Originalveröffentlichung in: Johann P. Arnason, S. N. Eisenstadt, Björn Wittrock (Hg.

), Axial Civilizations
and World History (Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture 4), Leiden 2005, S. 133-156

AXIAL “BREAKTHROUGHS”
AND SEMANTIC “RELOCATIONS”
IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ISRAEL

JAN ASSMANN

1. Introductory Remarks

The theory of the Axial Age was formulated around the time of
World War II, between 1935 and 1956. It was developed by three
thinkers, the sociologist Alfred Weber, whose Kultursoziologie appeared
in 1935, the philosopher Karl Jaspers, whose Vom Ursprung und yjel
der Geschichte followed in 1949, and the political philosopher Eric
Voegelin, who started publishing his monumental Order and History
in 1956. Although they never formed a school of thought, there is
little doubt about their intellectual connection. Voegelin spent a year
at Heidelberg (1929) and studied with Alfred Weber and Karl Jas­
pers. Further, we can also assume that both Jaspers and Voegelin
were significandy influenced by Alfred Weber even though they didn’t
do much to acknowledge their debt to him.1
In all three accounts of the transition from a “pre-axial” to an
“axial” age, the common element was the opposition between, on
the one side, the “pre-axial” civilizations of the Ancient Near East,
Egypt and Mesopotamia, and, on the other, the “axial” civilizations
of Greece and Israel. This does not mean that reference to other
civilizations was lacking. Weber and Jaspers extended the scope of
their work to the Far East, by including India and China, while
Voegelin devoted several chapters to Zoroastrianism and to China.
However, as far as the “pre-axial” world was concerned, Egypt and
Mesopotamia constituted its only representatives—and rightly so,
given that these are the only civilizations where the written evidence

1 In this respect, the meaning of the long and rather critical endnote, where
Karl Jaspers discusses the points of connection and difference between Alfred Weber’s
approach and his own (Jaspers (1955) 265; n. 5), is not entirely clear.
134 JAN ASSMANN

reaches back until the beginning of the third millennium bce. And
yet, this very world was closed to Weber and Jaspers. Neither of them
was able to reach a closer understanding of its cultural heritage.
Voegelin was the first to study the ancient documents in a more in-
depth way. Unable to read the texts in their original languages him­
self, he had nonetheless the good fortune to get into contact with
leading Assyriologists and Egyptologists, most of them emigrants like
him, who fled from Germany and other parts of Nazi-occupied
Europe. After what must have been years of study of Assyriological
and Egyptological literature, Voegelin was able to draw a convinc­
ing picture of the “pre-axial” world, for which he coined the term
“cosmological”. In the first part of the first volume of Order and History,
titled “The Cosmological Order of the Ancient Near East”, the first
sentence reads:
The societies of the ancient Near East were ordered in the form of the
cosmological myth. By the time of Alexander, however, mankind had
moved, through Israel, to existence in the presence under God and,
through Hellas, to existence in love of the unseen measure of all be­
ing. And this movement beyond existence in an embracing cosmic order
entailed a progress from the compact form of the myth to the differ­
entiated forms of history and philosophy.2

Voegelin explains this decisive transformation in terms of a “break”

from the “cosmological myth”, or a “leap in being”, leading, in Israel,
into the openness of history “under God” (thus, history in the sense
of historia sacra) and, in Greece, to philosophy and a form of exist­
ence “in love of the unseen measure of all being”.
Unlike Weber and Jaspers, Voegelin was thus able to give a com­
parably clear description of the world which Israel and Greece had
left behind. What in Weber’s and Jaspers’ accounts was nothing more
than a pale counter-image of Europe, a mere “not-yet”, in Voegelin’s
description, assumed a positive coloring as a world in its own right,
a positive alternative to monotheism and philosophy. Nonetheless,
being forced to use translations and to rely on secondary literature,
Voegelin was unable to form an independent view of the cultural
and intellectual development of the civilizations he was studying, and
perceived them as rather monolithic blocks almost without any in­
terior changes and evolutions; in short, without any history. To him,

2 Voegelin (1956), 13.

 AXIAL “BREAKTHROUGHS” IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ISRAEL 135

these cultures “lived” from beginning to end within the frame of the
“cosmological myth”, while the breakthrough into a new world-vi^w
was solely the achievement of Israel and Greece. Despite three
decades of intensive research and discussion, the restatement of the
Axial Age theory by S. N. Eisenstadt3 in the mid-eighties remains
open to similar criticisms. As its critics argue, the theory places too
much emphasis on the relatively uniform pattern of transformation,
while the historical diversity of interpretative frameworks is not
adequately addressed.
Of course, it is true that neither Mesopotamia nor Egypt invented
philosophy or monotheism in the Greek and Jewish sense. It is also
equally true that the relation between these “pre-axial”, or “cosmo­
logical”, societies and Israel and Greece can only be theorized in
terms of revolutionary transformations. Yet, notwithstanding this
general impression, in Egypt (but surely the same holds for Meso­
potamia), several lesser “breakthroughs” seem to be pointing in the
direction of the sort of transformation which would come to full
fruition later in Israel and Greece. Seen in this broader perspective,
the idea of the Axial Age loses much of its dramatic character. The
revolutionary breakthroughs occurring between 800 and 200 bce fall
into line with similar, if lesser, steps in the intellectual history of the
Ancient Near East. In this paper, my point of focus is Ancient Egypt
and the changes that announced the “axial” transformations in Is­
rael, rather than Greece. The first part looks at three such changes
(that is, transformations within the intellectual and religious history
of ancient Egypt, which led to considerable changes, though not to
what could be called an “axial transformation”); while the second
part deals with the “Mosaic distinction” and the “axial transforma­
tion” that took place in the slow transition from the “cosmological
immanence” of the oriental civilizations to the transcendental mono­
theism of Israel.
Voegelin described this process of conceptual transformation as
a “breakthrough” from “compactness” to “differentiation”. Israel and
Greece were able to recognize differences and to draw distinctions
where the oriental societies used “compact” concepts, which blurred
these differences in a systematic way. The Egyptian evidence con­
firms this approach, especially with regard to the distinction between

3 See Eisenstadt (1986). Cf. Eisenstadt (1987); and (1992).

136 JAN ASSMANN

the political and the religious sphere, or what I have called elsewhere,
“Herrschaft” and “Heil”.4 In particular, the specific axial transfor­
mation, which the Bible represents as the exodus (from Egypt) and
the entrance into a new form of religious and political order, involves
primarily the distinction between religion and politics and, as such,
it must be reconstructed and interpreted in terms of political theol­
ogy. At the same time, historical experiences in the political sphere,
that is, breakdowns and disappointments of a rather traumatic char­
acter, may also be identified as the decisive factors in the emergence
of the Egyptian forerunners of axiality. It is to them that I now turn.

