CHAPTER II.--THE GODS OF EGYPT

_THEIR NUMBER AND NATURE--THE FEUDAL GODS, LIVING AND DEAD--TRIADS----

THE TEMPLES AND PRIESTHOOD--THE COSMOGONIES OF THE DELTA----THE ENNEADS

OF HELIOPOLIS AND HERMOPOLIS._

_Multiplicity of the Egyptian gods: the commonalty of the gods, its

varieties, human, animal, and intermediate between man and beast; gods

of foreign origin, indigenous gods, and the contradictory forms with

which they were invested in accordance with various conceptions of their

nature.

The Star-gods--The Sun-god as the Eye of the Shy; as a bird, as a calf,

and as a man; its barks, voyages round the world, and encounters with

the serpent Apopi--The Moon-god and its enemies--The Star-gods: the

Haunch of the Ox, the Hippopotamus, the Lion, the five Horus-planets;

Sothis Sirius, and Sahû Orion.

The feudal gods and their classes: the Nile-gods, the earth-gods, the

sky-gods and the sun-god, the Horus-gods--The equality of feudal

gods and goddesses; their persons, alliances, and marriages: their

children--The triads and their various developments.

The nature of the gods: the double, the soul, the body, death of men and

gods, and their fate after death--The necessity for preserving the body,

mummification--Dead gods the gods of the dead--The living gods, their

temples and images--The gods of the people, trees, serpents, family

fetiches--The theory of prayer and sacrifice: the servants of the

temples, the property of the gods, the sacerdotal colleges.

The cosmogonies of the Delta: Sibu and Naît, Osiris and Isis, SU and

Nephthys--Heliopolis and its theological schools: Ra, his identification

with Horus, his dual nature, and the conception of Atûmû--The

Heliopolitan Enneads: formation of the Great Ennead--Thot and

the Hermopolitan Ennead: creation by articulate words and by voice

alone--Diffusion of the Enneads: their connection with the local triads,

the god One and the god Eight--The one and only gods._

[Illustration: 107.jpg PAGE IMAGE]

THE GODS OF EGYPT

The incredible number of religious scenes to be found among the

representations on the ancient monuments of Egypt is at first glance

very striking. Nearly every illustration in the works of Egyptologists

brings before us the figure of some deity receiving with an impassive

countenance the prayers and offerings of a worshipper. One would think

that the country had been inhabited for the most part by gods, and

contained just sufficient men and animals to satisfy the requirements of

their worship.

[Illustration: 108.jpg THE GODDESS NAPKÎT, STAPÎT.1]

1 The goddess Naprît, Napît; bas-relief from the first

chamber of Osiris, on the east side of the great temple of

Denderah. Drawn by Faucher-Gudin.

On penetrating into this mysterious world, we are confronted by an

actual rabble of gods, each one of whom has always possessed but a

limited and almost unconscious existence. They severally represented a

function, a moment in the life of man or of the universe; thus Naprît

was identified with the ripe ear, or the grain of wheat;[**]

** The word _naprît_ means _grain_, the grain of wheat. The

grain-god is represented in the tomb of Seti I. as a man

wearing two full ears of wheat or barley upon his head. He

is mentioned in the _Hymn to the Nile_ about the same date,

and in two or three other texts of different periods. The

goddess _Naprît_, or _Napît_, to whom reference is here

made, was his duplicate; her head-dress is a sheaf of corn,

as in the illustration.

*** This goddess, whose name expresses and whose form

personifies the brick or stone couch, the child-bed or

-chair, upon which women in labour bowed themselves, is

sometimes subdivided into two or four secondary divinities.

She is mentioned along with Shaît, _destiny_, and Raninît,

_suckling_. Her part of fairy godmother at the cradle of the

new-born child is indicated in the passage of the Westcar

Papyrus giving a detailed account of the births of three

kings of the fifth dynasty. She is represented in human

form, and often wears upon her head two long palm-shoots,

curling over at their ends.

