The ancient civilization of Egypt did not develop such a coherent concept of the division of the power of the gods, which later appeared in Hellas. The god of light and the sun in Egypt is Ra (the supreme deity), Atum (an earlier deity) and Horus. In Hellas, the solar gods included Helios and Phoebus, who entered the European consciousness through Roman mythology under the name of Apollo.
Solar deities of Egypt
The main cause of heat and light in the view of the ancient Egyptians was the sun. Only in ancient Japan and among the Incas can such a powerful heliocentrism be found. Most of the myths about cosmogony were formed in Heliopolis. The first place in them is occupied by the god of light and the sun Ra. He arose from the bowels of the eternal water chaos, having neither father nor mother. In a passive, gloomy and cold environment, a complete opposite appeared - a life-giving and active principle. Initially, the god of light Ra was presented as a bird, and his movement through the sky was thought of as a flight. In Heliopolis, where Atum was revered, who later merged with Ra, a myth arose about the appearance of a great luminary like a phoenix.
Another godsun - Hor. He was portrayed as a falcon. The appearance of the luminary was originally far from human. It took the form of a cheetah, a bird, a locust, a scarab, which rolls the solar disk across the sky.
Images and functions of the god Ra
In the future, the god Ra was depicted anthropomorphically, but with a bird's head or horns.
Every evening his boat sails to the western mountains, where the earth ends and hell opens. In it, he fights with a terrible huge snake, having a length of more than two hundred meters - Apophis, who every day absorbs all the water, defeats him and returns the water to people. In arid Egypt, this was very revered and was considered the main function of God.
The opposite is moonlight
The light of the moon appears after the sun, therefore, according to the book “Ancient Egypt. The Scythian world”(compiled by I. Khimik), the god of moonlight Thoth obeyed the god Ra. Other beliefs said that the moon and the sun appeared from the eyes of the same creature.
He ruled over the Moon, saved and guarded it, returned it to its place in the sky. He was in charge and observed the order of the astral cycle, controlled the harmony and justice of the world.
In addition, he was the god of counting, reckoning and wisdom. Based on the phases of the moon, the ancients made very accurate calendars. The Egyptians believed that Thoth invented writing, created magical and ritual books. He patronized scribes, doctors, and all kinds of knowledge. In the afterlife, Thoth helped Osiris and Ra leadcourt, recording the results of weighing the heart of the deceased. He acted in the form of a baboon, an ibis or a man. The city of Germopol became the center of his cult.
In ancient Hellas
The gods of the Hellenes from the very beginning were represented as people, only with hypertrophied features, that is, higher, stronger, more beautiful, more skillful. They took some human quality and brought it to the absolute, to inhuman limits. According to this simple principle, the Greek pantheon was formed. For the Greeks themselves, there was a feeling that God was a local king. He has his own region, his own city, some piece of the plain or islands over which he rules, and he does not interfere in other areas. This was the primary religion of the Greeks.
Then Greek religious history was determined by the struggle between light and dark beginnings. In the end, the gods of darkness retreated, and the cult of reason won. In a material sense, this embodied the struggle between Phoebus and Dionysus.
Apollo and Dionysus are the main rivals, they complemented each other. Apollo is the god of light, the patron of sciences, reason, arts. His beginning - logical, scientific, mathematical, rational, light, served as the opposite of the ecstatic, stormy, dark beginning of Dionysus.
Gold-haired Phoebus
Shining and radiant Apollo was the son of Zeus and the earthly woman Latona, who, fleeing the persecution of Hera, gave birth to twin children Apollo and Artemis on the island of Delos. When the god of light was born, the whole island sparkled under the streams of the rays of the sun. He was fedambrosia and nectar. On the 4th day after his birth, he had already defeated the terrible serpent Python in battle, which devastated the environs of Delphi. Subsequently, Delphi became the center of the cult of Apollo. Pilgrims went there for divination. In the sanctuary sat a Pythian priestess who predicted the will of Zeus.
Apollo - kifared and patron of sciences
Apollo, the god of light and art, always carried a kithara with him, from which he evoked divine sounds and sang to them. All the musicians envied the art of Apollo. He had no equal.
He was a beautiful young man, but he was unlucky in love. He fell in love with Cassandra and endowed her with the gift of divination, and when she refused, he made people not believe her predictions. He fell in love with the nymph Daphne, but she, fleeing his persecution, turned into a laurel tree. Since then, in memory of her, Phoebus always wore a wreath of laurel.
Besides, he had a bow with golden arrows, a kithara and a chariot. In it, he set off on a journey through the sky. Apollo was the guardian of the herds, the god-healer, the leader and patron of the muses. The lower classes believed in it. Among the fishermen, the peasants had the most archaic and primitive ideas: the gods must be appeased, some kind of sacrifice should be made to them. A simple person did not think about the gods. He lived by superstitions.
Development of Greek beliefs
Educated Greek public opinion did not take the gods seriously. They had the idea that the driving force of the universe was the law ("nomos") as a set of laws, and the gods obeyed him.
EducatedHellenes developed an intellectual discourse. It included mathematics, philosophy, poetry, in which the idea of the divine was of very little importance. This is how Greek religious and scientific thought developed, which later influenced the entire European civilization.
