THE HUMAN GODS
We now turn to the deities which are always represented in human form,
and never associated with animal figures; neither do they originate in
a cosmic--or nature--worship, nor in abstract ideas. There are three
divisions of this class, the Osiris family, the Amon family, and the
goddess Neit.
+Osiris+ (_Asar_ or _Asir_) is the most familiar figure of the
pantheon, but it is mainly on late sources that we have to depend for
the myth; and his worship was so much adapted to harmonise with other
ideas, that care is needed to trace his true position. The Osiride
portions of the _Book of the Dead_ are certainly very early, and
precede the solar portions, though both views were already mingled in
the pyramid texts. We cannot doubt but that the Osiris worship reaches
back to the prehistoric age. In the earliest tombs offering to Anubis
is named, for whom Osiris {38} became substituted in the fifth and
sixth dynasties. In the pyramid times we only find that kings are
termed Osiris, having undergone their apotheosis at the _sed_ festival;
but in the eighteenth dynasty and onward every justified person was
entitled the Osiris, as being united with the god. His worship was
unknown at Abydos in the earlier temples, and is not mentioned at the
cataracts; though in later times he became the leading deity of Abydos
and of Philae. Thus in all directions the recognition of Osiris
continued to increase; but, looking at the antiquity of his cult, we
must recognise in this change the gradual triumph of a popular religion
over a state religion which had been superimposed upon it. The
earliest phase of Osirism that we can identify is in portions of the
_Book of the Dead_. These assume the kingdom of Osiris, and a judgment
preceding admission to the blessed future; the completely human
character of Osiris and his family are implied, and there is no trace
of animal or nature-worship belonging to him. How far the myth, as
recorded in Roman times by Plutarch, can be traced to earlier and later
sources is very uncertain. The main outlines, which may be primitive,
are as follow. Osiris was a civilising king of Egypt, who was murdered
by his brother Set and seventy-two {39} conspirators. Isis, his wife,
found the coffin of Osiris at Byblos in Syria and brought it to Egypt.
Set then tore up the body of Osiris and scattered it. Isis sought the
fragments, and built a shrine over each of them. Isis and Horus then
attacked Set and drove him from Egypt, and finally down the Red Sea.
In other aspects Osiris seems to have been a corn god, and the
scattering of his body in Egypt is like the well-known division of the
sacrifice to the corn god, and the burial of parts in separate fields
to ensure their fertility.
How we are to analyse the formation of the early myths is suggested by
the known changes of later times. When two tribes who worshipped
different gods fought together and one overcame the other, the god of
the conqueror is always considered to have overcome the god of the
vanquished. The struggle of Horus and Set is expressly stated on the
Temple of Edfu to have been a tribal war, in which the followers of
Horus overcame those of Set, established garrisons and forges at
various places down the Nile valley, and finally ousted the Set party
from the whole land. We can hardly therefore avoid reading the history
of the animosities of the gods as being the struggles of their
worshippers.
{40}
If we try to trace the historic basis of the Osiris myth, we must take
into account the early customs and ideas among which the myths arose.
The cutting up of the body was the regular ritual of the prehistoric
people, and (even as late as the fifth dynasty) the bones were
separately treated, and even wrapped up separately when the body was
reunited for burial. We must also notice the apotheosis festival of
the king, which was probably his sacrificial death and union with the
god, in the prehistoric age. The course of events which might have
served as the basis for the Osiris myth may then have been somewhat as
follows. Osiris was the god of a tribe which occupied a large part of
Egypt. The kings of this tribe were sacrificed after thirty years'
reign (like the killing of kings at fixed intervals elsewhere), and
they thus became the Osiris himself. Their bodies were dismembered, as
usual at that period, the flesh ceremonially eaten by the assembled
people (as was done in prehistoric times), and the bones distributed
among the various centres of the tribe, the head to Abydos, the neck,
spine, limbs, etc., to various places, of which there were fourteen in
all. The worshippers of Set broke in upon this people, stopped this
worship, or killed Osiris, as was said, and established the dominion
{41} of their animal god. They were in turn attacked by the Isis
worshippers, who joined the older population of the Osiris tribe,
re-opened the shrines, and established Osiris worship again. The Set
tribe returning in force attacked the Osiris tribe and scattered all
the relics of the shrines in every part of the land. To re-establish
their power, the Osiris and Isis tribes called in the worshippers of
the hawk Horus, who were old enemies of the Set tribe, and with their
help finally expelled the Set worshippers from the whole country. Such
a history, somewhat misunderstood in a later age when the sacrifice of
kings and anthropophagy was forgotten, would give the basis for nearly
all the features of the Osiris myth as recorded in Roman times.
