plification is in accordance with the historic efforts of civilization to unify and simplify, to syncretize, the endless number of the gods. We come across this desire as far back as the old Egyptians, where the unlimited polytheism as exemplified in the numerous demons of places finally necessitated simplification. All the various local gods, Amon of Thebes, Horus of Edfu, Horus of the East, Chnum of Elephantine, Atum of Heliopolis, and others,29 became identified with the sun God Rê. In the hymns to the sun the composite being Amon-Rê-Harmachis-Atum was invoked as "the only god which truly lives."30
Amenhotep IV (XVIII dynasty) went the furthest in this direction. He replaced all former gods by the "living great disc of the sun," the official title reading:
"The sun ruling both horizons, triumphant in the horizon in his name; the glittering splendor which is in the sun's disc."
"And, indeed," Erman adds,31 "the sun, as a God, should not be honored, but the sun itself as a planet which imparts through its rays32 the infinite life which is in it to all living creatures."
Amenhotep IV by his reform completed a work which is psychologically important. He united all the bull,33 ram,34 crocodile35 and pile-dwelling36 gods into the disc of the sun, and made it clear that their various attributes were compatible with the sun's attributes.37 A similar fate overtook the Hellenic and Roman polytheism through the syncretistic efforts of later centuries. The beautiful prayer of Lucius38 to the queen of the Heavens furnishes an important proof of this:
