Scholars have long debated whether traditional Egyptian religion ever asserted that the multiple gods was , on a deeper level , unified . Reasons for this debate include the practice of syncretism , which might suggest that all the separate gods could ultimately merge into one , and the tendency of Egyptian texts to credit a particular god with power that surpass all other deities . Another point of contention is the appearance of the word " god " in wisdom literature , where the term do not refer to a specific deity or group of deities . In the early 20th century , for instance , E. A. Wallis Budge believed that Egyptian commoners was polytheistic , but knowledge of the true monotheistic nature of the religion was reserved for the elite , who wrote the wisdom literature . His contemporary James Henry Breasted thought Egyptian religion was instead pantheistic , with the power of the sun god present in all other gods , while Hermann Junker argued that Egyptian civilization had been originally monotheistic and became polytheistic in the course of its history .