2. Antecedents of Axiality in Ancient Egypt

2.1 The Judgment of the Dead

The first in this set of changes concerns the idea of a general judg­
ment of the dead.5 In the Old Kingdom (2800-2150 bce), the judg­
ment of the dead took place before a tribunal modeled on earthly
courts, in that it would be in session only if there were a case to
pursue. Of course, the deceased had to be prepared for any pos­
sible accusation, the more so as s/he had to reckon not only with
human but also with dead and divine accusers. Yet, if there were
no accusers, there would be no trial, and, thus, this tribunal was
considered as one of the many dangers of the liminal state between
this world and the next. That is to say, it was not yet thought as a
necessary and inevitable threshold, or passage, between life and
afterlife.
The idea that all the dead had to go through an assessment be­
fore entering the other world developed during the Middle King­
dom, at the beginning of the 2nd millennium bce. It is clearly
expressed in a wisdom text dating from that time:
The court that judge the wretch,
You know they are not lenient
On the day of judging the miserable,
In the hour of doing their task.
It is painful when the accuser has knowledge.
Do not trust in length of years.
They view a lifetime in an hour!

4 See Assmann (2000).

5 For the history of this idea, see Griffiths (1991).
 AXIAL “BREAKTHROUGHS” IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ISRAEL 137

When a man remains over after death,

His deeds are set beside him as a sum.
Being yonder lasts forever.
A Fool is he who does what they reprove!
He who reaches them without having done wrong
Will exist there like a god,
free-striding like the lords of eternity! 6
Here, we are clearly dealing with a tribunal where everybody is to
present him/herself after death. In addition, and this is another
decisive difference between the old and the new conception, here
the accuser is a god, and a “knowing god” for that, who looks into
the heart of the deceased, and forms his judgement on the basis of
that knowledge. However, and this needs to be stressed, the role of
this god is not what, in the Old Kingdom conception of the judge­
ment of the dead, was the role of the “prosecuting” side. His role,
rather, is one, which was formerly played by the king, society or
posterity.
In the tombs of the Old Kingdom, biographical inscriptions be­
gin to appear during the latter half of the 3rd millennium in which
a tomb-owner addresses posterity and gives an account of his achieve­
ments. The following is an inscription from the fifth dynasty, that
is, the 25th c bce.
I have come from my town
I have descended from my nome,
I have done justice for its lord,
I have satisfied him with what he loves.
I spoke truly, I did right,
I spoke fairly, I repeated fairly,
I seized the right moment,
so as to stand well with people.
I judged between two so as to content them,
I rescued the weak from one stronger than he
As much as was in my power.
I gave bread to the hungry, clothes to the naked,
I brought the boatless to land,
I buried him who has no son,
I made a boat for him who lacked one.
I respected my father, I pleased my mother,
I raised their children.7

6 Instruction for Merikare P 53-57; see Quack (1992), 34f.

7 K. Sethe (1933), 198f.; Assmann (1990), 100.
138 JAN ASSMANN

The apologetic tone of this inscription is unmistakable. The speaker

addresses the tribunal of posterity, knowing that his afterlife depends
on its verdict. As a well-known proverb of the time puts it, “the true
monument of a man is his virtue; the evil character will be forgot­
ten.”8 The immortality of the tomb-owner depends on the verdict
of posterity, on the memory of future generations and their willing­
ness to read the inscriptions and recall his personality. In other words,
what guaranteed the immortality of the deceased was his inclusion
in the continuity of a living social memory. The monumental tomb
had a crucial function in this, according to Egyptian beliefs, in that
it made possible the communication with future generations, who,
when visiting the tomb hundreds and thousands of years after the
death of its owner, would read the inscriptions, look at the scenes,
and marvel at his virtue. The hope of the deceased was that they
would be so taken in by the importance of his life that they would
recite a prayer in his name.
The breakdown of the Old Kingdom in the last quarter of the
third millennium, shattered the belief in the durability of monuments
and the continuity of social memory. In this situation of anxiety and
reorientation, the verdict of posterity was “divinized”. It took the
form of a judgment made by a divine court, the court of Osiris, before
which every deceased was supposed to appear. The idea of such a
general judgment of the dead, where the decision about the immor­
tality or annihilation of the deceased, was relegated to a divine
authority, could be interpreted as a breakthrough into a kind of
transcendence.9 Compared to this-worldly institutions (such as king,
society and posterity) the divine tribunal has undoubtedly a tran­
scendent, that-worldly character. However, I would not speak of
“breakthroughs” and “transcendental visions” here but rather of
“semantic relocations”, whereby a complex of ideas, concepts, and
values, is transferred from one sphere to another; in this case, from
the socio-political sphere of social memory to the transcendent sphere
of the divine.10 The semantic relocation, here, was caused by a severe
disappointment in the political sphere. In the Old Kingdom, people

8 Stele London UC 14333, ed. Goedicke (1962), 26; cf. W. Schenkel (1964),
Ilf.
9 For this interpretation, cf. Assmann (1990), ch. 5.
10 The German term is “Umbuchung”, see Assmann, 2000, passim. The En­
glish word, “relocation”, has been suggested by Johann Arnason.
 AXIAL “BREAKTHROUGHS” IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ISRAEL 139

would invest all their means into the erection of monumental tombs,
which they considered absolute guarantees of immortality. By means
of such a tomb, they hoped to continue their existence in the vicin­
ity of their lord, the pharaoh, and in the memory of future genera­
tions. The breakdown of the Old Kingdom along with the
disappearance of kingship and the pilloring and destruction of the
tombs showed these hopes to be illusory. Longing for safer warrants
of immortality, people turned elsewhere, beyond the social sphere.
The “break-fifozwz” in the order of the political caused a '‘\)rcak-through”
towards “meta-political” foundations of order.

2.2 The Discovery of Inner Man

The idea of the judgment of the dead by a divine court meant a
break-through not only with respect to an outer but also to an in­
ner transcendence, involving an important shift in what may be called
“the history of the heart”.11
The central symbolization in the judgment scene showed a scales
with the heart of the deceased on one side and the symbol of truth
and justice on the other. During the weighing of his/her heart, the
deceased had to recite two long lists of possible crimes and viola­
tions blocking his/her immortality, and explicitly declare his/her
innocence with respect to each. One list had to be recited before
Osiris, the other before 42 judges. Every lie would make the scale
with the heart sink a little deeper. In what follows, the deceased
implores his heart not to betray him:
O my heart which I had from my mother,
o my heart which I had upon earth:
do not rise up against me as a witness
in the presence of the lord of things;
do not speak against me concerning what I have done,
do not bring up against me in the presence of the Great God, lord of
the West.12
In a late papyrus, the deceased asks Atum for support:
May you give me my mouth that I may speak with it,
may you lead my heart for me in the moment of danger.
May you create my mouth for me that I may speak with it

