„ *i foe Wwttgtot * PRINCETON, N. J. % Shelf., Division . . .£). .Ut . (L 4 3 Section ..l...^.i Chabas altaegyptischen Reichs im Berliner on the Papyrus Abbott after Birch, Museum, Einl. u. 43 Tafeln. Berl. ibid. 1859, p. 269 et seq. ; especially, 1867. however, Lepsius, Aelteste Texten THE SACRED LITERATURE. 25 great majority of the different parts of which the " Book of the Dead " is composed is, that in them there is found no mention of Amun or Amun-ra, the chief god of Thebes. His name occurs in the last? three or four books only, but these betray their origin by many foreign words, Nubian as well as others, and likewise by their whole spirit. These were most probably written in Ethiopia, where the Theban priests of Amun had founded an independent sacerdotal kingdom, and accordingly belong to the tenth or ninth century B.C. In all the other chapters and books, even in those which are not found in the most ancient MSS., there is no mention of this god who was so ardently worshipped by the Amunhoteps and Eamesids, and after whom kings, even of the eleventh dynasty, were named. This fact can be explained only on the hypothesis that not only those portions of which a collection was made in the time of the eighteenth dynasty, but also the books that were added later, were already written before the worship of Amun rose in the fifteenth and fourteenth century B.C. to such a height of splendour. Hence arose the especial reverence with which the y Egyptians regarded the book, and the great degree of sacredness they ascribed to it. Beatification in the day of resurrection was represented as depending on a man's knowledge of the principal chapters of it. " He who knows this book," so says a sarcophagus of the eleventh dynasty, " is one who in the day of resurrection in the under-world, arises and enters in ; but if he does not know this chapter, he does not enter in so soon as he arises." And the close of the first chapter is as follows : — " If a man knows this book thoroughly, and has it inscribed upon his sarcophagus, he will be manifested in the day in all (the forms) that he may desire, and entering in to his abode will not be turned back," and so on. 1 It hence became customary for people to learn it off by heart Lepsius, Aelteste Texte, pp. 5, 25. 26 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. during their life, in order that they might thus keep in check the evil spirits in the under- world, and that they might be assured of the blessed life. Some portions, like the 64th chapter, are expressly stated to have been written by the deity himself, usually Thot; and it was also told how they were found at or below the feet of an image of the god, where they had been deposited by the god himself. 1 However much the " Book of the Dead" differs in character and contents from the Vedas, the Zend-Avesta, the Old Testament, and other books regarded by various nations as of divine origin, it may yet be emphatically called the Holy Scriptures of the Egyptians. On the whole, a very false idea has generally been en- tertained of the " Book of the Dead." Properly speaking, it is not a book at all. This arises, anions: other things, from the very remarkable circumstance that not two of the ancient papyri give the chapters or texts in the same order. It was not until a much later time, after the twenty-sixth dynasty, that the arrangement of them seems to have become in a measure fixed. All the ancient MSS. are thus, in fact, independent collections of texts that are similar, and no one of which has ever been generally adopted. It is consequently inaccurate to give the name of unacknowledged chapters of the " Book of the Dead " to magical texts which refer to the life to come, and which have not happened to be inserted in any one of the collections known to us. In a book that has been brought together, bit by bit, and that is made up of portions of widely different degrees of antiquity, plan or unity cannot be expected. Certain chapters (ro, slid), indeed, 1 Lepsius [Aelt. Text. p. 17, nt. 2, erection of the sanctuary in which and p. 18) gives the following ex- the image of the god was placed, planation of the discovery of these Under the feet of this image lay the documents. The founding of a town most sacred foundation {senti), and began with that of the temple dedi- under it, a cavity for the reception cated to the local deity, e.g., at of sacred records or papyri. When Hermopolis with that of Thot, and long afterwards these documents the building of the temple com- happened to be found, they were menced with the founding and ascribed to a divine origin. THE SACRED LITERATURE. 27 are a sort of summary of the phases of life after death, from the first successively to the last. The first chapter itself ends with the issue to the day which is the culminat- ing point of the drama ; and the same is the case in the 17th, the 64th, and some others. But some, on the contrary, present only some special points treated in an isolated way. This is especially the case with the final moment of the conflict. Others, like the 45th, include sacred texts, hymns, or prayers. We should accordingly seek in vain for any regular order, either logical or chronological, in the " Book of the Dead," but there is nevertheless observable a certain arrangement of the material. Usually those portions which treat of analogous subjects are found conjoined, and it is possible to point out two or three large separate collections. Thus in agreement with Lepsius w r e find two distinct principal ones : chaps, xvii.-lxiii., and chaps, lxiv.-cxxiv. These are preceded by a small collection of sixteen chapters, forming a group by themselves, and are followed by the later addi- tions, of which the 125th chapter is the most ancient, and these in turn may be divided into different groups. The^ first sixteen chapters have not hitherto been discovered on ancient sarcophagi, and they appear to be of somewhat more recent date than the two principal collections, but more ancient than the additions, chaps, cxxvi.-clxv. In these sixteen chapters, the complete drama of the resur- rection is unfolded. The deceased travels through the regions of the under- world, is justified in the sight of his enemies, and already, in the nth chapter, is represented as triumphing in the form of Ea, the sun-god. In the 1 5th chapter he has reached the goal, for he beholds the light, and is admitted to the fellowship of Ka and Turn to sing the praises of these gods. The two collections that follow begin each with one of the two indisputably most ancient chapters of the whole book, the 17th and the 64th. Chaps, xvii.-lxiii. comprise again the same cycle as chaps. i.-xvi., but in a totally dif- 28 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. ferent form. The 17th chapter, the most important of all, is complete in itself, and represents the deceased as one already justified. To give an idea of its contents, the com- mencement, after the most ancient text, and without ex- planations or glosses, is here quoted, the translation being that of Lepsius : — " I am Turn (the hidden sun-god), a being who is one alone ; I am Ea in his first supremacy ; I am the great god, the self-existing ; The creator of his name, the Lord of all gods, Whom none among the gods upholds. I was yesterday, I know the to-morrow. There was a battlefield of the gods prepared when I spoke ; I know the name of that great god who is in that place. I am the great Bennu 1 who is worshipped in An (Helio- polis). I am Chem (Min) in his appearing ; I have set both my feathers upon my head ; 1 am come home to the city of my abode." 2 1 The Bennu, a species of heron, bol of the bennu-bird), and was also is, as a bird of passage, the symbol the symbol of definite periods of of the sun-god, who disappears at time. That Herodotus limited the night, and shows himself again in phoenix to An (Heliopolis), while the the morning. Brugsch compares it Bennu was worshipped also at Aby- to the phoenix (u et p. 385 et seq., and by Brugsch, Aus scg. ( 35 ) CHAPTEK III THE KELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 1 It would be difficult to say which is the most ancient religion of Egypt. Some forms of religious worship are known to us as having arisen, or at least as having for the first time acquired significance in historic times. This was the case, to give one instance out of many, with Amun-worship. The institution of certain customs is recorded; for example, that of the worship of sacred animals at Memphis and Heliopolis. But whether those religions which appear first on the stage of history are in reality more ancient than those which rose to supre- macy in later times cannot now be made out ; this may, however, in the case of one or two, be asserted with a high degree of probability. But we can tell with certainty what religions are mentioned earliest on the monuments, and thus are shown to have reached, sooner than others, an epoch of splendour. Before Egypt was united as one kingdom there flou- rished, side by side, just so many local worships as there were small kingdoms in the valley of the Nile. These different worships were not brought methodically, or, rather, they did not attain, without many struggles and at times severe conflict, to a system of polytheism, manifold at first, and extending constantly. It was later still that 1 The author has now reasons for order, and that it was preceded by thinking that this form of the ancient the religion of Heliopolis (chap. iv. ), religion of the Egyptians came origi- the chief god of which is Ra. nally only second in the chronological 36 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. they passed into a system more monotheistic in character, towards which the Egyptian religion had a strong tendency. The policy of those wise kings who, in the course of centuries, reigned over Egypt was not an exclusive one. They purposely rendered homage to the chief gods of all the principal divisions of their kingdom, to the gods of the north and of the south, of Memphis and of Thebes, of the Delta and of Nubia, and endeavoured to unite them into a sort of pantheon. As the result of this policy, they were enabled to exercise their power undisturbed, and rule in peace within the boundaries of their territory. Other kings, who did not adopt this policy but were zealously devoted to the god of one particular locality and to one special form of worship, and who excluded and persecuted those who were not of their way of thinking, had to experience, in serious insurrections, the conse- quences of their unstatesmanlike policy. Some of them even lost in this way all their power. Yet in all cases the dominant religion of the kingdom is that of the reigning dynasty, and in every case the religion of the reigning dynasty is the local worship of its place of origin. The first dynasty that ruled over Upper and Lower Egypt in historic times is that which is said to have been founded by Menes (Mena is the name of the sacred bull of Heliopolis), a mythic personage, who is perhaps the same as Minos and the Indian Manu. Previous to his time the Egyptians are habitually called Hor-Shesu, 1 1 The reading Shesu-Har {hor or princes successors of H. the divine her) of De Rouge and Brugsch seems ruler, who had reigned first of all. preferable to that of Duemichen, But even in that case it would not Shai-her. It may be translated be only the kings before Menes who servants of H. and successors of would have a claim to the title. H. ; since, however, the word never All kings are called by the Egyp- occurs in a royal cartouche, or accom- tians, not successors of Horos,°but panied by the emblems of regal Horos. They are identified with power, it cannot be supposed to him, a conception much more f ami- refer to any king, though it would liar to the Egyptians. By Shesu- not be in the least extraordinary har is undoubtedly always meant to find the Egyptians calling their the most ancient men, or the most THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 37 worshippers or servants of Hor or Horos, while Horos x is always regarded as the master and creator of the Eutu, the men of higher race, of pure native extraction. It is possible, however, that, like Horos himself, the Shesu-Hor are mythical beings. The worship of Osiris and that of Ea are the most ancient religions mentioned on the oldest monuments. They are those which in after-times prevailed most generally, and may be said to have formed the founda- tion of the national religion. The worship of the Memphitic Ptah and of the Saitic goddess Keith, mentioned not quite so early, but still on very old monuments, is perhaps equally ancient, at least the latter is very probably so. There is, however, reason to think that neither of .them were of purely Egyptian origin, and they were certainly not adopted into the religious system of the Eutu and universally acknow- ledged until a later period. The principal ancient seat of Osiris- worship, a form of Horos-worship, is without doubt Thinis (Teni), the town from which the royal house of Mena and the dynasty next in succession take their name, Thinitic. It is situated in Upper Egypt, about sixty geographical miles to the south of Memphis, and fifteen miles to the north of Thebes, on the west bank of the Nile. Osiris is con- stantly designated Lord of Abydos (Abet), a place in the immediate neighbourhood of Thinis, by which it appears to have been cast into the shade ; or perhaps he is thus named as lord of the district (nomos) in which Thinis and Abydos were situated. The town itself bore the sacred name, house of Osiris, and the temples that have been discovered there were dedicated to him. Hitherto the only temples known were those founded by Seti I. ancient Egyptians, who, as the people 1 Horos, a god of Upper as well believed, lived in the abodes of the as of Lower Egypt, fills an important blest with Osiris. See De Rouge, place in the circle of Osiris and in Monuments des YI. preni. Dynasties, that of Ra. p. 163 et seq. and Eamses II., kings of the nineteenth dynasty, but some years ago the indefatigable Mariette discovered to the north of Abydos the remains of a much older temple, which not unfrequently crumbled to dust on being exposed to the air. The inscriptions he found testified to visits having been paid by various sovereigns to this venerable sanctuary. The other temples erected in honour of Osiris, like those at Memphis, at Mendes in Lower Egypt, on the island Phineb at Philak in the south, and in Ethiopia, are undoubtedly all of later date. At Thinis- Abydos Osiris was worshipped as the king of eternity dwelling in the west, and ruler of the kingdom of the dead. At his side there, but below him, stood Anhur, a war-god armed with a sword, apparently a form of the god who is met with at Heliopolis, and at a later period at Thebes, under the name of Shu; 1 Horos, the avenger of his father ; Isis, the great mother, and the four children of the concealed (Mescheri), which may possibly refer to the four genii of the dead. The other gods of the Osirian circle had, even in the earliest times, temples of their own in Upper Egypt. The temple