 Hornung 's arguments have greatly influenced other scholars of Egyptian religion , but some still believe that at times the gods were more unified than he allows . Jan Assmann maintains that the notion of a single deity developed slowly through the New Kingdom , beginning with a focus on Amun @-@ Ra as the all @-@ important sun god . In his view , Atenism was an extreme outgrowth of this trend . It equated the single deity with the sun and dismissed all other gods . Then , in the backlash against Atenism , priestly theologians described the universal god in a different way , one that <unk> with traditional polytheism . The one god was believed to transcend the world and all the other deities , while at the same time , the multiple gods were aspects of the one . According to Assmann , this one god was especially equated with Amun , the dominant god in the late New Kingdom , whereas for the rest of Egyptian history the universal deity could be identified with many other gods . James P. Allen says that <unk> notions of one god and many gods would fit well with the " multiplicity of approaches " in Egyptian thought , as well as with the <unk> practice of ordinary worshippers . He says that the Egyptians may have recognized the unity of the divine by " identifying their uniform notion of ' god ' with a particular god , depending on the particular situation . " 
