The Religion of Ancient Egypt/Lecture VI

by Peter le Page Renouf

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS:

HENOTHEISM, PANTHEISM AND MATERIALISM.

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Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys.

The Lamentations of Isis and Nephihys are a poetical composition supposed to be recited by the two sisters of Osiris for the purpose of effecting his resurrection, but intended to be repeated by two priestly personages over the dead. It has been completely translated for the first time by M. de Horrack. The first section begins with the cries of Isis:

"Come to thine abode, come to thine abode! God An, come to thine abode! Thine enemies are no more. O gracious Sovereign, come to thine abode! Look at me: I am thy sister who loveth thee. Do not remain far from me, O beautiful youth! Come to thine abode, quickly! quickly! I see thee no more. My heart is full of sorrow because of thee. Mine eyes seek after thee. I seek to behold thee: will it be long ere I see thee? will it be long ere I see thee? Beholding thee is happiness (bis); O god An, beholding thee is happiness. O Unnefer the triumphant, come to thy sister, come to thy wife (bis). O thou whose heart is motionless, come to thy spouse. I am thy sister by thy mother; do not separate from me. Gods and men turn their faces towards thee, weeping together for thee, whenever they behold me. I call thee in my lamentations even to the heights of heaven, and thou hearest not my voice. I am thy sister who loveth thee upon earth; no one else hath loved thee more than I, thy sister, thy sister!"

Then Nephthys takes up the strain:

"O gracious Sovereign, come to thine abode! Rejoice; all thine enemies are annihilated. Thy two sisters are near thee, protecting thy funeral bed; calling thee in weeping, thee who art prostrate on thy funeral bed. Speak to us, supreme Ruler, our Lord. Chase all the anguish which is in our hearts," &c.

In the invocations of which this book chiefly consists, protection is said to be afforded to the body of Osiris, that is, of the deceased person, by various gods in succession: by Isis, Nephthys, Tehuti, Neith, the divine mother of Osiris, and the children of Horus.

The last invocation is as follows: "Come and behold thy son Horus as supreme ruler of gods and men. He hath taken possession of the cities and the districts by the greatness of the respect he inspires. Heaven and earth are in awe of him; the barbarians are in fear of him. Thy companions who are gods and men have become his. … Thy two sisters are near to thee, offering libations to thy ka; thy son Horns accomplished for thee the funeral offering of bread, of beverages, of oxen and of geese. Tehuti chanteth thy festival songs, invoking thee by his beneficial formulae. The children of Horns are the protection of thy members, benefiting thy soul each day. Thy son Horus saluteth thy name in thy mysterious abode; the gods hold vases in their hands to make libations to thee. Come to thy companions, supreme Ruler, our Lord! Do not separate thyself from them."

The rubric prescribes that whilst this is recited, two beautiful women are to sit upon the ground, with the names Isis and Nephthys inscribed upon their shoulders. Crystal vases of water are to be placed in their right hands, and loaves of bread made in Memphis in their left hands.

Book of glorifying Osiris.

Very similar to these Lamentations is the "Book of glorifying Osiris in Aqerti," contained in a papyrus of the Louvre, which has been published and translated by M. Pierret. It is also supposed to be recited by Isis and Nephthys, and it begins:

"Come to thine abode, O come to thine abode, god An, come to thine abode; good bull, the Lord of all men who love thee and all women; god of the beautiful countenance, who residest in Aqerti. Ancient one among those of the sacred West. Are not all hearts swelling with love of thee, O Unnefer! … Gods and men raise their hands in search of thee, as a son seeketh his mother. Come to them whose hearts are sick, grant to them to come forth in gladness, that the bands of Horus may exult, and the abodes of Set may fall in fear of thee. Ho! Osiris who dwellest among those in Amenti; I am thy sister Isis; neither god nor goddess hath done what I have done for thee. I am who was a female have done a man's part to give life to thy name upon earth. Thy potent seed within my womb I have set down upon the earth to avenge thee. … Set yields to his wounds, the partizans of Set rejoin him, but the throne of Seb is for thee who art his beloved son." The book continues to speak of the war energetically conducted with the aid of Nephthys and Horus against all the enemies of Osiris. The departed, considered as Osiris, is directly identified with the first cause of all things.

"O Osiris … thou art the Youth at the horizon of heaven daily, and thine old age is the beginning of all seasons. The Nile cometh at the bidding of thy mouth, giving life to men by the emanations which proceed from thy limbs, who by thy coming causest all plants to grow up. … O Osiris, thou art the Lord of millions, raising up all wild animals and all cattle; the creation of all that is proceedeth from thee. To thee belongeth all that is upon earth; to thee all that is in heaven; to thee all that is in the waters; to thee belongeth all that is in life or in death; to thee all that is male or female. Thou art the sovereign king of the gods, the prince amid the company of the gods."

The text concludes with enumerating a multitude of localities in which Osiris is adored, and is more interesting from a geographical than from a religious point of view. In this composition (the manuscript of which belongs to the time of the twenty-sixth dynasty) the only passages which imply any ethical sympathy are these: "Thou art the lord of Maāt (here signifying righteousness), hating iniquity. … The goddess Maāt is with thee, and the whole day she never withdraweth herself from thee. Iniquity approacheth thee not wherever thou art."

Book of the Breaths of Life.

In the later periods, instead of the Book of the Dead, another work, more systematically composed and partly abridged from it, was buried with the dead and placed under the left arm near the heart. This book was called the Shāit en sensen, "Book of the Breaths of Life, made by Isis for her brother Osiris, for giving new life to his soul and body and renewing all his limbs, that he may reach the horizon with his father the Sun, that his soul may rise to heaven in the disk of the Moon, that his body may shine in the stars of the constellation Orion, on the bosom of Nut." It might be called a Breviary of the Book of the Dead, all the ideas in it being borrowed from that older collection, but the obscurities both in form and in matter are studiously avoided.

It was first published in the plates to the Travels of Vivant-Denon; then Brugsch, in an early publication of his, translated it into Latin, calling it the Book of the Metempsychosis of the ancient Egyptians; and finally, a critical edition has been given of it, with a French translation, by M. de Horrack.

Of the many other compendiums, paraphrases and imitations of the Book of the Dead, I shall only mention one, and that for the sake of a sort of definition which it gives of the gods. The English language is less suited than Greek or German for the translation of cheper chenti chep chet neb em-chet cheper-sen, which is literally, "the Becoming which is in the Becoming of all things when they become." Under this play of words the writer wishes to describe "the cause of change in everything that changes," and he adds: "the mighty ones, the powerful ones, the beneficent, the nutriu, who test by their level the words of men, the Lords of Law (Maāt), Hail to you, ye gods, ye associate gods, who are without body, who rule that which is born from the earth and that which is produced in the house of your cradles [in heaven]. … Ye prototypes of the image of all that exists, ye fathers and mothers of the solar orb, ye forms, ye great ones (uru), ye mighty ones (āaiu), ye strong ones (nutriu), first company of the gods of Almu, who generated men and shaped the form of every form, ye lords of all things: hail to you, ye lords of eternity and everlasting."

The author of this composition, the text of which has only been published quite recently,^[1] and was quite unknown to me when I delivered my third Lecture, has evidently the same conception of the gods of Egypt as that which I inferred from the scattered utterances we come across in the course of the national literature. The gods of Egypt are the "mighty ones," the forces acting throughout the universe, in heaven and on earth, according to fixed and unchangeable law, for ever and ever.

Rhind Papyri.

