Kemet — Kmt, "the Black Land," named for the dark alluvial soil of the Nile floodplain — is the indigenous name for ancient Egypt, and Kemetic spirituality is the modern movement that seeks to recover and practice its religion. Two distinct things travel under the name, and both need to be understood.

The first is the historic religion of ancient Egypt, practiced continuously for roughly three and a half millennia (c. 3100 BC to the closing of the temple of Philae in AD 537) — one of the longest-lived religious systems in human history. It centered on Ma'at, the principle of truth, justice, balance, reciprocity, and cosmic order; on the Neteru, the divine principles or powers commonly translated "gods"; on the king as the earthly embodiment of Heru (Horus); and above all on the Ausarian drama — the murder of Ausar (Osiris) by his brother Set, his dismemberment, the search and reassembly by his wife Auset (Isis), his revivification, the conception and birth of Heru, and Heru's vengeance and accession. This narrative organized Egyptian views on kingship, death, agriculture, and the afterlife, culminating in the judgment scene of the Papyrus of Ani, where the heart is weighed against the feather of Ma'at.

The second is the modern Kemetic revival, a largely Afrocentric movement dating from the mid-twentieth century. Its most established institution is the Ausar Auset Society, founded in New York in 1973 by Ra Un Nefer Amen I (born Rogelio Straughn), now present in more than thirty-five U.S. cities and internationally, teaching Kamitic cosmology, the Paut Neteru or "Tree of Life," meditation, ritual, oracle consultation, nutrition, herbalism, and African history through the Metu Neter volumes. Alongside it stand looser networks of Kemetic practitioners, Pan-African cultural organizations, and a substantial online presence. The revival is not merely antiquarian; it carries a polemical thesis that shapes most encounters between it and Christianity — namely, that Christianity was plagiarized from Egypt: that Ausar, Auset, and Heru are the originals of which Father, Virgin, and Son are copies; that the word "Christ" derives from the Egyptian KRST; that the Ten Commandments are a condensation of the 42 Laws of Ma'at; that Moses is a reworked Sargon; and that the Joseph narrative was lifted from the Famine Stela.

This post describes both, drawing on the information in Christianity vs Ancient African Kemetic together with Egyptological sources, and states the movement's claims as its own advocates state them. The comparison and the evaluation of the plagiarism thesis are in Christianity vs Ancient African Kemetic.

Historical Background

The Religion of Kemet

Egyptian religion was never a single system with a single scripture. It was local, cumulative, and remarkably tolerant of contradiction: creation was told at Heliopolis through Atum, at Memphis through Ptah's creative word, at Hermopolis through the Ogdoad, and at Thebes through Amun, and no one was troubled that the accounts differed. There was no religious book in the sense of a canon — the Pyramid Texts (c. 2350–2100 BC), Coffin Texts, and the funerary compilation Egyptians called The Book of Coming Forth by Day (popularly, the Book of the Dead) are ritual and mortuary literature, not revelation with binding doctrine.

Key Figures

Ausar (Osiris)

Ausar — the divine King of Kemet; Greek Osiris; also Asar, Usir, and, as "the Good Being," Unnefer (Wennefer).

In the movement's teaching, Ausar represents the living element of the earth. Painted green, he symbolizes vegetation growing from the earth; painted black, he is the god of the melanated people — the source of the term "Ausarian." Ausar represents the expansion of the world as Set represents its contraction, and he is said to have unified Upper and Lower Kemet.

Egyptologically, his origin is obscure. He was a local god of Busiris in Lower Egypt and may have been a personification of chthonic (underworld) fertility. By about 2400 BC, he clearly played a double role: god of fertility and the embodiment of the dead and resurrected king. This merged with the Egyptian concept of divine kingship — the king, upon death, became Ausar, god of the underworld, and the dead king's son, the living king, was identified with Heru, a sky god. Ausar and Heru were thus father and son; Auset was mother of the king and therefore mother of Heru and consort of Ausar; and Set was the murderer of Ausar and adversary of Heru.

In the form of the myth reported by Plutarch, Osiris was slain or drowned by Seth, who tore the corpse into fourteen pieces and flung them over Egypt. Isis and her sister Nephthys eventually found and buried all the pieces except the phallus, thereby giving new life to Osiris, who thenceforth remained in the underworld as ruler and judge. His son Horus successfully fought Seth, avenging Osiris and becoming the new king of Egypt.