Maskhonît appeared by the child's cradle at the very moment of its

birth;[*] and Raninît presided over the naming and the nurture of the

newly born.[*] Neither Raninît, the fairy godmother, nor Maskhonît

exercised over nature as a whole that sovereign authority which we are

accustomed to consider the primary attribute of deity. Every day

of every year was passed by the one in easing the pangs of women in

travail; by the other, in choosing for each baby a name of an auspicious

sound, and one which would afterwards serve to exorcise the influences

of evil fortune. No sooner were their tasks accomplished in one place

than they hastened to another, where approaching birth demanded their

presence and their care. From child-bed to child-bed they passed, and if

they fulfilled the single offices in which they were accounted adepts,

the pious asked nothing more of them. Bands of mysterious cynocephali

haunting the Eastern and the Western mountains concentrated the whole

of their activity on one passing moment of the day. They danced and

chattered in the East for half an hour, to salute the sun at his rising,

even as others in the West hailed him on his entrance into night.[**]

* Raninît presides over the child's suckling, but she also

gives him his name, and hence, his fortune. She is on the

whole the nursing goddess. Sometimes she is represented as a

human-headed woman, or as lioness-headed, most frequently

with the head of a serpent; she is also the urseus, clothed,

and wearing two long plumes on her head, and a simple urous,

as represented in the illustration on p. 169.

** This is the subject of a vignette in the _Book of the

Dead_, ch. xvi., where the cynocephali are placed in echelon

upon the slopes of the hill on the horizon, right and left

of the radiant solar disk, to which they offer worship by

gesticulations.

It was the duty of certain genii to open gates in Hades, or to keep the

paths daily traversed by the sun.[*] These genii were always at their

posts, never free to leave them, and possessed no other faculty than

that of punctually fulfilling their appointed offices. Their existence,

generally unperceived, was suddenly revealed at the very moment when the

specific acts of their lives were on the point of accomplishment. These

being completed, the divinities fell back into their state of inertia,

and were, so to speak, reabsorbed by their functions until the next

occasion.[***]

* Maspero, _Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie

Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. 34, 35.

*** The Egyptians employed a still more forcible expression

than our word "absorption" to express this idea. It was said

of objects wherein these genii concealed themselves, and

whence they issued in order to re-enter them immediately,

that these forms _ate_ them, or that they _ate_ their own

forms.

[Illustration: 110.jpg SOME FABULOUS BEASTS OF THE EGYPTIAN DESERT. 2]

2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from Champollion's copies, made

from the tombs of Beni-Hassan. To the right is the _sha_,

one of the animals of Sit, and an exact image of the god

with his stiff and arrow-like tail. Next comes the _safir_,

the griffin; and, lastly, we have the serpent-headed _saza_.

Scarcely visible even by glimpses, they were not easily depicted; their

real forms being often unknown, these were approximately conjectured

from their occupations. The character and costume of an archer, or of a

spear-man, were ascribed to such as roamed through Hades, to pierce the

dead with arrows or with javelins. Those who prowled around souls to cut

their throats and hack them to pieces were represented as women armed

with knives, carvers--_donît_--or else as lacerators--_nokit_. Some

appeared in human form; others as animals--bulls or lions, rams or

monkeys, serpents, fish, ibises, hawks; others dwelt in inanimate

things, such as trees,[*] sistrums, stakes stuck in the ground;[**] and

lastly, many betrayed a mixed origin in their combinations of human and

animal forms. These latter would be regarded by us as monsters; to the

Egyptians, they were beings, rarer perhaps than the rest, but not the

less real, and their like might be encountered in the neighbourhood of

Egypt.[***]

* Thus, the sycamores planted on the edge of the desert

were supposed to be inhabited by Hâthor, Nûît, Selkît, Nît,

or some other goddess. In vignettes representing the

deceased as stopping before one of these trees and receiving

water and loaves of bread, the bust of the goddess generally

appears from amid her sheltering foliage. But occasionally,

as on the sarcophagus of Petosiris, the transformation is

complete, and the trunk from which the branches spread is

the actual body of the god or goddess. Finally, the whole

body is often hidden, and only the arm of the goddess to be

seen emerging from the midst of the tree, with an

overflowing libation vase in her hand.

** The trunk of a tree, disbranched, and then set up in the

ground, seems to me the origin of the Osirian emblem called

_tat_ or _didu_. The symbol was afterwards so

conventionalized as to represent four columns seen in

perspective, one capital overtopping another; it thus became

the image of the four pillars which uphold the world.

