ABSTRACT
When the human mind began to form mental concepts and ideas corresponding to abstract terms attempts were made, it would seem, to rationalize the ritual organization that had grown up around the fundamental realities and necessities of existence which people have grouped together under the general heading of ‘Providence’. It is at this point in the development of religion that animistic beliefs in spiritual beings, ghosts of the dead, ancestors and individualized divinities become differentiated as integral parts of a coherent whole, viz., of the order of the sacred. Moreover, Supreme Beings are by no means always thought to be the controllers of nature like a monotheistic deity. Functioning as the high priest par excellence, the Pharaoh in Ancient Egypt daily performed his ritual tasks as the representative both of the Sun-god in the sky and culture-hero on earth, when the solar theology was brought into relation with that of Osiris.