Ausar was not only ruler of the dead but the power that granted all life from the underworld — from sprouting vegetation to the annual Nile flood. From about 2000 BC onward, it was believed that every man, not just deceased kings, became associated with Osiris at death. Britannica's summary states a point that becomes decisive in the comparison: this identification "did not imply resurrection, for even Osiris did not rise from the dead" — it signified renewal of life both in the next world and through one's descendants on earth. In this universalized form, the cult spread throughout Egypt, often merging with local fertility and underworld deities.

Cultic and festival detail: in the Middle Kingdom (1938–c. 1630 BC), the god's festivals consisted of processions and nocturnal rites celebrated at the temple of Abydos, where Osiris absorbed the very ancient god of the dead Khenty-Imentiu, whose name — "Foremost of the Westerners" — Osiris adopted as an epithet. Because these festivals took place in the open, public participation was permitted, and by the early 2nd millennium BC it had become fashionable to be buried along the processional road at Abydos, or to erect a cenotaph there. Osiris festivals symbolically reenacting the god's fate were celebrated annually throughout Egypt; a central feature in the late period was the construction of the "Osiris garden" — a mold in the shape of Osiris filled with soil, moistened with Nile water and sown with grain, the sprouting of which symbolized the god's vital strength.

At Memphis the holy bull Apis was linked with Osiris, becoming Osiris-Apis, which eventually became the name of the Hellenistic god Serapis. Greco-Roman authors connected Osiris with Dionysus. He was also identified with Soker, an ancient Memphite god of the dead. The oldest known depiction of Osiris dates to about 2300 BC, but representations are rare before the New Kingdom (1539–1075 BC), when he appears in archaizing form as a mummy with arms crossed on his breast, one hand holding a crook and the other a flail, wearing the atef crown — the white crown of Upper Egypt with two ostrich feathers (Britannica, "Osiris").

Auset (Isis)

Auset — divine mother of Heru; also Aset, Eset, Greek Isis. Her Greek name is the form of an ancient Egyptian word for "throne."

Isis was initially an obscure goddess who lacked her own dedicated temples, but she grew in importance as the dynastic age progressed until she became one of the most important deities of ancient Egypt. Her cult subsequently spread throughout the Roman Empire, and she was worshipped from England to Afghanistan; she is still revered by pagans today. As mourner, she was a principal deity in rites connected with the dead; as magical healer, she cured the sick and brought the deceased to life; and as mother, she was a role model for all women.

Isis had strong links to Egyptian kingship and is most often depicted as a woman wearing a sheath dress and either the hieroglyphic sign for the throne or a solar disk with cow's horns. Occasionally she was represented as a scorpion, a bird, a sow, or a cow. There are no references to Isis before the 5th dynasty (2465–2325 BC), but she is mentioned many times in the Pyramid Texts (c. 2350–c. 2100 BC), where she offers assistance to the dead king; later, as ideas of the afterlife became more democratic, she extended her help to all dead Egyptians.

The priests of Heliopolis, followers of the sun god Re, developed the myth of Isis: daughter of the earth god Geb and the sky goddess Nut, and sister of Osiris, Seth, and Nephthys. Married to Osiris, king of Egypt, Isis was a queen who supported her husband and taught the women of Egypt how to weave, bake, and brew beer. Seth, jealous, trapped Osiris in a decorated wooden chest, coated it in lead, and threw it into the Nile — the chest becoming Osiris's coffin. Isis searched everywhere and eventually discovered Osiris, still trapped in the chest, at Byblos. She brought his body back to Egypt, where Seth found the chest and, furious, hacked his brother into pieces and scattered them. Transforming into a bird and helped by Nephthys, Isis discovered and reunited the parts — only the penis was missing. By her magic, she made Osiris whole; bandaged, neither living nor dead, Osiris had become a mummy. Nine months later she bore him a son, Horus, and Osiris retreated to the underworld as king of the dead.

Isis hid with Horus in the marshes of the Nile delta until her son was grown and could avenge his father and claim his throne, defending the child against attacks from snakes and scorpions. But because Isis was also Seth's sister, she wavered during the eventual battle between Horus and Seth. In one episode, she took pity on Seth and was in consequence beheaded by Horus — the beheading reversed by magic. Eventually she and Horus were reconciled, and he took the throne.

Isis was the perfect traditional Egyptian wife and mother — content to stay in the background while things went well, but able to use her wits to guard her husband and son at need. The shelter she afforded her child gave her the character of a goddess of protection. But her chief aspect was that of a great magician, whose power transcended that of all other deities, stronger even than Osiris and Re. She was frequently invoked on behalf of the sick, and with Nephthys, Neith, and Selket she protected the dead. She became associated with other goddesses including Bastet, Nut, and Hathor, so that her nature and powers grew increasingly diverse; like other fierce goddesses she became known as the "Eye of Re" and was equated with the Dog Star, Sothis (Sirius).