11 Cf. Assmann (1993), 81-112.

12 Book of the Dead, ch. 30, in the transl. by R.O. Faulkner (1985), 27.
 140 JAN ASSMANN

in the presence of the Great God, lord of the Netherworld.13

What he fears is that every discrepancy between the speaking

mouth—declaring his innocence—and the heart on the scales would
make the heart sink every time a little deeper until it sinks beyond
redemption and the tribunal denies him immortality.
The emergence of a general judgment of the dead puts, thus, quite
a new emphasis on the notion of the heart, that is to say, on inner
man as the center of moral responsibility, conscience and account­
ability. The biographical inscriptions reflect this discovery of inner
man in a very clear way. As far as I can see, the word “heart” plays
no role in the autobiographical inscriptions of the Old Kingdom.14
What these texts show us is an official acting solely on the basis of
royal orders. Planning, after all, is the prerogative of the king. It is
on his initiative that each arm is set in motion. The inscriptions of
the later part of the Old Kingdom, moreover, despite the fact that
they dwell a lot on the achievements of their owners, also show that
everything is done on royal orders. This is what David Riesman called

13 Pap.Louvre 3279, ed. J.C. Goyon (1966), 28.

14 This statement requires several explanations and qualifications. By “auto­
biographies”, I understand a genre of tomb inscriptions which developed during
the early 4th dynasty (ca. 2600 bce) from two different sources: (a) from the names
and titles of the tomb-owner, which were expanded into a narrative of his career
(“career biography”); and (b) from a commentary on the tomb and its sacrosanct
nature, which were developed into declarations of the owner’s moral integrity (“ideal
biography”). The two genres of auto-thematization were kept apart during the Old
Kingdom and merged only at the end of the Old Kingdom into the classical type
of Egyptian autobiography. On this, see further Lichtheim (1988).
In the history of this genre, the notion of the “heart” appears only in the Middle
Kingdom. This does not mean that it may not occur much earlier in other genres.
The Pyramid Texts (the mortuary texts of the Old Kingdom), contain many ref­
erences to the “heart”, but these belong to the a-historical “deep structure” of the
idea. Yet more important, in this respect, are two other sources: proper names
and literary (“wisdom”) texts. If the name Hq3-jb (that is, “ruler of (one’s own)
heart” or “(My) heart is (my) ruler”), which appears in the 6th dynasty, can be
really said to express the notions of self-control and of “heart-directedness”, then
it has to be regarded as a precursor of ideas which become prominent in autobi­
ographies only in the Middle Kingdom. The other “problem” case is a literary
text, the “Teaching of Ptahhotep”, a text pretending to be composed under king
Asosi of dynasty V, where the idea of self-control (hrp jb: “submerging the heart”)
plays a great role. However, the question of whether this indication is to be taken
literally or, rather, to be regarded as a literary fiction remains controversial. My
reconstruction of the history of the heart in ancient Egypt rests upon the assump­
tion that the Teaching of Ptahhotep, or at least the pertinent sections, belong to the
Middle Kingdom.
 AXIAL “BREAKTHROUGHS” IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ISRAEL 141

“outward directedness”,15 which, in Old Kingdom Egypt, took the

form of “king-directedness”. The invention of the heart as a sym­
bol of “inner directedness” and moral responsibility is the result of
a long process, which started with the end of the Old Kingdom and
led to a new configuration of personhood, anchored on the concept
of the “heart-directed” man.16 The most explicit elaboration of the
“heart” in this way (that is, as the seat of inner qualities and the
leading force of the person) appears on the stela of Antef, who lived
under Thutmosis III, and who, in his “autobiography”, seems to have
followed closely the model of the Middle Kingdom:
It was my heart that induced me to do this,
according to its instruction for me.
It is an excellent witness for me:
I did not violate its injunctions.
Because I feared to transgress its orders
I prospered exceedingly well.
I did very well because of its instructions concerning my way of ac­
tion.
I was free of reproach because of its guidance.
(...) It is a divine utterance in every body,
blessed be he whom it has conducted on the right way of action.17
In this configuration, the heart appears not only as an inner motor
of will, initiative and self-determined activity, but also, and more
importantly, as a moral instance, as an agency whose orders and
instructions must not be “violated” and “transgressed”. And yet, the
voice of the heart is not that of a self-reliant individuality. It is the
voice of social and moral responsibility, and, as such, of divine
character. In this respect, the notion of the heart comes close to our
notion of conscience (Gewissen). The heart, in short, is the organ
through which individuals open up to the rules of togetherness, are
bound to one another, and brought into the structures (and the
strictures) of community.

15 Riesman (1950).
Il> Miriam Lichtheim, very aptly, interprets this process as a veritable “discov­
ery of the self1: The new attitudes of self-reliance and self-reflection are mirrored
in a vocabulary which continued to grow as man discovered his “self’ and began
to formulate its manifestations (Lichtheim (1988), 142).
17 Louvre C 26: K. Sethe (1961), 974f.; Assmann (1987), 225f.
142 JAN ASSMANN

2.3 The Appearance of “Personal Piety”

Both the emergence of a general judgment of the dead and the dis­
covery of “inner man” can be interpreted as cases of “semantic
relocation”—that is, as operations where a complex of values and
concepts is being transferred from one cultural sphere to another;
say, from the socio-political to the religious sphere. With the generali­
zation of the judgment of the dead, what was once a decision made
by society, the king, or posterity, concerning the worthiness of a
deceased to continue his/her life beyond the threshold of death is
now transferred to the sphere of the divine. Now, it is a divine tri­
bunal and its president, Osiris, who decide upon the immortality of
the deceased, while immortality as such is transferred from the
“mundane” sphere of social memory to the “transcendental” sphere
of the divine world. Becoming immortal no longer means living on
in the memory of one’s community, both present and future, but
living on in a radically other sphere, beyond human reach, in the
realm of Osiris.
A similar interpretation applies to the concept of the heart as the
center of human action and responsibility. In the Old Kingdom it
was the king who acted as the collective heart of the society. Every
individual activity was thought to occur only by royal order. How­
ever, with the disappearance of this motivational center, god and
the heart filled the gap. Indeed, we find some nobles claiming to
have acted on divine orders, while others to have been motivated
by their heart. From the Middle Kingdom onwards, the idea that
the heart constitutes the inner center of human motivation becomes
the dominant anthropological assumption. Now, it is the heart that
leads a man to follow the king and to act on his orders. In this shift,
we encounter, thus, another instance of “semantic relocation”,
whereby the concepts of initiative, motivation and responsibility are
“transferred”, or “relocated”, from the “mundane” sphere of political
obedience to the “transcendental” sphere of interiority, conscience
and “personal” decision.
Now, the third in this set of changes, which announce the mo­
ment of axiality in Egypt, represents the most distinct case of such
“relocation”. It concerns the appearance of a religious trend, which
Egyptologists call “personal piety”,18 where individuals form special

