The Genesis of Ancient Egyptian Hero Worship
Apocalyptic Literature & Cultural Decline in the Final Days of the Egyptian Empire
There will come a time when it will seem as though the Egyptians had honored the divine in vain with pious hearts and ceaseless devotion, and all sacred attention to the gods will be in vain and its fruits will be robbed. For divinity will ascend back from the earth to the sky and abandon Egypt. This land, once the seat of religion, will now be robbed of divine presence. Foreigners will people this land, and the old cults will not only be neglected, they will even be forbidden. Of Egyptian religion, only fables will remain, and inscribed stones. . . . In those days, men will grow weary of life and cease to marvel at the cosmos (mundus) and worship it. . . . The gods will separate themselves from men—O painful separation! . . . In those times, the earth will no longer be stable, and the sea no longer navigable, the sky will no longer be crossed by stars, and the stars will forsake their courses; every divine voice will be forced into silence. The fruits of the earth will be spoiled and the soil no longer fruitful, and even the air will hang heavy and close. This is the old age of the world: lack of religion (inreligio), order (inordinatio), and meaning (inrationabilitas).
Corpus Hermeticum, 1st century and 3rd century AD
When Cleopatra put the fabled asp to her breast it marked the end of the Ancient Egyptian Empire as a sovereign nation-state. However, this decline had begun centuries before and Egyptologist Jan Assmann described it as an era of a radical de-politicization, where the powerful Egyptian religious caste no longer supported an independent state but a colonized land.
It was in the last millennium BC while slowly being ripped apart by political turmoil and constant conquest (First by the Assyrians, then the Persians, and ultimately the Greek Macedonians) when Ancient Egypt began its glissade into cultural irrelevance.
The long tradition of politically centralized literature as a politically powerful medium of social discourse and a tool to reinforce state ideology became as brittle as the overall political & social coherence of the country. During the Ptolemaic and finally the Roman occupation the formerly centralized palace doctrine made way for an entirely different narrative culture favoring the perspective of the ruled and the aggrieved.
It was during this agony of cultural and political decay that a new literary genre emerged, subsumed under the term apocalyptic literature, comprising both new fictional narratives and already-known cataclysmic themes.
As an answer to the perceived loss of their cultural identity, the aggrieved priesthood and disillusioned population started issuing and circulating prophecies, hero tales, and popular ‘dream narratives’ talking of the decay of Egyptian mores, traditions, temples and divine order (Ma’at) while imagining idealized kingship, messianic savior figures and the completely new invention of Egyptian folk-heroes.
The preserved texts from this period starting right after the first Persian conquest and lasting into the Roman era (525 BC - 3rd century AD) can be roughly categorized into heroic folktales and gloomy prophecies with anti-colonial undertones.
These narratives are often overlooked and deemed inadequate as reliable historical sources but as a cultural relic, they reveal deeply psychological themes of collective trauma and coping strategies on how the Egyptians dealt with the loss of political sovereignty, religion, and cultural identity.
Heroic Tales
Apart from the prophetic texts which belonged to a well-established genre in Egypt and the likes of which we saw for millenia before, the most remarkable genre to find its genesis in these dark times was that of heroic literature, a genre mix of literature, magical realism, myth and sensationlist folktale, a sort of Gael Garcia Marquez meets Prometheus and Django Unchained.
Within this literary category there are several prominent narratives spanning over hundreds of years, never ceasing in popularity or continuity, all proclaiming a messianic savior, a powerful hero or an ideal king to arise out of the chaos and restore their national and cultural identity.
One of the most popular and remarkable of these new heroic stories, blending historical and mythological elements, is The Inaros-Petubastis cycle, a group of ancient Egyptian literary texts compilations from the Late Period (especially around the 26th–27th Dynasties) that centers on resistance against foreign (especially the Persian kings Artaxerxes I.) rule. These texts were found in the Tebtunis temple library in the Fayoum these stories were housed side by side with other genres of texts, such asmythological, medical, priestly, and astrological, thus representing a substantial partof the native Egyptian literary tradition.