*** The belief in the real existence of fantastic animals

was first noted by Maspero, _Études de Mythologie et

d'Archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. i. pp. 117, 118, 132, and

vol. ii. p. 213. Until then, scholars only

recognized the sphinx, and other Egyptian monsters, as

allegorical combinations by which the priesthood claimed to

give visible expression in one and the same being to

physical or moral qualities belonging to several different

beings. The later theory has now been adopted by Wiedemann,

and by most contemporary Egyptologists.

How could men who believed themselves surrounded by sphinxes and

griffins of flesh and blood doubt that there were bull-headed and

hawk-headed divinities with human busts? The existence of such

paradoxical creatures was proved by much authentic testimony; more

than one hunter had distinctly seen them as they ran along the furthest

planes of the horizon, beyond the herds of gazelles of which he was

in chase; and shepherds dreaded them for their flocks as truly as they

dreaded the lions, or the great felidse of the desert.[*]

* At Beni-Hassan and in Thebes many of the fantastic animals

mentioned in the text, griffins, hierosphinxes, serpent-

headed lions, are placed along with animals which might be

encountered by local princes hunting in the desert.

This nation of gods, like nations of men, contained foreign elements,

the origin of which was known to the Egyptians themselves. They knew

that Hâthor, the milch cow, had taken up her abode in their land from

very ancient times, and they called her the Lady of Pûanît, after the

name of her native country. Bîsû had followed her in course of time,

and claimed his share of honours and worship along with her. He first

appeared as a leopard; then he became a man clothed in a leopard's skin,

but of strange countenance and alarming character, a big-headed dwarf

with high cheek-bones, and a wide and open mouth, whence hung an

enormous tongue; he was at once jovial and martial, the friend of the

dance and of battle.[*]

* The hawk-headed monster with flower-tipped tail was

called the saga.

In historic times all nations subjugated by the Pharaohs transferred

some of their principal divinities to their conquerors, and the Libyan

Shehadidi was enthroned in the valley of the Nile, in the same way as

the Semitic Baâlû and his retinue of Astartes, Anitis, Eeshephs, and

Kadshûs. These divine colonists fared like all foreigners who

have sought to settle on the banks of the Nile: they were promptly

assimilated, wrought, moulded, and made into Egyptian deities scarcely

distinguishable from those of the old race. This mixed pantheon had

its grades of nobles, princes, kings, and each of its members was

representative of one of the elements constituting the world, or of one

of the forces which regulated its government.

[Illustration: 113.jpb SOME FABULOUS BEASTS OF THE EGYPTIAN DESERT 1]

1 Bîsû, pp. 111-184. The tail-piece to the summary of this

chapter is a figure of Bîsû, drawn by Faucher-Gudin from an

amulet in blue enamelled pottery.

The sky, the earth, the stars, the sun, the Nile, were so many breathing

and thinking beings whose lives were daily manifest in the life of the

universe.

They were worshipped from one end of the valley to the other, and the

whole nation agreed in proclaiming their sovereign power. But when the

people began to name them, to define their powers and attributes, to

particularize their forms, or the relationships that subsisted among

them, this unanimity was at an end. Each principality, each nome, each

city, almost every village, conceived and represented them differently.

Some said that the sky was the Great Horus, Haroêris, the sparrow-hawk

of mottled plumage which hovers in highest air, and whose gaze embraces

the whole field of creation. Owing to a punning assonance between his

name and the word _horû_, which designates the human countenance, the

two senses were combined, and to the idea of the sparrow-hawk there was

added that of a divine face, whose two eyes opened in turn, the right

eye being the sun, to give light by day, and the left eye the moon, to

illumine the night. The face shone also with a light of its own, the

zodiacal light, which appeared unexpectedly, morning or evening, a

little before sunrise, and a little after sunset. These luminous beams,

radiating from a common centre, hidden in the heights of the firmament,

spread into a wide pyramidal sheet of liquid blue, whose base rested

upon the earth, but whose apex was slightly inclined towards the zenith.

The divine face was symmetrically framed, and attached to earth by four

thick locks of hair; these were the pillars which upbore the firmament

and prevented its falling into ruin. A no less ancient tradition

disregarded as fabulous all tales told of the sparrow-hawk, or of the

face, and taught that heaven and earth are wedded gods, Sibû, and Nûît,

from whose marriage came forth all that has been, all that is, and all

that shall be.

[Illustration: 115.jpg NÛÎT THE STARRY ONE. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a painted coffin of the XXIth

dynasty in Leyden.