of Thot at Sesennu (Ashmunein) is mentioned on the very oldest monuments. The temple of Hathor and Horos at Den- dera, founded under the eighteenth dynasty, is, in a very old record found in that place, brought into connection with Chufu of the fourth dynasty and even with the Shesu-har, 2 and thus appears to have supplanted a sim- pler sanctuary. That of Horos at Edfu is so closely con- nected with it that it must be quite as ancient, although the sanctuary, the ruins of which are still to be found there, belongs to the latest period of the Egyptian king- dom. The temple', at Hermonthis perhaps belongs like- wise to the same time. 1 Chabas, Pap. Mag. Harris, pp. connected with anku = embrace, in- 37, 40. Anhur is thus a god of the elude. heaven or of the air, as is indicated - Duemichen, Bauurkunde ron by the name, which may easily be ^Dendera, Taf. vi. THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 39 Every one is familiar with the myth of Osiris in Plutarch. With him it becomes entirely a traditionary tale, although he himself expressly warns us not to take it for history. Osiris, an Egyptian king, not satisfied with combating rude and barbarous customs in his own kingdom, travels through the world, that he may everywhere spread the blessings of civilisation. In his absence, the queen, his wife and sister, acts as regent, and firmly maintains all the institutions of Osiris, taking care to see that no in- fraction of them occurs. This vexes Typhon, her own and Osiris' brother, who would have liked to introduce a different and ruder law, and who now, alon^ with some of the nobles and an Ethiopian queen, forms a conspiracy to kill Osiris. He causes a chest or sarcophagus to be pre- pared, made so as exactly to fit the body of his brother Osiris ; whom, along with the conspirators, he invites to a banquet. As if in jest, he promises to make a present of the chest to him whom it may be found to fit. All in turn lie down in it, but of course without success; scarcely, however, has Osiris done so, when the lid is put on and fastened closely down. The chest is then thrown into the river, and floats out to sea by the Tanaïtic branch of the Nile. After some time it is stranded at Byblos, a Phoenician town on the coast of Asia, and there it gets entangled in the boughs of a tamarind tree, which grows over it so completely as to wholly conceal it. Mean- while, as soon as tidings of the horrid deed reach them, Isis, along with Nephthys, her sister, fill the air with shrieks of despair and cries of wailing. Isis goes every- where seeking her murdered consort, and at last discovers him in the palace of the king at Byblos, who had caused the tamarind tree to be hewn down and a pillar to be made out of it for his house. With this precious treasure she now returns to Egypt; but, while visiting her son Horos at Bubastis, she neglects to take proper care of the sarcophagus, and Typhon, hunting by moonlight, finds and opens it, and cuts the body of his brother into fourteen 40 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. pieces, which he scatters over the country. But Isis manages to recover the whole of them, one after another, and causes each to be buried at the place where it was discovered. And now Horos arises as avenger of his father. He challenges Typhon and overcomes him, and afterwards delivers him over to Isis. She lets him go free again, and when Horos hears that she has done so he is filled with indignation. After having sternly rebuked her for thus yielding, he attacks Typhon again twice over, and finally succeeds in killing him outright. Osiris then becomes lord of the world of the dead, and Isis, who has continued to have intercourse with him there, brings forth Harpocrates, a child born prematurely, and lame in both legs. We shall not occupy ourselves with the explanations of this myth given by the Greek moralist. He gives it in the form in which it was related in his time. His version thus presents, along with much that is ancient and genuine, some traits of more recent origin or of foreign derivation. Also, one part of the story is given erroneously, for Harpo- crates, who is merely one of the forms in which Horos appears, is distinguished from him as a separate being. Harpocrates is the young Horos, Har pe chruti, i.e., Har the child, represented by the Egyptians as sitting in the lap of his mother, with his hand on his mouth and his legs hanging down. The Greeks fancied the dangling legs were lame. At a later time he was even looked upon as the god of taciturnity, because of his hand pointing to his mouth — this, however, was with the Egyptians the sign that he was yet an infant and could not speak. The foreign part of the myth is that in which Byblos is men- tioned. That part has been incorporated with the view of bringing the worship of Adonis, which prevailed there, into connection with the Egyptian Osiris-worship ; just as Lucian likewise relates how, at the great festival of Adonis, a head was observed to have come ashore, which had floated thither from Egypt, and was thereupon consigned THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 41 to the earth with great pomp. It was only in relatively modern times that the Egyptians ventured to navigate the Mediterranean, so that in ancient times Byblos must have been unknown to them. What is said about the sarcophagus drifting to sea through the Tanaïtic branch of the Nile cannot be original either, for that branch did not become famous in the estimation of the Egyptians till the Shepherd Kings had made Tanis (San, Hebr. Zoan) a centre of the worship of Sutech, the god who is supposed to be identical with Typhon. The division of the body of Osiris into fourteen pieces seems to have been invented as an explanation of the fact that so many towns in Egypt could boast of possessing the grave of this deity. Nevertheless, along with those marks of a more recent period, the tale comprises elements of great antiquity, and the foundation of the myth, its nucleus, is as ancient as the kingdom of Egypt. The principal outlines of it are found recurring in various original records. In a hymn in honour of Osiris, belonging to the first years of the eighteenth dynasty, i.e., to the commencement of the New Kingdom, we read as follows : — ' c His sister Isis has been filled with concern about him, and has scattered his enemies in a threefold rout. . . . She is Isis, the illustrious, the avenger of her brother ; she has sought him without rest- ing ; she has wandered all round the world as a mourner ; she did not cease until she had found him. She has made light with her feathers, she has made wind with her wings, she has made the invocations of the burial of her brother ; she has taken with her the principles of the god with the peaceable heart, she has made an extract of his being, she has made (thereof) a child, she has suckled the infant in secret. No man knows where that was done." 1 This representation is indeed in some respects different from that of Plutarch, since here, not Horos but Isis is the avenger of Osiris, and Set-Typhon is not even named ; 1 The translation is that of Chabas in the Rev. Archéol., 1857, p. 65 et seq., and p. 193 et seq. 42 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. but in a MS. of the " Book of the Dead/' which must be accounted as contemporary with the hymn just quoted, the conflict of Horos with Set is expressly mentioned, 1 and upon the sarcophagus of Mentuhotep, which dates from the beginning of the Middle Kingdom, Horos is spoken of as the avenger of his father. On an inscription of the time of King Chufu of the fourth dynasty, Osiris is called lord of Eusta or Boseti, that is, of the world of the dead, and "Horos the Conqueror" is an appellation already very common in those days. Indeed, in that portion of the " Book of the Dead " quoted in the preceding chapter, and therefore in the most ancient text of all, which was already in existence in the time of the earliest dynasties, we read that there a place of battle was made ready for the gods. In other passages, too, in the "Book of the Dead," mention is made of the laments of Isis, of her vigil on the night of the burial, and of the tears poured forth by her and her sister Nephthys. The lamentations of the two sisters have even been discovered in a Theban papyrus. " Come back," it says, " come back, god Panu, come back. For they who were thy foes are here no more. Ah ! fair helpmate, come back, that thou mayest behold me thy sister, by whom thou art beloved ; and thou drawest not nigh to me ; Ah, beautiful youth, come back ! come back ! I behold thee not, my heart is grieved for thee, my eyes search for thee. I cast my eyes around (?) that thee, that thee I may behold . . . the radiant one. Come to thy beloved, blessed Unnefer, come to thy sister, come to thy wife, god Urtuhet, come to the mistress of thy house. Am I not thy sister ? I am thy mother, and thou dost not draw nigh to me ; the face of the gods and of the children of men is turned towards thee while they bewail thee, at the time when they see me as I wail because of thee, as I weep and cry unto heaven that thou mightest hear my supplication, for I am thy sister, by whom thou wast beloved upon earth. Never didst thou love another than 1 Book of the Dead, xvii. 17, glosses. THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 43 me tliy sister ! " In the same way Nephthys, too, laments, " Ah ! lordly king, come back, let thy heart rejoice, for all they who persecuted thee are here no more. Thy sisters stand beside thy bier, they bewail thee and shed tears. People turn (?) thee round on thy bier that thou mayest behold their beauty. Oh speak to us, king and our lord ! " i Osiris, nevertheless, according to the old monuments, comes back on earth no more. His soul is indeed united again to his body in the mystic place Tanen, a ceremony in which all the gods of his circle take part ; his parents, Seb and Nu, his sisters Isis and Nephthys, Thot and Horos, and above all Shu and Tafnu, who watch over his heart and punish Set. 2 Osiris, however, remains in the invisible world of the departed or justified, while his soul alone, as the constellation of Orion, is displayed in full glory in the heavens, just as the soul of Isis shines forth in that of Sirius. Such is the tenor of the myths, of which, from Plutarch's time down to our own, various interpretations have been given, though in truth one alone is admissible. If, first, we study the nature of the various gods who here play their parts, and if, especially, we set them in the light which the old monuments can throw upon them, the myth itself will be easily understood. Osiris is a sun-god. This is indubitable and was per- ceived also by the ancients, although even at an early period he was made a god of the moon, a Nile-god, or even a god of wine like Bacchus. It is to be noted, however, that all these significations are really identical. The Nile, source of the fertility of the Egyptian soil, and wine, which imparts fresh life, corresponded on earth to the heavenly beverage called by the Aryans soma or haoma, and by the Greeks nectar, together with ambrosia the food of im- mortality, while the moon was looked upon as the reser- voir or fountain-head of these celestial waters. In short, 1 Dr.H.Brugsch, Die Adouisklage 2 Papyrus magique, No. 825 Brit, tind das Linoslied, p. 22 el seq. Mus., in the Rev. Arch. 1863, p. 125. 44 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. if Osiris is rightly regarded as a sun-god, it is the sun at night which he represents, the sun dead but risen again, and hence he is the p:od of the life eternal " of the length of time or of eternity," as the Egyptians say, and to him belongs by right all that gives or has life. The signification of his name Asar, As-iri, which Lauth not long ago proposed to translate " son of the earth," is indeed uncertain, 1 but that he cannot be other than a sun- god is evident if we notice his peculiar relation to Horos, the sun-god, who at one time is identified with him, and then is called his father, and oftenest of all his son. Osiris is also designated as son of Seb, the god of the v earth, and of Nu, goddess of the heavenly ocean, as grand- son of Ea, the sun-god par excellence, who is called first in his circle, the father of fathers, and of whom it is said that he is united with Osiris in Suten-se-nen. This conclusion, that Osiris is a sun-god, is confirmed by a number of expressions used regarding him. In the hymns, his accession to the throne of his father is compared to the rising of the sun, and it is even said of him in so many words : " He glitters on the horizon, he sends out rays of light from his double feather and inundates the world with it, as the sun from out of the highest heaven." Like the sun he is called in the sacred songs, Lord of the length of time. Yet it would be a great mistake to say that Osiris signifies the sun. He is the divine beino- who reveals himself in the sun. One of his usual appellations is "mysterious soul of the Lord of the disk," or simply - " soul of the sun." He is thus the soul of the sun, not dying when it dies, its ever-abiding vital force, which at nights is displayed in the glittering constellation of Orion, and in the morning is united again to the revivified body 1 It is worthy of note that the occurs so often in the kings' names), hidden or under-world heaven, of and that the signification of the which among the Egyptians Osiris is ' word p^X = tobe good) corresponds lord and originally also a personi- to Osiris' surname, Unnefer, "the fication, is called among the Assyro- good being." Babylonians, ashru or ashar (which THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 45 of the sun. He is also more definitely this, in a special character. The operation of the sun is twofold, benefi- cent and terrible; it quickens or it destroys life. The Greeks united both characteristics in Phoebus Apollo. The Egyptians kept them separate. They called Osiris Un- nefer, that is, the good being representing the beneficent power of the sun that triumphs always over the powers of darkness, and cannot be annihilated by those injurious powers that are also exercised by the sun. That is the original physical signification of Osiris, always evidently betrayed in words and symbols even after his moral significance came more into the foreground. Becoming ever more and more detached from nature and exalted above her, he grew by degrees to be Lord of the universe (Neb ter), to whom everything owed its origin, who formed the sun, and who makes it rise and set, the Lord of life without whom nothing can live. How these conceptions arose out of the original natural one is self-evident, and it is equally clear how he soon became the type of the good man, of the human soul which is obliged to carry on a conflict similar to his against the powers of death, and which finds in his victory a guarantee of its own triumph, in his rising again a pledge of its own immortality. From the most ancient times accordingly, we find the dead, both men and women, represented as identifying themselves with him, their everlasting ideal. We have "iven no more than the outlines of the con- o ception of Osiris as entertained by the Egyptians. Were we to come down to details and to attend to slight varia- tions, we should be lost in an ocean of symbolism and mysticism. As a necessary consequence of the prevalence of Osiris-worship in Egypt, a number of local legends have been incorporated with his myths. To this widespread devotion likewise he owes his manifold names, of which the 147th chapter of the "Book of the Dead," to give one instance, mentions no less than a hundred. To the same cause may be attributed the sacred metamorphoses that 4 6 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. he, according to the old texts, underwent, and the mys- terious forms he assumed. It would appear that so soon as his worship had established itself in any one place, Osiris took the form of the deity whose ancient seat it was, and the sacred animal of that particular town or district was consecrated to him. Thus, at Heliopolis and at Abydos, he is represented as the migratory bird Bennu, which appears to have been originally a form of the Heliopolitan god Ea. After the amalgamation of Osiris and Ea worship this form was bestowed upon the former as well. 1 At Memphis, among other forms he appears to have assumed that of a certain species of ape, and also that of a nechta, i.e., a mighty one, a giant of seven cubits, who was concealed in a chest eight cubits in height. 