolemaic, Roman, and early Christian eras (Dunand). Usually, these two major blocks of time are treated separately and as only tenuously related. But here the authors stress continuities, and also how beliefs changed over time, largely in response to "foreign," primarily Greco-Roman, cultural influence.
The first chapters lucidly outline fundamental aspects of thought and religion (the idea of the divine, the development of gods, the organization and appearance of deities, creation, cosmologies, cult activity, temples, and the...