The ancient civilization of Egypt did not develop such a harmonious concept of the division of power of the gods, which later appeared in Hellas. The god of light and sun in Egypt is Ra (supreme deity), Atum (earlier deity), and Horus. In Hellas, the solar gods included Helios and Phoebus, who entered European consciousness through Roman mythology under the name Apollo.
Solar deities of Egypt
The main cause of heat and light in the view of the ancient Egyptians was the sun. Only in ancient Japan and among the Incas can one find such a powerful heliocentrism. Most cosmogony myths formed in Heliopolis. The first place in them is the god of light and sun Ra. It arose from the bowels of eternal water chaos, having neither a father nor a mother. In a passive, gloomy and cold environment, the exact opposite appeared - a life-giving and active principle. Initially, the god of light Ra was represented as a bird, and his movement in the sky was conceived as a flight. In Heliopolis, where Atum was revered, which later merged with Ra, a myth arose about the appearance of the great luminary as a phoenix.
Another sun god is Horus. He was portrayed as a falcon. The appearance of the star was originally far from human. It took the form of a cheetah, bird, locust, scarab, which rolls the sun disc across the horizon.
Images and functions of the god Ra
Subsequently, the god Ra was depicted anthropomorphically, but with the head of a bird or horns.
Every evening, his boat swims to the western mountains, where the earth ends and the netherworld opens. In it, he fights with a terrible huge snake, having a length of more than two hundred meters, - Apopus, who every day absorbs all the water, defeats him and returns the 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, as the book “Ancient Egypt. Scythian world ”(compiled by I. Chemist), the moonlight god Thoth obeyed the god Ra. Other beliefs said that the moon and the sun came from the eyes of the same creature.
He ruled over the moon, saved and guarded it, returned it to its place in heaven. He knew and observed the order of the astral cycle, controlled the harmony and justice of the world.
He was also the god of counting, chronology, and wisdom. Based on the phases of the moon, the ancients made very accurate calendars. The Egyptians believed that He invented writing, created magic and ritual books. He patronized scribes, doctors, as well as all kinds of knowledge. In the afterlife, Thoth helped Osiris and Ra lead a trial by recording the results of weighing the heart of the deceased. He performed in the form of a baboon, ibis or man. The city of Germopol became the center of his cult.
In ancient Greece
From the very beginning, the Greeks represented the Gods as people, only with hypertrophied features, that is, higher, stronger, more beautiful, more skilled. They took some kind of human quality and brought it to the absolute, to inhuman limits. By this simple principle, the Greek pantheon was formed. For the Greeks themselves, there was a feeling that God was a local king. He has his own region, his own city, some piece of plain or islands over which he rules, and he does not interfere in other areas. This was the primary religion of the Greeks.
Then the Greek religious history was determined by the struggle of the light and dark principles. In the end, the gods of darkness retreated, and the cult of reason defeated. In a material sense, this embodied the struggle between Phoebe and Dionysus.
Apollo and Dionysus are the main rivals, they complemented each other. Apollo is the god of light, the patron of sciences, reason, and arts. Its beginning - logical, scientific, mathematical, rational, bright, served as the opposite of the ecstatic, stormy, dark beginning of Dionysus.
Golden-headed Phoebe
The radiant and radiant Apollo was the son of Zeus and the earthly woman Latona, who, fleeing the persecution of Hera, gave birth to the twin children Apollo and Artemis on the island of Delos. When the god of light was born, the whole island flashed under streams of rays of the Sun. He was fed ambrosia and nectar. On the 4th day after birth, he had already won the battle of the terrible serpent Python, which devastated the Delphi neighborhood. Subsequently, Delphi became the center of the cult of Apollo. Pilgrims went there for divination. In the sanctuary sat a priestess-Pythia, who predicted the will of Zeus.
Apollo - Kifared and Patron of Sciences
Apollo, the god of light and art, always carried a kithara, from which he called divine sounds and sang under them. All musicians were envious of the art of Apollo. He was not equal.
He was a young handsome man, but he was unlucky in love. He fell in love with Cassandra and endowed her with the gift of divination, and when she refused, he made it 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, Phoeb always wore a wreath of laurel.
In addition, he had a bow with golden arrows, a cifaru and a chariot. In it, he embarked on a journey through the sky. Apollo was the guardian of the herds, the healing god, the leader and patron of the muses. The lower classes believed in this. Among the fishermen and peasants there were the most archaic and primitive ideas: the gods must be appeased, and some sacrifice should be made to them. A simple man did not think about the gods. He lived on superstitions.
The development of Greek beliefs
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 laws, and the gods obeyed it.
Educated Hellenes have developed an intellectual discourse. It included mathematics, philosophy, poetry, in which the idea of the divine was of very little importance. This is how the Greek religious and scientific thought developed, which subsequently influenced the whole of European civilization.