Most people invested them with human form, and represented the earth-god

Sibû as extended beneath Nûît the Starry One; the goddess stretched out

her arms, stretched out her slender legs, stretched out her body above

the clouds, and her dishevelled head drooped westward. But there were

also many who believed that Sibû was concealed under the form of a

colossal gander, whose mate once laid the Sun Egg, and perhaps still

laid it daily. From the piercing cries wherewith he congratulated her,

and announced the good news to all who cared to hear it--after the

manner of his kind--he had received the flattering epithet of _Ngagu

oîrû_, the Great Cack-ler. Other versions repudiated the goose in favour

of a vigorous bull, the father of gods and men, whose companion was a

cow, a large-eyed Hâthor, of beautiful countenance. The head of the

good beast rises into the heavens, the mysterious waters which cover

the world flow along her spine; the star-covered underside of her body,

which we call the firmament, is visible to the inhabitants of earth, and

her four legs are the four pillars standing at the four cardinal points

of the world.

[Illustration: 116.jpg THE GOOSE-GOD FACING THE CAT-GODDESS, THE LADY OF

HEAVEN. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a stella in the museum of

Gîzeh. This is not the goose of Sibû, but the goose of Amon,

which was nurtured in the temple of Karnak, and was called

Smonû. Pacing it is the cat of Maût, the wife of Amon. Amon,

originally an earth-god, was, as we see, confounded with

Sibû, and thus naturally appropriated that deity's form of a

goose.

The planets, and especially the sun, varied in form and nature according

to the prevailing conception of the heavens. The fiery disk _Atonû_, by

which the sun revealed himself to men, was a living god, called Râ, as

was also the planet itself.[*] Where the sky was regarded as Horus, Râ

formed the right eye of the divine face: when Horus opened his eyelids

in the morning, he made the dawn and day; when he closed them in the

evening, the dusk and night were at hand.

* The name of Râ has been variously explained. The

commonest etymology is that deriving the name from a verb

râ, _to give, to make to be_ a person or a thing, so that Râ

would thus be the great organizer, the author of all things.

Lauth goes so far as to say that "notwithstanding its

brevity, Râ is a composite word (r-a, _maker--to be_)" As a

matter of fact, the word is simply the name of the

planet applied to the god. It means the _sun_, and nothing

more.

[Illustration: 117.jpg THE COW HÂTHOR, THE LADY OP HEAVEN.3]

3 Drawn by Boudier, from a XXXth dynasty statue of green

basalt in the Gîzeh Museum (Maspero, _Guide du Visiteur_, p.

345, No. 5243). The statue was also published by Mariette,

_Monuments divers_, pl. 96 A-B, and in the _Album

photographique du Musée de Boulaq_, pl. x.

Where the sky was looked upon as the incarnation of a goddess, Râ was

considered as her son,[**] his father being the earth-god, and he was

born again with every new dawn, wearing a sidelock, and with his finger

to his lips as human children were conventionally represented.

** Several passages from the Pyramid texts prove that the

_two eyes_ were very anciently considered as belonging to

the face of Nûît, and this conception persisted to the last

days of Egyptian paganism. Hence, we must not be surprised

if the inscriptions generally represent the god Râ as coming

forth from Nûît under the form of a disc, or a scarabaeus,

and born of her even as human children are born.

He was also that luminous egg, laid and hatched in the East by the

celestial goose, from which the sun breaks forth to fill the world with

its rays.[**]

** These are the very expressions used in the seventeenth

chapter of the _Book of the Dead_ (Naville's edition, vol.

i. pl. xxv. lines 58-61; Lepsius, _Todtenbuch_, pl. ix. 11.

50, 51).

[Illustration: 118.jpg THE TWELVE STAGES IN THE LIFE OF THE SUN AND ITS

TWELVE FORMS THROUGHOUT THE DAY. 1]

1 The twelve forms of the sun during the twelve hours of

the day, from the ceiling of the Hall of the New Year at

Edfu. Drawing by Faucher-Gudin.