2 It was most likely at Memphis, too, that he was imaged as a pillar beginning in the lowest and ending in the highest heaven, a conception which is undoubtedly referred to in that feature of the myth, as related by Plutarch, where the King of By bios causes a pillar to be made in his palace out of the tree which had grown around the sarcophagus of Osiris. In fact, we possess delineations of Osiris as well as of Ptah answering to this description. On a post upon which is graven a human countenance, and which is covered with gay clothing, stands the so-called Tat pillar, entirely made up of a kind of superimposed capitals, one of which has a rude face scratched upon it, intended no doubt to represent the shining sun. On the top of the pillar is placed the complete headdress of Osiris, the ram's horns, the sun, the ureus-adders, the double feather, all emblems of light and of sovereignty, and which in my judgment must here have been intended to repre- sent the highest heaven. 3 The Tat pillar is the symbol of 1 See above, p. 28, nt. 1. and C, 2d Series, Suppt. PI. 25 and 2 Chabas, Pap. mag. Harris, p. 33, No. 5. Mariette, Abydos, I., 116. PI. 16. :i See the plate in Wilkinson, M. THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 47 durability, immutability. This representation of Osiris, which its rude and simple character without trace of art proves to have been one of the most ancient, must apparently be held to be symbolical of him as " Lord of the length of time or of eternity." Elsewhere again he was a ncmma or dwarf with two heads, one of a sparrow- hawk, the other human, very evidently a symbol of his twofold being as sun-god and type or king of men. 1 All these varied transformations, which are found in all mytho- logies without exception, are nothing but the ancient forms of a deity which in later times, after the deity had come to be represented usually in human shape, were regarded as being forms he could still assume at pleasure. Here, as in other mythologies, these various forms have given rise to or have helped to embellish all sorts of legends. In the Osirian myths they have been employed chiefly for the purpose of carrying on the conflict with Set, who in seeking the body of his brother is again and again mocked by finding himself face to face with a totally different shape. Set likewise, as might be expected, transforms himself into the shape of his sacred animals — into that of the crocodile, for example. In this respect, however, he is outdone by Osiris, who by this device constantly succeeds in escaping persecution ; or, to express it differently, the symbolism and mythology of the good sun-god was in Egypt infinitely richer than that of the violent evil one, and his worship prevailed much more extensively than that of the latter. Eor I venture to consider it as certain that Set, the enemy and brother of Osiris or of the more ancient Horos, is likewise a sun-god, although Plutarch says that those who consider Typhon is the sun are unworthy of being listened to. In spite of his unamiable character and 1 The sparrow-hawk, as is well lordship, in the dwarf's hand, and known, is in Egypt the emblem of the sun circle with the double feather the sun. The emblem is made still between the two heads, plainer by the scourge, token of 4 8 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. hideous shape, he is one of the most interesting figures in the Egyptian pantheon, for he has had a peculiar history. In turn revered and hated, invoked and persecuted, he was at last so much detested that his very name, where it occurs on the monuments, was wherever possible expunged or chiselled out. At no time was he regarded as a good deity. Even in the oldest myths he is the great enemy and adversary of Horos, and plays the unenviable part of traitor and murderer ; and though finally he is not actually killed, he is nevertheless overcome and severely chastised, all which is not calculated to increase the reputation even of a divine being. Yet, though never a beneficent god, he was not detested in ancient times. He possessed temples and was worshipped, no doubt mostly out of fear. At a relatively late period warlike kings still named themselves after him. Homage was paid to him in Lower as well as in Upper Egypt, of which he was the special god ; and the kings who united both these countries under their sceptre were looked upon as the incarnate Horos and Set, as being images of the one as well as of the other. They are frequently depicted, even in comparatively recent centuries, as standing betwixt these two gods, as anointed by them with life and power, or as receiving instruction from both, from Set no less than Horos, in the art of handling their weapons. It is, indeed, the case that Set received more homage from foreign peoples who came into contact with Egypt than from genuine Egyptians. The Shepherd Kings, or at least one of them, selected him from among all the gods of Egypt as the object of exclusive worship. In the south, at Ombos, which must be reckoned as in Nubia, he was looked upon as the local deity, and derived from that town his most usual designation. He is also not un frequently called the god of the negroes. Was he then perhaps, as has sometimes been asserted, a foreign ^od. one of the so-called Semitic gods, introduced THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 49 from Asia ? The truth is precisely the contrary of this. From the most remote antiquity Set is one of the Osirian circle, and is thus a genuine Egyptian deity. His place in the ranks of these gods is clearly defined ; he constantly stands, even so early as the time of the first dynasties, betwixt Isis and Horos, with his wife Nephthys, forming thus along with her the complementary pair to Osiris and Isis. Even strictly Osirian kings, who neglected other gods, such as Ptah, worshipped Set. Among these were Chufu, Chafra, and Pepi. In Lower Egypt he was origi- nally worshipped at Memphis only, the royal residence of the Upper Egyptian kings, and under the fifth dynasty, which was distinguished by the orthodoxy of its Osirianism, he possessed a temple in that town. His being called the god of the Nubians and Negroes, who adopted the Egyptian civilisation, and with it the Egyptian mythology, must be explained by the fact that the gods whose worship was most popular there had more in common with his character than with that of Osiris. When the Egyptians established themselves in Nubia, and looked through the list of their gods for one to whom this new portion of their kingdom might appear peculiarly to belong, none was found so suit- able as Set. It was the same with the Hyksos, the char- acter of whose god, beyond doubt warlike and devastating, allowed of his being identified most easily with Set, though both at that time and ever afterwards he remained the special god of Upper Egypt. This high favour in which he stood with foreign conquerors may perhaps have contributed to make the Egyptians regard him with steadily lessening reverence ; it is at any rate certain that various reasons combined to bring about the persecution to which at a later time he was exposed, and the erasure of his name. In the first place, growing civilisation and the softening of manners made the people, and the culti- vated priesthood in particular, zealously hostile to the service of a god so barbarous, just as in Israel we see the prophets entering the lists to combat the worship of Moloch; 5 o HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. secondly, there was the influence of Persian doctrine, with its dualism, for it is remarkable that the aversion to Set became conspicuous just after the time of the Persian conquest; and lastly, the influence of the Greeks, who could as little tolerate the gloomy death-god on the banks of the Nile as in their native country, where they always looked with a certain degree of abhorrence on Hades and his temples. This influence, however, was not felt till a much later period. In remote antiquity there can be no doubt Set was a sun-god. This is evident from his being properly the complement, not the adversary only, of Horos the sun-god. Like him, Set is found on the deck of the bark of the sun, ready to ward off the serpent of darkness, with which, by a curious fatality, he was one day destined to be identified. Like Horos, he is god of war and execu- tioner in the under-world ; and he would never have been raised, as god of Upper Egypt, to the level of Horos, god of Lower Egypt, had he not corresponded to him in general significance, however much he differed from him in charac- ter. As sun-god he is sometimes called the great lord of heaven, and the spy. 1 In contrast to Horos, the sun-hero from whom proceed life and fertility, and who is to be dreaded by none save those who are friends of darkness, and in contrast especially to Osiris, Unnefer, the good being, the good nature-power, the beneficent though con- cealed sun-god, his position was just like that of Melek, the fire-king, the severe Semitic god, who was worshipped in Juda also, in contrast to the luxurious life-giving Canaanite Baal ; or like Qiva in contrast to Vishnu. He was the personification of the sun's terrible desolating power, of the sun as devouring fire, the god of extermi- nating war, with all its terrors. Hence he speedily was made god of death. Elevated soon a little above nature, and conceived of as more human in form, he grew to be not only the fell adversary of Horos, the lord of light, but also the being who causes all that is evil in nature — 1 See Brugsch, Zeits. d. Morgenl. Gesellschaft, vi. 253 ct seq. THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 51 earthquakes, scorching heat, tempests, thunder and light- ning, pestilential vapours that pollute the air and the water, and even mount up towards the moon, in order to make her and all that glitters in heaven dim and dark. It is he who wounds, or puts out, or swallows up the one eye of Horos, after which it is handed over to Ea, the sun-god highest in rank, that he may heal it. This, as Plutarch correctly explains, is a reference to a total or partial eclipse of the moon. 1 All plagues (ncshni) proceed from Set; 2 and, accordingly, the animals sacred to him are beasts of prey, and consequently unclean animals — the hippopota- mus, the crocodile, swine, and the monster with stiff ears, peculiar snout, and tail erect, which is the hieroglyph of this god. Finally, after having been completely dissociated from nature, apparently, as I said, by Persian influence in the first place, he became the evil principle in the creation, and in the moral world as well. It was at this stage that his name began to be removed and his images supplanted by those of Thot and Horos. Even on the tomb of Seti I., father of Eamses II. (Sesostris), the king's name was altered into Osiri. 3 The lot of his rival Horos, usually Osiris' son, and avenger of his father, was totally different, for through- out the course of centuries he remained one of the most honoured of the gods of Egypt. In a sense, it may be 1 See Zeits. für Aeg. Sprache u. the hippopotamus, Set's sacred ani- Alterthumskunde, 1868, p. 33. The mal, and the sacred name of the B. of the D. (chap, xvii., glosses 17 town is derived from it. In any and 1 8) expressly says that the eclipse case the Greeks must have got the of the moon takes place during the name Typhon from the Phoenicians, conflict between Horos and Set. who identified Set tebhu with their 2 See ibid., 1S68, p. 27. god of storms (Ziphon). Much has 3 The name of Set is not yet tho- been done to explain the myths and roughly explained. It is perhaps history of this god by W. Pleyte, in connected with sat = flame, and with his " Religion des Pré-israélites ; re- sati = ray of the sun and phallos. cherches sur le dieu Set," and in The Greeks called him Typhon, a his "Lettre a M. Th. Devéria." name which, in the opinion of some, Comp. also the smaller work of this is to be discovered in the Egyptian author, "Le dieu Set dans la barque Tebku, the god of Teb, where special du soleil." homage was paid to him. Teb is 5 2 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. said of him as of Baal (as regards whom, proof of the assertion we make will be found in Book III. of this work), that his name was not so much that of a definite deity, as the common title given to a particular class of cods. In support of this opinion, we can adduce the fol- lowing facts : we rarely find the name of Horos used without attribute or epithet ; nearly every locality has its particular Horos, designated by a special surname :— thus Harhut at Edfu, Harsamto and Ahi at Edfu and at Dendera, Harmachu, he who is Ra, Harkamutef, he who is Chem and Harka, the young one, son of Chem and of Ament, at Thebes, &c, — in fact, one frequently sees several different Horos deities represented side by side on the monuments : moreover, some divine beings, like the star Sirius (Har- sapd), have the title of Horos bestowed upon them when they are masculine ; and in later times at least, the name of Horos in the plural is always used as synonymous with the nuteru, the gods. The signification of the name of Horos accords perfectly with this use of it. Har, or Her, means really the most exalted, the Highest, the Lord, accordingly the principal divinity, the god considered as king of the country. Three classes of Horos gods are to be distinguished : the first includes Horos the old (Hor-ur) brothers of Osiris and of Ka ; the great Harmachis (Harmachu, Horos on the horizon), of Heliopolis ; Horos Amun, and the ithy- phallic god Hor Chem. The second is composed of the various sons of the preceding, in particular, the famous