A still more recent book is one which was discovered by Mr. Rhind at Thebes. The papyri are of the Roman period, and they are bilingual. The upper portion of each page is in the ancient language, written in hieratic characters; the lower contains a translation into the vernacular language of Egypt in the time of Augustus, and this is written in demotic characters. The form of this work is quite unlike that of the Book of the Dead, but the ideas remain unchanged. The same view of the world beyond the grave, and of the gods who influence the destiny of the departed, prevails to the last. The actual deification of the departed is not perpetually dwelt upon, but it is distinctly recognized. "Thou art the eldest brother among the five gods to whom thou art going" (Osiris is called in the Book of the Dead the eldest of the five gods of the family of Seb). "O thou august child of the gods and goddesses, thou king of the gods and men, who art king of the Tuat," that is, of the nether world. And there is the same disregard of consistency as in the older times, for the departed is spoken of, almost in the same sentence, as one of those who are in the service of Osiris, whom he addresses, "O my lord and father Osiris!"

Magical Literature.^[2]

One of the chief differences between the earlier and the more recent formularies is, that the latter are simply said over the deceased, instead of being intended to be said by him. Hence the absence of the constant personification of the gods by the dead, and the utterance in their names of words of power. This assimilation to divinity, which appears to be the most potent means of overcoming all dangers and disasters after death, was equally resorted to for the purpose of triumphing over all the dangers and disasters of the present life. The metaphysical axiom, that every effect has its cause, the Egyptians conceived in another way; namely, that everything that happened was owing to the action of some divinity. They believed therefore in the incessant intervention of the gods; and their magical literature is based on the notion of frightening one god by the terrors of a more powerful divinity, either by prayer placing a person under the protection of this divinity, or by the person actually assuming its name and authority. Disease and pain being caused by the intervention of some god, the efficacy of the medicines which are taken is owing chiefly to the prayers or incantations which are said over them. Isis is the great enchantress, and she delivers the sick and suffering from the gods and goddesses who afflict them, even as she delivered her son Horus from his wounds received in his battle with Set. The sun-god Rā had himself been ill, and the gods Shu, Tefnut, Seb, Nut and Isis, had prepared medicine for him. Even when no medicines are taken, palm-sprigs may serve as a charm, if a formula be pronounced relative to the palm-branch with which Horus defended himself against Set, and if Isis, the mother of Horus, be invoked. But sometimes the speaker boldly says, "I am Anubis, the son of Nephthys; I am Anubis, the son of Rā; I am Horus, I am Amon, I am Mentu, I am Set." Sometimes threats are uttered. The person using the spell relies upon his knowledge, and consequently on his power of revealing mysterious secrets. "N., son of N., is the messenger of Rā. … He is the messenger of every god and every goddess, and he utters the proclamation of Tehuti. N., son of N., knows the mysterious chest which is in Heliopolis, and all the hidden things of Heliopolis." "If he who is in the waters opens his mouth, … I will cause the earth to fall into the sea, the south to be changed into the north, and the whole world to be overturned." There is a terrible spell in behalf of a lady in childbirth. The lady is first identified with Isis, and the gods are invoked to prepare a place for her delivery. They are told that, in case of their not doing so, "You shall be undone, you cycle of the gods; there shall no longer be any earth; there shall no longer be the five supplementary days of the year; there shall be no more any offerings to the gods, lords of Heliopolis. There shall be a sinking of the southern sky, and disasters shall come from the sky of the north; there shall be cries from the tomb; the midday sun shall no longer shine; the Nile shall not furnish its waters at its wonted time. It is not I who say this; it is not I who repeat it; it is Isis who speaketh; she it is who repeateth it."

The very same kind of threats are spoken of by Porphyry, about 270 A.D., as mentioned by Chaeremon, a sacerdotal scribe in the first century, and affirmed by him to be of potent efficacy. "What a height of madness," says Porphyry, "does it not imply in the man who thus threatens what he neither understands nor is able to perform, and what baseness does it not attribute to the beings who are supposed to be frightened by these vain bugbears and figments, like silly children!" An Egyptian priest of the name of Abammon is introduced in the work of Jamblichos as replying to the objections of Porphyry. He distinguishes between the gods, properly speaking, and the δαίμονες, who are subordinate ministers, and he says that it is to the latter alone that threats are used. And the authority of the theurgist he derives from identification with the divinity. But the days of the Egyptian religion were already numbered when the book of Jamblichos was written. Constantine was reigning, and the gods of Egypt were already being deserted by their worshippers, who transferred their devotion to Christianity in one of its austerest forms. A very few years after the work of Jamblichos was written, the emperor Valens issued an edict against the monks of Egypt, and a detachment of cavalry and infantry, consisting of three thousand men, was sent into the desert of Nitria to compel the able-bodied ascetics who had retired thither to enlist in the imperial armies. In the next generation, Gibbon tells us, "The stately and populous city of Oxyrinchus, the seat of Christian orthodoxy, had devoted the temples, the public edifices and even the ramparts, to pious and charitable uses; and the bishop who might preach in twelve churches computed 10,000 females and 20,000 males of the monastic profession. The Egyptians, who gloried in this marvellous revolution, were disposed to hope and to believe that the number of monks was equal to the remainder of the people."

We have unfortunately no history of the gradual conversion of the Egyptians to Christianity. But when we compare the notions of the Divinity as contained in the authorized books of Egyptian theology with those which we ourselves hold, we cannot but ask whether so intelligent a people never came nearer to the truth than their most recent books would appear to show. What, then, do we mean by God? I will not venture to use my own words, but will use those of one of the greatest masters of the English language.

True Notion of God.

"I mean, then, by the Supreme Being, one who is simply self-dependent, and the only Being who is such; moreover, that he is without beginning, or eternal; that in consequence he has lived a whole eternity by himself; and hence that he is all-sufficient, sufficient for his own blessedness, and all-blessed, and ever-blessed. Further, I mean a Being who, having these prerogatives, has the supreme Good, or rather is the supreme Good, or has all the attributes of Good in infinite intenseness; all wisdom, all truth, all justice, all love, all holiness, all beautifulness; who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent; ineffably one, absolutely perfect; and such that we do not know, and cannot even imagine of him, is far more wonderful than what we do and can. I mean, moreover, that he created all things out of nothing, and preserves them every moment, and could destroy them as easily as he made them; and that in consequence he is separated from them by an abyss, and is incommunicable in all his attributes. And farther, he has stamped upon all things, in the hour of their creation, their respective nature, and has given them their work and mission, and their length of days, greater or less, in their appointed place. I mean, too, that he is ever present with his works, one by one, and confronts everything he has made by his particular and most loving Providence, and manifests, himself to each according to its needs; and has on rational beings imprinted the moral law, and given them power to obey it, imposing on them the duty of worship and service, searching and scanning them through and through with his omniscient eye, and putting before them a present trial and a judgment to come."

