Like the mythology of many other ancient civilisations, ancient Egyptian myth stories were generally chronologically attributed to times pre-human civilisation. In Ancient Egyptian mythology, the gods had once ruled the lands of Egypt as kings. The Chthonic deity Osiris, king of the underworld, he used to be the King of Egypt, assuming the throne as the eldest son, after his father. And his brother Seth, was jealous of him, so he murdered him, cut up his body into 14 parts and threw them into the Nile river, so that Osiris cannot be revived, without a complete body. This is a very human story, and we have every reason to think that these myth stories might be based on ancient anecdotes of actual kings, again, this is not uncommon for religious stories.

But after humans came about, the ancient Egyptians believed that the gods retreated to their own land and do not directly reveal themselves in front of earthly humans, only those who die might encounter the gods in the Underworld.

But arguably one of the important purposes of religions in earlier, more primitive times, is so that people can take advantage of it. For example, the Greek/roman religions, very similar to each other, is based on the concept of “do ut des’, meaning ‘I give so that you give’, meaning that the Greeks and romans offered sacrifices to the gods in hopes of advantages such as military success or a harvest. 

So how might Ancient Egyptian gods interact with humans? Well, this is one of the major purposes of ancient Egyptian art. Interestingly, ancient Egyptian art can come across as highly repetitive and stylised throughout the entire 3000 years of the civilisation, however this is due to there being strict rules around how things should be done, for example, the common depiction of the human form, and a side-viewed face and lower body, but front-viewed shoulder, this is one of the standard practices. This does not mean ancient Egyptian art was not advanced and credible. In fact, by the time of the Old Kingdom period, 4000 years ago, the Egyptians were already building pyramids using advanced architectural knowledge, and today we’re still not sure how exactly they did it, and by middle kingdom, there had been some fantastic sculptures and artwork that display the height of skill the contemporary artists reached. But coming back from that tangent, the ancient Egyptians believed that things like sculptures can be containers of spirits or souls, whether its that of a deceased or a god, through certain religious ceremonies. So religiously meaningful objects or animals, the ancient Egyptians believe, provided a pathway to the gods and their protection.

And actually religion plays a major part in an Ancient Egyptian’s life, ancient Egypt had thousands of gods, including 40 sth main gods, small protection gods, deified pharaohs, which are pretty common, some Egyptian Pharaohs were actually worshipped as gods during their life time, the famous Tutankhamun is such an example., and anthropomorphised concepts could be gods tool.

More on Ancient Egypt, the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, and other old stuff later, thank you for listening, see ya!