Nevertheless, by an anomaly not uncommon in religions, the egg did not

always contain the same kind of bird; a lapwing, or a heron, might

come out of it,[*] or perhaps, in memory of Horus, one of the beautiful

golden sparrow-hawks of Southern Egypt. A Sun-Hawk, hovering in high

heaven on outspread wings, at least presented a bold and poetic image;

but what can be said for a Sun-Calf? Yet it is under the innocent

aspect of a spotted calf, a "sucking calf of pure mouth,"[**] that the

Egyptians were pleased to describe the Sun-God when Sibu, the father,

was a bull, and Hâthor a heifer.

* The lapwing or the heron, the Egyptian _bonû_, is

generally the Osirian bird. The persistence with which it is

associated with Heliopolis and the gods of that city shows

that in this also we have a secondary form of Râ.

** The calf is represented in ch. cix. of the _Book of the

Dead_ (Naville's edition, pl. cxx.), where the text says

(lines 10, 11), "I know that this calf is Harmakhis the Sun,

and that it is no other than the Morning Star, daily

saluting Râ." The expression "_sucking calf of pure

mouth_" is taken word for word from a formula preserved in

the Pyramid texts (Ûnas, 1. 20).

But the prevalent conception was that in which the life of the sun was

likened to the life of man. The two deities presiding over the East

received the orb upon their hands at its birth, just as midwives receive

a new-born child, and cared for it during the first hour of the day and

of its life. It soon left them, and proceeded "under the belly of Nûît,"

growing and strengthening from minute to minute, until at noon it had

become a triumphant hero whose splendour is shed abroad over all. But as

night comes on his strength forsakes him and his glory is obscured; he

is bent and broken down, and heavily drags himself along like an old

man leaning upon his stick. At length he passes away beyond the horizon,

plunging westward into the mouth of Nûît, and traversing her body by

night to be born anew the next morning, again to follow the paths along

which he had travelled on the preceding day.

A first bark, the _saktit_, awaited him at his birth, and carried him

from the Eastern to the Southern extremity of the world. _Mâzît_, the

second bark, received him at noon, and bore him into the land of Manu,

which is at the entrance into Hades; other barks, with which we are less

familiar, conveyed him by night, from his setting until his rising at

morn.[*] Sometimes he was supposed to enter the barks alone, and then

they were magic and self-directed, having neither oars, nor sails, nor

helm.[**]

* In the formulæ of the _Book of Knowing that which is in

Hades_, the dead sun remains in the bark Saktit during part

of the night, and it is only to traverse the fourth and

fifth hours that he changes into another.

** Such is the bark of the sun in the other world. Although

carrying a complete crew of gods, yet for the most part it

progresses at its own will, and without their help. The bark

containing the sun alone is represented in many vignettes of

the _Book of the Dead_, and at the head of many stelæ.

Sometimes they were equipped with a full crew, like that of an Egyptian

boat--a pilot at the prow to take soundings in the channel and forecast

the wind, a pilot astern to steer, a quartermaster in the midst to

transmit the orders of the pilot at the prow to the pilot at the stern,

and half a dozen sailors to handle poles or oars. Peacefully the bark

glided along the celestial river amid the acclamations of the gods who

dwelt upon its shores. But, occasionally, Apôpi, a gigantic serpent,

like that which hides within the earthly Nile and devours its banks,

came forth from the depth of the waters and arose in the path of the

god.[*] As soon as they caught sight of it in the distance, the crew

flew to arms, and entered upon the struggle against him with prayers

and spear-thrusts. Men in their cities saw the sun faint and fail,

and sought to succour him in his distress; they cried aloud, they were

beside themselves with excitement, beating their breasts, sounding their

instruments of music, and striking with all their strength upon every

metal vase or utensil in their possession, that their clamour might rise

to heaven and terrify the monster. After a time of anguish, Râ emerged

from the darkness and again went on his way, while Apôpi sank back into

the abyss,[**] paralysed by the magic of the gods, and pierced with many

a wound.

* In Upper Egypt there is a widespread belief in the

existence of a monstrous serpent, who dwells at the bottom

of the river, and is the genius of the Nile. It is he who

brings about those falls of earth (_batabît_) at the decline

of the inundation which often destroy the banks and eat

whole fields. At such times, offerings of durrah, fowls, and

dates are made to him, that his hunger may be appeased, and

it is not only the natives who give themselves up to these

superstitious practices. Part of the grounds belonging to

the Karnak hotel at Luxor having been carried away during

the autumn of 1884, the manager, a Greek, made the customary

offerings to the serpent of the Nile.