Now as I carefully examine each paragraph of this beautiful passage (in which many will at once recognize the language of John Henry Newman),^[3] I am obliged to acknowledge that single parallel passages to match can be quoted from Egyptian far more easily than either from Greek or from Roman religious literature. I am not speaking of philosophy, which both in Greece and Rome was generally subversive of the popular religion. Where shall we find a heathen Greek or Latin saying like that of a papyrus on the staircase of the British Museum: "The great God, Lord of heaven and of earth, who made all things which are"? Or where shall we find such a prayer in heathen Greek or Roman times as this: "O my God and Lord, who hast made me, and formed me, give me an eye to see and an ear to hear thy glories"? On the other hand, passages like these are constantly accompanied by others in which the old polytheistic language is used without hesitation. Some phrases, again, are ambiguous, and if their true sense be a good one, the popular interpretation may be a bad one. No words can more distinctly express the notion of "self-existent Being" than chepera cheper t'esef, words which very frequently occur in Egyptian religious texts. But the word chepera signifies scarabaeus as well as being, and the scarabaeus was in fact an object of worship, as a symbol of divinity. How many Egyptians accepted the words in a sense which we ourselves should admit to be correct? Was there really, as is frequently asserted, an esoteric doctrine known to the scribes and priests alone, as distinct from the popular belief? No evidence has yet been produced in favour of this hypothesis.

Henotheism.

The nature of Henotheism as distinct from Monotheism was explained in last year's Lectures as a phase of religious thought in which the individual gods invoked are not conceived as limited by the power of others. "Each god is to the mind of the suppliant as good as all the gods. He is felt at the time as a real divinity, as supreme and absolute, in spite of the necessary limitations which to our mind a plurality of gods must entail on every single god. All the rest disappear from the vision, … and he only who is to fulfil their desires stands in full light before the eyes of the worshippers."^[4]

This phase of religious thought is chiefly presented to us in a large number of hymns, beginning with the earliest days of the eighteenth dynasty. It is certainly much more ancient, but the literature, properly speaking, of the older period is very small. None of the hymns of that time have come down to us.

One of the most interesting hymns to Osiris is engraved on a funereal tablet now in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and was published and translated in 1857 by M. Chabas. The ancient date of it is marked by the hammering out of it of the name Amon, during the period of the sun-disk worshippers. It probably belongs to the time of Tehutimes III.

Osiris is called "Lord of eternity, king of the gods, of many names, of holy transformations, of mysterious forms in the temples. … He is the substance of the world, Atmu, feeder of beings among the gods, beneficent spirit in the abode of spirits. From him the (celestial ocean) Nu derives its waters, from him comes the wind, and respirable air is in his nostrils for his satisfaction and the taste of his heart. For him the ground brings forth its abundance; in obedience to him is the upper heaven and its stars, and he opens the great gates. He is the master of invocations in the southern heavens, and of adorations in the northern heavens; the ever-moving stars are under obedience to him, and so are the stars which set. … He is the excellent master of the gods, fair and beloved by all who see him. … He is the eldest, the first of his brothers, the chief of the gods; he it is who maintains law in the universe, and places the son in the seat of his father. … He has made this world with his hands; its waters, its atmosphere, its vegetation, all its flocks, all its flying things, all its fish, all its reptiles and quadrupeds. … His diadem predominates at the zenith of heaven and accompanies the stars; he is the guide of all the gods. He is beneficent in will and words; he is the praise of the great gods, and the love of the inferior gods."

What follows is textually applied to Horus, but it is to Horus considered as Osiris born again, and as the son of the widowed Isis.

"The gods recognize the universal Lord. … He takes the royalty of the double world; the crown of the south is fixed upon his head. He judges the world according to his will; heaven and earth are in subjection to him; he giveth his commands to men, to the generations present, past and future, to Egyptians and to strangers. The circuit of the solar orb is under his direction; the winds, the waters, the wood of the plants and all vegetables. A god of seeds, he giveth all herbs and the abundance of the soil. He affordeth plentifulness, and giveth it to all the earth. All men are in ecstacy, all hearts in sweetness, all bosoms in joy, every one in adoration. Every one glorifieth his goodness; his tenderness encircles our hearts; great is his love in all bosoms."^[5]

An ancient text now in the British Museum is in so mutilated a condition that it is in many places quite illegible. There is one passage in it which refers either to Tehuti or to Ptah. Of this god it is said that "he gave birth to the gods, he made towns and organized provinces. … All things proceed from him. The divine word is made for those who love and for those who hate it; it gives life to the righteous, and it gives death to the unjust. To him is due the work of the hands, the walking of the feet, the sight of the eyes, the hearing of the ears, the breathing of the nostrils, the fortitude of heart, the vigour of hand, activity in body and in mouth of all the gods and men and of all living animals, intelligence and speech; whatever is in the heart and whatever is on the tongue."

"Hail to thee, Tehuti," says the tablet of Hor-em-heb in the British Museum, "Lord of Hermopolis, self-existent, without birth, sole God, who regulatest the nether world and givest laws to those who are in the Amenti, and to those who are in the service of Rā."

"Hail to thee," we read in another hymn, "Rā-Tmu-Horus of the double horizon, the one God, living by Maāt, who makest all things which are, who createst all that exists of beasts and men proceeding from thine eyes. Lord of heaven, Lord of earth, who makest those who are below and those who are above, Lord of all. … King of heaven, Lord of all gods. supreme King, amid the society of the gods, almighty God, self-existent, two-fold substance, existing from the beginning."

In a papyrus at Turin, the following words are put into the mouth of "the almighty God, the self-existent, who made heaven and earth, the waters, the breaths of life, fire, the gods, men, animals, cattle, reptiles, birds, fishes, kings, men and gods" [in accordance with one single thought]. … "I am the maker of heaven and of the earth. I raise its mountains and the creatures which are upon it; I make the waters, and the Mehura comes into being. … I am the maker of heaven, and of the mysteries of the two-fold horizon. It is I who have given to all the gods the soul which is within them. When I open my eyes, there is light; when I close them, there is darkness. … I make the hours, and the hours come into existence. I am Chepera in the morning, Rā at noon, Tmu in the evening."

Another text says, "I am yesterday, I am to-day, I am to-morrow."

"Hail to thee, Ptah-tanen, great god who concealeth his form, … thou art watching when at rest; the father of all fathers and of all gods. … Watcher, who traversest the endless ages of eternity. The heaven was yet uncreated, uncreated was the earth, the water flowed not; thou hast put together the earth, thou hast united thy limbs, thou hast reckoned thy members; what thou hast found apart, thou hast put into its place; God, architect of the world, thou art without a father, begotten by thine own becoming; thou art without a mother, being born through repetition of thyself. Thou drivest away the darkness by the beams of thine eyes. Thou ascendest into the zenith of heaven, and thou comest down even as thou hast risen. When thou art a dweller in the infernal world, thy knees are above the earth, and thine head is in the upper sky. Thou sustainest the substances which thou hast made. It is by thine own strength that thou movest; thou art raised up by the might of thine own arms. Thou weighest upon thyself, kept firm by the mystery which is in thee. The roaring of thy voice is in the cloud; thy breath is on the mountain-tops; the waters of the inundation cover the lofty trees of every region. … Heaven and earth obey the commands which thou hast given; they travel by the road which thou hast laid down for them; they transgress not the path which thou hast prescribed to them, and which thou hast opened to them. … Thou restest, and it is night; when thine eyes shine forth, we are illuminated. … O let us give glory to the God who hath raised up the sky, and who causeth his disk to float over the bosom of Nut, who hath made the gods and men and all their generations, who hath made all lands and countries, and the great sea, in his name of 'Let-the-earth-be!' … The babe who is brought forth daily, the ancient one who has reached the limits of time, the immovable one who traverses every path, the height which cannot be attained."

A beautiful hymn (written, it is expressly stated, for the harp), preserved in two MSS. now in the British Museum, identifies the Nile with Rā, Amon, Ptah and other gods, and even with the maker and creator of all things.

