<P> Scholars have long debated whether traditional Egyptian religion ever asserted that the multiple gods were, on a deeper level, unified . Reasons for this debate include the practice of syncretism, which might suggest that all the separate gods could ultimately merge into one, and the tendency of Egyptian texts to credit a particular god with power that surpasses all other deities . Another point of contention is the appearance of the word "god" in wisdom literature, where the term does not refer to a specific deity or group of deities . In the early 20th century, for instance, E.A. Wallis Budge believed that Egyptian commoners were polytheistic, but knowledge of the true monotheistic nature of the religion was reserved for the elite, who wrote the wisdom literature . His contemporary James Henry Breasted thought Egyptian religion was instead pantheistic, with the power of the sun god present in all other gods, while Hermann Junker argued that Egyptian civilization had been originally monotheistic and became polytheistic in the course of its history . </P> <P> In 1971, Erik Hornung published a study rebutting these views . He points out that in any given period many deities, even minor ones, were described as superior to all others . He also argues that the unspecified "god" in the wisdom texts is a generic term for whichever deity the reader chooses to revere . Although the combinations, manifestations, and iconographies of each god were constantly shifting, they were always restricted to a finite number of forms, never becoming fully interchangeable in a monotheistic or pantheistic way . Henotheism, Hornung says, describes Egyptian religion better than other labels . An Egyptian could worship any deity at a particular time and credit it with supreme power in that moment, without denying the other gods or merging them all with the god that he or she focused on . Hornung concludes that the gods were fully unified only in myth, at the time before creation, after which the multitude of gods emerged from a uniform nonexistence . </P> <P> Hornung's arguments have greatly influenced other scholars of Egyptian religion, but some still believe that at times the gods were more unified than he allows . Jan Assmann maintains that the notion of a single deity developed slowly through the New Kingdom, beginning with a focus on Amun - Ra as the all - important sun god . In his view, Atenism was an extreme outgrowth of this trend . It equated the single deity with the sun and dismissed all other gods . Then, in the backlash against Atenism, priestly theologians described the universal god in a different way, one that coexisted with traditional polytheism . The one god was believed to transcend the world and all the other deities, while at the same time, the multiple gods were aspects of the one . According to Assmann, this one god was especially equated with Amun, the dominant god in the late New Kingdom, whereas for the rest of Egyptian history the universal deity could be identified with many other gods . James P. Allen says that coexisting notions of one god and many gods would fit well with the "multiplicity of approaches" in Egyptian thought, as well as with the henotheistic practice of ordinary worshippers . He says that the Egyptians may have recognized the unity of the divine by "identifying their uniform notion of' god' with a particular god, depending on the particular situation ." </P> <P> Egyptian writings describe the gods' bodies in detail . They are made of precious materials; their flesh is gold, their bones are silver, and their hair is lapis lazuli . They give off a scent that the Egyptians likened to the incense used in rituals . Some texts give precise descriptions of particular deities, including their height and eye color . Yet these characteristics are not fixed; in myths, gods change their appearances to suit their own purposes . Egyptian texts often refer to deities' true, underlying forms as "mysterious". The Egyptians' visual representations of their gods are therefore not literal . They symbolize specific aspects of each deity's character, functioning much like the ideograms in hieroglyphic writing . For this reason, the funerary god Anubis is commonly shown in Egyptian art as a dog or jackal, a creature whose scavenging habits threaten the preservation of buried mummies, in an effort to counter this threat and employ it for protection . His black coloring alludes to the color of mummified flesh and to the fertile black soil that Egyptians saw as a symbol of resurrection . </P>

Typical characteristics of egyptian statues of deities and pharaohs