18 See Assmann (1996), 259-277. The term “Personlichc Frommigkeit” was

 AXIAL “BREAKTHROUGHS” IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ISRAEL 143

relationships with certain deities. In Egyptian, this is expressed in

formulas such as “putting god N into one’s heart” and “walking (or
acting) on the water of god N”, which we encounter in prayers and
tomb inscriptions from the 15th century onwards. In a tomb inscrip­
tion we read, for instance,
God is father and mother for him who takes him into his heart,
He turns away from him who neglects his city, (...)
But he whom he leads will not loose his way.*19
And in a prayer:
I gave you into my heart because of your strength. [...]
You are my protector. Behold: my fear has vanished.20
The following extract from a hymn to the crocodile god Sobek of
Crocodilopolis, dating from the Ramesside period, provides us with
one of the most representative instances of this trend
I want to praise your beautiful face
And to satisfy your Ka day by day,
For I have placed myself on your water
And have filled my heart with you.
You are a god whom to invoke,
With a friendly heart towards mankind.
How rejoices who has put you into his heartl
Woe to him who attacks you!
For your wrath is so great,
Your plans are so efficient,
Your mercy is so swift.21
The language of these texts has a long history.22 Many expressions
can be traced back to the First Intermediate Period (2150-2000 bce),
where they describe the relation of patron and client. During the
Middle Kingdom (2000-1750 bce), the ruling dynasty adopted this
relation, together with its rhetoric, to forge a new kind of rapport

coined by Erman in 1910 and translated as “personal piety” by James Henry

Breasted, who, in his magisterial and highly influential book The Development ofReligion
and Thought in Ancient Egypt (Breasted, [1912] 1972), identified this concept as the
hallmark of a whole period of Egyptian history (“The Age of Personal Piety”),
referring to the Ramesside Age (1300-1100 BCE).
19 J. Assmann (1983), 228-30; 1999; my emphasis.
20 Cairo CG 12217 recto ed. Posener (1975), 206f; my emphasis.
21 Cube statue of Ramose, Herbin (1980), 187; doc. 189.
22 For details, see Assmann (1979), 11-72.
144 JAN ASSMANN

between the king and his officials, wherein the actions of the latter
would be directed by their “hearts” (that is, an inner core of
“uncommanded” loyalty, motivation, virtue and responsibility). After
the Amarna revolution, this attitude, which we call “loyalism”, was
transferred to the divine sphere and served to describe the relation
between god and man more generally. Typical of the rhetoric of
“loyalism” is the opposition of wrath and mercy, the formulae of heart
and water, and especially the stylistic device called “macarism” or
“beautitude” (“Happy the man who ...”, “blessed is the man who”),
known to all of us as the beginning of the Book of Psalms. The
rhetoric of “loyalism” had also an important revival in the Amarna
age, and often sentences from that period read like the following:
Blessed the man who puts you into his heart,
For he will spend his old age in perfection.2i
At this point, let me briefly explain a few things about the Amarna
period, a period known as an age of religious revolution,23 24 when
Akhenaten replaced the countless traditional cults with the cult of
the one and only Aten, the god of light and time. What was crucial
in this move was not so much the replacement of the many by the
One, but the terms in which this took place. That is to say, for
Akhenaten, the fact that the totality of reality could be reduced to
the workings of light and time made all the other deities appear as
inert, superfluous, fictitious, and false, with nothing to contribute to
the explanation of the world. Akhenaten was thus the first in the
history of mankind to apply the distinction between true and false
to religion—that is, the same distinction which later, in the form of
biblical monotheism, led to a transformation of “axial” dimensions.
At the same time, although Akhenaten radically changed traditional
Egyptian cosmology, he did not break with it. His god, the sun, was
a cosmic energy also, the source of light and time, without any
personal and ethical traits. Further, and more importantly, his in­
tervention left untouched the “compact” unity of religion and poli­
tics. In fact, it seems that Akhenaten did everything to cement this
“undifferentiated” rapport between the two and counteract the
beginnings of “personal piety”, as if sensing its revolutionary potential.

23 Sandman (1938), 97.11-12.

24 The most recent literature on Akhenaten is Hornung (2000); Montserrat (2000);
and Reeves (2001).
 AXIAL “BREAKTHROUGHS” IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ISRAEL 145

Thus, in the new cosmological schema, Aten acted towards humanity

as a cosmic energy, while Akhenaten appeared as a personal god to
individuals and took the place of the object in the relationship of
“personal piety”:
He shows his wrath against him who ignores his teachings
And his favour to him who knows it.23
In this way, Akhenaten reinstalled the king as the sole mediator
between god and man, where “personal piety” tended to form an
immediate relationship between a deity and an individual, outside
the official institutions of cult and temple. In this respect, the Amarna
religion was clearly a restoration rather than an innovation.
Akhenaten failed in his project. Everything that he sought to
suppress reappeared stronger than ever. After his death, the Egyp­
tians not only returned to their traditional deities but the trend of
“personal piety” developed into the dominant mentality and religious
attitude of the time—so much so, in fact, that Breasted, at the be­
ginning of this century, called this “the age of personal piety”.25 26
However, this was undoubtedly a new form of “personal piety”,
where God had the role which Akhenaten had in the Amarna Pe­
riod, and before him the king in the Middle Kingdom, and before
him the patron in the First Intermediate Period, acting as father and
mother to all: father to orphans, husband to widows, refuge to the
persecuted, protector to the poor, good shepherd, judge, pilot and
steering oar, merciful to his followers, terrible to his enemies. And
this was not all. In fact, what was radically new about this form of
“personal piety” can be best analyzed in terms of a double “seman­
tic relocation”, where, on the one hand, the concepts and the rhetoric
of “loyalism” were transferred from the political to the divine sphere
and used as the model for the relationship of god and man more
generally; while, on the other, protection was no longer sought on
the “mundane” sphere, from king or patrons, but on the divine
sphere, from a deity. Thus, sentences like the following come up
frequently in prayers of this period:
I have not sought for myself a protector among men,
God N is my defender.27

