or AMUN, or AMMON, the name of an Egyptian god, in whom the classical writers unanimously recognise their own Zeus and Jupiter. The primitive seat of his worship appears to have been at Meroë, from which it descended to Thebes, and thence, according to Herodotus (ii. 54), was transmitted to the oasis of Siwah and to Dodona; in all which places there were celebrated oracles of this god. His chief temple and oracle in Egypt, however, were at Thebes, a city peculiarly consecrated to him, and which is probably meant by the No and No Amon of the prophets. He is generally represented on Egyptian monuments by the seated figure of a man with a ram's head, or by that of an entire ram, and of a blue colour. In honour of him, the inhabitants of the Thebaid abstained from the flesh of sheep, but they annually sacrificed a ram to him and dressed his image in the hide. A religious reason for that ceremony is assigned by Herodotus (ii. 42); but Diodorus (iii. 72) ascribes his wearing horns to a more trivial cause.

As for the power which was worshipped under the form of Amon, Macrobius asserts (Saturnal. i. 21) that the Libyans adored the setting sun under that of their Amon; but he points to the connection between the ram's horns of the god and Aries in the zodiac.

The etymology of the name is obscure. Eustathius says that, according to some, the word means shepherd. Jablonski proposed an etymology by which it would signify producing light; and Champollion, in his latest interpretation, assigned it the sense of hidden. There is little doubt that the pointed Hebrew text correctly represents the Egyptian name of the god, and, besides what may be gathered from the forms of the name in the classical writers, Kosegarten argues that the enchorial Amn was pronounced Amon, because names in which it forms a part are so written in Greek as Ἀμνοπαράσχηπος. Moreover, Ἀμνος and Ἀμνοῦ are found in Iamblichus and Plutarch; and the latter expressly says that the Greeks changed the native name into Ἀμνοῦ.

fourteenth king of Judah, reigned two years, and was assassinated B.C. 642.