Egypt was an ultrareligious land, rife with polytheism. Every city and town had its own local deity, bearing the title “Lord of the City.” A list found in the tomb of Thutmose III contains the names of some 740 gods. (Ex 12:12) Frequently the god was represented as married to a goddess who bore him a son, “thus forming a divine triad or trinity in which the father, moreover, was not always the chief, contenting himself on occasion with the role of prince consort, while the principal deity of the locality remained the goddess.” (New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology, 1968, p. 10) Each of the chief gods dwelt in a temple that was not open to the public. The god was worshiped by the priests who awoke him each morning with a hymn, bathed him, dressed him, “fed” him, and rendered him other services. (Contrast Ps 121:3, 4; Isa 40:28.) In this the priests were apparently regarded as acting as the representatives of the Pharaoh, who was believed to be a living god himself, the son of the god Ra. This situation certainly emphasizes the courage shown by Moses and Aaron in going before Pharaoh to present him with the decree of the true God and adds significance to Pharaoh’s disdainful response, “Who is Jehovah, so that I should obey his voice?”​—Ex 5:2.

The god Ra, for example, was known under 75 different names and forms. Only a few, relatively speaking, of the hundreds of deities seem to have received worship on a truly national basis. Most popular among these was the trinity or triad of Osiris, Isis (his wife), and Horus (his son). Then there were the “cosmic” gods headed by Ra, the sun-god, and including gods of the moon, sky, air, earth, the river Nile, and so forth. At Thebes (Biblical No) the god Amon was most prominent and in time was accorded the title “king of the gods” under the name Amon-Ra. (Jer 46:25) At festival times (Jer 46:17), the gods were paraded through the city streets. When, for example, the idol image of Ra was carried by his priests in religious procession, the people made it a point to be on hand, expecting to get merit thereby. Considering their mere presence as a fulfillment of their religious obligation, the Egyptians felt that Ra, in turn, was obligated to continue to prosper them. They looked to him only for material blessings and prosperity, never asking for anything spiritual. There are numerous correspondencies between the principal gods of Egypt and those of Babylon, the evidence favoring Babylon as the source and Egypt as the receiver or perpetuator.​—See GODS AND GODDESSES.

This polytheistic worship had no beneficial or uplifting effect on the Egyptians. As is observed by the Encyclopædia Britannica (1959, Vol. 8, p. 53): “Marvellous mysteries, occultly harbouring deep truths, are assigned to them by the classical and modern imagination. They had mysteries, of course, like the Ashantis or Ibos [African tribes]. It is a mistake, however, to think that these mysteries enshrined truth, and that there was an occult ‘faith’ behind them.” In reality, the available evidence shows that magic and primitive superstition were basic elements of the Egyptian worship. (Ge 41:8) Religious magic was employed to prevent disease; spiritism was prominent, with many “charmers,” “spirit mediums,” and “professional foretellers of events.” (Isa 19:3) Amulets and “good-luck” charms were worn, and magic spells were written on scraps of papyrus and tied around the neck. (Compare De 18:10, 11.) When Moses and Aaron performed miraculous acts by divine power, the priestly magicians and sorcerers of Pharaoh’s courts made a show of duplicating such acts through magical arts until forced to admit failure.​—Ex 7:11, 22; 8:7, 18, 19.

Animal worship. This superstitious worship led the Egyptians to practice a most degrading idolatry that embraced the worship of animals. (Compare Ro 1:22, 23.) Many of the most prominent gods were regularly depicted as having a human body with the head of an animal or bird. Thus the god Horus was represented with a falcon’s head; Thoth with the head of an ibis or else that of an ape. In some cases the god was considered to be actually incarnate in the body of the animal, as in the case of the Apis bulls. The living Apis bull, viewed as the incarnation of the god Osiris, was kept in a temple and at death received an elaborate funeral and burial. The belief that some animals, such as cats, baboons, crocodiles, jackals, and various birds, were sacred by virtue of their association with certain gods resulted in the Egyptians’ mummifying literally hundreds of thousands of such creatures, burying them in special cemeteries.

Why did Moses insist that Israel’s sacrifices would be “detestable to the Egyptians”?

The fact that so many different animals were venerated in one part of Egypt or another is doubtless what gave force and persuasiveness to Moses’ insistence that Israel be allowed to go into the wilderness to make their sacrifices, saying to Pharaoh: “Suppose we would sacrifice a thing detestable to the Egyptians before their eyes; would they not stone us?” (Ex 8:26, 27) It appears that most of the sacrifices Israel later did make would have been highly offensive to the Egyptians. (In Egypt the sun-god Ra was at times represented as a calf born of the celestial cow.) On the other hand, as shown under GODS AND GODDESSES, by the Ten Plagues on Egypt, Jehovah executed judgments “on all the gods of Egypt,” bringing great humiliation upon them while making his own name known throughout the land.​—Ex 12:12.

The nation of Israel did not completely escape contamination with such false worship during its two centuries of sojourning in Egypt (Jos 24:14), and this was doubtless, to a considerable extent, at the root of the wrong attitudes displayed early in the Exodus journey. Though Jehovah instructed the Israelites to throw away “the dungy idols of Egypt,” they failed to do so. (Eze 20:7, 8; 23:3, 4, 8) The making of a golden calf for worship in the wilderness likely reflects the Egyptian animal worship that had infected some Israelites. (Ex 32:1-8; Ac 7:39-41) Just before Israel entered the Promised Land, Jehovah again gave explicit warning against any association of animal forms or of any of the “cosmic” bodies in Israel’s worship of Him. (De 4:15-20) Yet, animal worship surfaced again centuries later when Jeroboam, who had recently returned from Egypt, made two golden calves for worship when he gained kingship in the northern kingdom of Israel. (1Ki 12:2, 28, 29) It is noteworthy that the inspired Scriptures recorded by Moses are entirely free from any corruption by such Egyptian idolatry and superstition.

Ancient Egypt’s religion appears to have been mainly a matter of ceremonies and spells, designed to achieve certain desired results through the providence of one or more of their numerous gods.

Though the claim is made that a form of monotheism existed during the reigns of Pharaohs Amenhotep III and Amenhotep IV (Akhenaton), when the worship of the sun-god Aton became nearly exclusive, it was not a true monotheism. The Pharaoh himself continued to be worshiped as a god. And even in this period there was no ethical quality to the Egyptian religious texts, the hymns to the sun-god Aton merely praising him for his life-giving heat but remaining barren of any expression of praise or appreciation for any spiritual or moral qualities. Any suggestion that the monotheism of Moses’ writings derived from Egyptian influence is therefore completely without foundation.