88
MYTH, RITUAL, AND RELIGION.
of Egyptian creeds the corruption of a pure primitive monotheism, its opponents see a crowd of survivals from savagery combined with clearer religious ideas, which are the long result of civilised and educated thought.[1]
After this preamble let us endeavour to form a general working idea of what Egyptian religion was as a whole. What kind of religion did the Israelites see during the sojourn in Egypt, or what presented
- ↑ The English leader of the former school, the believer in a primitive purity, corrupted and degraded but not extinguished, is Mr. Le Page Renouf ([[Portal:Hibbert Lectures|]], London, 1879). It is not always very easy to make out what side Mr. Le Page Renouf does take. For example, in his Hibbert Lectures, p. 89, he speaks somewhat sympathetically of the "very many eminent scholars who, with full knowledge of all that can be said to the contrary, maintain that the Egyptian religion is essentially monotheistic." He himself says that "a power without a name or any mythological characteristic is constantly referred to in the singular number, and can only be regarded as the object of that sensus numinis, or immediate perception of the Infinite," which is "the result of an intuition as irresistible as the impressions of our senses." If this be not primitive instinctive monotheism, what is it? Yet Mr. Le Page Renouf says that Egyptian polytheism, after closely approaching the point where it might have become monotheism, went off on a wrong track; so the Egyptians after all were polytheists, not monotheists (op. cit., p. 235). Of similar views are the late illustrious Vicomte de Rougé, M. Mariette, M. Pierret, and Brugsch Pasha (Rel. und Myth. der Alten Egypter, vol. i., Leipzig, 1884. Unluckily the work is unfinished, and does not contain its notes.) On the other side, on the whole regarding Egyptian creeds as a complex mass of early uncivilised and popular ideas, with a later priestly religion tending towards pantheism and monotheism, are M. Maspero, Professor Tiele, Professor Lieblein (English readers may consult his pamphlet, Egyptian Religion, Leipzig, 1884), M. Edward Meyer (Geschichte des Alterthums, Stuttgart, 1884), Herr Pietschmann (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, Berlin, 1878, art. "Fetisch Dienst"), and Professor Tiele (Manuel de l'Histoire des Religions, Paris, 1880, and History of the Egyptian Religion, English translation, 1882). In this essay, in accordance with its general principles, the views of M. Maspero are on the whole preferred to what appear to be those of Mr. Le Page Renouf.