25 Sandman (1938), 86.15-16.

26 Breasted (1972), 344-370.
27 See, e.g. Assmann, (1999), #173.12-13, 42fT, 628'., 102ff.; 177, 5-11.
146 JAN ASSMANN

In the time of Ramses II, a man called Kiki, a follower of the god­
dess Mut, who donated all his property to her temple, wrote in his
tomb “autobiography”:
He bethought himself
That he should find a patron:
And he found Mut at the head of the gods,
Fate and fortune in her hand,
Lifetime and breath of life are hers to command.
(...) I have not chosen a protector among men,
I have not sought myself a patron among the great.
(...) My heart is filled with my mistress.
I have no fear of anyone.
I spend the night in quiet sleep,
because I have a protector.28
The triggering factor for this kind of “relocation” seems obvious. It
involves the political trauma of the Amarna revolution and the mon­
strous spectacle of a kingship turning sinful and criminal towards its
own gods. Thus, the breakdown of a politics stressing the religious
monopoly of the state, led, on the one hand, to the loss of this mo­
nopoly on the part of the state, and, on the other, to the prolifera­
tion of personal forms of religiosity.
Further, the upsurge and spread of “personal piety” meant a new
chapter in the “history of the heart”. The ideal of the “heart-directed
man” of the Middle and early New Kingdoms now changed into
the ideal of the “god-directed heart”. In the tomb of the Vezir Pasiara
from the time of Seti I (ca. 1300 bce), a short invocation of Amun
is put in the mouth of the sculptor:
Amun the steering oar
for him who puts him into his heart.29
This idea finds its most explicit, and as it were “classical” expres­
sion, in a famous passage in the teaching of Amenemope:
Keep firm (dns “make heavy”) your heart, steady your heart.
Do not steer with your tongue.
If a man’s tongue is the boat’s rudder,
the Lord of All is yet its pilot.30

28 Mohammad (1960), 48ff.; Negm (1997); Wilson (1970), 187-92; Assmann

(1999), Nr. 173
29 Assmann, Hofmann, Kampp, Seyfried (forthcoming), Text 173.
30 Amenemope XX.3-6: Lichtheim (1976), 158.
 AXIAL “BREAKTHROUGHS” IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ISRAEL 147

The ideas of the “leading heart” and the “heart-directed individual”

are very different from the idea of the “god-directed heart” in that
they belong to a different historical situation and respond to a dif­
ferent set of needs. On the one hand, the notion of the “heart-di­
rected man” seems to be shaped by social needs. The virtues that
go with it, responsibility, reliability, self-control, commitment and
confidence, are social virtues. There is no other place on earth to
establish Ma'at than in the heart of man. On the other hand, the
idea of the “god-directed heart”, seems to be shaped by individual
needs: shelter from fear and anxiety, guidance in a pathless and
unintelligible world, protection against persecution, human injustice,
malign demons and deities, dangers of all sorts, including the Pha­
raoh.'^1 Typical requests refer to the injustice of judges and to cal­
umny (e.g. “may you rescue me from the mouth of men”31 32). It is
not only man’s inner world of passions, fears, drives and emotions
that is considered unsteady, irrational, and subject to abrupt change,
but also the outer world of society and nature:
Do not say “Today is like tomorrow”.
How will this end?
Comes tomorrow, today has vanished,
the deep has become the water’s edge.
Crocodiles are bared, hippopotami stranded,
the fish crowded together.
Jackals are sated, birds are in feast,
the fishnets have been drained.33
The world has become unintelligible, incalculable, unstable. It no
longer inspires comfort and confidence. In such a context, where
nothing but god provides some sense of relief and stability, god
becomes the sole resting point in a swirling world. The texts of
“personal piety” bespeak an unmistakable distrust in the “mundane
sphere”, which after all had proved so unreliable in the Amarna age.
Those who yearned for some sort of fixity and stability would put
their trust in god. We are very close, in the Ramesside period, to a
kind of “axial transformation”. However, for various reasons, which,

31 Morenz (1969), 113-125; Assmann (1976), 359-367.

32 tBM 5656 (AHG Nr. 190) in Assmann, 1999, 38-40; for other references,
see p. 612. Cf. Job 5.21. Also the teaching of Amenemope promises to “save him
(the disciple) from the mouth of strangers” (1.11), Lichtheim (1976), 148.
33 Amenemope 6.18-7.4: Lichtheim (1976), 151.
148 JAN ASSMANN

although interesting to explore further, cannot be examined in the

present context, the decisive axial breakthrough did not happen in
Egypt but in Israel. Crucial in this, in my opinion, was the inabil­
ity, or the unwillingness, of the Egyptians, to draw a clear line be­
tween the religious and the political. Despite the numerous and
significant “relocations” that occurred after the breakdown of the
Old Kingdom, pharaonic kingship, by mirroring in its rule the so­
lar circuit (that is, allegedly the way in which the creator ruled the
heavens), never gave up its claim to represent the divine sphere and
to act on earth as a representative of the creator. The unity of heaven
and earth, this strong relationship of analogy and representation,
wherein the spheres of the “transcendental” and the “mundane”
appeared as one, prevented Egypt from undergoing an axial trans­
formation in the end.

3. The “Mosaic Distinction” as an Axial Transformation

By “Mosaic distinction” I mean the distinction between true and false

in religion.34 This distinction was alien to “primary religion”,35 which
was based on distinctions such as pure and impure, sacred and
profane, and its introduction was revolutionary in that it created a
new type of religion. For the first time, and quite unlike “primary
religion”, a religion set itself off, not only against other religions
including its own religious tradition, but also against other cultural
spheres such as politics, law and the economy. At the same time, in
addition to setting itself up as an autonomous cultural sphere in its
own right, this new type of religion claimed for itself a superior form
of authority and normativity vis a vis other spheres.
The radicality, therefore, of the “Mosaic distinction” between true
and false, as opposed to the one made by Akhenaten, lies in its
connection to the distinction between religion and politics, or “state”
and “church”. In Akhenaten’s case, as we saw earlier, the distinc­
tion between true and false formed the basis for the abolition of the
traditional religion of ancient Egypt but did not lead to a separa­
tion between the spheres of religion and politics. Kingship kept its

54 See Assmann (1997), 1-8; and passim.

35 For the distinction between “primary” and “secondary” religions, see
Sundermeier (1987), 411-423; and Sundcrmeier (1999).
 AXIAL “BREAKTHROUGHS” IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ISRAEL 149

mediating role between god and man, and, even after the Amarna
period, in the “age of personal piety”; what was broken was only its
monopoly of that role. In Egypt, the state always acted as a kind of
church, being, as it were, the only institutionalized instance of reli­
gion. Thus, the separation of politics and religion, “Herrschaft” and
“Heil”, the mundane and the transcendental, was exclusively the
achievement of Israel; an achievement, which, in the biblical account,
is connected with the name of Moses and with the legend of the
exodus from Egypt.36
The political meaning of the “Mosaic distinction” becomes evi­
dent in the Exodus tradition. By leaving Egypt, Israel separates it­
self from a political system, which is denounced as false, oppressive,
and humiliating. Seen from the view-point of the biblical texts and
in the narrative enactment of the Exodus, monotheism appears both
as a political movement of liberation from pharaonic oppression and
as the foundation of an alternative way of life, where humans are
no longer subject to human rule but freely consent to enter into an
alliance with God and adopt the stipulations of divine law.37 In this
context, Egypt appears, as the symbol, not so much of “false reli­
gion” (i.e., paganism and idolatry), but, above all, of “false politics”,
as the “house of serfdom”, and the significance of the Exodus lies
in the double move, which, signals, on the one hand, leaving be­
hind the “house of oppression” and, on the other, entering the realm
of freedom. “Freedom”, to be sure, is not a biblical word and does
not occur in this context. It is obvious nonetheless, that the alliance,
or “covenant”, established with God at Mt Sinai is presented in the
narrative as a liberation from the serfdom of human rule. Further,
entering into an alliance with God and accepting His Law did not
simply mean the founding of yet another state. Insofar as Egypt
appears as the paradigmatic “state” representing both political and
divine power and order, it also meant a radical break with the ori­
ental principle of rulership and the establishment of a different kind
of polity altogether, a polity, that is, where the principle of kingship

