Koch, Klaus: Geschichte der ägyptischen Religion. - Assmann, Jan: Ägypten. -
Klaus Koch's Geschichte der ägyptischen Religion 'and Jan Assman's "Ägypten" are two seminal contributions - written from quite different angles - to the intellectual history of Ancient Egypt. Koch treats religion as such under the following main headings: 1. Veneration of the Sun god as the central event in divine worship; 2. Divine absolute kingship as its religious agent on earth; 3. Assumptions about life after death and cult of the dead as the chief obligation of society, in its entirery. Koch is the first scholar nor to treat this subject phenomenologically; instead he considers historical development between the Old Kingdom and the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods including the origins of Coptic Christianity. Assmann interprets the idea of history which the Egyptians themselves had (including in passing that of the Israelites, Greeks, and Romans). This comprises both the interpretation of specific historic events, and the history of the conceptions to understand the meaning of the world. Assmann uses as his sources material 'traces (Spuren)', 'witnesses (Botschaften)' - contemporary interpretative texts and images - and 'memories (Erinnerungen)' recorded by future generations. The most typical features are 'state and eternity' as expressed by the monumental stone architecture in the Old Kingdom, the struggle to fulfil the ethical category. Maat in the Middle Kingdom, Sun theology, the supremacy of the divine will and Personal Piety in the New Kingdom, classicism and restoration in the Late Period and apocalypticism, critical historiography, and messianism in the Ptolemaic Period.

Enthalten in:
Theologische Literaturzeitung; 1999/Nr.9 Monatsschrift für das gesamte Gebiet der Theologie und Religionswissenschaft (1999)

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Serie / Reihe: Theologische Literaturzeitung

Personen: Blumenthal, Elke

Schlagwörter: Rezensionsartikel Religionsgeschichte Ägypten (Altertum)