"Bringer of food! great lord of provisions, creator of all good things. Lord of terrors and of chiefest joys! all are combined in him. He produceth grass for the oxen; providing victims for every god. … He filleth the granaries, enricheth the storehouses; he careth for the state of the poor. He causeth growth to fulfil all desires—he never wearies of it. He maketh his might a buckler. He is not graven in marble as an image bearing the double crown. He is not beheld; he hath neither ministrant nor offerings; he is not adored in sanctuaries; his abode is not known; no shrine [of his] is found with painted figures. There is no building that can contain him. … Unknown is his name in heaven; he doth not manifest his forms! Vain are all representations." Yet the last of these passages, which would seem to have reference to the purest worship of one God, is preceded by lines which speak simply of the Nile inundation and of the offerings made to it, oxen slain and great festivals celebrated.

But it is chiefly in honour of Amon^[6] that we find hymns full of expressions closely approaching the language of Monotheism. This pre-eminence which Amon enjoys in the literature we have recovered, arises no doubt chiefly from the fact of his being the principal divinity at Thebes, and consequently of the great capital of Egypt during its most splendid period. Amon himself, according to the popular mythology, was not without a beginning. His legend relates that every year he left his temple at Karnak, and paid a visit to the valley of the dead, and poured a libation of lustral water upon a table of propitiation to his father and mother. Yet he is identified with the supreme and uncreated Being in hymns such as that (now in the Museum at Bulaq) from which the following extracts are made.

"Hail to thee, Amon Rā, Lord of the thrones of the earth, … the ancient of heaven, the oldest of the earth, Lord of all existences, the support of things, the support of all things. The One in his works, single among the gods; the beautiful bull of the cycle of the gods; chief of all the gods; Lord of truth, father of the gods; maker of men, creator of beasts, maker of herbs, feeder of cattle, good power begotten of Ptah, … to whom the gods give honour. Maker of things below and above, enlightener of the earth, sailing in heaven in tranquillity; king Rā, triumphant one, chief of the earth. Most glorious one. Lord of terror, chief maker of the earth after his image, how great are his thoughts above every god! Hail to thee, Rā, Lord of law, whose shrine is hidden, Lord of the gods; Chepra in his boat, at whose command the gods were made. Atmu, maker of men, … giving them life, … listening to the poor who is in distress, gentle of heart when one cries to him. Deliverer of the timid man from the violent, judging the poor, the poor and the oppressed. Lord of wisdom, whose precepts are wise; at whose pleasure the Nile overflows: Lord of mercy, most loving, at whose coming men live: opener of every eye, proceeding from the firmament, causer of pleasure and light; at whose goodness the gods rejoice; their hearts revive when they see him. O Rā, adored in Thebes, high crowned in the house of the obelisk (Heliopolis), sovereign of life, health and strength, sovereign Lord of all the gods; who art visible in the midst of the horizon, ruler of the past generations and the nether world; whose name is hidden from his creatures; in his name, which is Amon. …

"The One, maker of all that is; the one, the only one, the maker of existences; from whose eyes mankind proceeded, from whose mouth are the gods; maker of grass for the cattle (oxen, goats, asses, swine and sheep); of fruitful trees for men of future generations; causing the fish to live in the river, the birds to fill the air; giving breath to those in the egg; feeding the bird that flies; giving food to the bird that perches, to the creeping thing and the flying thing alike; providing food for the rats in their holes; feeding the flying things in every tree.

"Hail to thee for all these things—the one, alone with many hands, lying awake while all men sleep, to seek out the good of his creatures, Amon, sustainer of all things: Tmu and Horus of the horizon pay homage to thee in all their words; salutation to thee because thou abidest in us, adoration to thee because thou hast created us.

"Hail to thee, say all creatures: salutation to thee from every land; to the height of heaven, to the breadth of the earth, to the depth of the sea: the gods adore thy majesty, the spirits thou hast created exalt thee, rejoicing before the feet of their begetter; they cry out, Welcome to thee, father of the fathers of all the gods, who raises the heavens, who fixes the earth. Maker of beings, creator of existences, sovereign of life, health and strength, chief of the gods, we worship thy spirit who alone hast made us; we whom thou hast made (thank thee) that thou hast given us birth; we give to thee praises on account of thy abiding in us.

"Hail to thee, maker of all beings. Lord of law, father of the gods; maker of men, creator of beasts; Lord of grains, making food for the beast of the field. … The One alone without a second. … King alone, single among the gods; of many names, unknown is their number."

Another hymn begins: "I come to thee, Lord of the gods, who hast existed from the beginning, eternal God, who hast made all things that are. Thy name be my protection; prolong my term of life to a good age; may my son be in my place (after me); may my dignity remain with him (and his) for ever, as is done to the righteous, who is glorious in the house of his Lord."

And it is with reference to Amon that we most frequently find evidence of the devotion of the people. Thus the prayer of Rameses II. when in danger:

"Who then art thou, my father Amon? Doth a father forget his son? Surely a wretched lot awaiteth him who opposes thy will; but blessed is he who knoweth thee, for thy deeds proceed from a heart full of love. I call upon thee, O my father Amon! behold me in the midst of many peoples, unknown to me; all nations are united against me, and I am alone; no other is with me. My many soldiers have abandoned me, none of my horsemen hath looked towards me; and when I called them, none hath listened to my voice. But I believe that Amon is worth more to me than a million of soldiers, than a hundred thousand horsemen and ten thousands of brothers and sons, even were they all gathered together. The work of many men is nought; Amon will prevail over them."

The same confidence is expressed by humbler men in poems contained in papyri of the British Museum.

"Oh! Amon, lend thine ear to him who is alone before the tribunal; he is poor (and not) rich. The court oppresses him; silver and gold for the clerks of the books, garments for the servants. There is no other Amon, acting as a judge to deliver one from his misery when the poor man is before the tribunal."

"I cry, the beginning of wisdom is the cry of Amon, the rudder of (truth). Thou art he that giveth bread to him who has none, that sustaineth the servant of his house. Let no prince be my defender in all my troubles. Let not my memorial be placed under the power of any man who is in the house. … My Lord is my defender. I know his power, to wit (he is) a strong defender. There is none mighty except him alone. Strong is Amon, knowing how to answer, fulfilling the desire of him who cries to him."

Another hymn says: "Come to me, O thou Sun; Horus of the horizon, give me (help); thou art he that giveth (help); there is no help without thee, except thou givest it. … Let my desires be fulfilled, let my heart be joyful, my inmost heart in gladness. Hear my vows, my humble supplications every day, my adorations by night. … O Horus of the horizon, there is no other besides like him, protector of millions, deliverer of hundreds of thousands, the defender of him that calls to him. … Reproach me not with my many sins."

It is remarkable that a religious reformation at the end of the 18th dynasty in behalf of one god, spent its special wrath upon the name of Amon. The king whose title would under ordinary circumstances have been Amenhotep IV., set up the worship of a single god whose symbol was the sun-disk; he caused the names of other gods, particularly that of Amon, to be hammered out of inscriptions even when it only occurred in proper names, as in his own, which he changed into Chut en Aten, "Glory of the Sun-disk." And as Thebes was the great seat of the worship of Amon, he abandoned it and tried to set up another capital. His reformation lasted but a short time, his own immediate family having abandoned it after his death. All his monuments were destroyed by his successors, yet several hymns belonging to this short-lived phase of religion have escaped destruction. One of them says:

"The whole land of Egypt and all people repeat all thy names at thy rising, to magnify thy rising in like manner as thy setting. Thou, O God, who in truth art the living one, standest before the Two Eyes. Thou art he which createst what never was, which formest everything, which art in all things: we also have come into being through the word of thy mouth."

