REMARKABLE OBJECT OF THE HEIGX OF AMENOPIII.S III. 405 of Amen-Rci or liammoii, " the occult " ^ god, uas as old as the Twelfth dynasty, who had founded the cell or naos of the great temple of Thebes. But the worship of the " occult" god does not occur earher, and he ajipears as an intruder into the religious system of the gods Osiris, Phtlia, and Anubis of the earlier kings. In the reign of Amenophis, as already mentioned, the worshij) of the Aten, or Aten-ra, the sun's disk or orb, first appears. This name which resembles that of the Hebrew ii«, Adonai or Lord, and the 8vi"ian Adonis, appears to have been either a foreign religion intro- duced into Egypt, or else a part of the Sun-worship which had assumed an undue influence or development. Wliat was the esoteric doctrine of the sect is by no means clear, but probably they attributed a Pantheistic power to the Aten, for on the tablet of one of these heretics he addresses the sun's disk traversing the heaven, as " the sun-light which is the Amen of Thebes.^' ^ The disk is also called the great living disk in cycles, lord of the sun's orbit, of the heaven, of the earth, as the screen of the sun ; the horizon also is called the place of the sun's disk, the lord of festivals, and the ever- living.^ Similar ideas, but still more expressive of light, are found in a long prayer at El Tel, addressed b}^ a functionary,^ as — " Excellent is thy light — oh sun, lord of the Horizon, rejoicing on the Horizon, under the name of the light which is in the disk," and as " the maker of all beings who gives light to all mankind, who has given the King the South, North, East and West, and the Isles in the midst of the great sea." The worship of the hawk-headed god, Ra — the ^lidday sun ; of Mau, "the light " of En or Ten-pe ;* and of Aah, or the Moon, they tolerated : but the name of Amen Ka they held in great abomination, and they chiselled it out of every accessible place where it was inscribed. Probably the Theban Sacerdotal order resisted the religious reformers, and evi- dently fell for awhile before their hifluouce. Externally the worship was represented by the usual Sun's orb, or tUsk, shining down from the centre of compositions in which it is 9 Throui^hout the hieroglvplis, the ^ Burton. Ex. Ilier. I'l. VIII. Poole. word 4 wf>i means to "hide." It is deter- S. K. Home -fEg>pt, tjvo, Lond., lUol, mined by a pair of hinges. Cf. Buusen. p. 20'2, "204 Egypts. Place, p. 5G0 ' Egypt. S.aloon. 352. Lettres Ecrites d'Egypte. 8vo. Paris, 1840. 2 Prisse and PeiTing. Trans. R. S. Lit. p. 93. 8vo. 1847. vol. i. PI. I— III. VOL. I.
- Tr R. S. L. I.e. Nestor. L'Hote.
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