The Opet Festival of Ancient Egypt: Has it been derived from the Jagannatha Rathyatra of Puri, India?
By Bibhu Dev Misra (IIT, IIM)
Bibhu Dev Misra is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Management and has been working as an Information Technology consultant for more than 12 years, for various organizations across the world. He is also an independent researcher and writer on topics related to ancient civilizations, myths, symbols, religion and spirituality and has travelled to many places of historical, religious and architectural importance. His articles have appeared in various internet websites and magazines. He can be contacted at bibhumisra@gmail.com and via his personal blog: http://bibhudev.blogspot.com
More articles by Bibhu Dev Misra:
A Day and Night of Brahma: The Evidence from Fossil Records, April 2011
 An interesting piece of
information caught my attention during my journey across the sacred
sites of Egypt during early 2010. During the light and sound show in
the magnificent temple complex of Karnak, I heard a voice booming
over the loudspeakers: “I am Amon-Ra...The
waters of the Nile sprout from my sandals.”
This immediately reminded me the Vedic Creator God Vishnu. In the
typical depiction of Vishnu in Hindu iconography, the sacred river
Ganges is always shown emerging from the toe of the Vishnu,
while in Egypt, we find a very similar imagery associated with Amun.
But who was this Amun? I knew that Amun was the presiding diety of
Karnak, and he was worshipped there as the Creator God, along with
his wife Mut, and his son Khonsu. The next day, while discussing
about the light and sound show with my tour guide, he suddenly gave
me another piece of information that I was not aware of, and that
took me completely by surprise: “Amun was always depicted in
funerary art and temple inscriptions with a ‘blue skin
colour’ and having two feathers in his headdress.”
Now, if anyone ever
travels to India, and he talks to the people there about a god having
a blue skin colour, with a couple of feathers in his
headdress, and from whose sandals or toes a ‘sacred river’
emerges, he will get a single answer: Vishnu, or more correctly, his
incarnation Krishna, for it is Krishna who was always depicted with
two ‘peacock’ feathers in his headdress. This realization
has significant implications. Krishna is an exclusively Indian diety,
whose demise in 3102 BC signified the start of the present Kali Yuga
in the Vedic Yuga system. Amun on the other hand, was not worshipped
in Egypt prior to the establishment of the Temple complex at Thebes.
He is mentioned in the creation myth of Hermopolis as one of the four
pairs of divinities who were present in the Primeval Waters of Nun.
As Amun-Amaunet, he represented the ‘hidden’ properties
of the Primordial Ocean. However, he was not a part of the Egyptian
Ennead, the Divine Company of Gods, who were the primary deities of
worship. But suddenly at Karnak, sometime during the Middle Kingdom,
Amun usurped the position of Atum, as the head of the state patheon.
He became the self-engendered Creator God; an early Twelfth-Dynasty
inscription in the jubilee chapel of King Senusret I (c.1965 –
c.1920 BC) at Karnak describes Amun as ‘the king of the
gods’.[1] Current
evidence indicates that the construction of the temple complex at
Luxor and Karnak may have started as early as the Middle Kingdom
(c.2055 – c.1650 BC), although the buildings visible today date
from the reign of Amenhotep III (c.1390 – c.1352 BC), the great
temple builder of the Eighteenth Dynasty.[2]
What could have trigerred his precipitous rise to the head of the
Egyptian pantheon from relative obscurity as a diety of the Primeval
Ocean? And how did a whole new patheon of deities, along with
associated symbolisms, rites and rituals, with gigantic temple
complexes dedicated to them, suddenly spring up in Egypt during the
Middle Kingdom?
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