3(i As has been shown by Rodney Needham and Louis Dumont, a similar
distinction underlies the Indian system of “dual sovereignty”, which involves, on
the one hand, a religious (Brahmin), and, on the other, a political (Kshatriya)
authority. In fact, the duality of religious and military leadership seems rather
widespread even among tribal societies and has little to do with what I describe
as the political implications and consequences of the “Mosaic distinction”.
17 For details and bibliography, see Assmann (2000), 46-52.
 150 JAN ASSMANN

was allowed only a minimal place.38 It is precisely this anti-regal

impulse, which in the narrative forms the basis of the resistance to
pharaonic oppression. In addition, and this is another crucial point,
in the same way that the people liberate themselves from political
oppression, God also “emancipates” Himself from political represen­
tation. Religious salvation becomes thus the exclusive competence
of God, who, now, for the first time, takes the initiative of historical
action and withdraws the principle of salvation (“Heil”) from politi­
cal representation and “mundane” power.
The events in the story of the exodus from Egypt are located39 at
a time strangely close to Akhenaten and his monotheistic revolution
(that is, sometime in the 14th or the 13th century bce). The story,
however, was told much later, betweeen the 7th and the 5th centu­
ries, in Judah and Babylonia during a time which for the Israelites
was marked by Assyrian oppression, Babylonian exile and Persian
domination. In some respects, the “semantic relocation” it involves,
from the mundane sphere of politics to the transcendental sphere
of religion, can be compared to “personal piety” in Egypt, where,
as we saw earlier, the semiology of loyalism was transferred from
the political to the religious sphere. In the Exodus story, what we
are dealing with is the transfer of the semiology of Assyrian foreign
politics (vassal treaties) from the political to the religious sphere. It
is also obvious that, in both cases, the relocations were occasioned
by severe disappointments, crises, and traumatic experiences in the
political sphere. The difference between them is that the relocation
as effected in (and by) Israel had a much more radical character and
led to completely different results than the one in Egypt. The use of
the model of political alliance, as a new form of the relationship
between god and man, meant the creation of a completely new form
of religion, which proved able to withstand the pressures of politi­
cal oppression. The biblical texts, especially in Deuteronomy, use
the language of Assyrian loyalty oaths40 and vassal treaties.41 The

38 For the theory of the weak state, see Malamat (1990), 65-77; and Handel
(1981). For the concept of “counter-society” (or “Kontrastgesellschaft”), see Lohfink
(1987a), 33-86, esp. at 44. A similar concept is put forward in Clastres (1974). Lohfink
also applies the concept of “Kontrastgesellschaft” to early Israelite society, in Lohfink
(1987b), 106-136, esp. 119ff.
39 The events, that is, not in the historical sense of “what really happened”,
but in the narratological sense of related time.
40 Otto (1999); and Steymans (1995).
41 Baltzer (1964).
 AXIAL “BREAKTHROUGHS” IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ISRAEL 151

political theology of Assyria was thus adopted by way of a “subver­

sive inversion” and transformed into the political theology of Israel.42
Whereas the first stressed the inseparable unity of the divine and
the political, the latter stressed the categorical separation of the two.
From now on, politics and religion, or “state” and “church”, are
different spheres whose relationship has to be laboriously negotiated
and whose re-unification can only be achieved by force. Political
theology turns into a critical discourse which, in the biblical tradi­
tion, is critical of government, and in the Greek tradition is critical
of religion. The distinction between, and the separation of, religion
and politics, or state and church, has to be regarded as one of the
most important features of axiality. Subsequent attempts, therefore,
at reuniting and “streamlining”43 these two spheres, such as in the
French tradition of the “rois thaumaturges”, or in totalitarian forms of
civic religion,44 are to be regarded as shifts towards de-axialization.
The anti-Egyptian, or, more generally, the anti-state character of
biblical monotheism and its political theology finds its clearest ex­
pression in the prohibition of images. Idolatry means, in the first
place, the legitimization of rulership in terms of divine representa­
tion. Political authority presents itself in its images, symbols and
ceremonies as a representative of the Divine. From the viewpoint
of the Bible, this is idolatry. From the Egyptian viewpoint, however,
this was precisely what the state was there for.45 The Egyptians
believed the gods to be remote and hidden. In their world-view, the
gods withdrew from earth and became invisible, and, as a substi­
tute for their real presence, they instituted the kingdom on earth to
re-present them in the form of kings, images and sacred animals.
The most important task of political authority was thus to ensure
divine presence in a condition of divine absence and to maintain
the seamless unity of the relationship between man, society and the
cosmos. Within this schema, the king acted as representative of the
creator:
Re has installed the king
on the earth of the living
for ever and ever,

42 Otto, (2001), 59-76.

43 A helpless attempt to translate the Nazi-German term “Gleichschaltung”.
44 See Voegclin (1993).
45 For a more detailed treatment of this topic, see Assmann (1989), 55-88.
152 JAN ASSMANN

administering justice to humans, satisfying the gods,

creating true order and banishing disorder.
The king gives divine offerings to the gods
and mortuary offerings to the transfigured dead.46
The king thus depended on the god, whom he imitated and repre­
sented, and the god depended on the king for maintaining the or­
der of creation on earth among the living. In other words, God had
created the king “in his image”, so to speak—and, in fact, “image
of god” was one of the most usual epithets for the Egyptian kings.
Now, biblical political theology is the exact opposite. In this per­
spective, it is the very category of representation which shows the
falseness of pharaonic politics and religion in its most obvious and
abhorrent form (that is, as the sphere of kings, images and sacred
animals). Thus, the prohibition of images means more than anything
else that god must not be represented.47 The presence of images
contradicts the real presence of the divine in the world, an idea which
is also at work in the very notion of a covenant with God, since the
very possibility of such a covenant is a God who turns towards the
world in a way that is both political and “living”. Images are the
medium of a “magical” representation of the absent divine, and, as
such, imply or presuppose the idea of divine absence. A “living” God,
however, hides or reveals Himself as He chooses and forbids any
attempts to make Him present through magic. This is why the “liv­
ing God” (Elohim hayim) must not be represented, and at the same
time this is the political meaning of the prohibition of images. The
Golden Calf was meant to replace Moses, the only form in which
God allowed Himself to be represented. The Israelites, who believed
Moses dead, wanted to replace the representative of God by another
representation. The function of the Golden Calf was therefore clearly
political. Rather than a cult figure, it constituted a political symbol
of leadership, in the same way that Moses did when he led the people
out of Egypt, and its destruction put an end to all attempts of po­
litical representation. Images were artificial gods, and, as such,
“other” gods—that is to say, not inexistent gods, as the ones whose
worship Akhenaten abolished. They were forbidden gods, given that,

