Ammon of Siwa

Summary

Ammon of Siwa is the god whose oracle stood in the oasis of Siwa, in the Libyan desert west of Egypt; the Greeks called him Zeus Ammon and showed him as a man with a ram's horns. In name and image he is the Egyptian Amun of Thebes, but in the oasis he became the god of the caravans and the desert peoples, and kings from far countries came to ask him about what was hidden.

Herodotus gives the Theban priests' account of why Zeus is shown with a ram's head. Heracles wanted to see Zeus, and Zeus did not want to be seen; when Heracles pressed him, Zeus flayed a ram, cut off its head, put on its fleece and held the head before his face, and so showed himself. That is why the Egyptians make images of Zeus with a ram's head, and the Ammonians imitate them; in Herodotus's view they are colonists from Egypt and Ethiopia, speak a language mixed from both, and took their name from the Egyptian name of Zeus, Amun. On one day of the year the Thebans kill and flay a single ram, dress the image of Zeus in its fleece, bring an image of Heracles near it, then mourn the ram and bury it in a sacred coffin. Herodotus also gives the account of the priestesses of Dodona in Greece: two black doves flew from Thebes; one settled at Dodona, and the other flew to Libya and told the Libyans to found an oracle of Ammon.

The oasis was an island of water in a sea of sand. Herodotus says the Ammonians live ten days' journey from Thebes and have a spring called the Spring of the Sun: warm at dawn, cooling until it is coldest at noon, when they water their gardens, then warming until sunset, boiling at midnight and cooling again until dawn. Croesus of Lydia sent to it to test the truth of the oracles, and Cambyses of Persia sent an army against the Ammonians; halfway across, a violent south wind buried it in sand, as the people of the oasis tell. Pindar names "the temple of Zeus Ammon" in Libya in his fourth Pythian ode, and Pausanias says Pindar sent the Ammonians of Libya a hymn to Ammon, which he saw carved on a triangular slab beside an altar dedicated by Ptolemy son of Lagus.

The most famous visitor was Alexander of Macedon, after he had entered Egypt. Arrian says he wanted to consult Ammon because the oracle was said to be truthful, and because Perseus had consulted it when he was sent against the Gorgons, and Heracles when he went against Antaeus in Libya and Busiris in Egypt, and Alexander traced his descent to both. On the way heavy rain fell in the desert and the guides lost the road; two speaking serpents went before the army in Ptolemy's account, two ravens in Aristobulus's, and led it to the oracle. Arrian describes the oasis: a small tract full of olives and palms, the only place in that country refreshed by dew, with the spring that is cold at noon and warm at midnight, and clear salt like crystal that the priests carry to Egypt in boxes of palm leaf as a gift for the king. Diodorus says the god's image was set with emeralds and carried on a golden boat by eighty priests, who went wherever the god directed them, not where they chose, followed by women singing a traditional hymn. When Alexander entered, the chief priest said: "Rejoice, son; take this form of address as from the god also." Plutarch tells that the priest, meaning to say in Greek "O my son", ὦ παιδίον, mispronounced it as ὦ παιδίος, which was heard as "O son of Zeus".

The idea these accounts turn on is that the hidden god speaks from a place people reach only through danger. The road to the oasis is unmarked sand that buries an army and leads a guide astray; its water is a spring unlike every other; and the god himself is not seen: he is carried covered on a boat, as Amun is carried at Thebes, and answers by the movement of his bearers. Whoever survives the road finds with him an answer he can trust. The horned ram image spread after Alexander's visit: from 297 BCE Lysimachus struck coins showing Alexander with the horns of Zeus Ammon; among the Libyan tribes Ammon became the father of Gurzil; and some scholars think Baal Hammon at Carthage took the ram's horns from him.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. The Amazigh Semitic-reading essay reads Amun from ʾamina, to be settled and at ease, and from ʾāmana, to believe, and the Egyptian Semitic-reading essay reads it from the same root: the trusted, the faithful. Egyptian writes the name jmn, Imen, meaning there "the hidden one", and Greek writes Ἄμμων, Ammon, whose final n belongs to the name, so the three consonants ʾ-m-n stand complete. In Lane, ʾamina is to be at rest in heart and free from fear; ʾaminahu ʿalā ash-shayʾ, to trust someone with a thing; maʾman, a place of safety; amān, protection. On this reading Ammon of Siwa is the god in whom the one who has crossed the desert feels safe, and whose answer the questioner trusts without seeing him, which is what the accounts make him: an oracle tested for its truth and found true, and a road of fear that ends in a spring, shade and palms.

Linguistic Root

The Amazigh Semitic-reading essay says that the Libyan Amazigh Amun is the Egyptian Amun himself, that his temple at Siwa is the oldest of his temples, and that the path ran from the Libyan Amun to the Egyptian Amun, then to Greek Zeus Ammon, then to amen; it grades this "certain". On the reading itself, ʾ-m-n, the Amazigh essay, the Egyptian essay and the Amun page agree. On the direction of the path, the written witnesses run the other way: Herodotus says the Ammonians are colonists from Egypt and Ethiopia and named after the Egyptian name of Zeus, and the priestesses of Dodona say the dove came to Libya from Thebes. Camps calls "too simple" the view that Egypt spread its gods over all Africa and so made the rams of the Atlas rock engravings into images of Amun-Ra, because these rams with discs on their heads belong to the oldest stage of Neolithic rock art, older than the sheep of the Kerma tombs in Nubia; he thinks the ram there was not worshipped but a victim adorned for sacrifice. So the Libyan ram is older than the written Egyptian Amun, while the written name reached the oasis from Thebes.

Lane's entries for ʾ-m-n touch the oasis and the oracle together: ʾamina al-balad, the people of the country were secure in it; al-balad al-amīn, "the secure town", Mecca; maʾman, a place of safety; istaʾmana ilayhi, to enter within someone's protection; ʾamuna, said of a man who is trusted; and ʾammana, to say amen after a prayer. The Egyptian sense, "hidden", is not carried by this root; in the story it is the god's image covered in its boat, so the Arabic reading reads what people find with him, and the Egyptian how he is. Lane, ʾ-m-n; root ʾ-m-n.

Key Mythic Narratives

Ammon's oracle in Corippus

A thousand years after Herodotus, the sixth-century poet Corippus tells how the Moorish leader Carcasan went to the land of the Marmaridae, where horned Ammon dwells; a bull was struck on the forehead with an axe, the prophetess whirled round the altars until the god took hold of her, and she promised that he would enter Carthage with crowds around him; his head entered it on a pole. Before the last battle the Moors sacrificed by night to Gurzil and to horned Ammon. The story is told on the Gurzil page.

His cult in Libya and Africa

Camps says Ammon had lasting success in Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, as inscriptions and place names show, such as "the land of Ammon" in Ptolemy the geographer and "Ad Ammonem" on the Peutinger map, while west of the Lesser Syrtis the evidence thins out to a dedication to Jupiter Ammon at Carthage and another at Auzia.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

At Thebes the Egyptians carry Amun covered on a boat at the Beautiful Festival of the Valley, and at Siwa the priests carry his image on a golden boat: in both places the picture is the same, a god who is not seen and whom people carry. At Delphi Apollo speaks through his priestess, and at Siwa Ammon speaks through the movement of his bearers and the voice of his priest; the same kings went to both, and Croesus asked both at once to test which told the truth.