son of Isis (Har-se-ise), the avenger of his father, just as is Har-hut, the god of the winged bark of the sun at Edfu, the executioner of the judgments of Osiris in the under world, the king of the kings after whom, correctly speak- ing, no king reigns, since all the kings are only his lieuten- ants. Lastly, the third class is that made up of the infant Horos gods (Har-pe-chruti). Ahi and Samtoti,the youth- ful cods represented in the flower of the lotus, and which are very modern, having been, as Dr. Pleyte believes, THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 53 borrowed from India in the centuries immediately before our era, belong to this category. As god of the visible sun, he is father and brother as well as son of Osiris, for in truth, the sun at night may equally well be called a son of the sun that shone the day before, as father of the sun that rises next day. Thus both sun-gods may be also conceived of as a pair of brothers, and this occurs not ^infrequently in other mythologies. Horos is accordingly as Har-oer, Horos the great, the elder, son of Seb like Osiris, and husband of Isis or Hathor ; he is found, however, most often as son of Osiris, and Isis or Hathor, and is called Har-pe-chruti, the infant Horos, the young, scarcely born sun at its first rising again in the morning. The Egyptians did not find these conceptions inconsistent with each other ; they felt, on the contrary, that the elder and the younger Horos were one and the same, that the new-born sun, though apparently another than that they had seen die, was not in reality a different one, and they expressed this feeling of their identity in the mythological paradox, "Horos, (or Min, or Chem), husband of his mother." Horos also is a warrior god who, standing on the deck of the sun-bark, contends with the serpent Apap, the demon of darkness, or, in the character of avenger, with his father's enemy Set. At one moment he is seen brandishing his spear, at another he hurls his trident at the snout of the hippopo- tamus, one of Set's disguises, 1 and again he is armed with a sword ready to behead the wicked upon the scaffold (ncmma) in the kingdom of the dead. But, notwithstand- ing this, he, equally with Osiris, is a good deity who fights against darkness only, and the pious need not be afraid of him. Formidable to his enemies, the enemies of his be- loved Egypt, for his sparrow-hawk always hovers aloft over the head of the Egyptian kings as they go forth to battle, he is yet a guardian to his worshippers, and speaks as a Zeits für Aeg. Sprackeu. Alterthk. 1S68, p. iS. 54 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. father to the king, whom he calls his beloved son. 1 " I make you," thus he speaks to the king — " I make you a terror to evil-doers, and spit before you on the hearts of your enemies." 2 But he is likewise the beneficent creator of the full harvest, the lord of the grain. His beauty, especially that of his countenance, is frequently celebrated. Hence he is represented as the Sphinx (hu), whose face, turned eastwards under its broad projecting head-dress, is the radiant sun, and whose body in the form of a lion is emblematic of his divine strength. As the wunged sun's disk — a representation found in Egypt as well as in Babylon and in Assyria, from which latter country it was introduced into Persia — he is named Hut, the great god, the lord of heaven ; and he imparts " life, vital power, long life, health, and all good fortune, as the sun in eternity." In this form he was worshipped even in the most remote antiquity, especially at Edfu (Hut). 3 It would be inaccurate to regard Horos when without any attribute as being the god of the sun, and it would be more inaccurate still to mistake him for the sun itself deified. He is very far from being identical with Ba, whose name is oftenest used to designate the sun. The sun and the moon were called the eyes of Horos. He must, there- fore, be regarded as the god of the light, the token of life. The conflict with Set, in which he interposes as avenger of his father Osiris, or as Marshal of the armies of his father Ba-Harmachis, has furnished an inexhaustible subject to the poets, painters, and sculptors of Egypt. This is not the place to describe and explain the myth as it has been found delineated at Edfu in a series of pictures, and since its discovery made generally known through 1 Thus in the inscription on the father Haremchu." Brugsch, Reise- sphinx at Gizeh, "The majesty of berichte aus ^Egypten, p. 335. this god speaks with his own 2 Duemichen Bauurkunde von mouth; like a father with his son, Dendera, p. 13. so he speaks : Behold me, my 3 De Rouge in the Rev. Archseol. beloved son Thotmes (Thotmes 1S61, iv. 19b. IV., eighteenth dynasty), I am thy THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 55 the admirable publication of M. E. Naville. In its essence it was unquestionably a nature-myth, but of the most exalted kind, in which the actors are not simply natural phenomena deified, but are already nature-spirits, a sort of abstraction and personification of the powers of nature. Of this kind is the mythic conception of the conflict between the light and the darkness, between life and death. Day and night succeeding each other, the sweet revivifying warmth of spring followed by the scorching heats of summer, all contributed features to the picture. From a remote period, however, this nature-myth was ^ for the Egyptians the mere outward form of a dogma, which was the very foundation of the faith they cherished, faith in the triumph of light and life over darkness and death, faith in the eternal order. They found a pledge of this faith in the changing phenomena of nature, and in the regular succession of the kings, the representatives of Horos on earth. An historical application of the myth was made, there can be no doubt, in very early times. The struggle main- tained by the kings in their effort to unite all the divisions of Egypt under one sceptre, the wars carried on against barbarian invaders, or against foreign powers, were all referred back to the celestial drama. There is to be found, however, no particular and definite historical fact under- lying the myth, it simply expresses the lasting antagonism between the pure Egyptian race and foreign races. Yet, while this is the case, we must not suppose the origin of the myth is to be found in this struggle : the truth is, that the myth was, in the course of centuries, so modified as to reproduce the features of this national struggle. Side by side with the three sun-gods stand three god- desses who, from the nature of the case, differ from each other even less than the three gods to whom they are assigned as wives and sisters. These are Isis, Nephthys, and Hathor. Isis with a thousand names, as she was afterwards A 56 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. called, enjoyed in the later centuries of the Egyptian kingdom, especially under the Ptolemies, greater honours than all the other gods, with the exception, perhaps, of Hathor. It was then that the beautiful, much frequented, and often described temple, situated on the island of Philak, was dedicated to her. At that time, too, her worship found its way to other peoples, so that she with her little Horos on her bosom became the model for the Madonna col bambino. An attempt has been made to prove from this that her rank was higher than that of her husband, 1 an idea that, at least as regards the most ancient, purely Egyptian period, is utterly untenable. In ancient times the place she occupied was rather in the background, and before long she was cast into the shade by other goddesses, such as Hathor, Mut of Thebes, Sechet of Memphis, and others ; or else was wor- shipped merely in combination with these. Yet we know with certainty that she already had, even under the earliest dynasties, temples of her own. Her name (As) gives no clue to her nature, for whether this is under- stood to mean " the ancient," or whether we suppose, as I think is much to be preferred, that it signifies " the exalted, the worthy of being revered," 2 both meanings are too general to give us any information about the nature of this deity. After their usual fashion, the Greeks have compared her to some half-dozen of their own goddesses, but especially to Demeter, Persephone, and Hera, a clear proof that she is not to be altogether identified with any one among them all. Still, these comparisons are not quite without foundation. As wife of Osiris, the god of the kingdom of the dead, or, to take the name given to her most frequently, as " Ptoyal consort of Unnefer," she is 1 This is asserted by Sharpe, to has not the chair for determina- Hist. of Egypt, i. 23. tive. With this determinative, at 2 Mariette (Rev. Archaeol. 1866, least with a person seated, it sig- p. 85) explains A s by TraXaia. The mfies "adorned," and " worthy of word does actually occur with that reverence, exalted." And since the signification (see Brugsch, W. B., hieroglyph of Isis is a chair, the latter p. 120) ; but in the instance referred signification must certainly be chosen. THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 57 herself called " Mistress of Shetu," one of the designations of the kingdom of the dead, and in this respect she corre- sponds to Persephone. With Demeter, mother-earth, she has this in common, that she is " the great divine mother," and goddess of fertility. As mother goddess she wears her coif in the form of a vulture, a bird which was looked upon as the emblem of maternity ; or in place of a human head she has that of a cow, a symbol that needs no ex- planation ; 1 and she is also called Ocrlialat, " the great power," the nature-power of conception and birth deified in her person. It is now impossible to tell precisely to what natural phenomena the character of Isis at first referred. Origi- nally she was a goddess of fecundity, the goddess par excellence, as wife of the supreme god and mother of the god Horos, the avenger of his father. In common with all the Egyptian deities of a certain rank, she was regarded as mistress of heaven, daughter of Ea, and she shared with Horos the title of Lord of the two worlds, and his em- blems of celestial power, the solar disk, horns, and ureus adder. She was accordingly a goddess of heaven, sister, daughter, mother of the sun-god, and in respect of these titles may be likened to Hera-Dione, the Juno of the Italians, who, as goddess of the nocturnal heavens and of the moon, is wife of Zeus or Jupiter, originally god of day and of the bright heaven. As goddess of night, her head is the moon. It is almost impossible to draw a sharp line of distinction between Isis and her sister Nephthys, who is called like- wise mother goddess and goddess of heaven, and she too 1 The opinion of Wilkinson that proves that, before the Osirian my- she owes her cow's head to her iden- thology became fixed, Isis was in tification with Hathor, is refuted by some localities regarded as consort an ancient myth which relates how of Set, and in that character was her son Horos, in order to punish represented with the shape of a cow. her for her mildness towards Set, She, likewise, is found under the smote off her head, and how Thot form of a female hippopotamus, a gave her a cow's head in place of it. form which is pretty common even The myth points to a combination down to later times, and which of Isis with Set ; in other words, it marks her as the wife of Set*. 58 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. wears the vulture hood and the sun's disk, with the horns on her head, and also is called " mistress of heaven," and it is said of her that she bestows fulness of life and joy. 1 Not unfrequently she is confounded with Isis, who, in one instance, has been discovered wearing on her head the hieroglyphic emblem of Nephthys. 2 And while on the one hand Isis is sometimes found designated as wife of Set, Nephthys, on the other hand, is said to have become by Osiris the mother of Anubis, whom Isis in her turn brought up; so that before the Osirian mythology was fixed, we see that Nephthys was regarded by some of the worshippers of Osiris as the lawful wife of this beneficent deity, and it is perhaps in connection with this that she is called NeU-ha, i.e., " mistress of the house." The well-known fact may be repeated here that nearly all the myths about the adultery of the gods sprang simply from this, that in different localities the principal deities were found coupled with different consorts. One among these, she who was most honoured, or the goddess of the ruling tribe, was by and by declared to be the lawful spouse, while the others sank to the rank of concubines. Nephthys never shared the evil fame of Set her husband, the god of death. Along with Isis, she bewails the mur- dered Osiris, and watches over the beloved dead with outstretched wings. 3 While, accordingly, she is named guardian of the dead, it is in a favourable sense. She presides at the close of life, but it is a close which leads to victory. The signification of Isis and Nephthys as nature god- desses comes out with somewhat greater clearness in the description of the divine ship of Horos. It is said there that the yard is the goddess of heaven (Nu), and that Isis and Nephthys are the two extremities of this yard. They must therefore be considered as the two extremities of 1 Pleyte, Lettre a Devéria, p. 17. 3 Brugsch, Die Adonisklage 2 Wilkinson, M. & C. Suppl., PL das Linoslied, p. 23. 34, No- 2. THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 59 heaven, the two horizons, whether the east and the west, or the north and the south, or, as that which is quite the same thinq-, the morning and evening twilight. CD' O OO The name Nephthys (Ncbt-ha), " mistress of the house," was undoubtedly understood originally in a physical sense, the house being that to which the sun returns at the end of his course, that is, the nocturnal heavens ; but afterwards Nephthys became, like Isis, the exalted, a symbol of the wife of kings, the heavenly type of the Egyptian matron, whose usual designation was " mistress of the house." This moral signification appears to have secured to her a place in the Osirian pantheon beside Isis, to whom, as a nature goddess, she so entirely corresponds. 1 Another goddess of the Egyptian pantheon, Hathor, in quite as great a degree as Nephthys, resembles Isis, and was in a much greater degree identified with her. Thougli no definite part is assigned to her in the w r ell-known myth of Osiris, we must nevertheless consider her in this con- nection. That she was sometimes confounded with Isis is not astonishing, since she had in common with her a form with a human or with a cow's head, the coif being adorned sometimes with the very emblems of Isis ; and also the form of a cow. Hathor too is the mother and nurse of Horos, and at the same time his wife. Among the names by which she is designated in her principal temple at Dendera, that of Isis occurs frequently, and she is there even called " Hathor who is Isis at Dendera," although it is to be noticed that these inscriptions at least belong to a later period; but, at any rate, she was placed on a line with Isis at an early date. With Nu likewise, of w T hom we shall speak presently, she had not a few points in com- 1 The explanation is well known presented as the sister of Isis, and that makes Nephthys goddess of as grieved at the death of Osiris ? It the desert between the Eastern Nile is certain there is nothing on the bank and the Red Sea, Set the deso- monuments to justify this view, which lating wind of the Libyan desert, is a mere intellectual conceit, origi- Osiris the Nile, and Isis the earth, nating at a time when the primary But how in that case is it conceivable signification of the myths was not that Nephthys should have been re- understood. 