In the cycle, the Libyan prince Inaros becomes a semi-divine warrior, gifted by the gods, and fights off entire Persian armies single-handedly. In reality, his rebellion was a major event—but short-lived and ultimately unsuccessful and his heroic tale also ends tragically—with the hero captured through treachery and defeated. Petubastis is another native Egyptian figure, sometimes portrayed as a king, who also resists Persian occupation. In the cycle, he is often seen as an ally or successor to Inaros in the ongoing struggle against the Persians. In some versions, Petubastis is even said to have become king of Egypt for a short time after defeating the Persians in Upper Egypt.
"Then Prince Inaros stood before his people, and he lifted his arms to heaven and said: 'By the gods of our fathers, I will not let the foreign ones rule this land without a fight. Let the bow be drawn and the spear be lifted! For Egypt shall not kneel before the yoke of Persia.'
And all the men of Athribis and the cities of the north rallied to him, calling him 'Son of Sekhmet' and 'Protector of the Two Lands.' They girded themselves for battle, and their hearts were fierce like lions."
In one of these stories, Egyptian troops, while stationed in foreign lands, are being forced to eat food that is not native to Egypt which parallels other accounts of these incidents in other apocalyptic narratives from this era.
The consumption of foreign food by Egyptian troops seen as an act of severe neglect and the ulitmate failure in leadership, and served as a metaphor for the broader loss of cultural identity, alienation and humiliation, highlighting the cultural and spiritual dissonance experienced by Egyptians under foreign rule.
The Sesostris–Seoosis narratives are part of a group of Egyptian historical tales preserved in Greek sources, especially by authors like Diodorus Siculus and Herodotus. They blend historical memory with legend, focusing on idealized Egyptian kings and their deeds. These narratives are not based on strict history but are cultural memory, shaped by Egyptian storytelling and Greek interpretation.
Sesostris is a legendary Egyptian king often equated with Senusret III or Ramses II, depending on the source who is depicted as a universal conqueror—leading armies across Asia and even into Europe, marking his victories with engraved pillars. He acts as a foil to the foreign ruler and is celebrated as a model ruler, wise in governance, powerful in war, and deeply pious, while he has to survive palace intrigue and embarks on romantic adventures.
The Demotic Chronicle - The Coming of an Egyptian Hero
The Demotic Chronicle is an ancient Egyptian prophetic text written in demotic script and foretells the rise of a native hero who will restore justice to Egypt.
Rather than recording historical events, it offers moral judgments of the pharaohs of the 28th to 30th dynasties, linking the success or failure of their reigns to divine will. It criticizes the rule of the Achaemenids—especially Cambyses II, Xerxes I, and Artaxerxes III—as well as the Ptolemies and although the text itself claims to originate from the time of Pharaoh Teos (30th Dynasty), it was likely written in the 3rd century BCE under Ptolemy III Euergetes. (Discovered during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, the papyrus is now held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France; Pap. 215).
Gloom & Doom Prophecies
Many prophetic texts in Ancient Egypt foretold catastrophic events that would interrupt the ritualized cosmic order (Ma’at) held constant by the pharaoh as head of the priesthood, where time in its cyclical form would collapse and and chaos would reign.
Egyptologist Jan Assmann suggested that Ancient Egyptian Apocalyptic concepts were devoid of the cataclysmic end-of-the-world scenarios conjured up in later apocalyptic traditions of Abrahamic cultures, but instead focused on the maintenance of Ma'at (cosmic order and justice) and the dangers of Isfet (chaos and disorder), by depicting societal decline, foreign invasions, and periods of transition, seen as reflections of a perceived loss of cosmic order / Ma’at.
Old or Middle Kingdom prophecies of the doom and gloom category therefore either deal with encounters of chaos in the underworld (see quote above), or like in the Prophecy of Neferti with actual societal unrest and collective trauma, highlighting the Hyksos period (a period of foreign rule in ancient Egypt) as a significant event that challenged the traditional image of Egypt as a stable, ordered land
In these texts the Apocalypse is something hypothetical, far off, imagined in a abstract literary dimension and not as much a probable reality as more of a fantasy story.
