ABSTRACT
The early history of the god Ȧmen is somewhat obscure, and his origin is unknown. The name Ȧmen https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315870755/e3a65d60-d4a9-4a56-bcb8-bdc326166f32/content/fig14_01_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> means “hidden (one),” a title which might be applied to many gods. A god Ȧmen and his consort Ȧment or Ȧmenit are mentioned in the Pyramid Texts (Unȧs, line 558), where they are grouped with Nȧu and Nen, and with the two Lion gods Shu and Tefnut. This Ȧmen was regarded as an ancient nature-god by the priests of Heliopolis under the Vth dynasty, and it is possible that many of his attributes were transferred at a very early period to Ȧmen, the great god of Thebes. Though recent excavations have shown that a cult of Ȧmen existed at Thebes under the Ancient Empire, it is doubtful if it possessed any more than a local importance until the XIIth dynasty. When the princes of Thebes conquered their rivals in the north and obtained the sovereignty of Egypt, their god Ȧmen and his priesthood became a great power in the land, and an entirely new temple was built by them, in his honour, at Karnak on the right bank of the Nile. The temple was quite small, and resembled in form and arrangement some of the small Nubian temples; it consisted of a shrine, with a few small chambers grouped about it, and a forecourt, with a colonnade on two sides of it. Ȧmen was not the oldest god worshipped there, and his sanctuary seems to have absorbed the shrine of the ancient goddess Ȧpit. The name of Thebes is derived from T-Ȧpe, the Coptic name of the shrine of the goddess Ȧpit, and the city was not known as Nut Ȧmen https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315870755/e3a65d60-d4a9-4a56-bcb8-bdc326166f32/content/fig15_01_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> (the No Amon of the Bible, Nahum 3, 8), i.e., the “city of Ȧmen,” until a very much later date.
