Of gods and men

Over the stupefyingly long course of Egyptian history, gods have been born and they have died. Some 4,000 years ago, amid the chaos that marked the fragmentation of the original pharaonic state, an incantation was inscribed on the side of a coffin. It imagined a time when there had been nothing in existence save a single divine Creator. ‘I was alone in the emptiness,’ the god proclaimed, ‘and could find no place to stand.’ Nevertheless, beside him, he could feel the gods that were yet to exist. ‘They were with me, these deities waiting to be born. I came into being and Becoming became.’ The gods emerged, to reign first on earth and then in the heavens, and history began.

Outside Egypt itself, the British Museum is as good a place as any to trace their evolution: how, for millennia, temples were raised in their honour, and rituals performed. What happened to them, though, that eventually they came to fade and be forgotten? A new exhibition at the museum, Egypt: faith after the pharaohs, explores this momentous question.