The aim of this dissertation is to critically present one of the founding theses from the cultural-anthropologic opus of Jan Assmann (1938), German Egyptologist and cultural theorist, which deals with the origins and effects of monotheism in the religious and civilizational history of mankind. Presenting a part of Assmann’s opulent scientific opus in this dissertation is somewhat of a novelty in the humanistic research of cultural-religious-historical topics for the Croatian language and its culture. Professor emeritus Jan Assmann is probably the most media-exposed Egyptologist in the German-speaking world today, and a living classic of Egyptology. In spite of all this, he is practically unknown to the Croatian scientific community, with only two works translated into Croatian (2005 and 2010). This dissertation is centered on one effect of Professor Assmann’s research into the phenomenon of cultural memory: the cultural and religious tradition of ancient Egypt. He relates it analytically to the Biblical tradition of the formation of Judaism as a spiritual ethnic community which emerged after the exodus from Egypt, and brought with it a unique and unexpected spiritual notion: Assmann calls it the “Mosaic Distinction”, postulated in detail in the work Die Mosaische Unterscheidung. The meaning behind this new concept is the starting point of a new revolutionary distinction: between truth and falsehood in religion, and the entire spectrum of consequences as a result thereof. Introducing the Mosaic distinction brought about a break with all earlier traditions, and the process of formation of a new type of religion which stands apart from other religions and spheres of culture such as politics, law and economics. However, this new, revolutionary monotheism of faith and fidelity to one God through a covenant, comes at a cost. It liberates man from the power of the divinized world (and nature), grants him a personal relationship with God who is above and beyond the world, righteousness as an expression of individual freedom, ethics as a set of obligations made in covenant with God... Assmann considers the monotheism of the Mosaic distinction to be the backbone of civilizational differentiation of the entire history of mankind. However, for many theorists of religion throughout history, the “price” of monotheism is too great, and the consequences thereof are the division between worshipers of the one and only God vs. pagans, believers vs. non-believers, orthodox vs. heretics, which will lead to the occurrence of a certain (religious) violence towards those very pagans, non-believers, heretics... With this, Assmann provoked a whole range of reactions. At first, there was a predominance of highly critical tones by those who saw him as an advocatus diaboli of monotheism, even associations with anti-Semitism, to suggestions of the renewal of cosmotheist (conciliatory) open perspectives of the world at the expense of monotheistic (intolerant) dogmatic exclusivity. The question of monotheism once again becomes a burning issue in today’s day and age: as a generator of a new worldview that has already shaped current dominant civilizations, as well as a presupposed generator of anxiety and questionability of today, facing specific challenges of religious fundamentalism from different directions of the monotheistic tradition. This dissertation also seeks to find answers to recurring questions on monotheism, which in no way belong to “archival” history, but rather are the highly active and fundamental foundations of our civilization. The dissertation strives to show that the role of monotheism in Jan Assmann’s work is not an enlightened ideological confrontation with the religious legacy of monotheism, instead an important scientific attempt to explore the deep religious relevance of this powerful and ineffaceable idea from human history that follows the modern world.