6o HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. mon; for example, she is said, like Nu, to have been " She who brought forth all the gods," and seated in the heavenly sycamore, she pours out the waters of life. If it be asked whether this intermixture of deities is of ancient date, I would answer that in my opinion it is not, -and that the conception according to which she is goddess of love and beauty, of joy and of song, has equally little claim to anti- quity. That conception is, indeed, not foreign to her nature, but it appears to have arisen from the circum- stance that the Greeks regarded her in the same light as their Aphrodite. Her worship prevailed so extensively as to supplant that of Nu, Nephthys, and Isis ; and we may take for granted that the peculiar attributes of these god- desses with whom she had so much in common were insensibly transferred to her, for this was a process very usual in Egyptian theology. She too, like the majority of Egyptian goddesses, is mistress of the visible heaven and of the invisible. She is not, like the mourning Nephthys, the guardian of the dead, but rather goddess of the heavens by day, bathed in the pure bright sunshine, and of the heavens at night, glittering with the mild light of the stars, the fertile and fertilising mother, bestower of plea- sure and of good fortune. In this character she is the first-born of the beginning, the nurse who satiates gods and goddesses with her gifts, and fills Egypt to overflowing with her benefits. It is she who, as Nub, the golden one, first receives and greets the sun at his rising and at his setting, that is, at his birth and at his death. Mother of the young god of the sun, she bears likewise the name of daughter or child of Ea, the sun-god in general, the creator. Hence, as Horos is called the golden god, she is called golden goddess. In Egypt there is presented at sunset and sunrise a spectacle so magnificent that it can scarcely be imagined by those who have not witnessed it. "The western horizon," to quote the words of Ampère, " is a furnace of molten gold, the stems and foliage of the palm trees are likewise gold, THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 61 and through this dazzling glow the purple tints of the hills can just be perceived. The sky and the Nile become in turn rose-coloured and violet, like the colours of an ame- thyst, then the light dies away." 1 The moral significance of goddess of beauty and of love, of joy and of the pleasure of life, of song and of stringed instruments of music, was evolved naturally from the physical signification, although, perhaps, the influence of the Greek spirit may have tended to bring this aspect into greater prominence. It was very natural too that even in the most ancient times she was worshipped as patron saint at mines, whether they were dug 2 to obtain red copper or precious stones, for there could be found for such works no patroness so suitable as the goddess who from her dark womb brought forth to the light the golden sun. 3 Besides the three pairs of gods already mentioned, two other deities also belong to the Osirian family. Usually they stand alone without any consort. 4 These are Thot and Anubis. Thot (Thuti or Thui) had, from the most remote anti- quity, his principal temple at Sesennu (Ashmunein) in Upper Egypt, a town mentioned on the monuments of the very earliest dynasties as being sacred to him, and the sacred appellation of which (Sesennu, Ashmunein = eight) is derived from the eight gods of creation who were 1 Ampère, Voyage en Egypte et Rev. d. deux Mondes, 1S67, p. 1S9) en Nubie, p. 296. regard her as the nocturnal, or, as 2 Brugsch, Wanderung nach den they call it, the heaven of the under- Turkisininen und der Sinai Halb- world, I believe this to be incorrect, insel, pp. 12, 74, 80. Accord- It would at least leave unexplained ing to Brugsch, the mines there, various attributes of Hathor, about which so early as the time of the which there is no difficulty according kings of the eleventh dynasty were to the explanation I give, worked out, were not, as Lepsius 4 It was not until he had become considered them to be, copper mines, Thot, the thrice great, Hermes Tris- but turquois mines. If he is right, megistus, that at Troja, near Mem- the blue gems taken out of the mine phis, at Philak and at other places, were a fitting image of the blue he was coupled with Nehemanus, heaven that would seem to be dug or Nehemau, one of the forms of out from the masses of dark clouds, Hathor. See Lepsius, D. Götter represented by the mountain. der vier Elementen, taf. iv., No. 13. 3 Though Mariette and Maury Brugsch, Reiseberichte, p. 45. (Rev. Archseol., 1S62, vi. 133, and 62 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. worshipped there along with him. As to his nature there is no room for doubt. He bears the moon's disk between two horns on his head, and on that account, and for other reasons, he must unquestionably be regarded as god of the moon. Moon deities of the male sex are not uncommon in other mythologies — in the Germanic and Eoman, for instance; and among the Babylonians and Assyrians, Sin, the god of the moon, occupied a very high rank. Accordingly we find Thot has a place in the bark of the sun, where the principal light-gods were grouped together. He is " King of Eternity," and in that character holds in his hand a palm branch, the symbol of the year, and upon it marks occurrences of importance, or the periods of time. That the moon-god should also be god of time, and thus of eternity, is not to be wondered at among a people who at first were acquainted only with the lunar year. In reference to this a peculiar myth exists. Thot, so it is related, invented draughts, and won from the moon the five intercalary days that at a later period were added to the lunar year. 1 Thot, by this time no longer the moon itself regarded as a divine being, but distinct from it, and become now the god of science, wins from her the five days she would not give of her own accord. In other words, the improved mode of reckoning time was ascribed to the god who invented all the arts and was the fountain of all knowledge ; and since he was so closely connected with the moon, it was fabled that he had won from her these five days by gaming. 2 As God of the moon, Thot is likewise governor of the four winds — the winds, that is to say, of the night — just as the sun-god brought forth the four winds of the day " by the fire of his mouth." Ancient peoples conceived of the wind as 1 See Birch, Rev. Archaeol., 1S65, is at the head of those of the heavtn. u. 57- All we know is, that the Babylonian 2 I cannot satisfactory explain moon-god Sin also was commonly why Thot, in particular, instead of named "the protector," or "the illu- or along with Seb, is placed at the minator of the earth." head of the gods of the earth as Horos THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 63 being the breath of the creative, light-giving god, whether revealed in sun or moon, and Thot as well as Ea is creator. Yet, although this natural signification was never lost sight of, a moral significance also was attributed to Thot even in the most remote antiquity. He was the god of knowledge, of letters, of priestly culture, the only culture Egypt had, and accordingly god of the priests par excellence. The connection between these qualities and his lunar character is easily understood. Science began with the observation of the heavenly bodies and the computation of time, and for these studies no more suitable patron could be found than the god of the moon, who, with her peaceful light, rules the stillness of night. All work demanding more than common skill and intelligence was consecrated to him. Thus, he was worshipped in combination with Hathor and Horos-sophd at the mines in Sinai. As inventor of all arts and of writ- ing, he was master of the divine word, the writer who composed or inspired 1 the holy scriptures. He was the founder of libraries, and it was he who bestowed their significant names on the kings. He was the lawgiver, too, whose laws were immutable. In the under- world he filled the post of advocate and justifier of the good, who, through his pleading, gained an acquittal at the judgment throne of Osiris, who had once himself been in like manner acquitted through the advocacy of Thot. 2 This may, per- haps, have originally had a natural sense ; the god of the moon, which receives its light from the invisible sun, may easily, in poetico-mythological language, have come to be iboked on as the justifier of the sun-god, the pledge of his beneficence, the instrument of his revival. Thus Thot became in general the justifier of all who think themselves injured or disowned. " The god Thot," so exclaims the scribe Hui in his pleading {Papyrus Anastasi I.), " stands as a shield behind me." 3 Along with him worship 1 See Book of the Dead, xviii. 24. fur Aeg. sprache, &c., 186S, p. I et 2 Rev. Archseol., 1863, viii. 105. scq., and Lauth, Moses der Ebraër, 3 Compare De Horrack in the Zs. p. 84. 64 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. was rendered, even in the remotest antiquity, to the goddess Safech, 1 the mistress of libraries, represented as a woman adorned almost always with a panther's skin, the dress of the higher priesthood, and bearing on her head an emblem that seems to mark her as goddess of the starlight. As far as I know, however, she is never spoken of as wife of Thot. 2 The animals sacred to him were the ibis and clogheaded ape. He is often represented under the latter form, which is also assumed by the eight gods (the Sesennu) who form his retinue. He, in common with these animals, bears also the name of Asten, or Astennu. This was an animal which was regarded in Egypt, for what reason we do not very well know, as the symbol of the equality of day and night, and generally of equilibrium, of equality. It is for this reason that Asten is constantly represented seated upon the beam of the sacred balance precisely above the index, in the psychos- tasias as well as in the temples. From the first, very great honour was paid to Thot, and as the power and influence of his patrons the priests increased, and the country became more civilised, the favour he enjoyed augmented steadily. From great he rose to twice great, to thrice great, and when the name and imao-e of Set were obliterated from the monuments, o it was most frequently Thot who took the vacant place. At the time, too, when a new religion, the universal reli- gion that took its rise in Palestine, began slowly to supplant the ancient Egyptian one, Hermes Trismegistus was the god in whom, more than any other, men gloried, and under his name a sort of theosophy was propagated which had no little influence on the formation of early Christian doctrine. A god of much less importance, and who was very speedily cast into the shade 3 by other deities is Anubis 1 Comp. Lepsius, Aelt. Texte des Reiseberichte, p. 294 ct seq. ) ; Ma, Todtenbuchs, p. 3, n. Her name Goddess of Righteousness ; and must be written as in the text, and Pacht, the wife of Ptah, the mistress not, as it usually is, Saf. of thoughts (ibid., p. 264). 2 Other gods of libraries and lite- 3 The conjecture of Brugsch, that rature are Atmu of Thebes (Brugsch, he anciently occupied the place taken THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 65 Anup (from an = to conduct). He is, as his name imports, the conductor of the dead, the god of mummies and of embalming, and he may always be recognised by his jackal's head. Thus, he may be seen ("Book of the Dead/' chap, cxvii.) conducting the dead to the western gate Sta. In the tombs (e.g., tomb No. 32 at Qurna) he is frequently found depicted as a guardian standing beside the mummy. One of his most usual names is Ap-heru, guardian of the ways, that is to say, of the heavenly path- ways over which the dead pass towards the abode of Osiris. He is brought into connection with the Dogstar which occupies so prominent a place in the Egyptian mythology and chronology. 1 Perhaps he is nothing but this star per- sonified as a divine being. Among other nations also, as is well known, Sirius, the most brilliant of the fixed stars, was worshipped as a god, and among the Hindoos, Per- sians, and Greeks, it was held in the highest estimation. It is a star peculiarly fitted to be regarded as keeping vigil over the body of Osiris and as conductor to the regions of light, and it was indeed called the soul of Isis. Accord- ing to the common tradition Anubis was a son of Osiris and Nephthys, whence it appears that in the localities where homage was paid to Osiris and Nephthys as divine consorts, he usually occupied the third place in the divine triad of father, mother, and son. He is, however, also designated as a son of Osiris and Isis, or of Set and Nephthys, and in connection with these pairs he appears likewise to have filled the place of son. Like all gods of light he is son of the sun. All the gods of the Osirian circle are descendants of common ancestors, Seb and Nu, whose precise signification is difficult to define. But if, instead of taking each of the names which have been given to them into consideration by itself, we comprise them all in one view, a satisfactory by Osiris, while in no way proved, * See Chabas, Pap. Mag. Harris has not hitherto been confirmed by p. 101. the most ancient monuments. 