46 See Assmann (1995), 19fF.

47 On the prohibition of images see, for instance, Dohmen (1987); Mettinger
(1995); Uehlinger (1998), 52-63; Bcrlejung (1998); Dick (1999), 1-54; Keel (2001),
244-281.
 AXIAL “BREAKTHROUGHS” IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ISRAEL 153

where an alliance is formed with one (over)lord, any other relation­

ship with “other” lords (elohim aherim) is forbidden. Thus, the politi­
cal meaning of monotheism in its early stage does not deny the
existence of other gods. On the contrary, without the existence of
other gods, the request to stay faithful to the Lord would be point­
less.
The radical destruction of representation meant that the divine,
or “transcendental”, sphere became independent of political insti­
tutions. It was thus able to survive the Babylonian exile and the loss
of sovereign statehood under the Persians, when the former king­
dom ofJudah became integrated into the Persian empire as a prov­
ince within the satrapy of Transeuphratene. Religion became an
autonomous sphere, constituting and consolidating a vantage-point
from which all other cultural spheres, including the political one,
could be transformed. Max Weber, in his “Zwischenbetrachtung”,
identified the tension between religion and other cultural spheres such
as economy, politics, aesthetics, the erotic and the intellectual spheres,
as characteristic of “Erlosungsreligionen” (religions of salvation or
redemption).48 Tension presupposes distinction and differentiation,
and I think that the process of differentiation, especially concerning
the religious and the political spheres, is a characteristic feature of
axiality.
Voegelin reconstructed the process, which led from the “cosmo­
logical societies” of the Ancient Near East to the rise of new, meta-
cosmic, or “transcendental”, world-views in Israel and Greece, in
terms of a shift from “compactness” to “differentiation”. In this
account, “compactness” would constitute the hallmark of myth and
the totalizing tendency of mythical thinking,49 while “differentiation”
would appear as the hallmark of axiality. Axiality, however, should
not be equated with either antiquity (a certain time-period around
500 bce) or modernity, where the differentiation of autonomous
spheres is seen (by Weber, Habermas and others) as the most char­
acteristic feature.50 Weber, along with all those who followed his lead,

48 Weber (1920), 536-573.

49 See especially the work of Claude Levi Strauss. Cf. Godelier (1973), 309-
329; and Habermas (1981), 72-1 13.
50 I would like to thank Johann Arnason who drew my attention to the prob­
lem of reconciling my concept of “distinction and differentiation” with Max Weber’s
theory of the separation of cultural spheres, closely related to Weber’s concepts of
occidental rationalization and modernization. I think it is important to distinguish
 154 JAN ASSMANN

including Voegelin and Habermas, interpreted differentiation as a

purely mental process and a form of rationalization. What I wanted
to show in this paper, with regard to Ancient Egypt, is the close
relationship between historical and intellectual processes. Distinc­
tions and differentiations in the intellectual sphere were brought
about, and forced upon, the human mind by catastrophic and trau­
matic experiences on the level of history. There is no doubt that the
rise of monotheism in the ancient world had historical conse­
quences.51 Yet, the rise of monotheism may itself be seen as a con­
sequence of historical changes. In this sense, I take the emergence
of certain intellectual and religious concepts in Ancient Egypt (such
as the emergence of a general judgment of the dead, the “heart-
directed man” and “personal piety”) to be, if not directly caused, at
least occasioned, or, in some other way, related to, historical trau­
mas such as the breakdown of the Old Kingdom and the Amarna
revolution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Book of the Dead. Translated by R. O Faulkner and edited by C. Andrews, as

The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead (1985). London: British Museum Publica­
tions.
Assmann, J. (1976) “Furcht”, Lexikon der Agyptologie II. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz;
pp. 359-367.
Assmann, J. (1979) “Weisheit, Loyalismus und Frommigkeit”, in E. Hornung, O.
Keel (eds.), Studien zu altagyptischen Lebenslehren. Freiburg und Gottingen:
Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht (Orbis Biblicus et Oricntalis 28); pp. 11-72.
Assmann, J. (1983) Sonnenhymnen in Thebanischen Grabern. Mainz: P. von Zabern.
Assmann, J. (1987) “Sepulkrale Selbstbcstimmung im altcn Agypten”, in A. Hahn
and V. Kapp (eds.) Selbstthematisierung und Selbstzeugnis: Bekenntnis und Gestandnis.
Franfurt: Suhrkamp; pp. 208-32.
Assmann, J. (1989) “State and Religion in the New Kingdom”, in W.K. Simpson
(ed.), Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt. New Haven: Yale University Press
(Yale Egyptological Studies 2); pp. 55-88.
Assmann, J. (1990) Ma’at. Gerechtigkeit und Unsterblichkeit im Allen Agypten. Munchen:
Beck.
Assmann, J. (1993) “Zur Geschichte des Herzens im Alten Agypten”, in J. Assmann,
T. Sundermeier (eds.), Die Erfmdung des inneren Menschen. Gutersloh: Giitersloher
Verlagsanstalt; pp. 81-112
Assmann, J. (1995) Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom. Re, Amun, and the Crisis
of Polytheism. London: Kegan Paul International.

between “axiality” and “modernity”, especially if we take axiality as a non-evolu-

tionary concept (the “axial” paradigm , that is; not the “axial age”).
51 See Stark (2001).
 AXIAL “BREAKTHROUGHS” IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ISRAEL 155

Assmann, J. (1996) Agyplen: eine Sinngeschichte. Munchen: Beck; (English translation,

