God of light and sun in ancient Egypt and Hellas

The ancient civilization of Egypt did not develop such a harmonious concept of the separation of the power of the gods, which later appeared in Hellas. The God of light and sun in Egypt is Ra (the supreme deity), Atum (the earlier deity) and Horus. In Hellas, the solar gods included Helios and Phoebe, 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 representation of the ancient Egyptians was the sun. Only in ancient Japan and the Incas can you find such a powerful heliocentrism. Most of the myths about cosmogony were formed in Heliopolis. The first place in them is occupied by the god of light and sun Ra. He originated from the depths of the eternal water chaos, having neither father nor mother. In the passive, gloomy and cold environment, a complete opposite emerged: a life-giving and active beginning. Initially, the god of light Ra was represented as a bird, and his movement in the sky was thought of as a flight. In Heliopolis, where revered Atum, who later merged with Ra, a myth arose about the appearance of the great luminar as a phoenix.

Another god of the sun is Horus. He was portrayed as a falcon. The outer appearance of the star was originally far from human. It took the form of a cheetah, a bird, a locust, a scarab, which rolls a sun disk over the sky.

Images and functions of the god Ra

Later, the god Ra was depicted anthropomorphically, but with a bird head or horns.

Every evening, his boat swims to the western mountains, where the earth ends and the underworld opens. In it, he fights the terrible huge snake, which is more than two hundred meters in length, - Apop, who every day absorbs all the water, conquers it and returns water to people. In arid Egypt it 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. Scythian world "(compiled by I. Khimik), the god of moonlight He obeyed the god Ra. Other beliefs told us that the moon and the sun came from the eyes of the same being.

He dominated the moon, saved and guarded her, brought him back to his place in the sky. He knew and maintained the order of the astral cycle, controlled the harmony and justice of the world. In addition, he was a god of account, chronology and wisdom. Based on the phases of the moon, the ancients made very accurate calendars. The Egyptians believed that He invented writing, created magical and ritual books. He patronized scribes, doctors, as well as all kinds of knowledge. In the afterlife, He helped Osiris and Ra conduct the trial, recording the results of weighing the heart of the deceased. He acted as a baboon, an ibis or a man. The city of Hermopolis 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 kind of human quality and brought it to the absolute, to inhuman limits. On such an uncomplicated principle, the Greek pantheon was formed. For the Greeks themselves there was a feeling that God is a local king. He has his own region, his city, some piece of plain or islands over which he rules, and he does not interfere in other spheres. This was the primary religion of the Greeks.

Then the Greek religious history was determined by the struggle of a light and dark beginning. In the end, the gods of darkness receded, and the cult of reason won. In a material sense, this embodied the struggle of Phoebe and Dionysus.

Apollo and Dionysus - the main rivals, they complemented each other. Apollo is the god of light, the patron of sciences, reason, and the arts. Its beginning - logical, scientific, mathematical, rational, bright, served as the opposite of the ecstatic, stormy, dark beginning of Dionysus.

Zlatokudry Pheb

The radiant and radiant Apollo was the son of Zeus and the earthly woman of Latona, who, rescued from the persecution of Hera, gave birth to the children of the twins Apollo and Artemis on the island of Delos. When the god of light was born, the island all shone under the streams of the sun's rays. He was fed with ragweed and nectar. On the 4th day after birth, he already won the battle of the terrible snake Python, which devastated the neighborhood of Delphi. Subsequently, Delphi became the center of the cult of Apollo. There were pilgrims for divinations. In the sanctuary sat the priestess-pythia, who predicted the will of Zeus.

Apollo - cifarred and patron of science

Apollo, the god of light and art, always carried a cithara, from which he summoned divine sounds and sang for them. All the musicians envied the art of Apollo. Equal to him was not.

He was a handsome young man, but he was unlucky in love. He fell in love with Cassandra and gave her the gift of prophecy, and when she refused, she did so that people did not believe her predictions. He fell in love with the nymph Daphne, but she, fleeing from his persecution, turned into a laurel tree. Since then, in memory of her, Phoebus always wore a wreath from the laurel.

In addition, he had a bow with golden arrows, a cithara and a chariot. In it, he embarked on a journey across the sky. Apollo was the guardian of the herds, the god-healer, the leader and patron of the Muses. This was believed by the people's lower classes. Among fishermen and peasants there were the most archaic and primitive ideas: the gods should be appeased, they should be offered some sacrifice. A simple man did not think about the gods. He lived a superstition.

The development of Greek beliefs

The 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 regularities, and the gods obeyed him.

The educated Hellenes formed an intellectual discourse. He included mathematics, philosophy, poetry, in which the idea of the divine took very little significance. This was how the Greek religious and scientific thought developed, which subsequently influenced the whole of European civilization.