** The character of Apôpi and of his struggle with the sun

was, from the first, excellently defined by Champollion as

representing the conflict of darkness with light.

Occasionally, but very rarely, Apôpi seems to win, and his

triumph over Râ furnishes one explanation of a solar

eclipse. A similar explanation is common to many races. In

one very ancient form of the Egyptian legend, the sun is

represented by a wild ass running round the world along the

sides of the mountains that uphold the sky, and the serpent

which attacks it is called _Haiû_.

Apart from these temporary eclipses, which no one could foretell, the

Sun-King steadily followed his course round the world, according to laws

which even his will could not change. Day after day he made his oblique

ascent from east to south, thence to descend obliquely towards the west.

During the summer months the obliquity of his course diminished, and

he came closer to Egypt; during the winter it increased, and he went

farther away. This double movement recurred with such regularity from

equinox to solstice, and from solstice to equinox, that the day of

the god's departure and the day of his return could be confidently

predicted. The Egyptians explained this phenomenon according to their

conceptions of the nature of the world. The solar bark always kept close

to that bank of the celestial river which was nearest to men; and when

the river overflowed at the annual inundation, the sun was carried along

with it outside the regular bed of the stream, and brought yet closer

to Egypt. As the inundation abated, the bark descended and receded, its

greatest distance from earth corresponding with the lowest level of the

waters. It was again brought back to us by the rising strength of the

next flood; and, as this phenomenon was yearly repeated, the periodicity

of the sun's oblique movements was regarded as the necessary consequence

of the periodic movements of the celestial Nile.

The same stream also carried a whole crowd of gods, whose existence was

revealed at night only to the inhabitants of earth. At an interval of

twelve hours, and in its own bark, the pale disk of the moon--_Yâûhû

Aûhû_--followed the disk of the sun along the ramparts of the world.

The moon, also, appeared in many various forms--here, as a man born of

Nûît;[*] there, as a cynocephalus or an ibis;[**] elsewhere, it was the

left eye of Horus,[***] guarded by the ibis or cynocephalus. Like Râ,

it had its enemies incessantly upon the watch for it: the crocodile, the

hippopotamus, and the sow. But it was when at the full, about the 15th

of each month, that the lunar eye was in greatest peril.

* He may be seen as a child, or man, bearing the lunar disk

upon his head, and pressing the lunar eye to his breast.

Passages from the Pyramid text of Unas indicate the

relationship subsisting between Thot, Sibû, and Nûît, making

Thot the brother of Isis, Sit, and Nephthys. In later times

he was considered a son of Râ.

** Even as late as the Græco-Roman period, the temple of

Thot at Khmûnû contained a sacred ibis, which was the

incarnation of the god, and said to be immortal by the local

priesthood. The temple sacristans showed it to Apion the

grammarian, who reports the fact, but is very sceptical in

the matter.

*** The texts quoted by Chabas and Lepsius to show that the

sun is the right eye of Horus also prove that his left eye

is the moon.

[Illustration: 123.jpg EGYPTIAN CONCEPTION OF THE PRINCIPAL

CONSTELLATIONS OF THE NORTHERN SKY.4]

4 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the ceiling of the

Ramesseum. On the right, the _female hippopotamus_ bearing

the _crocodile_, and leaning on the _Monâît_; in the middle,

the _Haunch_, here represented by the whole bull; to the

left, _Selkit_ and the _Sparrow-hawk_, with the _Lion_, and

the _Giant fighting the Crocodile_.

The sow fell upon it, tore it out of the face of heaven, and cast it,

streaming with blood and tears, into the celestial Nile, where it was

gradually extinguished, and lost for days; but its twin, the sun, or

its guardian, the cyno-cephalus, immediately set forth to find it and

to restore it to Horus. No sooner was it replaced, than it slowly

recovered, and renewed its radiance; when it was well--_ûzaît_--the sow

again attacked and mutilated it, and the gods rescued and again revived

it.

[Illustration: 124.jpg THE LUNAR BARK, SELF-PROPELLED, UNDER THE

PROTECTION OF THE TWO EYES.]

Each month there was a fortnight of youth and of growing splendour,

followed by a fortnight's agony and ever-increasing pallor. It was born

to die, and died to be born again twelve times in the year, and each

of these cycles measured a month for the inhabitants of the world.

