THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
AMMONIUS, am-mo'ne-us, OF ALEXANDRIA:
An Alexandrian of the third century who is thought to have made one of the earliest attempts to prepare a harmony of the Gospels. Eusebius (Hist, eccl., vi. 19) and Jerome (De vir. ill., lv.) strangely confuse him with Ammonius Saccas (q.v.). He may have been a younger contemporary of Origen. Of his work nothing is known except what may be gathered from a statement of Eusebius (Epist. ad Carpianum), that he put beside the text of the Gospel of Matthew the parallel passages from the three other Gospels. Whether he wrote out the parallels in full, or merely indicated them by some system of reference, and whether or not he also included the variants from Matthew can only be conjectured. His work was probably intended for the learned rather than for general use. The so-called Ammonian sections are contained in the edition of the " Tables " of Eusebius (i.e., his gospel harmony), using the Authorized Version as text, prepared by S. H. Turner (New York, 1860). See Bible Text, II., 1, § 4.
Bibliography: McGiffert in Eusebius, Hist, eccl., in NPNF, i. 38, 39; 267.
AMMONIUS (AMMON, AMUN) THE HERMIT.
See Monasticism.
AMMONIUS SACCAS, sak'kas: The founder of Xeoplatonism ; he lived at Alexandria c. 175- 242. He was of Christian parentage and education, but returned to heathenism. For a long time, it is said, he earned his living as a porter and carried the grain sacks from the ships; hence his name. Herennius, Longinus, Plotinus, and Origen the Xeoplatonist, as well as the Christian Origen, were among his pupils. He wrote nothing, and it is impossible to reproduce his system from the statements of his disciples.
AMOLO, am'6-lo: Archbishop of Lyons, 841- 852. He was educated in the school of Lyons under Agobard, whom he succeeded in the archbishopric, and whom he resembled in his freedom from credulity and superstition. In a letter to Theotbold, bishop of Langres, dealing with a case of the exhibition of unauthorized relics by two men who came from Italy and pretended to be monks, he advised that they should be prohibited, citing other cases in his experience which had been mere fraud and avarice. Amolo also followed Agobard in his protest against the powerful position which the Jews were acquiring in the south of France. His book Adversus Judceos, dedicated to Charles the Bald, contains some interesting details as to the Messianic expectations of the Jews at the beginning of the Middle Ages. In a letter to Gottschalk, who had sought to find in him a supporter, he exhorts the imprisoned monk to submit to the judgment of the ecclesiastical authorities, and definitely repudiates several of his assertions on the subject of predestination. His works are in MPL, cxvi., and his letters in UGH, Epist., v. (1899) 361 sqq- (A. Hauck.)
AMON, EGYPTIAN DEITY: The local deity of Thebes in Upper Egypt. The etymology of the name, as in the case of most Egyptian deities, is uncertain; the theologians of the later time ex-
plained it as meaning " the concealed," from the root 'MN, " to be veiled, hidden." Amon appears to have been originally a harvest-god; but as early as the Middle Kingdom he was thought of as sungod, according to the teaching that all Egyptian deities, whatever might be their names, were only different forms of the one sun-god. As such he was called Amon-Ra-setn-nteru, " Amon the Sun God, the King of the Gods," and was later identified by the Greeks with their Zeus (hence the late Greek name for Thebes, Diospolis). His holy animal was a ram with horns curving downward. He is usually represented in human form, blue in color, wearing a close-fitting hat with two long upright plumes. Less often he is represented ithyphallic, in the form of the harvest-god, Min of Koptos, with whom he was often identified. Ram-headed figures of Amon are also found, especially in Nubia. Amon gained much from the changed political conditions after the fall of the Old Kingdom. Thebes became the metropolis of Egypt and its god took the chief place in the Egyptian pantheon. The Pharaohs undertook their campaigns in Asia and Nubia in the name of Amon and naturally the lion's share of the booty fell to him. His great temple, near the present Karnak, "the throne of the world," was begun by the kings of the twentieth dynasty, and was extended and adorned by succeeding generations until it became the most imposing of Egyptian temples (see No). His worship was introduced in the conquered provinces and his sanctuaries arose all over Nubia, in the oases of the Libyan desert, and in Syria. Under the New Kingdom he was preeminently the national god of Egypt. The only check to the growth of his power and wealth was the abortive attempt of Amenophis IV., about 1400 B.C., to introduce the worship of the sun's disk. Under the Ramessids Anion's possessions were almost incredible (cf. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, London, 1894, pp. 302-303). His high priest came to -be the first person in the State after the king, and eventually, toward the end of the twentieth dynasty, was able to supplant the latter. The priests of Amon did not long retain the throne, but their great wealth perpetuated their political influence until the twenty-sixth dynasty, when their power seems to have declined, and Amon gradually sank back to the position of a local deity. In the oases, however, and in Ethiopia his worship and the authority of his priests lasted till Roman times and the introduction of Christianity.
(G. Steindorff.) Bibliography: C. P. Tiele, History of the Egyptian Religion, pp. 147-150, Boston, 1882; H. Brugsch, Religion der alten Aegypter, pp. 87 sqq., Leipsic, 1885; A. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, passim, London, 1894; A. Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, 109-110, New York, 1897 (authoritative); E. A. W. Budge, Gods of the Egyptians, i. 23, 79, 88, ii. 1-16, 324, London, 1903 (the fullest account, in a volume richly illustrated); P.D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte, i. 208-209, Tubingen, 1905; G. Steindorff, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, New York, 1905.
AMON, 6'men, KING OF JUDAH: Fourteenth king of Judah, son and successor of Manasseh. He reigned, according to the old chronology, 642-641 b.c; according to Kamphausen, 640-639;