Another says: "Thou living God! there is none other beside thee! Thou givest health to the eyes by thy beams. Creator of all beings. Thou goest up on the eastern horizon of heaven to dispense life to all that thou hast created: to man, to four-footed beasts, birds, and all manner of creeping things on the earth where they live. … Grant to thy son who loves thee, life in truth … that he may live united with thee in eternity."

The language of these hymns and prayers is exactly similar to that of ordinary Egyptian orthodoxy, and there is nothing heterodox in the symbol itself; the heresy consisted in refusing worship to all the other gods.

Pantheism.

But the magnificent predicates of the one and only God, however recognized by Egyptian orthodoxy, never in fact led to actual Monotheism. They stopped short in Pantheism—namely, in the doctrine that "all individual things are nothing but modifications, affections, of the One and All, the eternal and infinite God-world; that there is but one universal force in nature in different forms, in itself eternal and unchangeable."

This doctrine is perhaps most clearly expressed in a hymn upon the walls of the temple in the oasis of El-Khargeh:

"The gods salute his royal majesty as their Lord, who revealeth himself in all that is, and hath names in everything, from mountain to stream. That which persisteth in all things is Amon. This lordly god was from the very beginning. He is Ptah, the greatest of the gods. … Thy secret is in the depths of the secret waters and unknown. Thou hast come on the road, thou hast given light, in the path, thou hast overcome all difficulties in thy mysterious form. Each god has assumed thy aspect; without shape is their type compared to thy form. To thee, all things that are give praise when thou returnest to the nether world at even. Thou raisest up Osiris by the radiance of thy beams. To thee, those give praise who lie in their tombs, … and the damned rise up in their abodes. … Thou art the King, thine is the kingdom of heaven, and the earth is at thy will. The gods are in thine hand, and men are at thy feet. What god is like to thee? Thou hast made the double world, as Ptah. Thou hast placed thy throne in the life of the double world, as Amon. Thy soul is the pillar and the ark of the two heavens. Thy form emanated at first whilst thou shinest as Amon, Rā and Ptah. … Shu, Tefnut, Nut and Chonsu are thy form, dwelling in thy shrine under the types of the ithyphallic god, raising his tall plumes, king of the gods. … Thou art Mentu Rā. Thou art Sekar; thy transformations are into the Nile. Thou art Youth and Age. Thou givest life to the earth by thy stream. Thou art heaven, thou art earth, thou art fire, thou art water, thou art air, and whatever is in the midst of them."

This very remarkable hymn is put in the mouth of the gods of the elements, eight in number, four male and four female. What these elements are is not perfectly clear. They used to be thought peculiar to the Ptolemaic period, and were then supposed to have been borrowed from the four Greek elements. Earth, Air, Fire and Water, but they have been recognized in much earlier texts. They are, in fact, the eight gods mentioned in the seventeenth chapter of the Book of the Dead, and belong to the oldest cosmogonical part of the religion. This chapter, as we have already seen, speaks of a time when as yet there was no firmament, and when these eight divinities were set up as the gods of Hermopolis; in other words, when chaos disappeared, and the elements began to rule with fixed and unchangeable laws.

Another hymn, copied by Brugsch at the same temple, sings "the mysterious names of the God who is immanent in all things (men em χet neb) the soul of Shu (breath) to all the gods. He is the body of the living man, the creator of the fruit-bearing tree, the author of the inundation; without him nothing liveth within the circuit of the earth, whether north or south, under his name of Osiris, the giver of light: he is the Horus of the living souls, the living god of the generations yet to come. He is the creator of every animal under his names of Ram of the sheep, god of the goats. Bull of the cows. … He loves the scorpion in his hole; he is the god of the crocodiles who plunge in the water … he is the god of those who rest in their graves. Amon is an image, Atmu is an image, Chepera is an image, Rā is an image; he alone maketh himself in millions of ways. He is a great architect, who was from the beginning, who fashioned his body with his own hands, in all forms according to his will. … Permanent and enduring, he never passeth away. Through millions upon millions of endless years he traverseth the heavens, he compasseth the nether world each day. … He is the moon in the night and king of the stars, who maketh the division of seasons, months and years; he cometh living everlastingly both in his rising and in his setting. There is no other like him; his voice is heard, but he remains unseen to every creature that breathes. He strengthens the heart of the woman in travail, and gives life to those who are born from her. … He travels in the cloud to separate heaven and earth, and again to re-unite them, permanently abiding in all things, the Living One in whom all things live everlastingly."

But the Litanies of Rā which M. Naville copied from the royal tombs of the 19th dynasty are already pantheistic. All things are represented as mere emanations from Rā. The learned editor of these Litanies has not failed to remark that the pantheistic influence of the doctrine has told upon the ethical system, which can hardly be said to exist at all; whereas the notions of right and wrong, iniquity and sin, are perpetually occurring in the Book of the Dead and in all the ancient inscriptions.^[7] It is only out of condescension to popular language that pantheistic systems can recognize these notions. If everything really emanates from God, there can be no such thing as sin. And the ablest philosophers who have been led to pantheistic views have vainly endeavoured to harmonize these views with what we understand by the notion of sin or moral evil. The great systematic work of Spinoza is entitled "Ethica," but for real ethics we might as profitably consult the Elements of Euclid.

I believe, therefore, that, after closely approaching the point at which polytheism might have turned into monotheism, the religious thought of Egypt turned aside into a wrong track. And this was followed by a decided and hopeless course of retrogression. Those elements of the Egyptian religion which the Greeks and the Jewish and Christian writers looked upon with such disgust, had existed from the first, but in a very subordinate position; they now became nearly predominant.

There can be no doubt that, from the earliest days, symbolism had played a great part in the religion of Egypt. We are ourselves so familiar with certain symbols in Hebrew or Christian writings, or with the poetic figures which classical literature has brought home to us, that when we meet with symbols of another kind, we are far more shocked than we really have a right to be. We think it natural enough to speak of a hero we venerate as a lion or an eagle, while quite other associations are connected with a fox or a dog. Christians have other associations with the lamb or the dove. But the Egyptians, as far back as we know them, seem to have studied the animal creation with a minute accuracy which only the natural history of our own times can rival. Their symbolism is not necessarily the same as ours. Certain characteristics of animals have in the course of ages fixed themselves in our minds, but in this we are simply following a tradition. Other characteristics of the same animals had impressed the minds of the Egyptians, and their symbolism is based on the peculiar observations made by them. Some of the inscriptions enable us to understand parts of the symbolism. Who of us would like to be called a crocodile, a jackal, or even a young bull? Yet the Egyptian poet gives these names to Tehutimes III. in a song of triumph, and he at the same time enlightens us as to the meaning of these words: the crocodile is terrible in the waters, and not to be encountered without disaster; the young bull whets his horns, and is not to be attacked without peril; and so on. The "bull" is a favourite name for a king or a god. However foreign the symbol may be to our own poetical conceptions, we can easily understand how an ancient agricultural people was impressed by certain qualities of the animal, his might, his courage, the terror he inspires when angry, the protection he affords to the herd, and his marital or paternal relations to it. The rays of the sun and the moon's crescent have at all times suggested the notion of horns. The cow in Egypt, as well as in India, represents the Sky,^[8] the Dawn and other powers. The hawk was among birds what the bull was among quadrupeds, and they admired his rapid, lofty and unerring flight, the piercing sight which nothing can escape, and the irresistible grasp of his talons. All this with us is mere poetry, but all early language is poetry. There is nothing more certainly established by the science of language than "the fact that all words expressive of immaterial conceptions are derived by metaphor from words expressive of sensible ideas." But besides such metaphors as those of which I have just been speaking, and which are intelligible even when translated, there are others which are necessarily peculiar to the language in which they originated. The names of Seb and of Tehuti, as we have seen, were to the Egyptians connected with the names of the goose and the ibis. Anpu (Anubis) "is apparently," as Mr. Goodwin says, "the ancient Egyptian name for a jackal." Sebek, one of the names of the Sun-god, is also the name of a kind of crocodile. It is not improbable that the cat, in Egyptian mäu, became the symbol of the Sun-god, or Day, because the word mäu also means light. It is, I think, quite easy to see how the mythological symbolism arose through these varieties of metaphorical language. And this metaphorical language reacted upon thought, and, as in other religions, obtained the mastery.