66 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. explanation is reached. It is accordingly proved beyond question by a very great number of texts, that Seb is a god of the earth or a personification of the earth, who even became completely identified with it at a later period. But the earth is here looked upon as material substance, durable, lasting, eternal, existing for ever. For this among other reasons, King Menkaura is called, upon a sarcophagus, offspring of Nut and flesh of Seb. Seb is therefore the most ancient of the gods, " Lord of the length of time, of eternity," 1 and he is hence constantly named the most ancient sovereign. It is no doubt on account of this that the Greeks have compared him with their Kronos, who likewise was the king of the golden age of old. It is however incorrect to designate him, as Lepsius and to a certain extent Mariette still do, as the god of time, which neither he nor Kronos was. Upon various tombs Seb is represented as recumbent, while Kut, goddess of heaven, forms above him as it were an arched vault, exactly simi- lar to the representations of Ymer the German giant of matter, and Audhumbla the cow of heaven. His ordinary symbol is however the goose, that according to Egyptian tradition laid the egg of the world. His wife Nu or Nu-tpe is likewise called " She who brought forth the gods." She has this in common with most of the Egyptian goddesses, that she is regarded as a goddess of heaven. Like Hathor, she too sits in the heavenly sycamore and pours forth the waters of life into the hands of a soul that refreshes itself with them, or she even pours down a stream of all sorts of gifts, such as flowers and fruits upon her patrons. She is undoubtedly the goddess of water regarded as a cosmogonic principle, of the heavenly ocean, who gives water to the souls of the departed usually identified with the stars, and in fertilis- ing dew she causes all kinds of blessings to come down on the earth. At night, when even the moon is invisible, all that is 1 So Champollion Monumens, PI. CLXII. THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 67 in the universe, all the gods of the luminous heaven are at rest (cmhotep) in peace. The heaven rests upon the earth like a goose brooding over her egg. The earth-god alone continues to reign. The mistress of the heavenly ocean alone shares his vigil, and reveals herself in the clear star- light, continuing all the night through to bestow her bene- fits ; all the other gods are hidden. Thus must it have been, thought the Egyptian, once in the beginning of things. Then there existed no others, save the eternal god, the god of everlasting substance and the eternal waters that covered and overflowed all things. But just as each morning from the marriage of these two the gods of the clear daylight heaven are born, so it happened before the ages ; so before Osiris came into being, or Horos, or any one of the gods, did Seb the father of them all bear sway. With this mythology is connected the doctrine of im- mortality, which in no other ancient people is so fully developed, or occupies so prominent a place in the theo- logical system, as among the Egyptians. It is indeed the case that the doctrine did not arise out of the mythology, but was merely brought into close connection with it. So soon as man relinquishes the standpoint of instinctive belief, he begins to reflect, to reason, to seek a basis for his faith. The first pledge of renewal of life after death was discovered in what men saw happen to the sun every day and every year. He too died, and he revived. And was not he a living being ? Had not he become a personal deity 1 Were not men his children ? Thus the Egyptians reasoned, and not only they but others as well, and among them the Hindoos, so that this mode of reasoning appears to have been, from remotest antiquity, peculiar to the whole Caucasian race, and not special to the Mesopotamians or the Aryans ; unless it be met with, which I am not aware of, in other races likewise. It is at all events certain, that the belief in immortality, the hope of life eternal, was in no other people more deeply rooted than among the Egyptians. Diodorus truly 68 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. observes, " The Egyptians call the dwellings of the living inns, because in them they live but a short time; the tombs of the dead, however, they call eternal abodes, since in Hades they continue to live on in a limitless eternity." Hence the Egyptian was filled with anxiety about his grave more than about anything else. Eor example, a cer- tain Saneha, who lived under the first kings of the twelfth dynasty, had been banished, but had had the good fortune to be well received at the court of a neighbouring — probably Libyan — prince. There he rose to the highest posts of honour, and, with his family, was at home. He lived in luxury and overflowing abundance. But the thought that he must die there, that he would not be carried to the grave in his native land, and would thus fail to secure a new birth and eternal power of changing his shape ; this thought oppressed him and made him look out anxiously for leave to return home. It was given, the king remembered him, and desired his return, holding out as one of the strongest inducements the same consideration, " Think upon the day of your burial, the journey to Amenti, for you have already reached middle age." He promises that the interment shall be splendid. Saneha, on his part, does not hesitate, but leaves everything, even his very children, behind him in order to erect without delay a magnificent tomb in pre- paration for his approaching death. It is no wonder then that a hope so lively left its impress on the teachings of their faith, and became fixed as a dogma. The Egyptian expressed it in this way — The deceased, provided he had lived piously, as a child of light, becomes Osiris. Like that of the sun-god, his shade sinks gently down in the West, while his soul ascends to heaven, and his body is laid in the tomb. Next, it depends on what happens to himself, that is, to his shade, whether his soul shall be re- united to his body and he shall thus revive again to life. He enters that world which at one time is called " the hidden " (Amenti), at another " the reversed world of the double righteousness " (Set-i or Set-mati), and again " the land of THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 6<) rest " (Teser), or also Crier- nuter, " the divine under-world." There, as a sinner, he must be judged. The judgment, how- ever variously it may be described, in its principal features amounts to the following : — first, it is ascertained whether the deceased is Osiris, or in other words, whether he is re- lated to the divine good being. Ma, the goddess of truth and righteousness, or Horos himself, conducts him within. His soul is then weighed on the divine balance by Anubis, Horos, and Thot. The last mentioned records the sum total, and, if it be possible, justifies the soul. Finally, he is brought by Horos before Osiris, who, seated upon his throne of judgment, with the hell-monster before him, the four genii of the dead close by, and surrounded by the seventy-two judges, gives a verdict. Should it be one of condemnation, the soul has to undergo the second death, and is delivered up to annihilation. One of the gods — either the terrible Set, or Horos, or it may be one of the serpents, Sapi or Apap, demons of darkness, or the bene- volent Turn, the hidden sun-god, in fact another Osiris — cuts off his head. The punishment did not, however, end with the execution, which, it would appear, did not ex- tinguish consciousness. At least, he is next cast into the everlasting flames. A never-ending death seems to have been the conception of the punishment of hell entertained by the Egyptians. This punishment was likewise per- sonified in the female demon Auai, a name that would seem to have been suggested by the sound of " weeping and gnashing of teeth." We have already noticed other modes of punishment, as for instance that of being torn and devoured by an evil spirit and then transmuted into its excrement. There were many such punishments, and it would appear that there was a difference in the penal- ties, according to the different sins of which men had been guilty, for hell had seventy-five compartments. The deepest misery was frequently expressed by say- ing that the condemned see not the light, and are no longer kept in remembrance. To sit in everlasting darkness — 7o HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. a phrase that irresistibly recalls the outer darkness of the Gospel — and to be forgotten, were the most dreadful ideas to the mind of the good Egyptian, the friend of the light, who his whole life long esteemed no effort that he could make too great, if he could thereby immortalise himself. Yet he who, on the other hand, was not condemned, did not, on account of that, escape henceforth from all con- flict : he was obliged to be purified in battle and cleansed by fire. He must pass through fifteen or more portals, at which the most terrifying trials awaited him. Monsters attacked him, he was menaced by dangers, nets were laid to ensnare him ; at one time he was obliged to travel through desolate tracts where nothing grew, and which were under the dominion of seven evil spirits; then he had to sail over the heavenly ocean, and in his voyage was — just as they were who sailed in the bark of the sun — perpetually in danger of falling overboard and being drowned ; some- times he was caught in the mazes of a labyrinth. But if he kept steadfast and fought bravely with the sacred spear, and repeated the magical words of power from the sacred books and hymns, he reached at last the happy fields, the aalu-fields, where a lordly banquet was served up to him. There he could labour again as he once did on earth, cultivating the soil and gathering in a fabulous harvest. There he is illuminated by the glory of Osiris, and bathes himself in contemplation of the god of light. There, too, he may, as a spirit of light {dm), accompany the sun-god in his bark, sailing over the heavenly ocean, or at night (as sahu) he may sparkle in the firmament as a star. He is now one of the pious (amliu), the faithful (hesu), the wise (akeru), the rich (asii). Accordingly, to be with the deity and to be like him is, even in this, the oldest development of the doctrine of immortality, what constitutes salvation. It may perhaps excite astonishment that in this doctrine no mention is made of the metempsychosis, nor of a distinct resurrection of the dead out of the tomb — dogmas that have THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 71 been hitherto ascribed to the Egyptians on the authority of Herodotus. According to the Greek historian, the soul of the departed is said to have passed into an animal, and after having gone through all the ranks of the animal world, it was at the end of three thousand years reunited to the human body. On the monuments, however, next to nothino- has been discovered that can be said to confirm o this account. In the tomb of one of the Eamesids indeed there is a representation that might suggest such a doctrine. The departed, after having been judged by Osiris, is being removed under the form of a pig, the unclean animal, upon a bark guided by two dogheaded apes, the animals of Thot, the whole being under the superintendence of Anubis. Apparently, the deceased is being taken to the place of torment, and not, as is usually believed, to the earth. 1 This representation is, however, unique, and is assuredly symbolical. Herodotus probably formed a false idea of the well-known Egyptian doctrine of the metamorphoses of the dead. According to the Book of the Dead 2 the de- ceased may assume all sorts of shapes — that of a sparrow- hawk, an adder, a crocodile-headed god — in order by this expedient to trick his enemies, exactly as we learn from the myths Osiris used to do. Not until after this is the soul, which always accompanies the shade in the form of a sparrowhawk with human head, reunited to the body. But all this happens in the kingdom of the dead, not on earth. It is quite possible that the father of history mis- took the doctrine taught by Pythagoras among the Greeks for a genuine Egyptian one. Perhaps, too, at a later period there may have arisen among the inhabitants of the Nile valley a dogma of the soul's incarnation evolved from the ancient eschatology. If so, that dogma is certainly not ancient, and their original doctrine of immortality is nothing but a mystic representation arising out of sun-worship. Just as the setting of the sun was for them a separation of the 1 See Wükinson, M. and C. Suppt., PI. LXXXVIL 2 Book of the Dead, chap, lxxxix. 72 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. body and the soul of the radiant god, and his rising a reunion of the two, so, they believed, was likewise the future lot of man. With the sun-^od he in like manner rose again to life, to life in a higher sphere. Meanwhile, much in the faith of the ancient Egyptians still remains obscure. The study of the Book of the Dead, a study still in its infancy, will assuredly cast new light on many points. Thus, for example, it is still customary to speak of the underworld, the subterranean heaven, but I have very great doubts whether Cher Nuter is really properly a subterranean tract, and I should be much more inclined to recognise in it the highest, the hidden heaven. I am not, of course, a stranger to the idea that the matter must be represented as follows — the sun-god and they who, like him, die, sink into the tomb, enter in the west the kingdom of the dead, the hidden heaven, and make their way thence, not beneath the earth, but above the visible heaven, in the opposite direction, towards the east- There is a great deal to be found in confirmation of this conception in the representations and expressions on the monuments, yet on this point I do not venture to speak with certainty, but await a solution of the problem from a closer investigation of the sources. The myth of Osiris is in any case sufficiently clear. It sprang from the soil of nature-worship and always re- mained rooted there ; yet it had, even in the earliest his- torical times, an ethical signification. Osiris is, unques- tionably, the sun-god who dies every day and falls a prey every evening to the demon of darkness, the serpent Apap. Bewailed by the goddess of heaven, his sister and consort, he revives each morning in the youthful sun, the serpent- slayer, the avenger of his father. In the night, unseen by mortal eye, the conflict takes place between the youthful Horos and the powers of darkness, for it is only after the battle has been fought out that he can in the morning proceed on his journey. But the earth keeps vigil, and with her the celestial watchman Sirius, while the moon- THE RELIGION OF THINIS-ABYDOS. 72 god displays himself as substitute for the sun-god, and as the living pledge of his return. That is the simple nature- ground from which the myth arose. Afterwards, when the actors in the drama were conceived as being in a greater degree human, the place of the serpent Apep was taken by Set, the god of the scorching sun heat, who had by this time become the god of all violent natural phenomena in general, and among them of death. Hence, by a natural transition, he was regarded as the murderer of his brother, and the great foe of the youthful sun. As agriculture rose in importance in the Nile valley, the myth was un- doubtedly likewise applied to the change of the seasons. It is, for instance, often brought into connection with the periodical inundation of the river. But the purely natural element of the myth belongs to the prehistoric period. When we first become acquainted with Osiris he is already more than a nature-god, he has already become a type of man dying and reviving again, and at the same time the supreme hidden god, lord of creation, who reveals himself in the sun, and in other beneficent natural phenomena. Already, in the consciousness of the ancient Egyptians, this myth is the expression of their faith in that triumph of life over death that is to be seen in all that exists, in the course of the sun, and in the returning fruitfulness of the earth. It was on this faith in the victory of life over death that they based their hope of immortality. But, besides, the myth expressed also their faith in the triumph of good, of virtue. They who, while they lived on earth, had been like the good deity and obedient to his com- mands, would, when, like him, they died, overcome with him, and after the victory reign with him in the abodes of light. ( 74 ) CHAPTEE IV. THE RELIGION OF HELIOPOLIS. A place even more renowned than Abydos is Pa-ra, the city of the sun, or as the Greeks translated it, Heliopolis. It lies a little to the east of the Nile, and not far from the spot where Memphis was bnilt. Its usual name among the Egyptians and Hebrews was An, or On, a name borne also by two towns in the south — Hermonthis and Dendera. 