Amun-of-the-Road: Trade and Religious Mobility between Egypt and the Levant at the Turn of the First Millennium BCE

The continual practice of some Egyptian religious beliefs in the early Iron Age Levant can be discerned, among others, through the persistence of the Amun name and imagery on local glyptic finds. This phenomenon can be interpreted as one of two very different manifestations of cultural interaction. On the one hand it can be seen as the continuation of the Amun traditions that were acquired under Egyptian rule during the Late Bronze Age. On the other hand it could be the impact of the contemporary intensification of the Amun cult in Egypt during the late 20th and 21st Dynasties. In the following article I shall attempt to distinguish the mode of interaction by identifying the scope of the Amun phenomenon in Ancient Israel against the backdrop of the relations between Egypt and the Levant in the early Iron Age.