EgyptianGods #IslamInEgypt #ReligionInEgypt #WhyAllah #HistoricalShift
Understanding the Shift: Egyptian Gods to Allah
Have you ever wondered why people in Egypt today believe in Allah rather than the ancient Egyptian gods? 🤔 Let’s break it down in a simple way!
Ancient Egyptian Religion 🌞
- Ancient Egyptians worshiped many gods.
- Each god had specific roles and powers.
- Temples and rituals were part of daily life.
Arrival of Islam 🕌
- Islam started in the 7th century in the Arabian Peninsula.
- Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) spread the message of Allah.
- Islam promotes monotheism (belief in one god).
Islamic Conquest of Egypt ⚔️
- In 641 AD, Muslim Arab forces conquered Egypt.
- Islam spread quickly due to social, economic, and political benefits.
- Arabic language and culture influenced everyday life.
Why Did People Convert? 🤷♂️
- Monotheism appealed to many.
- Islam was inclusive; many Egyptians found community in it.
- Economic benefits: Muslims had certain tax privileges.
- Preservation of social status for those who converted.
Continuity of Change 🌍
- Over centuries, Islamic traditions became deeply rooted.
- Ancient Egyptian religious practices faded naturally.
- Islamic education and culture became predominant.
Modern Egypt’s Belief in Allah 🙏
- Today, Islam is Egypt’s state religion.
- Majority of Egyptians identify as Muslim.
- Ancient Egyptian deities are part of history and mythology.
Recap & Key Points 📌
- Ancient Egyptian Religion: Polytheistic.
- Islamic Conquest: Introduced monotheism.
- Conversion Reasons: Social, economic benefits.
- Modern Egypt: Predominantly Muslim.
If you have more questions or need further clarification, feel free to ask! 🤓 Now you understand why Egyptians today believe in Allah rather than their ancient gods. 🧩
Because they were converted either by force or willing in the early conquests of Islam.
The same is true for most big religions and their followers.
There was a big Muslim conquest of North Africa, and it began in Egypt in the year 640. It didn’t take long before it was under Islam. Worth noting at that time, Egypt was under Byzantine Christian control anyways, and the ancient Egyptian religion had already fallen to the wayside. So, the people in that region slowly became Christianized with the rise and spread of Christianity, and then eventually Islamized around 640, and they remain so today.
The Arabs conquered Egypt between 639-642 AD. However, before that there were Christian and Jewish Egyptians. Most were converted during the conquest, however some Coptic Christians and Jews did not.
However, there may be fringe Cults that worship the Egyptian gods just like there are cults that worship the Greek pantheon post Christinization of Greece.
It is fair to assume with the rise of Paganism there is “new” cults surrounding the Egyptian gods, but they are underground due to fear of persecution.
The short answer is massive waves of Arabic immigration and conquest displacing them, but as others have noted they were merely the most recent one in a long line. Most modern day Egyptians aren’t directly descended from the classical Egyptians of the Pharoahs, and their culture has been displaced several times.
The ancient Egyptian pantheon pretty much died out a long time ago. It started to get replaced by Greek gods after Ptolemaic dynasty (named after one of Alexander the Great’s generals) controlled it, and later by Roman gods.
After Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire, Christianity actually became one of the primary religions in the country. However, from 639 and 642 AD, it was conquered by the Rashidun Caliphate which was a Muslim empire. There were some periods of relative religious tolerance, but other periods of extreme persecution towards Egyptian Christians and Jews. Eventually, Islam was the dominant religion there.
Egypt was conquered by Muslims in the early, rapid spread of Islam. It was conquered by the Muslim Rashidun Caliphate (the first caliphate after the death of Mohamed) in 642 A.D. When the Caliphate conquered Egypt, they brought their new religion with them, although it took several centuries to really cement itself.
Even prior to this though, the unified ancient Egyptian religion was significantly declining in influence for several reasons. First was the decline of Egypt as a centralized power politically and the decline of the Egyptian culture and civilization. By roughly 600 B.C., Egypt had already been on the decline, due largely to a number of invasions and occupations from neighboring empires such as Persia, and Assyria, which placed Egypt under the rule of foreign leaders who were not Egyptian and had no connection to the culture or religion. This left Egypt without a centralized authority to promote and guide the religion.
