was obscure. Yet another hypothesis is offered by Mr. Le Page Renouf, and in the case of Set and the hippopotamus is shared by M. Maspero. Tiele also remarks that some beasts were promoted to godhead comparatively late, because their names resembled names of gods.[1] The gods, in certain cases, received their animal characteristics by virtue of certain unconscious puns or mistakes in the double senses of words. Seb is the earth. Seb is also the Egyptian name for a certain species of goose, and, in accordance with the homonymous tendency of the mythological period of all nations, the god and the bird were identified.[2] Seb was called "the Great Cackler.[3] Again, the god Thoth was usually represented with the head of an ibis. A mummied ibis "in the human form is made to represent the god Thoth."[4] This connection between Thoth and the ibis Mr. Le Page Renouf explains at some length as the result of an etymological confusion.[5] Thus metaphorical language reacted upon thought, and, as in other religions, obtained the mastery.
While these are the views of a distinguished modern Egyptologist, another Egyptologist, not less distinguished, is of an entirely opposite opinion as to the question on the whole. "It is possible, nay, certain," writes M. Maspero, "that during the second Theban
- ↑ Theolog. Tidjsch., 12th year, p. 261.
- ↑ For a statement of the theory of "homonymous tendency," see Selected Essays, Max Müller, i. 299, 245. For a criticism of the system, see Mythology in Encyclop. Brit., or in La Mythologie, A. Lang, Paris, 1886.
- ↑ Hibbert Lectures, 1880, p. 111.
- ↑ Wilkinson, iii. 325.
- ↑ Op. cit., pp. 116–117, 237.