1 To this place, according to the Hebrew narrator, the wife of Joseph, Asnet, or Asnath (Exalted Keith, or simply Isis-Neith), is said to have belonged ; she being called a daughter of Potiphera (Peti-p-ra, dedi- cated to the sun-god), priest of On. 2 At a later time On became almost completely a Hebrew town, and, in fact, the religion of this locality must, more than that of any other, have agreed with that of the ancient Hebrews. In Egypt also, Heliopolis was held in the greatest esteem ; coronation ceremonies took place there as at Memphis, and the kings who were crowned there had the special 1 An signifies •' pillar, stone." which occurs as the name of a per- The name may thus have been given son, and then represents the supreme to the towns on account of some god, the name of the deity himself ? remarkable structure, an obelisk In any case it cannot be mere acci- perhaps, but it is more likely that dent that the name An is borne by the reference here is to a sacred the three cities where the victorious stone, an aerolite that would be kept Sun or Light-god, as Ra-har-em-chu, hidden in the innermost sanctuary. Har-munt, and Har-hut was the local The spot in or near Heliopolis where deity. An or Ana, which in theproto- this object of the greatest mystery Babylonian language signifies "hea- was kept veiled from the eyes of all ven," has nothing to do with the except the king, who beheld it at Egyptian word, nor has the god his consecration, was called "Ha- Anubis (Egyp. Anup) the least con- benben, the house of the two nection with it. pyramids or obelisks." Or is An, 2 Gen. xli. 45. THE RELIGION OF HELIOPOLIS. 75 title bestowed on them of Haq-an, sovereign lord of On. The priesthood of Heliopolis was regarded as an excep- tionally learned one, and this town appears to have been the cradle of the entire sacred literature. The religion that had its seat there was no less ancient and venerable than that of Osiris, and, like it, prevailed at a later period throughout all Egypt. Upon the same extremely ancient monuments on which we read the names of Osiris and Isis, there occurs in brotherly union with these that of Ea, the chief god of On. The place he takes in the Book of the Dead is in no way less honourable and important than that assigned to Osiris. They are there confounded with each other ; now the one, now the other being the greatest ; now the one, then the other being mediator. Yet from the remotest antiquity there is not the slightest trace of any jealousy having ever existed between these two closely related worships. It was felt even then that the two were one under a diversity of form ; or rather, for that is saying too much, it was felt that the two were one in spirit and form, and differed only in some names and trifling idiosyncrasies. The myth of Osiris might be described as more Semitic in character, while that of Ea is more Aryan. In every point Osiris corresponds to the beneficent sun-god of the Semites, to Adonis or Thammuz, killed by the consuming god of the summer sun. Ea, on the other hand, is like all the Aryan gods of the light and of the sky; he fights against the demon of darkness, the serpent Apap, who, properly speaking, is not a god in the same way as are Indra, Apollon, and others. These analogies ought not, however, to lead us in any way to imagine that foreign elements were introduced into the religion of the Egyptians, or to think that they may have adopted the myths of a people anterior to them in history. It would be more accurate to regard the two conceptions as two different ways of expressing the same mythological strug- gle, each being, the one among the Semites, the other 76 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. among the Aryans, a development of one principal myth. Each people found the germ of this myth in a primitive myth which they severally took over from their common ancestors at a time anterior to the period when the race to which both belong divided into two distinct families. The myth was afterwards developed by each people under the action of special influences which determined its peculiar drift and the mould into which its ideas have been cast, the influence of climate being especially noticeable. In this way both the resemblances and the points of difference which have struck historians are alike fully explained. The correspondence between Osiris and Ea worship in their forms is evident enough. Horos, the divinely per- sonified being common to both systems, is represented in the Osirian mythology under two forms, namely, as Horos the elder, father and brother of Osiris, and as Horos the child. The Heliopolitan visible sun-god is likewise split into two persons. Ea, in a narrower sense, god of the sun by day, and Harmachis (Har-m-achu) the rising sun-god, the sun-god appearing to view on the horizon. Ea and Horos had the same symbol, the sparrow-hawk. Atum or Turn, repeatedly called god of An, was in reality identical with Osiris, and in the vignettes of the " Book of the Dead" is confounded with him (17, 34, and elsewhere). Shu, the god of An, as he is most commonly named, we find a^ain at Thinis as Nunhur. The difference between the two seems to have been this, that while at Abydos, the place of honour was occupied by the dead or hidden god Osiris, at Heliopolis, on the other hand, it was Ea, the self-revealing god, who took the chief place, how great soever might be the honours paid there to Turn also. Hence the doctrine of the resurrection took a more prominent place in the Osirian theology than in that of Ea, although the "Book of the Dead" shows that Ea worship was brought into connection with this doctrine in very early times. THE RELIGION OF HELIOPOLIS. 77 But the contents of the two systems are even more in accordance than the forms. This is seen among other instances from the above-quoted seventeenth chapter of the " Book of the Dead." I believe I do not err in consid- ering Heliopolis to be the place where the original text of this chapter was composed. The gods mentioned in it belong to this locality. An is the goal of the pilgrimage of the deceased, and the ideal towards which he strives is to reach this city, the holy city. De Eougé is, however, of opinion that here the heavenly An is referred to. It is a matter of course that the deceased, as always happens in Egyptian eschatology, becomes identified with the deities, so that properly it is he, not they, who speak. But it is very possible that the ancient text was originally composed with another object than to serve as a magical formula for the departed ; it may have been simply an inscription in the temple of the sun-god. However that may be, it at least makes us acquainted with the genuine Heliopolitan theology of the olden time. In this respect let us now see what may be learnt from it. 1 " I am," thus speaks the deity, or the deceased identified with him — " I am Turn, a being that is alone." This does not as yet amount to an expression of monotheistic doc- trine, for it simply means, Turn is the being who once, before the creation, existed alone. Turn, as his name imports, is the still concealed or imprisoned god, 2 in a physical sense the sun-god in the darkness of night, not revealing himself, but alive nevertheless, and who on this account is frequently likened to the setting sun. In a 1 Comp. Lepsius Aelteste Texte that is the abstract signification des Todtenbuchs, which includes a which gives here no proper sense, commentary on this portion which " The god who is not " would have I have mainly followed. been to Egyptians an impossibility. 2 I cannot agree with Pleyte's ex- The root denotes to shut up, to sepa- planation ; who is not, Theol. Tijd- rate, to hide, and from this the name schrift, 1869, No. 3, p. 243. Turn must be derived. or Tern certainly signifies not, but 78 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. cosmical sense lie is the god who, before there was diver- sity in the creation, reigned and was alone in the fathom- less abyss, or rather who was the sonl of it. On this account he is, in another passage of the Book of the Dead (yS, at the end), called " the first of the gods, the only one who does not change." " I am," thus continues the deity, " Ea in his first sovereignty," that is to say, Ea as the first ruler over all that exists, and as such, " the great sod self-existing, the creator of his name, the lord of all gods, who is upheld by none among the gods." This god comes to view out of darkness and concealment, and is the same as the hidden god, only, inasmuch as he reveals himself, he bears another name. He is not created, but exists of himself. He himself creates his name, that is, his being, and because, as we read in another passage, all the gods are said to be only manifestations or members of Ea, he is Lord of all the gods. In this character he is symbolically represented by the beetle (choper), an emblem which is proved to have been a very favourite one among the Egyptians, by the innumerable scarabaei in every sort of material that have come down to us. This symbol implies the idea of change of being through transforma- tion ; and since the transformation here referred to is that of Turn into Ea, he is under this form frequently called Tum-ra- choper, the hidden one, who alters his form to the revealed one. Another frequently recurring emblem is " Ea in his egg." The egg is the world-egg, a conception found in other mythologies likewise, and signifying, in fact, chaos. The Egyptians looked upon Ea as its germ, the motive-power who, by moving himself, was the original cause of motion. This corresponds to the signification of his name ; Ea denotes creator, for it must be derived from a root which means to make, to create. Thus, as in America and other places, he is the soul of the sun, regarded as creator of the universe. To the popular conception he was the visible sun, the sun by day THE RELIGION OF HELIOPOLIS. 79 born in the east, and passing into union, with the west. 1 But, as is proved by his name, the cosmogonic conception of him is the more ancient. It can be easily explained how he is called the divine ruler, or the first ruler of heaven, inasmuch as, not dependent on any of the other gods who all rank beneath him, he passes undisturbed on his way through the heavens. Thus he finishes his appointed course, but he does not die for ever ; " he was yesterday, he knows the morrow ; " the past and the future are his. Now, however, begins the conflict. God himself has made ready a field of battle in the stent of the crods ; at his command it is set in order. This is a rough mythological expression, for it is God's will that his various manifestations should be at strife with each other ; rejuvenescence, renewal of life, in which the idiosyncrasy, the being of the deity, consists, cannot take place but through conflict. 2 The battle-field is the land of the west, Amenti the portal of the kingdom of the dead, or the kingdom itself as a whole, and there is the proper abode of the great deity, whose name is a mystery known only to himself. For in this sense the words are to be understood, which are uttered by the deity or by the de- ceased identified with him. " I know the name of the great god whose abode is there." The interpreter, who would have us understand from this that the name was " spirit of Ea," comes certainly nearest to what the ancient author meant to indicate. For now the deity becomes " the great Bennu, who is honoured in An." Bennu is the soul of Ba {Bennu ha en Ea), and was therefore, when the mythologies of Abydos and Heliopolis were commingled, regarded often as a form of Osiris. The sun-god, after his setting, has now become a soul, and as, in his glory in the heavens, in his glittering body, he was represented as a sparrow-hawk, so in his concealment as a soul in the realm 1 Brugsch, Reiseberichte, p. 38. M. Lepage Renouf is of another opi- 2 Nuter, the generic name for the nion. See his Hibbert Lectures, p. gods, signifies, according to E. de 93 et scq. ïtoitgé, ' ; the self -rejuvenating ones/' So HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. of the dead he is represented by the Bennu-bird, the heron, which, as a bird of passage, is a symbol of immortality and of return to life. 1 This is expressly stated in the sentences that follow : " I am Chem in his appearing, whose two feathers are set upon his head." Chem is the ithyfallic god, the special god of masculine generative power. He is the youthful new sun-god, regarded as self-begetting, and as husband of his mother, a mystic expression indicating that in all his forms the deity is one and the same, and constantly renews himself by virtue of his own never-dying force. Hence it is that this form of the deity, offensive to our modern ideas of chastity, is here identified with Ea, and in the Osirian mythology with Horos, son of Osiris and Isis, and later at Thebes with Amun. Thus he has at length arrived at his divine abode, " in the sun-mountain of his father Turn." Thence he set out, and thither at last he returns home, but only to set out again from it in a never-endincr circuit. o This is now described in the continuation of chap, xvii., so far as it is possible, conjecturally and by analogy from what goes before, to discriminate the ancient text from notes and additions. From this continuation it appears that the sojourn with Turn is for the sun-god a mode of purification. The great hidden god takes away all his sins and makes him clean ; in other words, by this return to his essence the sun-god perpetually renews his body and his purity or radiancy. He next proceeds onward in his path from Turn towards the blessed heavenly fields. He says, " I am a soul and its twins," or, " My soul is becoming two twins." This means that the soul of the sun-god is one, but, now that it is born again, it divides into two principal forms. Ea was worshipped at An under his two prominent mani- 1 This heron appears to have de- the self-begetting Bennu. Brugsch, rived its name from a word signify- Hier. dem. W. B., p. 397. If this be ing " to be of the masculine gender," correct the symbolism may be diffe- and is called also bennu-cheper-tes(f, rent from that indicated in the text. THE RELIGION OF HELIOPOLIS. Si festations, as