Page 100 - Perished Nations

rol and the entire production of goods and services were assigned to the
king. The king distributed and shared these goods and services in the pro-
portions his people needed. It was not hard for the kings, who had estab-
lished such a power in the region, to reduce the people to submission. The
King of Egypt, or with his future name, the Pharaoh, was looked upon as
a holy being who held great power and met all the needs of his people:
and he was transformed into a god. The Pharaohs definitely believed in ti-
me that they were indeed gods.
Some of the words the Pharaoh mentioned in the Qur’an used during
his conversation with Musa (as) prove that they held this belief. He tried
to intimidate Musa (as) by saying: "If thou dost put forward any god other
than me, I will certainly put thee in prison!" (Surat ash-Shu’ara: 29), and he
said to the people around him: "No god do I know for you but myself."
(Surat al-Qasas: 38). He said all this because he regarded himself as a god.

Religious Beliefs
According to the historian Herodotus, the Ancient Egyptians were the
most "devout" people in the world. However, their religion was not the re-
ligion of Truth, but a perverse polytheistic one and they could not aban-
don their perverse religion because of their extreme conservatism.
The Ancient Egyptians were largely influenced by the natural environ-
ment in which they lived. The natural geography of Egypt protected the
country against external attacks perfectly. Egypt was surrounded by de-
serts, mountainous lands and seas on all sides. Attacks likely to be made
on the country had two possible routes and it was very simple for the
Egyptians to defend those routes. The Egyptians remained isolated from
the external world thanks to these natural factors. But passing centuries
transformed this isolation into a dark bigotry. Thus the Egyptians acquired
a viewpoint which was locked against new developments and novelties,
and which was extremely conservative about their religion. The "religion
of their ancestors" mentioned frequently in the Qur’an became their most
important value.
This is why Fir’awn and his close circle turned their backs on Musa (as)

Harun Yahya
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