THEOLOGY OF ANCIENT EGYPT AS PRE-PHILOSOPHY

The article is devoted to the problem of genesis the philosophical tradition from pre-philosophical components using the example of Ancient Egyptian theology. The author poses the question of criteria - how and on what basis it is possible to identify elements of speculative thinking in religious and mythological texts of ancient cultures. The approaches to the definition of pre-philosophy, its separation from the mythological tradition, and the rational and irrational components in it are discussed. The connection between abstract and mytho-poetic description and expression of reality is considered. The article contains a review of academic sources that, firstly, consider the influence of the pre-philosophical component of Eastern cultures on the genesis of ancient Greek philosophy (Frankfort, West, Cornford, Bernal, Burkert), and, secondly, analyze religious and mythological representations in the texts of Ancient Egypt as certain explainatory sense constructions that have features of philosophical or pre-philosophical (Assmann, Allen, Wilson, Butler, Manley, etc.). Based on the literature review, a specific program for the study of ancient Egyptian theology as a pre-philosophical tradition, which can be regarded as universal, i.e., relevant to any ancient tradition, has been created. It is shown that such research should be based on the following semantic contexts analysis: 1. consideration of cosmogonic ancient Egyptian beliefs as a system of metaphysical questions; 2. analysis of the ideas about the essence of the god-creator and the ways of creating the world by him through the research of the texts describing cosmogony and eschatology; 3. identification and interpretation of the main concepts describing and structuring the universe, such as the categories of time-eternity (neheh and djet), which make possible to describe the ontological worldview foundations of the Ancient Egyptians; 4. description of the ideas of justice, world harmony and law (maat) - both in the social and metaphysical dimensions; 5. study of ethical guidelines in the so-called “literature of wisdom” (sebayt), which will allow to describe the existential foundations of human existence in the culture of Ancient Egypt