Along with this idea, the popular notion was that these earthly governors and judges were just counterparts of their heavenly models. It was true that the government did things that were not religiously established but it was a general consensus of the public "that the state must be regarded as really maintaining the religion of the country" (273) . .
During the early beginnings of the Egyptian empire, religion was very sporadically unified. Mainly it only consisted of local deities and worship of ancestors. As civilization progressed, the people of the Nile slowly became united until there was an empire known as Egypt. With this, the consequence was the religion underwent a process of simplification. Local deities that were common in many of the regions became a major deity and many of the other local ones became somehow associated with the major ones. It was on the reign of Amenhotep IV, the son and successor of Amenhotep III that the idea of a single deity came to be known as the Aton. Under the guidance of the Aton, or sun-disk, Amenhotep IV changed his name to Akhenaton and ruled with an emphasis that he was a divine king. It was not strange for the Akhenaton to give the laws, to promote men in their appointments, to adjust boundaries, and to even settle quarrels with the guidance of the God (88) . Akhenaton ran his entire empire with his new laws according to the Aton. At the height of the New Empire of Egypt, religion ran the entire government, "for just at that period religion undermined and stifled energies of the nation" (105) . .
The citizens of ancient Egypt were no different. They worshipped the major divinities such as the Sun-God and the Water God but also local Gods and home Gods as well. To each different god they made sacrifices of food as well, "it was natural that families traveling from one home to another should take the gods they had hitherto served their new homes" (260) .