The first major temple dedicated to Isis was built by the Late Period king Nectanebo II (360–343 BC) at Behbeit el-Hagar in the central Nile delta. Other important temples, including the island temple of Philae, were built in Greco-Roman times when Isis was dominant among Egyptian goddesses. Several temples were dedicated to her in Alexandria, where she became patron of seafarers, and from Alexandria her cult spread to Greece and Rome. Images of Isis nursing the baby Horus may have influenced early Christian artists who depicted the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus — a genuine art-historical observation, and one distinct from the theological claims later built on it (Britannica, "Isis").

Nephthys

Sister of Isis, Osiris, and Seth; daughter of Geb and Nut; consort and sister of Seth, to whom he was an unfaithful husband. Despite that marriage, she sides with Isis: she helps search for and recover the scattered body of Osiris, assists in the lamentations, and with Isis, Neith, and Selket protects the dead. In the Osirian ritual drama she is one of the principal parts played by priests, and the Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys (Berlin papyrus, published by J. de Horrack, Paris, 1866) preserves the mourning liturgy the two goddesses recite over the body.

Heru (Horus)

Heru — NTR, lord of the two lands; Greek Horus; also Hor, Her. In the movement's teaching, the word hero is said to derive from his name, and Heru is understood to be the reincarnation of Ausar.

Horus is a god in the form of a falcon whose right eye was the sun or morning star, representing power and quintessence, and whose left eye was the moon or evening star, representing healing. Falcon cults were in evidence from late predynastic times and were widespread in Egypt.

He appeared as a local god in many places under different names and epithets — Harmakhis (Har-em-akhet, "Horus in the Horizon"), Harpocrates (Har-pe-khrad, "Horus the Child"), Harsiesis (Har-si-Ese, "Horus, Son of Isis"), Harakhte ("Horus of the Horizon," closely associated with Re), and at Kom Ombo as Haroeris (Harwer, "Horus the Elder").

At Nekhen (Greek: Hierakonpolis), the conception arose that the reigning king was a manifestation of Horus; after Lower and Upper Egypt were united by kings from Nekhen, this became accepted dogma. The most important of a king's names — the number growing from three in early dynastic times to five later — was his Horus name, which identified him with the god and appeared on monuments and tombs in a rectangular frame called a serekh. The king was typically depicted with a hovering form of Horus above his head; sometimes Horus appears as a winged sun disk, representing the Horus of Behdet, a delta town where the falcon-god enjoyed a cult.

From the 1st dynasty (c. 2925–2775 BC) onward, Horus and Seth were presented as perpetual antagonists reconciled in the harmony of Upper and Lower Egypt. In the Osiris myth, prominent from about 2350 BC, Horus was the son of Osiris and Isis and nephew of Seth. When Seth murdered Osiris and contested Horus's heritage — the royal throne — Horus became his enemy, eventually defeated him, avenged his father, and assumed rule. In the fight, Horus's left eye (the moon) was damaged — a mythical explanation of the moon's phases — and was healed by Thoth; the figure of the restored eye, the wedjat, became a powerful amulet. Horus is also associated, sometimes as son and sometimes as partner, with the ancient cow-goddess Hathor, often depicted with cow's horns or ears.

In the Ptolemaic period, the vanquishing of Seth became a symbol of Egypt triumphing over its occupiers. At Idfu (Edfu), where rebellions frequently interrupted work on the temple, a ritual drama depicting Horus as pharaoh spearing Seth in the guise of a hippopotamus was periodically enacted. Horus was later identified by the Greeks with Apollo, and Idfu was called Apollinopolis ("Apollo's Town") in the Greco-Roman period (Britannica, "Horus").

Set (Setan / Satan)

Set — brother of Ausar; also Seth, Setekh, Setesh, and in the movement's usage Setan / Satan. In the movement's telling, Set was jealous of Auset because Ausar considered her his equal and would not give Set access to rule.

In Egyptian mythology, Seth was the patron of the 11th nome of Upper Egypt. His worship originally centered at Nubt (Greek Ombos), near present-day Tukh on the western bank of the Nile. Nubt, with its vast cemetery at nearby Naqada, was the principal predynastic center in Upper Egypt, and lost its preeminence with the unification of Egypt about 3050 BC under kings whose capital was Abydos and whose royal god was Horus.

Seth was represented as a composite figure — canine body, slanting eyes, square-tipped ears, tufted (later forked) tail, and a long curved pointed snout. Aardvark, antelope, ass, camel, fennec, greyhound, jackal, jerboa, long-snouted mouse, okapi, oryx, and pig have all been suggested as the basis of his form; because even the Egyptians rendered him inconsistently, the figure is probably a mythical composite.

