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Johann Christoph “Jan” Assmann, the world’s foremost Egyptologist and a profound religious thinker and cultural historian, died on Monday at the age of 85.

Assmann was born in Langelsheim in Lower Saxony and grew up in Lübeck and Heidelberg. After studying Egyptology, classical archeology, and Greek studies in Munich, Heidelberg, Paris, and Göttingen, as well as doing fieldwork in Egypt, Assmann was appointed professor of Egyptology at the University of Heidelberg in 1976, where he stayed until his retirement in 2003. Assmann then became Honorary Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Constance, where his wife Aleida Assmann taught English. Jan and Aleida raised five children and developed a theory of memory and cultural transmission.

Assmann was the author of 25 books, about half of which have been translated into English, including his classic Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); his magisterial synthesis The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs, trans. Andrew Jenkins (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003); his definitive study of Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, trans. David Lorton (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006); Religio Duplex: How the Enlightenment Reinvented Egyptian Religion, trans. Robert Savage (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2014); and The Invention of Religion: Faith and Covenant in the Book of Exodus, trans. Robert Savage (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).

Assmann’s work is particularly important for neopagans, Traditionalists, and those who entertain questions about Jews and Biblical monotheism.

Assmann’s concept of “cosmotheism” refers to the idea that behind the different polytheistic pantheons — as well as all other particular phenomena — is a single transcendent divine principle that manifests itself through these phenomena. This “cosmotheist” idea is found in the Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of Greek and Latin texts from Roman Egypt that was rediscovered in the Renaissance and influenced modern Western esoteric traditions, including Freemasonry. One of Assmann’s most important discoveries is that the cosmotheism of the Hermetic tradition is an authentic Egyptian religious teaching which he traces back as early as the nineteenth dynasty (the thirteenth century BCE).

The cosmotheist idea of a single transcendent divine principle behind all manifestation sounds very much like the Traditionalist idea of the “transcendent unity of religions,” but for an important difference. The Traditionalists claim that this unity embraces the Biblical monotheist religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. But Assmann begs to differ. These religions all adhere to what Assmann calls the Mosaic Distinction. They claim that their one God is the only true deity, and all other gods are false. The cosmotheists, however, held that in a deep sense, all religions are true, contradictions and all, because they are manifestations of the same divine principle, although they are accommodated to different religions and cultures. Cosmotheism gives rise to religious pluralism and tolerance, whereas monotheism introduces religious violence and intolerance into a world that already has enough problems.

Assmann connects Biblical monotheism with the intolerant monotheism of the Egyptian heretic Pharaoh Akhenaten. He also argues that Judaism arose from the “normative inversion” of Egyptian polytheism. Judaism, in short, was the first instance of what Nietzsche called the “slave revolt” in morals, long before Christianity inverted the values of the Greeks and Romans.

These ideas are explored in Moses the Egyptian and Religio Duplex, as well as The Price of Monotheism, trans. Robert Savage (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010); Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008); and From Akhenaten to Moses: Ancient Egypt and Religious Change (Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2014).

For further reading on Assmann, see the following pieces by me that were published at Counter-Currents:

• “The Hatred Born on Sinai: Jan Assmann’s Moses the Egyptian” (French version here, Slovak version here, Spanish version here).


• “Jan Assmann’s Critique of the Axial Age” (French version here, Spanish version here).


• “Notes on Moses the Egyptian,” Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 (French version: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3; Spanish version: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3).

See also items tagged Jan Assmann for places where he is mentioned in passing.