ABSTRACT
Religious sciences distinguish between gods as creators and as deities close to man. On a primitive level, all great deities embodied both divine qualities. The slow but steady process of the moving apart of these two conceptions can be observed historically in the Ancient Egyptian Empire in the so-called Shabaka inscription of the theological scriptures of Memphis. In that early phase of the Egyptian Empire—after 3000 BC—“the pushing up of heaven” was realised to such an extent that the creator of the world—Ptati the Very Great—was considered to be transcendent. That meant that the theologians were faced with the problem of explaining to the people how this god, who was so far away, transcending everything that could be comprehended by man, could hear people’s prayers and smell the smoke of their offerings.