If we try to materialise this history more closely we see that the
Osiris worshippers occupied both the Delta and Upper Egypt, and that
fourteen important centres were recognised at the earliest time, which
afterwards became the capitals of nomes, and were added to until they
numbered forty-two divisions in later ages. Set was the god of the
Asiatic invaders who broke in upon this civilisation; and about a
quarter through the long ages of the prehistoric culture (perhaps 7500
B.C.) we find material evidences of {42} considerable changes brought
in from the Arabian or Semitic side. It may not be unlikely that this
was the first triumph of Set. The Isis worshippers came from the
Delta, where Isis was worshipped at Buto as a virgin goddess, apart
from Osiris or Horus. These followers of Isis succeeded in helping the
rest of the early Libyan inhabitants to resist the Set worship, and
re-establish Osiris. The close of the prehistoric age is marked by a
great decline in work and abilities, very likely due to more trouble
from Asia, when Set scattered the relics of Osiris. Lastly, we cannot
avoid seeing in the Horus triumph the conquest of Egypt by the dynastic
race who came down from the district of Edfu and Hierakonpolis, the
centres of Horus worship; and helped the older inhabitants to drive out
the Asiatics. Nearly the same chain of events is seen in later times,
when the Berber king Aahmes I helped the Egyptians to expel the Hyksos.
If we can thus succeed in connecting the archaeology of the prehistoric
age with the history preserved in the myths, it shows that Osiris must
have been the national god as early as the beginning of prehistoric
culture. His civilising mission may well have been the introduction of
cultivation, at about 8000 B.C., into the Nile valley.
{43}
The theology of Osiris was at first that of a god of those holy fields
in which the souls of the dead enjoyed a future life. There was
necessarily some selection to exclude the wicked from such happiness,
and Osiris judged each soul whether it were worthy. This judgment
became elaborated in detailed scenes, where Isis and Neb-hat stand
behind Osiris who is on his throne, Anubis leads in the soul, the heart
is placed in the balance, and Th[=o]th stands to weigh it and to record
the result. The occupations of the souls in this future we have
noticed in chapter iii. The function of Osiris was therefore the
reception and rule of the dead, and we never find him as a god of
action or patronising any of the affairs of life.
+Isis+ (_Aset_ or _Isit_) became attached at a very early time to the
Osiris worship; and appears in later myths as the sister and wife of
Osiris. But she always remained on a very different plane to Osiris.
Her worship and priesthood were far more popular than those of Osiris,
persons were named after her much more often than after Osiris, and she
appears far more usually in the activities of life. Her union in the
Osiris myth by no moans blotted out her independent position and
importance as a deity, though it gave her {44} a far more widespread
devotion. The union of Horus with the myth, and the establishment of
Isis as the mother goddess, was the main mode of her importance in
later times. Isis as the nursing mother is seldom shown until the
twenty-sixth dynasty; then the type continually became more popular,
until it outgrew all other religions of the country. In the Roman
times the mother Isis not only received the devotion of all Egypt, but
her worship spread rapidly abroad, like that of Mithra. It became the
popular devotion of Italy; and, after a change of name due to the
growth of Christianity, she has continued to receive the adoration of a
large part of Europe down to the present day as the Madonna.
+Nephthys+ (_Neb-hat_) was a shadowy double of Isis; reputedly her
sister, and always associated with her, she seems to have no other
function. Her name, 'mistress of the palace,' suggests that she was
the consort of Osiris at the first, as a necessary but passive
complement in the system of his kingdom. When the active Isis worship
entered into the renovation of Osiris, Nebhat remained of nominal
importance, but practically ignored.
+Horus+ (_Heru_ or _Horu_) has a more complex {45} history than any
other god. We cannot assign the various stages of it with certainty,
but we can discriminate the following ideas. (_A_) There was an elder
or greater Horus, _Hor-ur_ (or Aroeris of the Greeks) who was credited
with being the brother of Osiris, older than Isis, Set, or Nephthys.