Originally a sky god, lord of the desert, master of storms, disorder, and warfare — in general a trickster — Seth embodied the necessary and creative element of violence and disorder within the ordered world. The vicissitudes of his cult reflect Egypt's ambivalence toward him and its shifting political fortunes. In the 2nd dynasty (c. 2775–c. 2650 BC), King Peribsen identified himself with Seth, taking a Seth title instead of the traditional Horus name; his successor Khasekhemwy gave Horus and Seth equal prominence, reflecting the mythical resolution of the two gods. Under the Hyksos (c. 1630–1521 BC), Seth was worshipped at their capital Avaris in the northeastern delta and identified with the Canaanite storm god Baal. During the New Kingdom he was esteemed as a martial god who could sow discord among Egypt's enemies. The Ramesside pharaohs (1292–c. 1075 BC), originating in the northeastern delta, ranked him among the great gods, used his name in their own (Seti I, Seti II, Setnakht), and promoted the image of Seth as protector of Re in the prow of his bark, slaying Re's enemy Apopis. Seth thus joined Amon, Re, and Ptah as the fourth of the principal gods of the cosmos.

In myth, Seth was the brother of Osiris and troublesome throughout: bursting out of the womb of his mother Nut, an unfaithful husband to his consort and sister Nephthys, and the murderer of Osiris, whom he tricked into a chest, closed, and hurled into the river to be carried out to sea. After the murder, Horus was conceived miraculously by Isis, and struggled with Seth, who sought to dispossess him of his father's throne. This struggle is the theme of the Ramesside text The Contending of Horus and Seth, which borders on satire, and of the later, much more somber version recorded by Plutarch, in which Seth is the embodiment of the Greek demon Typhon.

After the close of the New Kingdom, as Egypt lost its empire and then its independence, and as the cult of Osiris grew, Seth was gradually ousted from the Egyptian pantheon. In the 1st millennium BC, his name and image were effaced from many monuments. He was identified as a god of the eastern invaders of Egypt, including the Persians. No longer able to reconcile Seth with Horus, the Egyptians equated him with evil, with the demon Apopis, or with Typhon; elaborate rituals of the repeated defeat of Seth largely replaced the earlier ritual destructions of Apopis (Britannica, "Seth").

This trajectory matters for the comparison: the identification of "Set" with "Satan" is a late development and a phonetic coincidence, not an etymology — the Hebrew שָׂטָן (śāṭān, Strong's H7854) is a common Semitic noun meaning "adversary, accuser," used of human opponents as well (1 Samuel 29:4; 1 Kings 11:14).

The Ausarian Drama

The movement teaches that the trinity was god, woman, and man — Ausar, Auset, and Heru — the original holy trinity, called the Ausarian Drama, claimed to be over 6,000 years old.

The narrative as told in the movement (and in the vault's source notes) runs: Ausar reigns as a good king, teaching agriculture and the arts with Auset as his equal. Set, jealous because his brother gave her all as his equal, murders him, cuts the body into fourteen pieces, and scatters the parts across Egypt. Auset searches and finds all but one piece. It takes her seventy days to reassemble and bandage the body — the first mummified body, the Sahu, the embalmed and wrapped body. She prays to the high god and to Ausar's spirit in her mourning, and the legend states that Ausar's spirit heard her prayers and visited her one night — the resurrection of Ausar — and had relations with her (she being still a virgin, in the movement's telling) so that he would have an heir to his throne. From this consummation Heru is born, said to be born on the same day as Ausar, December 25, the winter solstice. This is presented as the original virgin birth. Heru avenges his father's death, and the story is said to be the meaning of cosmic life.

The drama continues as the redemption of the human spirit. When Set learned of Heru's birth, he set out to kill all the firstborn children, and Auset fled with Heru to save his life. Heru (light) fights Set (darkness), and Heru is said to be the savior of the world. During the battle, Heru loses his eye, which becomes the Eye of Heru — now known as the "all-seeing eye" or "third eye," representing the ability to see into other spiritual dimensions. After killing Set, Heru is said to have turned into a falcon and flown into heaven to be with his father. Ausar became the lord of judgment in the Duat (the underworld), and Heru the king of the physical world of Kemet; together they became the pathway of life and afterlife.

Ausar was resurrected into a specific region of the sky — the constellation known to us as Orion, whose original name is given as Sahu.

September 11 is when Ethiopia celebrates its new year; in the movement's teaching, this is a week-long celebration of the myth of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, commemorating the resurrection of Ausar.