The triumph of the symbol over the thought is most sensibly visible in the development of the worship of the Apis Bull. This worship is indeed as old as the age of the Pyramids, but an inspection of the tombs of the bulls in the Serapeum discovered by M. Mariette under the sands of Saqāra, shows how immeasurably greater the devotion to the sacred animals was in the later times than in the former. Dean Stanley^[9] has described these:

"Long galleries, hewn in the rock and opening from time to time—say every fifty yards—into high-arched vaults, under each of which reposes the most magnificent black marble sarcophagus that can be conceived—a chamber rather than a coffin^[10]—smooth and sculptured within and without; grander by far than ever the granite sarcophagi of the Theban king,—how much grander than any human sepulchres anywhere else! And all for the successive corpses of the bull Apis! These galleries formed part of the great temple of Serapis, in which the Apis mummies were deposited; and here they lay, not in royal, but in divine state. The walls of the entrances are covered with ex-votos. In one porch there is a painting at full length, black and white, of the Bull himself as he was in life."

No one who has seen the tombs of these strange gods can doubt the accounts given by the classical writers as to the extravagant expenses incurred at a single funeral. But if one of the funerals of an Apis cost fifty talents, not less than a hundred talents are said to have been expended by curators of other sacred animals. The Apis was called "the second life of Ptah," the god of Memphis. The sacred Ram of Mendes was called "the life of Rā." Three other sacred Rams are mentioned, "the soul of Osiris," "the soul of Shu," and "the soul of Chepra."^[11] They were also conceived as united in one, who is represented with four heads, and bears the name of Shefthāt, Primeval Force. This name I believe to be comparatively modern, and to bear the impress of pantheistic speculation rather than of mythology; but the word Ba, which means a ram, also means soul; so that here again there is every probability that the god originated, like so many others, in homonymous metaphor. The encouragement given to his worship by the Ptolemies is circumstantially exhibited in the great tablet of Mendes, published by M. Mariette,^[12] and translated by Brugsch-Bey.^[13]

Materialism.

If Pantheism strongly contributed to the development of this animal worship and to all the superstition therewith connected, it also led to simple Materialism. The hymns at Dendera in honour of the goddess Hathor irresistibly remind one of the opening of the poem of Lucretius. Hathor, like the mother of the Aeneadae, is "sole mistress of the nature of things, and without her nothing rises up into the divine borders of light, nothing grows to be glad or lovely;" "through her every kind of living thing is conceived, rises up and beholds the light of the sun."^[14] But we know the Roman poet's apology^[15] for these poetical conceptions, "however well and beautifully they may be set forth." "If any one thinks proper to call the sea Neptune, and corn Ceres, and chooses rather to misuse the name of Bacchus than to utter the term that belongs to that liquor, let us allow him to declare that the earth is mother of the gods, if he only forbear in earnest to stain his mind with foul religion." Man had formerly been led to associate the earth and sun and sky with the notion of infinite power behind those phenomena; he now retraced his steps and recognized in the universe nothing but the mere phenomena. The heathen Plutarch and the Christian Origen equally give evidence of this atheistical interpretation put upon the myths of Osiris and Isis. Plutarch protests against the habit of explaining away the very nature of the gods by resolving it, as it were, into mere blasts of wind, or streams of rivers, and the like, such as making Dionysos to be wine and Hephaistos fire. We might suppose that Plutarch is simply alluding to Greek speculation, but it is certain that the Egyptian texts of the late period are in the habit of substituting the name of a god for a physical object, such as Seb for the earth, Shu for the air, and so on. Origen, as a Christian apologist, sees no advantage to be gained by his adversaries in giving an allegorical interpretation to Osiris and Isis, "for they will nevertheless teach us to offer divine worship to cold water and the earth, which is subject to men and all the animal creation."

The transformation of the Egyptian religion is nowhere more apparent than in the view of the life beyond the grave which is exhibited on a tablet which has already been referred to, that of the wife of Pasherenptah. This lady thus addresses her husband from the grave:^[16]

"Oh my brother, my spouse, cease not to drink and to eat, to drain the cup of joy, to enjoy the love of woman, and to make holiday: follow thy desires each day, and let not care enter into thy heart, as long as thou livest upon earth. For as to Amenti, it is the land of heavy slumber and of darkness, an abode of sorrow for those who dwell there. They sleep in their forms; they wake not any more to see their brethren; they recognize not their father and their mother; their heart is indifferent to their wife and children. Every one [on earth] enjoys the water of life, but thirst is by me. The water cometh to him who remaineth on earth, but I thirst for the water which is by me. I know not where I am since I came into this spot; I weep for the water which passes by me. I weep for the breeze on the brink of the stream, that through it my heart may be refreshed in its sorrow. For as to the god who is here, 'Death-Absolute' is his name.^[17] He calleth on all, and all men come to obey him, trembling with fear before him. With him there is no respect for gods or men; by him great ones are as little ones. One feareth to pray to him, for he listeneth not.^[18] No one comes to invoke him, for he is not kind to those who adore him; he has no respect to any offering which is made to him." There is something of this undoubtedly in the song of King Antuf and in the Lay of the Harper, but the moral which the harper taught has utterly disappeared: "Mind thee of the day when thou too shalt start for that land." There is no allusion to the necessity of a good life; no recommendation to be just and hate iniquity; no assurance that he who loveth what is just shall triumph. The tablet on which this strange inscription is found has upon it the figures of several of the Egyptian gods, in whom it professes faith, but the religion must have been already at its end when such a text could be inscribed on a funereal tablet.

Influence of Egyptian upon Foreign Thought.