In 332 BC, Egypt was conquered by Alexander the Great, a Macedonian Greek. This led to nearly 300 years of Egypt ruled by Macedonian Greeks, and their religion and culture in some ways merged with the local Egyptian religion and culture, creating a blend. Then in 30 BC, Egypt was conquered by Rome, and became a province of the Roman Empire, adding further foreign influence from the Roman religion.
Not long after that, Egypt became an early center of Christianity, which took root and flourished there in the first centuries, before Rome officially accepted Christianity in 313 AD. Christianity continued to be widespread there until it was conquered by the Rashudin Caliphate in 642 A.D. Although again, it took a long time for Islam to really spread and take hold.
And across the centuries while all of this was going on, the ancient Egyptian religion was just sort of neglected and stagnant and slowly disappeared as political and cultural change and upheaval brought new beliefs.
It’s important to note that Christianity is still a major religion in Egypt. Roughly 10% of Egyptians are Coptic Christians, so while the large majority are Sunni Muslims, not all are.
So anyway, that’s how it happened. Many centuries of decline, invasions, and being overtaken by other religions.
An interesting aside. If you observe ancient religious sites you can still see observances being conducted. Officially they are Muslim but unofficially the old ways still exist in a suppressed manner.
The story goes that as Islam followers conquered regions, religious freedom was maintained. However a tax was levied on those who were not Muslims and many found it to be efficacious to just convert. Also it was easier then to get deals done because you were in the ruling social circle.
Religions are largely about social cohesion and clublike behaviours. If you are part of the club you will get preferential treatment. When the leadership of the country is muslim it pays for you to join their club.
Same reasons the Italians don’t pray to Roman gods or the Greeks to the pantheon of Mt Olympus
They were invaded and colonized by Arab armies conquering in the name of Islam. It happened to all of North Africa.
Same reason Western Europeans now follow a middle eastern religion instead of their original religion. Culture changes and develops through trade and conquest
Why do the Iranians not believe in ancient Mesopotamian gods? Why do the Scandinavians not believe in Norse gods? Why do the Greeks and Italians not believe in the Olympian gods? The answer is the same. Times change, gods change. In the case of Egypt particularly they had a rather complicated and convoluted religious system that was not unified. Each region placed different importance on each god and new cults would form with new gods taking over the older ones. Ancient Egyptian religion was fractured, with each region having their own version slightly different from the others. And the pharaohs were intertwined with the faith as they were considered gods themselves, and each pharaoh belonged to a different cult and promoted their own gods or even their own version of the faith itself.
As you may understand, this system didn’t work too well, and as the Egyptian empire crumbled and lost influence and power it was taken over by Abrahamic religions, so following the ancient Egyptian religion most Egyptians converted to Christianity, and then later with the Muslim conquest the region became mostly muslim. For a very long time Egypt was a very multicultural place having people of many faiths and from many places around the world but eventually they homogenised into what we see today.
The short answer is that they were conquered in about 640AD, but that’s really oversimple. And not “like I’m five” simple but “missing out about a thousand years of history” oversimple. For one thing they’d already been conquered by Rome, and by the Assyrians, and by a whole bunch of other people.
But the big deal is that all of that, in egyptian terms, is recent, what we tend to lump together into “ancient egypt” really gets going about 3000BC. There were, depending on who you ask, at least 3 major ancient egyptian civilisations or kingdoms but even that’s skewed by the ridiculous amounts of time involved, there were large transient kingdoms and civilisations inbetween that we just sort of dismiss as “intermediate period stuff” between the big kingdoms because they’re small fry for egypt, but which if they were in, say, England would be a huge deal in their own right.
