Ammon
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Ammon. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a god of the ancient Egyptians, worshipped especially in Thebes (No-Ammon), and early represented as a ram with downward branching horns, the symbols of power; as a man with a ram's head; and as a complete man with two high feathers on his head, bearded, sitting on a throne, and holding in his right hand the scepter of the gods, in his left the handled cross, the symbol of divine life. Ammon, his wife Mut (the mother), and his son Chensu, form the divine triad of Thebes. In Egyptian mythology he held his highest place. From about the time of the 21st dynasty, he came to be considered the god of oracles, and as such was worshipped in Ethiopia and in the Libyan desert. Twelve days' journey W. of Memphis, in the desert, was a green oasis fringed with a belt of palm trees, on which rose the temple of Ammon. Hither came pilgrims laden with costly presents; among them Alexander the Great and Cato of Utica. Alexander was hailed as the actual son of the god by the priests, quick to anticipate the wishes of the hero. The Persian conqueror, Cambyses, sent against the temple an expedition, which perished miserably in the sands. The worship of Ammon spread at an early period to Greece, and afterward to Rome, where he was identified with Zeus and Jupiter.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
an Egyptian deity whose worship extended through many parts of North Africa and Greece, but centered at the Egyptian city of Thebes. Ammon was represented in Egyptian art usually as a person with the head and horns of a ram. He was the protector of cattle and shepherds. The reader may recall that Alexander the Great toiled through the Libyan Desert to the famous oracle of Jupiter Ammon in an oasis. He is said to have been gratified by a declaration of the priests to the effect that he was a son of Jupiter.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Both accounts still describe the god recognizably, though he is now written Amun (or Amon) rather than Ammon, his consort Mut and son Khonsu — Collier's "Chensu" — keeping their places in the Theban triad. The desert oracle that Alexander visited, which Collier's placed vaguely "twelve days' journey W. of Memphis," is firmly identified as Siwa in Egypt's Western Desert, where the ruined temple of Aghurmi survives. What neither entry could mention is the excavation of Karnak on a scale unimaginable in 1921: the vast temple of Amun there, with its 134-column hypostyle hall, is now the best-known monument of the cult, and Egyptologists read Amun's name as "the hidden one," an air or breath god whose ram form came later — not primarily Aiton's "protector of cattle and shepherds." A year after Collier's went to press, Howard Carter opened the tomb of a boy king whose very name, Tutankhamun, proclaims the god's restoration after Akhenaten had tried to erase him.
Written for this edition, 2026.