(2002) The Mind of Egypt. New York: Metropolitan Books).
Assmann, J. (1997) Moses the Egyptian. The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism.
Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press.
Assmann, J. (1999), Agyptische Hymnen und Gebete (2nd ed., revised and expanded).
Freiburg / Schweiz: Universitatsverlag (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis).
Assmann, J. (2000) Herrschafl und Heil. Politische Theologie in Altagypten, Israel und Europa.
Munchen: Beck.
Assmann, J., Hofmann, Kampp, Seyfried, Das Grab des Pasiara (Nr.106). Theben.
Baltzer, K. (1964) Das Bundesformular (2nd ed.). Neukirchen: Neukirchener Verlag.
Berlejung, A. (1998) Die Theologie der Bilder: Herstellung und Einweihung von Bildem in
Mesopotamien und die alttestamentliche Bilderpolemik. Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis
162, Freiburg/Schweiz : Universitatsverlag.
Breasted, J. H. [1912] (1972) The Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Clastres, P. (1974), La societe contre l’Etat. Paris: Editions du minuit.
Dick, M. B. (1999) “Prophetic Parodies of Making the Cult Image" in M.B. Dick
(ed.), The Making ofthe Cult Image in the Ancient Near East. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns.
Dohmen, C. (1987) Das Bilderverbot. Seine Entstehung und seine Entwicklung im Alten
Testament (2nd ed.). Frankfurt: Athenaum (Bonner Biblische Beitrage 62)
Eisenstadt, S. N. (ed.) (1986) The Origin and Diversity of Axial Civilizations. Albany:
State University of New York Press.
Eisenstadt, S. N. (1987) Kulturen der Achsengeit. Ihre Urspriinge und ihre Vielfalt. 2 Vols.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Eisenstadt, S. N. (1992) Kulturen der Achsengeit II. Ihre inslitutionelle und kulturelle Dynamik.
3 vols. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Godelier, M. (1973), “Mythos und Geschichte. Uberlegungen iiber die Grundlagen
des wilden Denkens”, in Klaus Eder (ed.), Seminar: Die Entstehung von
Klassengesellschaften. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp; pp. 309-329.
Goedicke, H. (1962), ‘A neglected wisdom text’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 48,
26
Goyon, J.C. (1966) Le Papyrus du Louvre N. 3279. Cairo
Griffiths, J.G. (1991) The Divine Verdict. A Study ofDivineJudgement in the Ancient Religions.
Leiden: Brill.
Habermas, J. (1981), Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns I. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Handel, I. M. (1981), Weak States in the International System. London: Frank Cass.
Herbin, F.R (1980) Histoire du Fayum de la xviii.e a la xxx.e dynastie (these du III.e
cycle, Sorbonne, Paris).
Hornung, E. (2000), Akhenaten: the Religion of Light. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Jaspers, K. (1955) Vom Ursprung und Jiel der Geschichte. Frankfurt: Klostermann.
Keel, O. (2001), “Warum im Jerusalemer Tempel kein anthropomorphes Kultbild
gestanden haben diirfte”, in G. Boehm (ed.), Homo Pictor. Munchen: Saur
(Colloquium Rauricum 7); pp. 244-281.
Lichtheim, M. (1976) Ancient Egyptian Literature II. Berkeley: California UniversityPress.
Lichtheim, M. (1988) Ancient Egyptian Autobiographies Chiefly of the Middle Kingdom. A
Study and an Anthology. Freiburg: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht (Orbis Biblicus
et Orientalis 84)
Lohfink, N. (1987a) “Der BegrifTdes Gottesreichs vom Alten Testament her gesehen”,
in W. Breuning and J. Schreiner (eds.), Unterwegs zur Kirche. Alttestamentliche
Konzeptionen. Freiburg: Herder.
Lohfink, N. (1987b) “Der gewalttatige Gott des Alten Testaments”, Jahrbuch f.
Bibl.Theologie 2 (Der eine Gott der beiden Testamente).
 156 JAN ASSMANN

Malamat, A. (1990) “The Kingdom ofjudah between Egypt and Babylon. A Small
State within a Great Power Confrontation”, Studia Theologica 44, 65—77.
Mettinger, T. (1995) No Graven Image? Israelite Aniconism in Its Near Eastern Context.
Stockholm (Coniectanea Biblica, Old Testament Series 42).
Montserrat, D. (2000) Akhenaten. History, Fantasy and Ancient Egypt. London and NY:
Routledge.
Morenz, S. (1969) “Der Schrecken Pharaos”, in Liber Amicorum. Studies in honour of
Professor Dr. CJ. Bleeker. Leiden: Brill; pp. 113-125.
Muhammad, A. (1960) ‘Two Theban tombs. Kyky and Bak-en-Amun’, Annales du
Service Archeologique Egyptien 59, 157-84.
Negm, M. (1997) The Tomb ofSmut called Kyb). Theban Tomb 409 at Qumah. Warminster.
Otto, E. (1999) Das Deuteronomium. Politische Theologie und Rechtsreform in
Juda und Israel. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Otto, E. (2001) “Political Theology in Judah and Assyria. The Beginning of the
Hebrew Bible as Literature”, Svensk Exegitisk Arsbok 65 (Festschrift T. Mettinger),
59-76.
Posener, G. (1975), “La piete personelle avant Page amarnien”, Revue d’ Egyptologie
27.
Quack, J.F. (1992) Studien zur Lehre fur Merikare. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Reeves, N. (2001) Akhenaten. Egypt’s False Prophet. London: Thames and Hudson.
Riesman, D. (1950) The Lonely Crowd. A Study of the Changing American Character. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
Sandman, M. (1938), Textsfrom the Time ofAkhenaten. Brussels: Edititons de laFondation
Egyptologique (Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca VIII).
Schenkel, W. (1964) ‘Eine neue Weisheitslehre’, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 50,
llff.
Sethe, K. (1933) Urkunden des Alten Reichs. (Urkunden des Agyptischen Altertums I
Bd., Heft 3). Leipzig: Hinrichs.
Sethe, K. (1961) Urkunden des agyptischen Altertums IV. repr. Graz.
Stark, R. (2001), One True God. Historical Consequences ofMonotheism. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.
Steymans, H. U. (1995) Deuteronomium 28 und die ade zur Thronfolgeregelung
Asarhaddons. Segen und Fluch im Alten Orient und in Israel. Freiburg /
Schweiz, Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis
145).
Sundermeier, T. (1987), “Religion, Religionen”, in K. Muller, T. Sundermeier
(eds.), Lexikon missionstheologischer Grundbegriffe. Berlin: Reimer; pp. 411 -423.
Sundermeier, T. (1999) Was ist Religion? Religionswissenschafl im theologischen Nontext.
Giitersloh: Gutersloher Verlagsanstalt.
Uehlinger, C. (1998), “Du culte des images a son interdit”, Le monde de la bible 110:
April, 52-63.
Voegelin, E. [1938] (1993), Die polilischen Religionen. Wien. (Re-edited by P. Opitz.
Miinchen: Fink )
Voegelin, E. (1956) Order and History. Volume I, Israel and Revelation. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press.
Weber, M. (1920) Gesammelte Aufsdlze zur Religionssoziologie I. Tubingen: F.C. Mohr.
Wilson, J.A. (1970), Journal of Near Eastern Studies 29,187-92