The Osirian Mystery

The most explicit Egyptian text on the Osirian mysteries is a stela dated from Senusret III (XIIth dynasty, c. 1875 BC), in which a high official — Ikhernofret (rendered Igernefert in older literature) — tells how he conducted a ceremony called "the ceremony of the golden chamber for the mystery (śešta) of the lord of Abydos (Osiris)"; published by H. Schaefer, Die Mysterien des Osiris in Abydos (Leipzig, 1904). The account below follows S. Langdon et al., "Mysteries," Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics (Edinburgh; New York: T. & T. Clark; Charles Scribner's Sons, 1908–1926), 74–75.

The Osirian Legend as the Mystery Presupposes It

The Good Being (Unnefer) reigned over Egypt and, with the help of his sister and spouse, Isis, taught his subjects agriculture and all the arts and crafts; he also conquered the rest of the world in order to civilize it. His brother Seth (Typhon) murdered him and launched the coffin containing the body into the Nile. It drifted to Byblos and was discovered there by Isis, who took it back to Buto in Egypt. Seth again found the corpse and cut it into pieces, which he cast into the Nile. Isis resumed her mournful quest, searched for and found the fragments, and wherever she found a piece she raised a tomb over it. Then Horus, the son of Osiris, together with Thoth and Anubis, came to her aid in order to "avenge" Osiris; they justified him before the court of the gods and restored his mummified body to life and immortality. Thus Osiris could hand over his realm to his son Horus, who became patron and ancestor of the Pharaohs ^[1].

The Abydos Drama Under Ikhernofret

Senusret III entrusted the preparations to Ikhernofret, who first attended to the properties and scenery. He procured a barge to stand for the solar bari, a statue of Osiris adorned with lapis lazuli, electrum, and precious stones, as well as movable shrines to hold the statue. As "head of the mystery" he conducted the process of fabrication and appointed sets of "hourly priests" (wnw-tw) to execute the rites. He played the part of Horus (samer-f, "the beloved son"); after him, the principal parts were those of Anubis and Thoth, played by other high officials. The drama had several acts.

(1) The procession. It opens with a procession (perjt) of Anubis (Upuaut), who comes to protect (nednw) his father Osiris and, with Horus's help, defeats the adversaries of the barge (nešmet) and overthrows the foes of Osiris. Those adversaries were figured by supernumeraries who came to blows with the subjects of Osiris; the fights are sometimes pictured ^[2], and Herodotus alludes to them (ii. 61, 132). Presumably, Osiris was then shown sailing out in his barge to conquer and civilize the world after his triumph.

(2) The death of the god. No less reticent than Herodotus (ii. 170) and Diodorus (i. 21), Ikhernofret points to this act only with a periphrasis: "I conducted the great outing and I followed the god upon his steps." The expression "great outing" (perjt āat) means the great mourning. Whether the murder itself was represented is unknown. The Pyramid Texts (Vth–VIth dynasty, c. 2600 BC) describe the quest and discovery of the sacred corpse: "They found Osiris such as his brother Seth did fell him (nedi) on earth, at Nedit" (N, 1263), and "Isis embraced his body after she found him, stretched upon his side, on the shore of Nedit" (N, 868 f.). Other texts recall the woeful lament that rose to the throne of Rā: "O Rā, hast thou not heard the voice that hath risen on an evening upon the shore of Nedit, the moaning cry of all the gods and goddesses" (W. Golenischeff, Die Metternichstele, Leipzig, 1877, l. 46 f.). The procession of the perjt āat may have carried out realistically the search for and finding of the body while the lamentations were recited. The richly adorned body was carried in a barge to the tomb at Peker, the archaic cemetery of Abydos, where E. Amélineau claimed to have found the "tomb of Osiris" within the enclosure of the tomb of King Chent (Le Tombeau d'Osiris, Paris, 1899). The Medinet-Habu festival calendar places the perjt āat on 22nd Thoth ^[3]; other texts assign different dates, and Plutarch places the funeral festivities in the month of Athyr.

(3) Resurrection and triumph. After the burial comes the resurrection and triumph. Ikhernofret says: "I have avenged Unnefer (Osiris) on this day of the great fight, I have smitten all his foes upon the river of Nedit" (l. 21). Amid the cheers of his people the god sailed back in his barge to Abydos, re-entered his palace as a king (ll. 21–24), and received there his "purification" (ābū) — the rites ensuring his life and triumph, at least until the next panegyrics. Here the same circumspection is observed: the process of the resurrection, though necessarily understood, is no more clearly described than the death. Ikhernofret reveals only the outward pomp; the fight against the god's adversaries corresponds to the spectacle Herodotus witnessed at Papremis (ii. 63), where a battle is fought around the god's image on its way to the temple, and the god enters despite his opponents.

