What is the crowd's opinion of The Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt?

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So I'm just going to let you know the question you're asking is very very VERY difficult to explain. But I'll give a you a limited/ over-simplified version of my understanding. I think the biggest reason why nobody has attempted to answer your question is due to how daunting the answer is. Lucky for you I had a 12 hour shift and NOTHING to do.

The books I'll be leaning on are as follows, I have read all of them and would recommend all of them.

• https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Ancient-Egypt-Helen-Strudwick/dp/1782744363
• https://www.amazon.com/Wrote-Bible-Richard-Elliott-Friedman/dp/0060630353
• https://www.amazon.com/Myths-Mesopotamia-Creation-Gilgamesh-Classics/dp/0199538360
• https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Unearthed-Archaeologys-Vision-Ancient/dp/0684869136
• https://www.amazon.com/History-God-000-Year-Judaism-Christianity/dp/0345384563
• The Bible, (I'm not going to get into knitty-gritty so I will use ESV for convince).
• Good 'ole Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Canaanite_religion
• https://books.google.com/books?id=1yM3AuBh4AsC&pg=PA80

First off "Israel" is situated inside ancient Canaan. Canaan wasn't just limited to modern Israel territory but also way up in modern Turkey too. The evidence for this is both in the Bible and in archaeology. Abraham left Ur, (which is east in Mesopotamia), and settled in Canaan in Genesis 12:5. Sarah came with him from Ur but Hagar, (Mother of Ishmeal), was Egyptian in origin. Point is: People took wives and intermingled with the Canaan population, (which was already intermingled with various ethnicities), before the great exodus from Egypt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canaan , https://biblehub.com/genesis/12-5.htm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishmael

So there are two components to this: What has been physically found and What's in the Bible. The Ugaritic Texts are just one example and was discovered in 1928. It gives us much of our consolidated understanding of the Canaanite pantheon. But also the Bible itself has scattered remains of these deities too as I will attempt to demonstrate. The Bible mentions "Elohim," "Yahweh," and "Ba'al" to name a few (Note: "Ba'al" isn't a god but a title that means roughly "Lord"). There were multiple gods that started with "Ba'al" in the Canaanite pantheon. Ba'al Hadad, Ba'al Hermon, Ba'al Hammon, etc. You can find a more complete list here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Canaanite_religion, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugaritic_texts#:~:text=The%20Ugaritic%20texts%20are%20a,have%20been%20found%20to%20date.

Over the last century we've found various cuneiform's and stele's that mention such deities speckled all across, Mesopotamia, Assyria, Israel, Egypt, etc. Keep in mind INFLUENCE muddles perceptions of deities. For example the Hyksos, (east Egypt who ruled lower egypt from Avaris), brought the Canaanite god Ba'al Hadad with them from Canaan but they eventually linked him to the Egyptians god Seth/Set because they were similar... enough. Was Set of the Hyksos the same as Set of native Egyptians? Probably not. That happened A LOT... Egyptians did it, Canaanites did it, Assyrians did it, and so on. Gods weren't strictly defined across swaths of territory in the Bronze Age... or the Iron Age... or today for that matter. They swirled much like a multi-flavored ice cream. Another less obvious example would be Asherah who was mentioned in Judges. 3:7, and is alluded to in Deut. 7:5, 12:2-3; 2 Kings 16:4, 17:10; Jer. 3:6,13; Ezek. 6:13, due to those pesky "asherah poles." lol "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyksos , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_(deity) , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asherah#:~:text=Asherah%20%2F%C9%99%CB%88%CA%83%C9%AA%C9%99r,with%20the%20Ugaritic%20goddess%20%CA%BEA%E1%B9%AFiratu. , https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges%203%3A7-11&version=NIV

ELOHIM

Now I'm going to turn my attention to Elohim or just El, (the patriarch of the Canaanite pantheon, like Zeus was to the Greeks). In the Northwest Semitic, (Phoenicia maybe?), El meant "god" and could be used to represent any deity much like we say "god" in English. It wasn't so much a name as it is/was a title... However elsewhere in Canaan El specifically referred to Elohim. But he was supreme God in most of Canaan and Mesopotamia's Early Dynastic Period. A good verification of this is in the Bible itself in Genesis 32 : 28 where God tells Jacob his new name will be isra*EL, "struggle with **God*." Also El's effigy is a bull. So in Exodus 32 : 4 where Moses finds his people worshiping a golden bull. That was a clear violation for Moses, as they were supposed to worship EL only, and not his symbol. This name is still represented in our Bible today, (if you read it in Hebrew), in contrast to Yahweh/YHWY which is also in the Bible. Confusing yet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_(deity) , https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2032%3A22-32&version=NIV, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_calf , https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+32%3A4&version=NRSV

YAHWEH or YHWY

Yahweh was a national war god that both Israel and Judah acknowledged who became/merged with El. "Yahwah" is the roman spelling of the Hebrew 4 letter word YHWY. In some places, especially in Psalm 29, Yahweh is envisioned as a storm god, (Like El's son, Ba'al Haddad). It is Yahweh who is prophesied to one day battle Leviathan the serpent, and slay the dragon in the sea in Isaiah 27:1. The slaying of the serpent in myth is a deed attributed to both Ba’al Hadad and ‘Anat in the Ugaritic texts, but not to Ēl. Such mythological motifs are variously seen as late survivals from a period when Yahweh held a place in theology comparable to that of Hadad at Ugarit. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isaiah+27&version=NRSV, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=psalms+29&version=NRSV