Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

Amen and Zeus Ammon

god of ' Mockery,' ask Zeus how he can permit ram's horns to be
affixed to him and makes Zeus apologise for the disgrace1, Greek
refinement had come to despise these barbaric identifications. But
in earlier days and with simpler folk it was not so. The Greeks in
general delighted to trace an analogy, sometimes quite unessential,
not to say far-fetched, between their own deities and those of the
foreigners among whom they were sojourning. It was a cheer to
meet a familiar face in a strange country, even if the garb was out-
landish and some of the accessories novel. If the Egyptian Amen

Fig. 271.

was ' King of the Gods,' pious Greeks would regard him as their
own Zeus and would readily discover further points of resemblance2.
In fact, they would be glad to worship him under his new-found

1 Loukian. deorl conciL iof.

2 A. Wiedemann op. cit. p. 118 remarks that Amen-Ra 'was sometimes coloured
blue, probably because that was the colour of the heavens in which he ruled as Sun god '
(ib. n. 3 'Amen is coloured green in the tomb of Seti I'). If so, we may cp. the blue
nimbus, globe, and mantle of Zeus [supra p. 33 ff.). But Khnemu was coloured blue as
a water-god or Nile-god (supra p. 347 n. 5, K. Sethe in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc. iii.
2351). The two alleged reasons are not necessarily incompatible : Homer speaks of the
Nile as 8ll7T€T€os ttotu/ulo^o (Od. 4. 477 with schol.).