Related Festivals and the Temple Rituals

Other documents preserve festivals that contain episodes of mystery. The feast on 1st Pakhon, when the king cuts a sheaf with his sickle and sacrifices a white bull, seems to actualize the death of Osiris as god of vegetation ^[4]. Another ceremony, the erection of the ded — the Osirian pillar — symbolizes the god's resurrection and is associated with fighting and shouting ^[5]. The Sed festivities bring before the eye the coronation and victory of the resuscitated Osiris ^[6].

More valuable still are the temple rituals describing the secret ceremonies of the passion and resurrection of Osiris, celebrated in small temples or in Osirian chapels found in all large Egyptian temples — some daily, some only at certain festivals. The Ptolemaic temples preserve, in those chapels, texts and pictures illustrating the rites recited and acted by the hourly priests during each of the twelve hours (wnw-t) of night and of day. It is a sacred drama played by priests assuming the parts of the Osirian family: Shu and Geb, father and grandfather of Osiris; Horus, his son; Anubis and Thoth, his brothers or relatives; the four children of Horus; the goddesses Isis and Nephthys; and reciting and officiating priests. The scenery consists of an image of Osiris swathed in the funeral shroud, a bed on which the divine mummy is stretched, and requisites such as crowns, scepters, weapons, libation vases, and paint and incense boxes.

The drama opens at six p.m. and closes twenty-four hours later, falling into twelve hours of night (six p.m. to six a.m.) and twelve hours of day. Its subject is the passion and resurrection of Osiris. From first to last hour the rites lead step by step toward the god's triumph, yet the advance is hardly felt, because each hour is scenically treated as a complete little drama in itself in which the god passes from death to resurrection: at the beginning of each hour Osiris is led back to his initial state of distress, from which he is wrenched by the power of rites and formulæ, only to be brought back anew at the close of the hour ^[7].

Grouping the actions and recitations across the twenty-four hours, the scheme runs:

1. Isis and Nephthys have searched and found the body of Osiris upon the river of Nedit; vocero and prolonged lament ^[8].
2. On hearing the cries, the gods come in haste; Horus, Anubis, and Thoth carry magical implements and vases of fresh water; Osiris is cleansed of all stains by four libations and fumigations.
3. Divine magic effects a series of miracles:
   • (a) the dismembered body is restored;
   • (b) by unctions with oil and paint and by the adze of Anubis, the mouth, eyes, and ears of the Osirian body are "opened";
   • (c) the members are put into motion and each organ recalled to life — rites elaborated in a special ritual called the "Opening of the Mouth" (wap-re; cf. E. Schiaparelli, Il Libro dei funerali, Turin, 1879);
   • (d) the body is buried in the earth that it may germinate and give forth sprouts as tokens of the god's rebirth — proceedings of resurrection by plant-growth fully developed in the rites of the Choiak festivals ^[9];
   • (e) Osiris is also revived by simulating an animal rebirth: the priest playing Anubis lies in a recumbent position — that of the fœtus in the womb — under the skin of a sacrificed animal, symbolizing Osiris being conceived anew, reborn in the hide, and issuing as if from the matrix after assimilating the life of his sacrificed adversary Seth ^[10].
4. About mid-day, as the result of these rites, Osiris is alive. He is fed with offerings, adorned, and crowned, and recovers the privilege of "creative voice" (maã ḫrw) or "just of voice" (Maspero), by which he can battle all dangers and create instantly whatever necessity demands.

Such, in brief, were the proceedings when the "great mystery" (śešta wr) or other great rites (iaḫw wrw) were celebrated. The "purification" (ābū) of Osiris that Ikhernofret mentions as complementary to the Abydos mysteries was itself a sacred drama, actualizing the resurrection of Osiris and his rebirth to eternal life by a process that remained secret to the majority of men.

The Modern Revival

Nineteenth- and twentieth-century Afrocentric scholarship — Cheikh Anta Diop's work on Egyptian origins, George G. M. James's Stolen Legacy (1954), and the popular writings of Gerald Massey and Alvin Boyd Kuhn — supplied the intellectual frame. The Ausar Auset Society (1973) gave it institutional form, and Ra Un Nefer Amen's Metu Neter series became its standard text. Contemporary practice emphasizes meditation, ritual, oracle work, vegetarianism and herbalism, astrology, and the cultivation of Ma'at as a life discipline. For many adherents, the appeal is not primarily anti-Christian but reconstructive — a spirituality rooted in African antiquity rather than in the religion of the slaveholder.

