WI/AHC: A major revival of the Ancient Egyptian religion

Now, how do you get a big come back of the Ancient Egyptian religion, and the Gods and Goddess with it after Egypt falls to the Romans and later the rise of Christianity?
 
Now, how do you get a big come back of the Ancient Egyptian religion, and the Gods and Goddess with it after Egypt falls to the Romans and later the rise of Christianity?

1) you don't
2) Major apocalyptic event happens. small nucleus of survivors form around a charismatic leader who's into Ancient Egypt. NB more likely to happen in Northern California than in Egypt. Just sayin.
 
I want to fulfill this challenge. But I warn you: it will be more crazy than Nasser.

So:
Step 1: To resolve the Egyption constitutional problem after the overthrow of Mubarak, a charismatic liberal run for president and promises democracy.
Step 2: Mursi becomes president and tries to create an islamic state in Egypt. A military coup is avoided, but he looses the elections some years later.
Step 3: Our liberal friend becomes president of Egypt. He can enact some important reforms, but Egypt, shattered by islamic terror and surrounded by civil wars (Libya, Palestine + Israel, Syria) still lacks of stability.
Step 4: Our liberal president decides to establish a constitutional monarchy in Egypt to give the country a national symbol. This monarch will be a Pharaoh styled as the old Egyptian kings were styled (son of Re etc.), but with limited powers.
Step 5: As islamic powers don't recognize the new regime in Egypt, our liberal pharaoh decides to introduce a "new" religions, basically Ancient Egyptian religion to fight against islamism. Though the world at first laugh and names the pharaoh crazy, the Egyptian administration is purged of Muslims (only Christian and Atheist officials stay in their positions) and executive positions are filled with those who have converted to the new faith. Also, financial advantages are given to those (in the general population) who attend to Egyptian ceremonies and have an Egyptian marriage instead of an Islamic one.
Step 6: After 30 years, (around 2040), a new generation has taken over the country. This generation is highly influenced by the idea of an own Egyptian nation with a Pharao at the top and an own religion (in contrast to islam). In absolute numbers, there is still a large Muslim majority in the country, but everybody has the opportunity to move up the ladder if he converts to Egyptian religion. Other religions aren't really oppressed, but radical Muslims are more or less discriminated against, and every civil servant has to swear on Ma'at, Ra and Horus, so only believers in these gods and opportunists can hold an office.
Step 7: 2100. Now, a narrow majority of Egyptians have adopted the new religion. Discrimination has faded, since there is now reason to maintain it.
 
If we are talking before 1900, wasn't there a revolt against the Greek Ptolemaic Dynasty, that had a chance to do so, even though they made serious efforts to style themselves as Pharaohs?
 
That could work. I know i said it had to happen after the Romans and Christianity, but a revolt against the Greek Ptolemaic Dynasty would be nice.

After Constantine you would have to have the Eastern Roman Empire suffer a very serious crisis, that could disrupt the south, but even that late depending on how the Egyptian religion fared it seems rather unlikely on both counts.
 
Just ask Amenhotep IV how that worked out.
Amenhotep / Echnaton introduced something that was popular in neighbouring countries, re-centering Egypt`s religious pantheon from a position and in a time where the population half-expected their leaders to pull off stuff like that.

Nasser would, in the scenario, have revived something not just clinically dead, but also completely decomposed, a cult with no explanations for the questions and problems of modern society, which he would have to adapt very fast in the process of introduction. And he was in a position where people expected him to pull off crazy political turns and reforms, but not religious ones. Ideologies were the religions of the 20th century. Nasserism wasn`t that absurd as a political ideology. Mixed with Ancient Egyptian religious leanings, it would lose it pan-Arabian appeal; its semi-socialist tendencies also wouldn`t work quite well with Pharaonic nostalgia.

I´ll go back a few millennia.
Roughly around 172 CE, a revolt by Egyptian peasants (the Bucoli Revolt) was led by an Egyptian priest. It was crushed.
The social situation of the Egyptian peasantry under Roman domination didn`t improve, and the rebellion, which almost took Alexandria, surely didn`t fail because it had no social ground. It was crushed by superior Roman military force and the old "divide et impera" strategy.
Perhaps back then, you could alter a few things (either weaken the Empire through a worse turn of the Markomannic Wars, or have the Bucoli be more united) and have a temporary Egyptian revivial state, with a social revolutionary twist. I doubt that in the 2nd century CE it could last long, but then again, you never know...
 
