Page 29.
"The Greater Pthah."
IT is impossible, as yet, to define with distinctness the personal
agencies of the Egyptian deities. They are continually associated
in function, or hold derivative powers, or are related to each
other in mysterious triads, uniting always symbolism of physical
phenomena with real spiritual power. I have endeavored partly to
explain this in the text of the tenth Lecture here, it is only
necessary for the reader to know that the Greater Pthah more or
less represents the formative power of order and measurement he
always stands on a four-square pedestal, "the Egyptian cubit,
metaphorically used as the hieroglyphic for truth," his limbs are
bound together, to signify fixed stability, as of a pillar; he has
a measuring-rod in his hand, and at Philas, is represented as
holding an egg on a potter's wheel; but I do not know if this
symbol occurs in older sculptures. His usual title is the "Lord of
Truth". Others, very beautiful "King of the Two Worlds, of
Gracious Countenance," "Superintendent of the Great Abode," etc.,
are given by Mr. Birch in Arundale's "Gallery of Antiquities,"
which I suppose is the book of best authority easily accessible.
For the full titles and utterances of the gods, Rosellini is as
yet the only--and I believe, still a very questionable--authority,
and Arundale's little book, excellent in the text, has this great
defect, that its drawings give the statues invariably a ludicrous
or ignoble character Readers who have not access to the originals
must be warned against this frequent fault in modern illustration
(especially existing also in some of the painted casts of Gothic
and Norman work at the Crystal Palace). It is not owing to any
willful want of veracity: the plates in Arundale's book are
laboriously faithful: but the expressions of both face and body in
a figure depend merely on emphasis of touch, and, in barbaric art
most draughtsmen emphasize what they plainly see--the barbarism,
and miss conditions of nobleness, which they must approach the
monument in a different temper before they will discover and draw
with great subtlety before they can express.
The character of the Lower Pthah, or perhaps I ought rather to
say, of Pthah in his lower office, is sufficiently explained in
the text of the third Lecture, only the reader must be warned that
the Egyptian symbolism of him by the beetle was not a scornful
one, it expressed only the idea of his presence in the first
elements of life. But it may not unjustly be used, in another
sense, by us, who have seen his power in new development, and,
even as it was, I cannot conceive that the Egyptians should have
regarded their beetle headed image of him (Champollion,
"Pantheon," p. 12), without some occult scorn. It is the most
painful of all their types of any beneficent power, and even among
those of evil influences, none can be compared with it, except its
opposite, the tortoise headed demon of indolence.
Pasht (p. 27, line 9) is connected with the Greek Artemis,
especially in her offices of judgment and vengeance. She is
usually lioness headed, sometimes cat headed, her attributes
seeming often trivial or ludicrous unless their full meaning is
known, but the inquiry is much too wide to be followed here. The
cat was sacred to her, or rather to the sun, and secondarily to
her. She is alluded to in the text because she is always the
companion of Pthah (called "the beloved of Pthah," it may be as
Judgment, demanded and longed for by Truth), and it may be well
for young readers to have this fixed in their minds, even by
chance association. There are more statues of Pasht in the British
Museum than of any other Egyptian deity; several of them fine in
workmanship, nearly all in dark stone, which may be, presumably,
to connect her, as the moon, with the night; and in her office of
avenger, with grief.
Thoth (p. 31, line 12), is the Recording Angel of Judgment; and
the Greek Hermes--Phre (line 16), is the Sun.
Neith is the Egyptian spirit of divine wisdom, and the Athena of
the Greeks. No sufficient statement of her many attributes, still
less of their meanings, can be shortly given; but this should be
noted respecting the veiling of the Egyptian image of her by
vulture wings--that as she is, physically, the goddess of the air,
this bird, the most powerful creature of the air known to the
Egyptians, naturally became her symbol. It had other
significations; but certainly this, when in connection with Neith.
As representing her, it was the most important sign, next to the
winged sphere, in Egyptian sculpture; and, just as in Homer,
Athena herself guides her heroes into battle, this symbol of
wisdom, giving victory, floats over the heads of the Egyptian
Kings. The Greeks, representing the goddess herself in human form,
yet would not lose the power of the Egyptian symbol, and changed
it into an angel of victory. First seen in loveliness on the early
coins of Syracuse and Leontium, it gradually became the received
sign of all conquest, and the so called "Victory" of later times,
which, little by little, loses its truth, and is accepted by the
moderns only as a personification of victory itself,--not as an
actual picture of the living Angel who led to victory. There is a
wide difference between these two conceptions,--all the difference
between insincere poetry, and sincere religion. This I have also
endeavored farther to illustrate in the tenth Lecture, there is
however one part of Athena's character which it would have been
irrelevant to dwell upon there, yet which I must not wholly leave
unnoticed.
As the goddess of the air, she physically represents both its
beneficent calm, and necessary tempest other storm deities (as
Chrysaor and Aeolus) being invested with a subordinate and more or
less malignant function, which is exclusively their own, and is
related to that of Athena as the power of Mars is related to hers
in war. So also Virgil makes her able to wield the lightning
herself, while Juno cannot, but must pray for the intervention of
Aeolus. She has precisely the correspondent moral authority over
calmness of mind, and just anger. She soothes Achilles, as she
incites Tydides; her physical power over the air being always
hinted correlatively. She grasps Achilles by his hair--as the wind
would lift it--softly,
"It fanned his cheek, it raised his hair,
Like a meadow gale in spring"
She does not merely turn the lance of Mars from Diomed; but seizes
it in both her hands, and casts it aside, with a sense of making
it vain, like chaff in the wind;--to the shout of Achilles, she
adds her own voice of storm in heaven--but in all cases the moral
power is still the principal one--most beautifully in that seizing
of Achilles by the hair, which was the talisman of his life
(because he had vowed it to the Sperchius if he returned in
safety), and which, in giving at Patroclus' tomb, he, knowingly,
yields up the hope of return to his country, and signifies that he
will die with his friend. Achilles and Tydides are, above all
other heroes, aided by her in war, because their prevailing
characters are the desire of justice, united in both, with deep
affections; and, in Achilles, with a passionate tenderness, which
is the real root of his passionate anger Ulysses is her favorite
chiefly in her office as the goddess of conduct and design.