What makes the apocalyptic texts from the era of the Persians to that of Cleopatra and the Roman occupation so deep in their specific insights is the fact, that here the prospective, apocalyptic vision has become a tangible reality.
Many of these later texts therefore tell us of the Ancient Egyptian’s personal worst-case scenario, this is no longer a prospective prophecy like in the politically edited texts in the Middle Kingdom (Prophecy of Neferti), here the disaster has already struck - weak kingship, break-down of their sovereign nation state and therefore all cosmic order - and we get a personal perspective of it.
In the Oracle of the Potter, we hear again about the greatest failure in the eyes of the Egyptian population, having to eat foreign food and loosing their sacred head of religion, their king:
“They will eat in foreign lands, and none will give to them… Their masters will be Greeks, and they will wander without honor.”
Oracle of the Potter, 3rd or 2nd century BCE
In the very controversial apocalyptic passages of the priest Manetho, who was tasked to compile an anthology of Ancient Egyptian history (3rd century BCE, Aegyptiaca) for the new Greek rulers of Egypt we learn of a religious and social inversion, with heretics and foreigners taking over the sacred land—a kind of spiritual apocalypse, where the Hyksos as foreign invaders who destroyed temples, massacred populations ruled Egypt violently from Avaris. He tells of a group of unclean people (lepers, priests, or heretics) who are allowed to live in Avaris. They ally with the Hyksos and rebel against the Egyptian king
Anti-colonial sentiment or a strive for a new cultural identity?
“All right, but apart from sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the freshwater system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”
Monty Python, Life of Brian
Egyptologist and cultural theorist Jan Assmann connects apocalyptic literature with the formation and reinforcement of collective identity, especially in the context of cultural memory and religious transformation.
And according to his theory, most of these texts have been interpreted as a sign of revolt against foreign rulers, a testament of social and political upheaval or a simple expression of primitive spirituality and pseudo-historical nonsense. But whatever the interpretation or historical gravitas of these texts, they definitely reveal a deeper collective psychology, give an unparalleled insight into the most pressing social topics of the time and illustrate how the Ancient Egyptians navigated witnessing their cultural decline over a span of six centuries.
Facing the Apocalypse - Triumph and Trauma
"In times of distress and trauma, the hero figures we conceptualize often embody a culture’s deepest fears, psychological currents, and its most significant transformative shifts within a culture."
Bernard Giesen in his book Triumph and Trauma (by Bernhard Giesen and S. N. Eisenstadt) examined the evolving narratives of collective identity in Western societies, focusing on the shifting representations of heroes, victims, and perpetrators. He explored how memories - or manufactured memories - of triumphant heroism, such as revolutionary uprisings, are increasingly supplanted by public remembrances of collective trauma, including genocide, slavery, and expulsion. The book delves into the social construction of charisma and its inevitable decay, the transformation of victims from objects to subjects, and the tragic fate of heroes. The authors argue that these processes contribute to a new post-utopian pattern of collective identity in a globalized setting
How the Egyptians dealt with their collective trauma through narrative culture also unveils what Egyptians feared the most was - not death, conquest, or destruction - but being separated from their sacred home country (as it happened en masse during the deportations of the Assyrian conquest), which meant being cut off from their home-grown food, being buried in foreign earth, with no hope of return or life after death.
The Egyptians were so deeply connected to their Km.t (The Ancient Egyptian word for Egypt but also the black earth the Nile would bring in each year), that being parted from it was the most horrific thing they could imagine.
It is therefore no surprise that the first fictional heroes that arose in Ancient Egypt during this period of upheaval were tasked with either taking revenge for suffered collective drama (i.e. the hero Inaros taking revenge on the Assyrians/Persians for deporting and abducting Egyptians/Egyptian statues back to their heartland) or securing the safety of Egyptians on their own soil and supplying them with Egyptian-grown food on military campaigns.