Tum the primal god, or more definitely, god of the sun at evening, and as Harmachis, god of the new sun, the sun at dawn. The Ea worship of Heliopolis had a distinctly dualistic character. Upon two door-posts, which still remain there, Brugsch read on one side the praises of Tum, on the other a record of homage paid to Harmachis. The name of the sanctuary already referred to, Ha-ben-ben, the two pyra- mids, is likewise in close connection with this. Harmachis (Har-m-achu), usually, in the popular conception, the morning- sun in contrast to Tum the evening sun, is " Horos on the horizon," or " Horos radiant," as his name imports, and therefore the sun-god as he appears shining in glory. His emblem, the sphinx with a lion's body and human head, is well known. It is the symbol of reasoning power, 1 of power enlightened and disciplined by reason. As victor over the powers of darkness, the sun-god is next found crowned as a king. " It is I," thus he exclaims, " who have received the double crown with delight; it is I on whom the burden has been laid of ruling over the gods in the day when the world is set in order by the lord of the universe." Then, as ruling prince, as king of the day, he comes forth from the king- dom of darkness into that of light, and as god of the day he is likewise " he who exterminates plagues and rules the course of the seasons," and likewise, he appears to be " the divine beetle, the self-creating one, whose substance exists by itself." The beetle (chepra, or choper) is a very common repre- sentation of Ea. In chap. xv. of the " Book of the Dead " he appears as king, with the full name of Ea Haremchu Chepra, and upon his head, which is adorned with the 1 As the visible sun-god in general is thought of as the evening sun. he is called Har-m-achuti, Horos of See Brugsch, D. Aegypt. Graber- the two horizons, and this name is welt, p. 35, in the hymns quoted thus given to Tum also whenever he there. F 82 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. double crown, he has the goddess ISTeb-un, mistress of being, that is, the divine ureus-adder, the symbol of sovereignty. There, too (xv. 19, 20), he is a god both beneficent and dreaded — beneficent towards the good, dreaded by the w T icked ; for he is the righteous one, and he passes through the heaven along with Ma, the goddess of righteousness. We must, however, guard very carefully against taking Ea as being simply the sun. It appears from the hymns addressed to Ea, included in chap. xv. of the " Book of the Dead," that at the most remote period it was already usual to distinguish betwixt the s^od and the manifesta- tions of him. In that chapter he is seemingly identified with the sun ; his splendid rising, for example, is referred to ; but, in point of fact, a careful distinction was made between the being who was an object of worship and his visible representation. The sun's disk was called " his," " his emblem." He journeys in his disk, and is designated as the ancient unknown one in his mystery (xv. 46). Even when men look at him, what they behold is nothing more than the reflected rays of his glory; even before men's eyes he still walks in his mystery. That there existed a full conviction of the unity of the deity, even when he was called by various names, is proved by collective names, such as Ea-haremchu-chepra, and other similar ones. This is, at least in Egypt, no new doctrine resulting from later theological speculations. It is found occurring on the very oldest monuments. Indeed, the position that fetishism and the worship of natural objects and phenomena as such is nothing but the vulgar cor- ruption of an originally much purer religion, nowhere appears to receive more striking confirmation than in these ancient Egyptian records. But although the facts on which this argument is founded are correctly inter- preted, and the Egyptian religion at its first appearance is already far above animism proper, I cannot agree in the inference. It is indeed the case that the most ancient THE RELIGION OF HELIOPOLIS. 83 Egyptian religion, so far as it is known to us, is at least simpler than it was in later times. We should, however, infer too much if we on that ground came to the conclu- sion that the worship of natural objects as living beings, through whose power natural phenomena are produced, is a corruption. Such worship is in all cases the original form, and it must also be the ground from which the Egyptian religion originally sprang. It is already a sym- bolic religion, as far back as we know it, but the symbols are all reformed fetishes. The degeneration which may be perceived in the Egyptian religion is a retrogression to the earlier standpoint, a revival of what seemed dead long ago, just what may be observed in all the higher religions. 1 To give an idea of the worship of Ea, I quote here from the hymns in chap. xv. of the "Book of the Dead," according to the arrangement of Lefébure and after his transla- tion: 2 — " Hail, thou who art come as Turn, and who hast been the creator of the gods ! 3 "Hail, thou who art come as soul of the holy souls in Amenti ! "Hail, supreme among the gods, who by thy beauties dost illumine the kingdom of the dead !• "Hail, thou who comest in radiance and travellest in thy disk ! " Hail, greatest of all the gods, bearing rule in the highest, l ? ö J rei «mine: in the nethermost heaven ! 1 See my Outlines of the History gods" Lefébure's translation is to of Religion, p. 8 et seq. be preferred. In other passages 2 E. Lefébure, Traduction com- Turn occurs constantly as the crea- parée des hymnes au soleil compo- tor. Comp. " Book of the Dead," i. sant le xv e chapitre du Rit. fun. Eg., 1 7, var. , cited by Brugsch, Wörter- p. 123 et seq. Lefébure divides the buch, voce Kema. Likewise "Book lines 29-33 into couplets, and ar- of the Dead," lxxix., at the beginning ranges together the five first and the where it is said: " Maker of the five last halves. His important heaven, creator of the beings pro- work has also been made use of in duced out of the world, who makes reference to the immediately pre- all kinds (sorts) of forms of exist- ceding part of the text. ence, calls the gods into life, creates 3 So Lefébure. Birch (in Bunsen, himself lord of life, who fills the Egypt's Place, pt. v. p. 170) tran- gods with fulness of life." slates " created by the creator of the 84 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. "Hail, thou who dost penetrate within the nethermost heaven (tiau), and hast command of all the gates ! " Hail, among the gods, weigher of words in the kingdom of the dead (chernuter) ! " Hail ! thou art in thine abode (nest) creator of the nether- most heaven by thy virtue ! " Hail, renowned and glorified god ! Thy enemies fall upon their scaffold ! " Hail ! thou hast slain the guilty, thou hast destroyed Apap (the serpent of darkness) ! " It is impossible to read this song of praise in any degree attentively without seeing, what also results from all our former statements, that Ra-Tum and Osiris are not really different, and that the Heliopolitan mythology is, in fact, the same as that of Abydos. And naturally so, for, as we saw, the Osirian myth, too, was originally a sun-myth. Perhaps it was only at a later period that it was asso- ciated at Heliopolis with eschatological doctrine through being commingled with the southern myth, and in that city it may originally have had a more cosmogonic char- acter, as among the Asiatic Mesopotamians. The two remaining chief gods of Heliopolis whom I can- not leave unmentioned are Shu and Tefnut, and they too are cosmogonic beings. They are the two lion-gods of whom it is said in the " Book of the Dead," chap, iii., that they light Turn as he comes out from his place in the heavenly ocean. An invocation in chap. xvii. is thus translated by De Rouge', " O Ra in his egg, who shines through his disk, who glitters on the horizon, who .... hast an abhor- rence of remaining stationary, who walkest on the supports of the god Shu ! Thou who hast not thy second among the gods, who brings forth the wind by the fire of his mouth, and who lights up the two worlds by his bright- ness." That this last phrase applies to Shu and not Ra is evident from a passage at the commencement of chap, lv., where it is said, " I am Shu who, in advance of the light, drives or compels the winds onwards to the confines THE RELIGION OF HELIOPOLIS. 85 of heaven, to the confines of the earth, even to the confines of space." This has the same signification as the image elsewhere employed where the dogs, symbolical of the winds, follow him swiftly. Shu is the cosmic heat and light principle, the world- egg within which Ea is said to be, 1 and hence he is like- wise called the abode of the sun. This is expressed symbolically by saying that he is found in the centre of the bark of the sun (hur sek ti). This centre point is regarded as the quickening creative power. In other not less important texts he is without doubt the god of the air, the atmosphere, and as such he is depicted as supporting the heavens, a form mentioned below. He is also ("Book of the Dead," lxvii.) he who opens the gate, the gate leading to the place where the bark of the sun is. For this reason he, like all the gods of Helio- polis, is moreover the son of Ka begotten by Turn, but born in fact without a mother, for it is said of him that he be^ot himself in the womb of the goddess of heaven. He is the lord who came forth alone from the heavenly sea, Nun, over which in the beginning the quickening breath of the deity passed. 2 As the principle of creation he is uncreated ; with the beginning of his existence the sun began to exist. He is the life-giver, and like all the gods that are to be taken as representing the first cause, has the marvellous designation bestowed on him of young- old, an expression by which the Egyptians sought to indi- cate eternal youth. It is easy to understand why he was identified with the goddesses Oer Hakau and Ma, the Great Power and Righteousness, for he is distinctively power which manifests itself by operating in matter. By him righteousness and truth reign ; in short, by him, Order, of which Ma is the personification, reigns in the creation. The root whence his name is derived has a twofold signi- fication, first that of scorching, and secondly that of stretch- 1 Chabas, Pap. Mag. Harris, p. 96. 2 Pap. Mag. Harris, 23, 53, 54. S6 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. ing out, growing. Both of these correspond to his nature : as the vital glowing heat of the universe he is the scorch- ing one, and he is the outstretcher in virtue of his being the one who lights up the vault of heaven and " divides the waters which are under from those which are above the firmament." 1 In the latter office he is depicted as a man who with uplifted arms supports the vault of heaven in the shape of a woman bending forward and supporting herself on her hands and feet, and this symbol forms the determinative emblem of the root of Shu. Hence it is that Ea the sun-god goes on his props, for in the symbolic repre- sentation, this deity travels along the back of the goddess of heaven. ("Book of the Dead," xvii. 24, and 34 glosses.) That, seemingly at a later period, Shu was united with Ea, and thus made like most other Egyptian chief gods into a sun-god is natural enough, for the germ of the world-egg is in fact the sun. He thus became, as the god of the scorching sun-heat, as the dread sun-god, most closely related to Set; and the ass, the animal of Set, which is also called Shu, appears to have belonged to him as well. 2 In the mystic language of the Egyptians this is expressed as follows : — " Shu has fused himself into the substance of his father Ea, whose enemies he seeks to destroy," or " the Self (Ka) of Shu unites itself with that of Ea ; " in other words, Ea, as destroyer of evil powers, as the dreadful god is endued with the character of Shu. He wears then the form assumed by Ea the chastiser, that of a male cat. Eor the same reason he is identified with Horos-tem, Horos of the sword, and is represented not only as a war- 1 Book of the Dead, xcviii. The god is indicated by this name, or deceased as he reaches from earth to whether it is a mere play on the heaven compares himself to Shu. sounds of words. The two fea- 2 A play upon words such as this thers are a common ornament of is very common in Egyptian symbol- reigning gods. The name Kai-Shu- ism. Thus Shu is also called Kai- ti may perhaps have some connec- iïhu-ti, " who erects two feathers ; " tion with that of the mysterious Shu also signifying feather. It is deity Kai, who so early as the sixth now scarcely possible to say whe- dynasty was placed at the head of ther some real attribute of the the gods. THE RELIGION OF HELIO POLIS. 87 god with lance and horns, bnt likewise as chastiser of the wicked in the under world (" Book of the Dead," xc.) The wife of Shu is Tefnut or Tef. By her he effects the birth of all things. Like him, she is generally de- picted as a lioness or as a cat, a form very common with the goddesses of northern Egypt. These facts lead us to infer that she too was a nature power. Her name, signifying "humidity, foam," also bears witness that this must have been her original character. She is the ocean out of which all that is came into being, personi- fied as a living divine being. She is the cosmic water, or more precisely, the foam that has risen on its sur- face through the agitating motive power of the glowing Shu, whose breath the winds are. Like her the Aphro- dite- Astarte of the Cretans was born of the foam of the sea. Tefnut, however, usually appears in a form that would lead us to a totally different conception of her nature. This is the ureus- adder, the symbol of regal power on the heads of princes and gods, and the common emblem of all female deities. Thus Shu is said to have his wife as pro- tectress upon his head, 1 which can refer to nothing but this. In this instance, however, Shu is already identified with the sun, for in his usual character he wears only an ostrich feather on his head. Tefnut is likewise usually called " the only one upon the head of her father," that is, of Ba the sun-god as creator. On the surface there seems to be no connection between these two representations of Tefnut. The ureus on the head of the sun-god is em- blematic of light. Whether it occurs as the goddess ISTeb-un, the mistress of being, or as Neb-anch, the mistress of life, or as Sechet, it denotes always " the sparkling," or " the sun's disk in his wrath," and is thus a personification of the scorching glow of the sun. 2 The serpent was em- blematic of the moist warmth as well as of the withering 1 See Pap. Mag. Harris, p. 24. the Egyptian deity referred to here 2 Lefébure, chap. xv. du Riteul, and the Hebrew serafs, whose name pp. 28, 29. A very apt compari- signifies " the consuming ones. " son is made by this scholar between 83 HISTORY OF THE EGYPTIAN RELIGION. heat of fire or the burning rays of the sun. Tefnut is accordingly the feminine aspect of Shu, the god of heat and light, and hence unites in herself both attributes. As wife of Shu the