AMON, AMON-RA, or AMON-RE
Most Eastern cosmogonies admit that water existed before the material organization of other parts of the globe, whose germs were confused and intermingled in this fluid. Several Greek philosophers have also systematically maintained that water was the principle of all things; this doctrine came, in all appearance, from the sanctuaries of Egypt, where it was professed even in the most remote times.
This ancient assimilation of the Nile with the Egyptian Jupiter, Ammon-Cnouphis, first explains some passages of Greek and Latin writers on the religion of Egypt, and then gives us the understanding of a host of monuments.
The same legends are just as often found inscribed next to a scarab with two large outstretched wings, but whose head, that of a green Ram, is surmounted by two Goat horns bearing a disk flanked by two uraeus decorated with the ansate cross. This scarab is therefore the symbolic image of the God Cnouphis-Nilus ; the head of Ram indicates the supremacy of the God; his quality of father and his eminently generative faculty are expressed by the Scarab and the Goat horns; the other signs, common to several Gods, are the tropic expression of royalty and life , qualities inherent in the divine essences.The Greek and Latin writers , who have preserved for us some documents on the worship and religion of the ancient Egyptians, all say that this people represented the god Amon, the principal divinity of Egypt and Thebes, in a human form, and having for a head that of a ram . We have just seen this divinity in a purely human form, but the monuments also show it to us as the Greeks described it; the name and the hieroglyphic legend Amon or Amonre , Lord of the regions of the world, supreme Lord , are linked, in fact, quite often with the image of a divinity seated on a throne, the scepter of the gods in one hand, the symbol of divine life in the other, having green or blue flesh like the human-faced Amon, but whose head is that of a ram , adorned with the same headdress, surmounted by the disk, and the large feathers which also distinguish Amon with a man's head; the serpent Ureus, seen from the front, and which decorates the bottom of this headdress, is the ordinary emblem of royal power ; this insignia is common to the gods and sovereigns of Egypt: such is the divinity represented on our engraving.
The images of Amon , with human heads, appear more numerous on the monuments of Thebes than the images of the same god with ram's heads; and the latter are shown more frequently, on the contrary, in the temples of Libya, and in the various Oases where constructions in the Egyptian style have been found.
The ram, according to the ideas of the Egyptians, was a remarkable animal, especially for its head in which resides its principal strength; and as it is also the leader and conductor of the herd, it became for them the symbol of preeminence, of principality, of which its horns were also the emblem among several oriental nations; it is for this reason that the Egyptians, according to Plutarch, placed it at the head of the animals of the zodiac, and that this quadruped was specially consecrated to the chief4of the gods, to the supreme Lord, to Amon, whose representations borrow the head of this animal, in the same way that we will see all the Egyptian gods represented in a human form, but with the heads of the various animals, quadrupeds, birds, amphibians, reptiles or insects, which were specially dedicated to them.
The ram was the sacred animal of the inhabitants of Thebes, of which Amon was the special protector and local divinity; it is for this reason that immense avenues of monolithic rams, twenty feet in length, united the principal monuments of this capital.
Among the Egyptian mythical stories that the Greeks have transmitted to us, there is one that could also motivate, in the eyes of the people, this ram's head given to the images of the chief of the gods: Gomi or Somi (the Hercules of the Egyptians), desired one day, it was said, to see face to face Amon, the supreme god: the latter, who wanted to remain hidden and unknown, covered himself with the skin of a ram, and held its head placed in front of his own. "It is for this reason," continues Herodotus, who reports in this regard the sayings of the inhabitants of Thebes, "that in Egypt, the statues of Amon (Zeus) represent this god with a ram's head: this custom passed from the Egyptians to the Ammonians (the Libyans of the Oases)."
We learn from the same historian that at Thebes, on the day of the festival of Amon, a sacred ceremony took place in commemoration of this meeting of the gods Amon and Somi: the Thebans sacrificed a ram, on that day only; and after having skinned it, they covered with its skin the statue of Amon, to which they then brought that of Gomi (the Egyptian Hercules); after that, all those who were around the temple struck each other while lamenting the death of the ram, and its body was embalmed and enclosed in a sacred coffin.
Finally, the sun entering the sign of Aries in spring could be, in the eyes of the Egyptians, the sensible image of the god Amon who, according to their belief, created the world and gave life and movement to the universe, in this same season. This is perhaps also why this god often bears the combined names Amon and Re, Amon-re or Amon-ri, that is to say Amon-Sun .