He was always in human form, and was the god of Letopolis. This seems
to have been the primitive god of a tribe cognate to the Osiris
worshippers. What connection this god had with the hawk we do not
know; often Horus is found written without the hawk, simply as _hr_,
with the meaning of 'upper' or 'above.' This word generally has the
determinative of sky, and so means primitively the sky or one belonging
to the sky. It is at least possible that there was a sky-god _her_ at
Letopolis, and likewise the hawk-god was a sky-god _her_ at Edfu, and
hence the mixture of the two deities. (_B_) The hawk-god of the south,
at Edfu and Hierakonpolis, became so firmly embedded in the myth as the
avenger of Osiris, that we must accept the southern people as the
ejectors of the Set tribe. It is always the hawk-headed Horus who wars
against Set, and attends on the enthroned Osiris. (_C_) The hawk Horus
became identified with the sun-god, and hence came the winged solar
disk as the emblem {46} of Horus of Edfu, and the title of Horus on the
horizons (at rising and setting) Hor-em-akhti, Harmakhis of the Greeks.
(_D_) Another aspect resulting from Horus being the 'sky' god, was that
the sun and moon were his two eyes; hence he was Hor-merti, Horus of
the two eyes, and the sacred eye of Horus (_uza_) became the most usual
of all amulets. (_E_) Horus, as conqueror of Set, appears as the hawk
standing on the sign of gold, _nub_; _nubti_ was the title of Set, and
thus Horus is shown trampling upon Set; this became a usual title of
the kings. There are many less important forms of Horus, but the form
which outgrew all others in popular estimation was (_F_) Hor-pe-khroti,
Harpokrates of the Greeks, 'Horus the child.' As the son of Isis he
constantly appears from the nineteenth dynasty onward. One of the
earlier of these forms is that of the boy Horus standing upon
crocodiles, and grasping scorpions and noxious animals in his hands.
This type was a favourite amulet down to Ptolemaic times, and is often
found carved in stone to be placed in a house, but was scarcely ever
made in other materials or for suspension on the person. The form of
the young Horus seated on an open lotus flower was also popular in the
Greek times. But the infant Horus with his finger to his lips {47} was
the most popular form of all, sometimes alone, sometimes on his
mother's lap. The finger, which pointed to his being a sucking child,
was absurdly misunderstood by the Greeks as an emblem of silence. From
the twenty-sixth dynasty down to late Roman times the infant Horus, or
the young boy, was the most prominent subject on the temples, and the
commonest figure in the homes of the people.
The other main group of human gods was Amon, Mut, and Khonsu of Thebes.
_Amon_ was the local god of Karnak, and owed his importance in Egypt to
the political rise of his district. The Theban kingdom of the twelfth
dynasty spread his fame, the great kings of the eighteenth and
nineteenth dynasty ascribed their victories to Amon, his high priest
became a political power which absorbed the state after the twentieth
dynasty, and the importance of the god only ceased with the fall of his
city. The original attributes and the origin of the name of Amon are
unknown; but he became combined with Ra, the sun-god, and as Amon-Ra he
was 'king of the gods,' and 'lord of the thrones of the world.' The
supremacy of Amon was for some centuries an article of political faith,
and many other gods were merged in him, and only survived as aspects
{48} of the great god of all. The queens were the high priestesses of
the god, and he was the divine father of their children; the kings
being only incarnations of Amon in their relation to the queens.
+Mut+, the great mother, was the goddess of Thebes, and hence the
consort of Amon. She is often shown as leading and protecting the
kings, and the queens appear in the character of this goddess. Little
is known about her otherwise, and she disappears in the later theology.
+Khonsu+ is a youthful god combined in the Theban system as the son of
Amon and Mut. He is closely parallel to Th[=o]th as being a god of
time, as a moon god, and of science, 'the executor of plans.' A large
temple was dedicated to him at Karnak, but otherwise he was not of
religious importance.
+Neit+ was a goddess of the Libyan people; but her worship was firmly
implanted by them in Egypt. She was a goddess of hunting and of
weaving, the two arts of a nomadic people. Her emblem was a distaff
with two crossed arrows, and her name was written with a figure of a
weaver's shuttle. She was adored in the first dynasty, when the name
Merneit, 'loved by Neit,' occurs; and her priesthood was one of the
most {49} usual in the pyramid period. She was almost lost to sight
during some thousands of years, but she became the state goddess of the
twenty-sixth dynasty, when the Libyans set up their capital in her city
of Sais. In later times she again disappears from customary religion.
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