Core Beliefs

General Beliefs

Everything in nature represents an attribute of the creator or a way to know the one creator. The dead are buried in the west, because the sun sets in the west and west represents death. There is no religious book, because the tradition is transmitted through spiritual traditions and systems rather than a canon.

Initiates are taught to learn the mineral domain, plant domain, animal domain, spirit domain, and human domain — a structure the tradition's teachers compare to the Hindu concept of the chakras.

Africans, in this teaching, recognize that there is one creator but hold that the creator is in all things: God is the totality of creation. This is panentheism rather than either polytheism or biblical theism. On this account, the Neteru are not gods in competition with the one, but principles or aspects of the divine, functionally comparable to angels.

After one dies, one becomes netcher-like, because one is living in Ma'at. People are born as a copy of a divinity in heaven and live to become that divinity fully after death. There is a constant cycle of life, death, and resurrection, so that there is no real concept of death: every stage of life is another level of consciousness. The tradition names this Wehem Mesut — "repetition of the birth."

A distinctive origin claim in the teaching: when Africans traveled into the northern climate and were caught in the Ice Age (the last glacial maximum, c. 26,500 years ago) above the 51st parallel north, they experienced the great freeze. Their environment was harsh — jealous, envious, and destructive — and out of that concept came their creator. The claim serves as an explanation of the character of the God of the Hebrew Scriptures in contrast to the Kemetic understanding of the divine.

It is also held that there was no slavery in Ancient Kemet — as the Bible claims happened in Egypt — because Ma'at would not have approved of slavery.

Two terms carry weight in this connection:

• Aamu — Western Asian peoples.
• Hebrew (ivri; plural ivrim / ibrim) — held to be a corruption of ibri, meaning "to traverse," "to cross over," or "those who crossed over." The Ibri are said to be those ancient Canaanites, Moabites, and Hittites who crossed the great river. Essentially, the teaching holds that "Hebrew" is not a people or cultural group but a title for what took place — the crossing.

The Netchers (Neteru)

NTR — Netcher (plural Neteru) is the principle of the divine creator: the Kemetic word for the principal aspect of the divine. Heru, Hathor, Nephthys, Ra, and Set are not considered gods in this teaching; they are regarded as similar to angels.

1. Djehuty — Ibis. Thought, wisdom, and writing; depicted as a bird head on a human body to represent writers.
2. Khnum — the great netcher; the molder, who created everyone on his potter's wheel.
3. Amen / Amun (setting of the sun) — means concealed or hidden: the Hidden One. The study of the transits of the sun; the sun rising was a sense of the living and its setting a sense of death, and every day the sun is reborn.
4. Amentet — netcher, She of the West.
5. Amen-Ra — the seen unseen one.
6. Ka — spirit double of the deceased.
7. Ma'at — the righteous path.
   • Ma'at is the center figure of the whole governance of Ancient Kemet.
   • Ma'at: truth, justice, righteousness, harmony, balance, reciprocity, and order.
   • Ma'at is the netcher of truth, balance, and harmony.
   • Ma'at is pictured as a woman with wings.
   • You give Ma'at to receive Ma'at at judgment.
8. Isfet — the unrighteous path.
9. Inpu (Anubis) — leads you to the scales where Ausar is sitting at the judgment seat.
10. Min (Khem / Menu) — NTR of fertility.
11. Trinity of Waset — Amun, Mut, and Khonsu; temple at Karnak.
12. Khonsu — NTR of the moon.
13. Aten — the sun disc; a representation of Ra, elevated to sole worship under Akhenaten (c. 1353–1336 BC).
    • It is claimed that when Aten was in existence, there was no Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, and no Christianity.
    • It is further claimed that one who goes to Kemet and looks at the temples will see all of the same elements found in Solomon's temple.
14. Sin — moon deity of Canaan, c. 2400 BC.

Alongside these, Ba is the personality of the deceased, depicted winged, ascending after judgment.

Judgment — The Weighing of the Heart

The judgment scene of the Papyrus of Ani — the final judgment, or Weighing of the Heart — is Kemetic religion's moral center. A figure stands with a scale, and in the middle of that scale is Ma'at. On one side of the scale is the heart — one's earthly deeds; on the other, the ostrich feather of Ma'at. One's deeds must be so righteous that the weight of the heart is lighter than the feather. If the heart is heavier, an entity named Ammit — devourer of the dead, a combination of crocodile, lion, and hippopotamus — awaits to eat the heart, taking in one's injustice. Djehuty records the verdict.