So the religious practices and pantheon changed over time, in the same way as you can hold 2 artifacts in your hands and say “these are ancient egyptian” but then realise there’s 3000 years between them and they’re effectively from different civilisations
So the gods also rose and fell even within ancient egypt, it was a really long time even for gods. Montu, frinstance, is so old that we have no idea how old he is, but he went largely out of fashion by 1300bc. Or Aten, sun god? It was the official state religion in about 1400bc then got pretty much deleted afterwards. Loads of egyptian gods were basically forgotten even in the time which we’d think of as when ancient egyptian gods were still the thing, or overwritten by other cooler gods. they had a LOT of sun gods, I mean a lot.
So when you’re thinking “why don’t they worship these old gods” remember that even in that time of those old gods some had already been forgotten for a thousand years, or had been huge and now aren’t.
The religion in ancient Egypt was absorbed into other ancient religions. This was common throughout the ancient world. For example, Isis was the goddess of motherhood, beauty, love, and rebirth. She came to be identified with Hera and Aphrodite under the Greeks, and then later with Juno under the Romans. The word for this process is [*syncretism*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism?wprov=sfti1).
This didn’t just happen in Egypt. It happened in Gaul with Celtic gods, in the near east with Phoenician gods, in Spain with Iberian gods, etc. It also happened outside of the Roman Empire, but that’s not relevant to your question.
Pretty much the only group that successfully resisted this process were the Jews, who were notorious for their unwillingness to go along with that sort of thing.
In 343 BC Egypt was conquered by Artaxerses III, a Persian emperor, and the last native Egyptian pharaoh was deposed. Egypt would not be ruled by another native Egyptian until 1953. This began a slow process of syncretism with various conquerers’ religions, first with the Persians, then with the Greeks, then most importantly with the Romans. By the 300s AD, the Egyptian religion had been entirely fused with Roman state practices, and had begun to die off as a daily faith. When Christianity replaced the Roman state religions, it happened in Egypt as well.
Egypt was increasingly Christian until the Muslim conquest in the 600s. Then, it was gradually Islamicized over the next 500-600 years.
Today, Egypt is 85-95% Muslim, with a small Christian minority.
The Egyptians that built the pyramids aren’t the same Egyptians that are in Egypt now. They aren’t even the same Egyptians that had Cleopatra as their Pharoah.
The Egyptians that built the pyramids and other tombs like that are were the ones who developed that religion, and the pyramids were build as early at 2700 BC.
In 332 BC, Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, and Ptolemy was put in charge. The Greeks tended to explain other culture’s gods as their own gods, but in disguise, so the Egyptian religion survived, but from here it has a lot of Greek influences.
Around 30 BC, the Romans conquered Egypt, further influencing their culture, but the Egyptian gods did survive in some capacity.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Egypt fell under the influence of Arab powers. While Europe was entering the dark ages,the Islamic world was entering a golden age. In 641 AD, Muslim Arabs come to Egypt. Since they are doing so well in this time, it spread quickly across Africa and into Southeast Asia, and even into Spain.
The Ottoman Empire even held the territory from the beginning 16th century to the end of the 18th century.
TL;DR Muslims showed up 1400 years ago and haven’t left.
Probably the same reason the people of the United States don’t believe in Etu or other Native American spirits.
They become Christian first, under roman rule.. You know Cleopatra was the last Pharoah around Jesus time. Emperor Theodosius made Christianity the religion of state in 381, then in 391 CE made the public worship of the old gods a criminal offence.
The Egyptians obeyed this and abandoned the old Gods. Later, the Muslim conquest started which leads us up to the crusades. They took Egypt. Most likely there was conversion by force by Christians and Islamic but the romans never needed to actually invade so there was probably a lot less forced conversion (conversion or die).
I think also in general monotheistic religions spread easier than polytheistic.
It’s easier to learn that there is one god called Allah and his prophet is Mohammad, than trying to remember all of the Greek and Egyptian pantheons, all their rituals and feast days etc etc.
There was a brief period of monotheistic worship in ancient Egypt, where Amun was worshipped as the sole god.
Christianity does the same thing. Believe in Jesus? That’s enough.
I think Hinduism is the exception, being an extremely popular polytheistic religion but it’s also because the population in India is so massive.