Nasser would, in the scenario, have revived something not just clinically dead, but also completely decomposed, a cult with no explanations for the questions and problems of modern society, which he would have to adapt very fast in the process of introduction. And he was in a position where people expected him to pull off crazy political turns and reforms, but not religious ones. Ideologies were the religions of the 20th century. Nasserism wasn`t that absurd as a political ideology. Mixed with Ancient Egyptian religious leanings, it would lose it pan-Arabian appeal; its semi-socialist tendencies also wouldn`t work quite well with Pharaonic nostalgia.

Oh, don't be such a killjoy. I was imagining a Bokassa-style coronation of Nasser in a palace in Cairo built by specialists of Ancient Egyptian architecture.

And instead of the Aswan Dam (relocate a religious building for such a human vanity...), Nasser will be known for having built the highest pyramid of history, consisting of ferroconcrete (just to protect his holy body from the godless Israeli).
 
Well, which version of the religion ?

It and the pantheon it worshipped differed both by era and by region.

The religious situation in Upper and Lower Egypt and during, say, the Old Kingdom and the Hellenistic/Ptolemaic period, is not exactly the same, in any sense of the word. And then you have the largely monotheistic anomaly during Akhenaten's short reign.


Sorry, but this is just ASB. Contemporary Egyptians are too staunchly Muslim or Christian for this to overwhelmingly succeed.
 
Now, how do you get a big come back of the Ancient Egyptian religion, and the Gods and Goddess with it after Egypt falls to the Romans and later the rise of Christianity?

hmm...

In its traditional form, you probably can't.

However, there was a tendency towards Oriental mystery cults among the elite of the Roman Empire, and even some of the common people.

Isis cults were common, and had roots in the Empire alongside Cybele, Dionysus, and a host of other gods. Perhaps if you can get the Isis cult going...
 

fi11222

Banned
Now, how do you get a big come back of the Ancient Egyptian religion, and the Gods and Goddess with it after Egypt falls to the Romans and later the rise of Christianity?
Emperor Julian does not die in 363 CE and his policy of revivving paganism in the Roman Empire is successful and endures after his death.

Some time later, an usurper with a power base in Egypt becomes emperor. In order to legitimise his rule, he adopts a form of the Serapis cult as the official religion of the Empire. In order to compete with christianity, he borrows certain key elements : personal salvation and eternal life (reframed in an Osiris/Isis language), charity for the poor, death and resurection (Osiris again). Like Constantine, he maintains a policy of theoretical neutrality between faiths but in practice supports the Serapis religious with generous subsidies.
 
What if it's revived, but not by Egyptians?

Egyptology was a craze that started with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and lasted all the way into the 1900s, think The Mummy. What if French and/or Brits created a spiritual, mystical dimension to Egyptology and got into it the same way Germans got into Theosophy?

Imagine Mosley's or Maurras' regime having a fringe of Egyptian trappings, with the ankh or the eye of Horus as their emblem, building obelisks everywhere as part of their neoclassical revamp on architecture, and the Irem Society sending all sorts of wild expeditions into darkest Africa and Arabia, leading to much speculation by postwar conspiracy theorists about the role of esoteric occultism in fascist Britain/France. Indiana Jones fights with Mosley/Maurras' goons as they attempt to uncover the Book of Thoth.

If no one responds to this post I'm going to throw a fit.
 
What if it's revived, but not by Egyptians?

Egyptology was a craze that started with the discovery of the Rosetta Stone and lasted all the way into the 1900s, think The Mummy. What if French and/or Brits created a spiritual, mystical dimension to Egyptology and got into it the same way Germans got into Theosophy?

Imagine Mosley's or Maurras' regime having a fringe of Egyptian trappings, with the ankh or the eye of Horus as their emblem, building obelisks everywhere as part of their neoclassical revamp on architecture, and the Irem Society sending all sorts of wild expeditions into darkest Africa and Arabia, leading to much speculation by postwar conspiracy theorists about the role of esoteric occultism in fascist Britain/France. Indiana Jones fights with Mosley/Maurras' goons as they attempt to uncover the Book of Thoth.

If no one responds to this post I'm going to throw a fit.

Wow. That's great, and would make a great TL.
 
Top