The short time which is now left will not allow me to enter at length into a discussion of certain questions which have naturally arisen as to the influence of Egyptian upon foreign thought, as, for instance, on the Hebrew or Greek religions and philosophies. It may be confidently asserted that neither Hebrews nor Greeks borrowed any of their ideas from Egypt, It ought, I think, to be a matter of wonder that, after a long time of bondage, the Israelites left Egypt without having even learnt the length of the year. The Hebrew year consisted of twelve lunar months, each of them empirically determined by actual inspection of the new moon, and an entire month was intercalated whenever it was found that the year ended before the natural season. The most remarkable point of contact between Hebrew and Egyptian religion is the identity of meaning between "El Shaddai" and nutar nutra; but the notion which is expressed by these words is common to all religion, and is only alluded to as characterizing the religion of the patriarchs in contrast to the new revelation made to Moses. But even this revelation is said to have been borrowed from Egypt. I have repeatedly seen it asserted that Moses borrowed his concept of God, and the sublime words, ehyeh asher ehyeh ("I am that I am," in the Authorized Version), from the Egyptian nuk pu nuk. I am afraid that some Egyptologist has to bear the responsibility of this illusion. It is quite true that in several places of the Book of the Dead the three words nuk pu nuk are to be found; it is true that nuk is the pronoun I, and that the demonstrative pu often serves to connect the subject and predicate of a sentence. But the context of the words requires to be examined before we can be sure that we have just an entire sentence before us, especially as pu generally comes at the end of a sentence. Now if we look at the passages of the Book of the Dead where these words occur, we shall see at once that they do not contain any mysterious doctrine about the Divine nature. In one of these passages^[19] the deceased says, "It is I who know the ways of Nu." In another place^[20] he says, "I am the Ancient One in the country [or fields];^[21] it is I who am Osiris, who shut up his father Seb and his mother Nut on that day of the great slaughter." "It is I who am Osiris, the Ancient One." In another recension of the same text, contained in the 96th chapter, the words nuk pu nuk disappear, because the narrative is in the third person. "He is the Bull in the fields, he is Osiris who shut up his father," and so forth. I have looked through a number of works professing to discover Egyptian influences in Hebrew institutions, but have not even found anything worth controverting. Purely external resemblances may no doubt be discovered in abundance, but evidence of the transmission of ideas will be sought in vain. I cannot find that any of the idolatries or superstitions of the Israelites are derived from Egyptian sources. The golden calf has been supposed, but on no sufficient grounds, to represent Apis or Mnevis. The worship of oxen, as symbols of a Divine power, is not peculiar to Egypt, but is met with in all the ancient religions. The chariot and horses of the sun which the kings of Judah had set up "at the entering in of the house of the Lord," and which Joash burnt with fire, show that the Israelites had an independent mythology of their own.

The existence of Egyptian elements in Hellenic Religion and philosophy has long since been disproved. The supposed travels of Pythagoras and other ancient philosophers to Eastern climes, Chaldaea, Persia, India and Egypt, are fabulous inventions, the historical evidence of which does not begin till at least two centuries after the death of the philosopher, but continues increasing after this time. Internal evidence tells the same tale as the external. Every step in the history of Greek philosophy can be accounted for and explained from native sources, and it is not merely unnecessary, but impossible (to the historian of philosophy, ridiculously impossible), to imagine a foreign teacher whom the Greeks would never have listened, as being the author of doctrines which without his help the Greeks would themselves certainly have discovered, and at the very time that they did so.

The importance of Alexandria as a medium of interchange of ideas between the Eastern and Western worlds must also be considered as exploded. Nothing was more common, about forty or fifty years ago, than to hear learned men account for the presence of Oriental ideas in Europe, by the transmission of these ideas through the channel of Alexandria. Alexandria was supposed to be the seat of Oriental philosophy, and Philo, Origen, Porphyry, Plotinos and other great names, were imagined to be the representatives of the alliance between Greek and Oriental thought. All this is now considered as unhistorical as the reign of Jupiter in Crete. It was a mere a priori fancy, which has not been verified by facts. The most accurate analysis of the Alexandrian philosophy has not succeeded in discovering a single element in it which requires to be referred to an Oriental source. All attempts to refer Alexandrian opinions to Eastern sources have proved abortive. And long before the great work of Zeller on Greek Philosophy had dealt with the problem in detail, M. Ampère had shown how extremely improbable the received hypothesis was. Alexandria was a commercial Greek town, inhabited by a population which cared not the least for Eastern ideas. The learned men in it were Greeks who had the utmost contempt for barbarians and their opinions. Of the Egyptian language and literature, they were profoundly ignorant. "It is incredible," he says, "to what an extent the Greeks of Alexandria remained strangers to the knowledge of the Egyptian language and writing; one could not understand it if there were not other instances of the contemptuous aversion of the Greeks and Romans to the study of the barbarous languages." The greatest part of the information they give us is utterly erroneous, and even when it has been derived from an authentic source, it never fails to be completely hellenized in passing through a Greek channel. The Oriental works, like those attributed to Zoroaster, said to have been preserved in the Library at Alexandria, were Greek forgeries. "En somme," M. Ampère says, "Alexandre fut très grecque, assez juive et presque point égyptienne."^[22] And if Alexandria was not the means of communicating Egyptian ideas to the Western world, still less was it the channel of learning from the farther East. It is an error to suppose that Alexandria was on the chief line of traffic between Europe and Asia. During the whole period which followed the foundation of Alexandria down to the Roman times, there was no direct communication between this city and the distant East. Indian traffic was in the hands of the seafaring Arabs of the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman, and the Gulf of Akaba. It came to the shores of the Mediterranean through Seleucia, Antioch and Palmyra, or through Gaza and Petra, the chief town of the Nabataeans.^[23]

Conclusion.

The interest which the history of Egyptian religion inspires must be derived solely from itself, not from any hypothetical connection with other systems.

We have seen Egypt a powerful and highly civilized kingdom not less than two thousand years before the birth of Moses, with religious beliefs and institutions at least externally identical with those which it possessed till the last years of its existence.

This religion, however, was not from the first that mere worship of brutes which strangers imagined in the days of its decline.

The worship of the sacred animals was not a principle, but a consequence; it presupposes the rest of the religion as its foundation, and it acquired its full development and extension only in the declining periods of the Egyptian history.

It is based upon symbols derived from the mythology.

The mythology has exactly the same origin as the mythology of our own Aryan ancestors. The early language had no words to express abstract conceptions, and the operations of nature were spoken of in terms which would now be thought poetical or at least metaphorical, but were then the simplest expressions of popular intuition. The nomina became numina.

The Egyptian mythology, as far as I can see, dealt only with those phenomena of nature which are conspicuously the result of fixed law, such as the rising and setting of the sun, moon and stars.^[24] The recognition of law and order as existing throughout the universe, underlies the whole system of Egyptian religion. The Egyptian maāt, derived, like the Sanskrit rita, from merely sensuous impressions, became the name for moral order and righteousness.

Besides the powers recognized by the mythology, the Egyptians from the very first spoke of the Power by whom the whole physical and moral government of the universe is directed, upon whom each individual depends, and to whom he is responsible.

The moral code which they identified with the law governing the universe, was a pure and noble one. The summary of it as given in the Book of the Dead has often been quoted: "He hath given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked; he hath given a boat to the shipwrecked; he hath made the offerings to the gods, and paid the due rites to the departed."

The rites are paid to the departed, because death is but the beginning of a new life, and that life will never end.

A sense of the Eternal and Infinite, Holy and Good, governing the world, and upon which we are dependent, of Right and Wrong, of Holiness and Virtue, of Immortality and Retribution—such are the elements of Egyptian religion. But where are these grand elements of a religion found in their simple purity?

Mythology, we know, is the disease which springs up at a peculiar stage of human culture, and is in its first stage as harmless as it is inevitable. It ceases to be harmless when its original meaning is forgotten, when, instead of being the simple expression of man's intuition of real facts, it obtains a mastery over his thought, and leads him to conclusions which are not involved in the original premisses. This disease of thought was terribly aggravated, I believe, by the early development of Art, and the forms which it assumed in Egypt. That Power which the Egyptians recognized without any mythological adjunct, to whom no temple was ever raised, "who was not graven in stone," "whose shrine was never found with painted figures," "who had neither ministrants nor offerings," and "whose abode was unknown," must practically have been forgotten by the worshippers at the magnificent temples of Memphis, Heliopolis, Abydos, Thebes or Dendera, where quite other deities received the homage of prayer and praise and sacrifice.

