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For over 2,500 years, the Egyptians worshipped a pantheon of gods. Archaeological evidence reveals a religion of great complexity and emotional fervor characterized by magnificent temples and tombs.
Egypt today, though, is almost totally committed to Islam and with the exception of some New Age‑inspired rediscoveries, the old religion has no surviving adherents. How could a religion so far‑reaching in its influence—from peasant to pharaoh—over such a long period of time break down? The answer, deeply imbedded in the dynamics behind cultural transformation cannot lie in the Arab conquest of 641 A.D. By then, the old religion had been largely dead across most of Egypt for three centuries. But the Islamic‑dominated Egypt of today, subtitled the "United Arab Republic," was once a Christian nation.
The problem can be approached in two ways. The first is to examine both belief systems for points of intersection. Certain ideas in Christianity were compatible with older beliefs widely held by Egyptians, such as the concept of resurrection, human accountability in the afterlife for bad actions committed during life, and the identification of qualities of the goddess Isis with those of the Virgin Mary—both are mothers of prime deities, sons of God. Taking such issues into account certainly makes Christianity a less alien force to the Egyptians than one might think it would be. As in Dark Age Europe, many native magical beliefs also survived well into Christianity (people simply substituted Christ or one of the saints where before they had invoked the old gods).
Such an approach, however, fails to address why people converted on a mass level over such a brief period of time. Their ancestors, after all, had been satisfied with the old religion for centuries, even millennia. What social, political, economic forces were at work in Egypt during the first few centuries BC? Max Weber supported that people turn to new religions in times of evolving social circumstances. When a society is under stress and no longer fits the old definition, its members will seek a new definition to give meaning to the new situation. These times are when revitalization, or millenarian, movements arise, promising a way out, a rise or return to glory.
Egypt Under The Greeks
Egypt in 31 BC when Octavian won the Battle of Actium was already a conquered country with centuries past since an Egyptian pharaoh had been "Lord of the Two Lands." First, the Nubians, then the Persians, then the Greeks had dominated Egypt. But what separated the Greeks from earlier conquerors was their efforts to Hellenize Egyptian culture. On one hand, they accepted the old gods as their own, interpreting Isis as their harvest goddess Demeter, sun‑God Horus as Apollo, the Egyptian head‑God Ammon as Zeus, Thoth, god of wisdom and scribes, as Hermes. While the Persians had looted the temples, taking sacred icons and vessels out of Egypt, Alexander, arriving in newly‑conquered Memphis, offered a sacrifice to the Egyptian gods and to the Apis Bull. Alexander, and his successors, restored and enlarged the old temples and financed the building of new ones, such as the magnificent temple of Horus at Edfu, one of the best preserved in Egypt today. Alexander and his successors also accepted the mantle of divinity extended by the Egyptians to the pharaohs as living Gods.
Why should Alexander and his successors support local religion so strenuously? The Greeks shared a belief that the Gods of one land were strongest nearest that land, meaning their own deities had less power in Egypt. On the other hand, it was good politics, given the priests’ influence on the general populace. Keep your enemies close, because an angered priesthood could provide a rallying force for rebellion, especially in the Thebaid in Upper Egypt.
Thus, Ptolemy I, successor to Alexander, fused Osiris, the Egyptian god of the Underworld, with the Apis bull, to create a new deity, Serapis, to "symbolize the unity and equality of the two cultures," that is, Greek and Egyptian. The cult, centered around a huge temple called the Serapeum, was a substantial movement in Alexandria by the time of the Roman invasion. Papyrologist Naphtali Lewis suggested that the Serapis cult appealed to both Egyptians and Greeks because of its “promise of a better life.” However, the Greek attitude, he maintained, was hypocritical—they liked the ideal of cultural equality in spirit, but in practice supported a rigidly stratified status quo that always placed Greeks above Egyptians.