If one is accepted, he is taken to Heru, who then escorts him to his father Ausar, who is considered the god of all. This is the point at which Kemetic advocates observe a parallel to the Christian claim that there is no way to the Father except through the Son (John 14:6). Ausar then makes the final disposition as to where the soul goes and where the next life begins. From there, the wings above the person are seen ascending to heaven — the Ba, the personality of the deceased — to become one of the revered ancestors. After this process, one is born again and comes back as an ancestor in a new body, working toward the fulfillment of the soul's evolution.

Accompanying the weighing are the 42 Negative Confessions (the "42 Laws of Ma'at"), recited before the 42 Assessors — divine judges corresponding to the 42 nomes of Egypt — each a declaration of innocence: I have not stolen. I have not killed. I have not told lies. I have not defiled myself. They are declarations of what has not been done, spoken to secure passage.

Various Definitions

• Sahu — anointed body; the embalmed and wrapped body; also given as the original name of the constellation Orion.
• Karast / KRST — protective case for the Sahu. KRST (coffin, burial) is claimed as the source of Christos (Greek), Christus (Latin), Christ (English).
• Vodu gazi — man manifest as God.
• Obelisk (known as the Tekhen) — represents the resurrection of Ausar and represents the missing piece of Ausar's body, his phallus. This structure can be seen all over the world, including in very prominent places such as St. Peter's Square and the Washington Monument.
• Aamu — Western Asian peoples.
• Ibri / Hebrew — "those who crossed over" (see General Beliefs above).

The Case Against Christianity

Because the modern movement is defined substantially by this polemic, it should be laid out plainly and in its own terms before any response is offered (the response is in Christianity vs Ancient African Kemetic:

1. The original Trinity. God, woman, and man — Ausar, Auset, Heru — constitute the original holy triad, the Ausarian Drama, claimed to be over 6,000 years old and the template for the Christian Trinity.
2. The original virgin birth. Auset conceives Heru without ordinary intercourse; Heru is said to be born on December 25 at the winter solstice, the same day as Ausar. Set's attempt to kill the firstborn parallels Herod's massacre and the flight into Egypt.
3. The original dying-and-rising savior. Ausar dies, is restored, and becomes lord of judgment; Heru is called savior of the world and ascends as a falcon to be with his father.
4. The name of Christ. KRST — the coffin or burial case of the anointed body — is claimed as the source of Christos, Christus, Christ.
5. The Ten Commandments. Moses is said to have taken the original Ancient Kemetic 42 Laws of Ma'at and condensed them into the Ten Commandments.
6. Moses as myth. The Moses story is considered a myth deriving from an Asiatic story — the Legend of Sargon, Akkadian Empire (Sumer), c. 2300 BC — from the Babylonians.
7. Joseph as borrowed. Joseph coming into Egypt is said to be a story called Wdj of Jbw (the famine text) that was borrowed. The story is found on a wedge of giant rock (est. 332 BC) called The Famine Stela — the story of a seven-year drought — at Aswan, Egypt.
8. The Psalms and Akhenaten. Aten's writings under Akhenaten (c. 1353–1336 BC) are said to have been co-opted by the religious groups Christianity and Judaism, taken almost word-for-word in some instances.
9. Christian ritual as Egyptian survival. The altar at Christian Mass is said to be a reenactment of the sarcophagus; Solomon's temple to replicate Kemetic temple elements; the obelisk in St. Peter's Square to be an Ausarian symbol.
10. No slavery in Kemet. It is argued that Ma'at would not have permitted slavery, and therefore the biblical Exodus account is false.
11. Abraham as allegory rather than a historical figure.

Timeline

Where Kemetic Religion Diverges from Scripture

• God — the Creator distinct from and transcendent over creation (Genesis 1:1; Isaiah 40:22, 28; Acts 17:24–25) versus a divine totality identical with the cosmos.
• Worship — directed to the Creator alone, never through images or through creation (Exodus 20:3–5; Romans 1:22–25) versus the Neteru as mediating principles.
• Humanity — created, not divine seed; fallen, not merely unevolved (Genesis 2:7; Romans 3:23) versus copies of divinities progressing toward godhood.
• Death and afterlife — appointed once, then judgment (Hebrews 9:27) versus cyclical rebirth and ancestral return.
• Justification — righteousness reckoned by grace to the guilty (Romans 4:5; Ephesians 2:8–9) versus a heart weighed against a feather and a recitation of innocence.
• Resurrection — a bodily rising to imperishable life in space and time (Luke 24:39; 1 Corinthians 15:3–8) versus an annual, cyclical, mythological revivification in the underworld, re-enacted hour by hour and returned each hour to distress.