A highly cultured and intelligent people like the Egyptians, it is true, did not simply acquiesce in the polytheistic view of things, and efforts are visible from the very first to cling to the notion of the Unity of God. The "self-existent" or "self-becoming" One, the One, the One of One, "the One without a second," "the Beginner of becoming, from the first," "who made all things, but was not made," are expressions which we meet constantly in the religious texts, and they are applied to this or that god, each in his turn being considered as the supreme God of gods, the Maker and Creator of all things. But the conclusion which seems to have remained was, that all gods were in fact but names of the One who resided in them all. But this God is no other than Nature. Both individuals and entire nations may long continue to hold this view, without drawing the inevitable conclusion, that if there is no other God than this, the world is really without a God. But when the conclusion is once brought home, it is, as we have seen in our own day, most eagerly accepted. But the fate of a religion which involves such a conclusion, and with that conclusion the loss of faith in immortality, and even in the distinction of Right and Wrong, except as far as they are connected with ritual prescriptions, is inevitably sealed.^[25]

Notes

1. Wiedemann, Hieratische Texte aus den Museen zu Berlin und Paris; Leipzig, 1879, Taf. 1. This text is from the Louvre papyrus 3283, of which a notice is found in Deveria's "Catalogue des Manuscrits Egyptiens," p. 143.
2. The authorities to be consulted on this subject are:
   Chabas, "Papyrus Magique Harris."
   Birch, "Egyptian Magical Text," in "Records of the Past," Vol. VI. p. 113.
   Pleyte, "Etudes Egyptologiques," and "Papyrus de Turin." Ebers, "Papyros Ebers, das Hermetische Buch über die Arznei-mittel der alten Aegypten."
   Goodwin, "Graeco-Egyptian Fragment on Magic," in the Publications of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society.
   A good many extracts from magical works will be found in Brugsch's "Grammaire Démotique," and some entire compositions are translated by M. Maspero in his "Etudes Démotiques," published in the Recueil de travaux rélatifs à la philologie et à l'archéologie égyptiennes et assyriennes.
3. "Idea of a University," p. 60 and following.
4. Max Müller, "Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion; as illustrated by the Religions of India," p. 285.
5. The "Records of the Past" give the translation of this hymn, and of some of the others which are here quoted. I have in these Lectures availed myself freely of the existing translations, but have not scrupled to introduce important alterations, for which no one but myself is responsible.
6. He is called in the temple of Seti at Qurnah "the Lord of lords, King of the gods, the father of fathers, the powerful of the powerful, the substance which was from the beginning." Denkm. iii. 150.
7. "Puisque toute chose bonne ou mauvaise émane également du Grand Tout, il est clair que la valeur morale du bien est nécessairement fort affaiblie. Nous ne trouvons rien dans ces textes qui rappelle la morale si élevée qu'enseigne le chapitre 125 du Livre des Morts, rien même qui nous parle de la responsabilité."—La Litanie du Soleil, p. 128.
8. See Transactions of the Society of Biblical Literature, Vol. IV. pl. 1, where the cow has the stars upon its belly.
9. "Sinai and Palestine," p. lii.
10. A breakfast-party has been held in one of these coffins.
11. Or, according to another text, "of Seb."
12. Monumens divers, pl. 43, 44.
13. Zeitschrift, 1875, p. 33. An English version has been published in the "Records of the Past."
14.     Per te genus omne animantum
    Concipitur visitque exortum lumina solis;
    Te dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli
    Adventumque tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellus
    Smnmittit flores tibi rident aequora ponti
    Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum. …
    Quae quoniam rerum naturam sola gubernas
    Nec sine te quicquam dias in luminis oras
    Exoritur neque fit laetum neque amabile quicquam, &c.
    De Rerum Natura, i. 4—9, 21—24: Munro. 
    
    

    I do not quote these lines to prove that the hymns of Dendera are atheistic or epicurean, but that they are not inconsistent with an entire disbelief in religion. All these hymns are absolutely epicurean.

15. Hic siquis mare Neptunum Cereremque vocare
    Constituit fruges et Bacchi nomine abuti
    Mavolt quam laticis proprium proferre vocamen,
    Concedamus ut hie terrarum dictitet orbem
    Esse deum matrem, dum vera re tamen ipse
    Beligione animum turpi contingere parcat.
    Ib. ii. 662—657. 
    
    
16. Sharpe, Egyptian Inscriptions, i. pl. 4.
17. ⁠Τὸν πανώλεθρον θεὸν. …
    Ὃς οὐδ' ἐν Ἄιδου τὸν θανόντ' ἐλευθεροῖ.
    ⁠Aesch. Suppl. 414.
18. La Mort a des rigueurs à nulle autre pareilles,
         On a beau la prier;
    La cruelle qu'elle est se bouche les oreilles,
         Et nous laisse crier.
    
    
19. Todt. 78, 21.
20. Ib. 31, 4.
21. Two of the many names of Horus are "the Youth in Town" and "the Lad in the Country." Todt. 85, 8, 9.
22. Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1846, p. 735. Ampère refutes the opinions of Matter and of Jules Simon as expressed in their Histories of the Alexandrian School.
23. "Presque tout le temps que les Ptolémées regnèrent en Egypte, les navires qui partaient des côtes égyptiennes ne depassaient pas la côte méridionale de l'Arabie. Ils relâchaient soit dans un port situé en terre ferme, notamment Aden, ou bien dans quelqu'lle, telle que Socotora. Là anivaient les navires arabes, indiens et malais, avec les produits destinés à l'occident."—Reinaud, "Sur le royaume de la Mesène et de la Kharasène," in the Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscr. t. xxiv. pt. 2, p. 215. See also the chapter vi. (Du Commerce) of Lumbroso, "Recherches sur l'economie politique de l'Egypte sous les Lagides." M. Reinaud has also shown that the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, which displays an accuracy of information quite unknown to Strabo, Pliny or Ptolemy, was not written before the middle of the third century after Christ.
24. This is my reason for being inclined (see p. 109) to identify the goddess Tefnut with the Dew, rather than with the Rain. Tefnut, as a common noun, is undoubtedly some form of moisture, but rain, though far from unknown in ancient Egypt, must always have been a comparatively rare and apparently irregular phenomenon. Otherwise it would be very tempting to identify the two lions, Shu and Tefnut, children of Rā, with the Wind and the Rain. I do not find any god as the personification of Thunder, which rather appears as the roaring of a lion-god, or the bellowing of a bull-god. This illustrates the position which occasional phenomena occupy in Egyptian mythology. The position of Fire in this mythology affords matter for an interesting inquiry.
25. On looking back over these pages, I find that I have quoted (p. 99) from Professor Max Müller an etymology of the Sanskrit Brahman which is at variance with his more mature judgment in Hibbert Lectures, p. 358, note.
    At page 20, the name of M. Guyesse is too important to be omitted from the list of French scholars. M. Revillout, the most eminent Coptic scholar now in Europe, is also highly distinguished for his publication and interpretation of demotic records. To the German names I should add those of Pietschmann, Erman and Meyer.
    And I do not think it out of place here to say, that as the thanks of scholars are due to private persons like Mr. Sharpe and the late Mr. Bonomi, for the publication of accurate Egyptian texts, no small amount of gratitude should be felt towards booksellers like Messrs. Hinrichs, of Leipzig, for the publication of so many inestimable works by Brugsch, Dümichen and Mariette, which, however indispensable to the student, have necessarily but a limited sale, and cannot be immediately remunerative.