Hinduism and Ancient Egyptian Religion

Hinduism and Ancient Egyptian Religion:--

Considering the enormous geographical distance between India and Egypt, ancient Egyptian religion and modern Hinduism have a surprising number of similarities in concepts and practices. This is not to say that other polytheistic religions do not have similarities with each other or with ancient Egypt but not in what appears to be such abundance as between ancient Egyptian and Hinduism. A number of religions do have similarities with Hinduism, such as Buddhism (which was born from Hinduism), and some African belief systems, but as Hinduism is one of the six main world religions the comparisons between this vibrant religion and a long-extinct ancient religion are interesting.

Aspects of Hinduism can be traced to the Indus Valley Civilisation (approximately 2500 BC), when it was at a cultural high point, through the archaeological record, although this religion is not recognisable as the form practised by Hindus today. The Indus Valley Civilisation and their religion is contemporary with the Egyptian Old Kingdom and the religion of the ancient Egyptians was in a fully developed form. How the ancient Egyptian religion developed is unknown as no written records of these developmental stages. Hieroglyphs were not introduced until approximately 3100 BC on the Narmer Palette whereas the Indus Valley civilisation has written texts dating to prior 2500 BC, from the Mohenjo-Daro region. Unfortunately this language has not yet been deciphered (Brockington 1996, 24) and therefore the contents (religious or otherwise) are unknown to us.

However, it is likely that some elements of the Indus Valley religion may have become absorbed into that of the invading Aryans (2500-1500 BC) and therefore into modern Hinduism. The Aryan invasion of India instigated a decline in the Indus Valley Civilisation, and a loss or absorption of the traditional religion into that of the Aryans. The Aryan race recorded their beliefs in Sanskrit, which has been deciphered and has produced a number of religious texts; which are still important to modern Hindus. The earliest known Hindu texts are the Vedas written in approximately 1500-1000 BC (Brockington 1996, 7), which are primarily concerned with the elemental gods (e.g. fire, sun, wind and storms) and the ritual of sacrifice and cosmic balance.

The earliest written religious texts in Egypt, are the Pyramid Texts from the pyramid of Unas (2375- 2345 BC) approximately 1000 years earlier than the Hindu Vedas. Both the Vedas and the ancient Egyptian religion were passed down orally for generations but only remained in a fixed form once they were recorded. However the Vedas, although passed down for centuries through oral tradition, were considered too sacred to permanently record (Brockington 1996, 8) indicating the traditions may have existed for as long as the Egyptian beliefs if not longer before being recorded. Like the Vedas, and indeed many early belief systems the gods of the Pyramid Texts are elemental as the sun (Re) is the primary deity of these texts, although there are also many references to the stars, the river and the environmental elements involved in the creation stories, where deities of the sky, earth, air and moisture are the first created by the sun god (Hart 1990, 10-8).