One invariable accident from time to time disturbed the routine of

its existence. Profiting by some distraction of the guardians, the sow

greedily swallowed it, and then its light went out suddenly, instead of

fading gradually. These eclipses, which alarmed mankind at least as much

as did those of the sun, were scarcely more than momentary, the gods

compelling the monster to cast up the eye before it had been destroyed.

[Illustration: 125.jpg THE HAUNCH, AND THE FEMALE HIPPOPOTAMUS.1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the rectangular zodiac

carved upon the ceiling of the great temple of Denderah

(Dùmichen, _Resultate_, vol. ii. pl. xxxix.).

Every evening the lunar bark issued out of Hades by the door which Râ

had passed through in the morning, and as it rose on the horizon, the

star-lamps scattered over the firmament appeared one by one, giving

light here and there like the camp-fires of a distant army. However

many of them there might be, there were as many Indestructibles--_Akhîmû

Sokû_--or Unchanging Ones--_Akhîmû Ûrdû_--whose charge it was to attend

upon them and watch over their maintenance.[**]

** The _Akhîmû Sokû_ and the _Akhîmû Ûrdû_ have been very

variously defined by different Egyptologists who have

studied them. Chabas considered them to be gods or genii of

the constellations of the ecliptic, which mark the apparent

course of the sun through the sky. Following the indications

given by Dévéria, he also thought them to be the sailors of

the solar bark, and perhaps the gods of the twelve hours,

divided into two classes: the _Akhîmû Sokû_ being those who

are rowing, and the _Akhîmû Ûrdû_ those who are resting. But

texts found and cited by Brugsch show that the _Akhîmû Sokû_

are the planets accompanying Râ in the northern sky, while

the _Akhîmû Ûrdû_ are his escort in the south. The

nomenclature of the stars included in these two classes is

furnished by monuments of widely different epochs. The two

names should be translated according to the meaning of their

component words: _Akhîmû Sokû_, those who know not

destruction, the Indestructibles; and _Akhîmû Ûrdû_ (

_Urzii_), those who know not the immobility of death, the

_Imperishables_.

They were not scattered at random by the hand which had suspended them,

but their distribution had been ordered in accordance with a certain

plan, and they were arranged in fixed groups like so many star

republics, each being independent of its neighbours. They represented

the outlines of bodies of men and animals dimly traced out upon

the depths of night, but shining with greater brilliancy in certain

important places. The seven stars which we liken to a chariot (Charles's

Wain) suggested to the Egyptians the haunch of an ox placed on the

northern edge of the horizon.[*]

* The forms of the constellations, and the number of stars

composing them in the astronomy of different periods, are

known from the astronomical scenes of tombs and temples. The

identity of the _Haunch_ with the _Chariot_, or _Great Bear_

of modern astronomy, was discovered by Lepsius and confirmed

by Biot. Mariette pointed out that the Pyramid Arabs applied

the name of the _Haunch (er-Rigl)_ to the same group of

stars as that thus designated by the ancient Egyptians.

Champollion had noted the position of the _Haunch_ in the

northern sky, but had not suggested any identification. The

_Haunch_ appertained to Sît-Typhon.

Two lesser stars connected the haunch--_Maskhaît_--with

thirteen others, which recalled the silhouette of a female

hippopotamus--_Rirît_--erect upon her hind legs,[*] and jauntily

carrying upon her shoulders a monstrous crocodile whose jaws opened

threateningly above her head. Eighteen luminaries of varying size and

splendour, forming a group hard by the hippopotamus, indicated the

outline of a gigantic lion couchant, with stiffened tail, its head

turned to the right, and facing the Haunch.[***]

* The connection of _Birît_, the female hippopotamus, with

the Haunch is made quite clear in scenes from Philae and

Edfû, representing Isis holding back Typhon by a chain, that

he might do no hurt to Sâhii-Osiris. Jollois and Devilliers

thought that the hippopotamus was the _Great Bear_. Biot

contested their conclusions, and while holding that the

hippopotamus might at least in part present our

constellation of the Dragon, thought that it was probably

included in the scene only as an ornament, or as an emblem.

The present tendency is to identify the hippopotamus with

the Dragon and with certain stars not included in the

constellations surrounding it.

*** The Lion, with its eighteen stars, is represented on

the tomb of Seti I.; on the ceiling of the Ramesseum; and on

the sarcophagus of Htari.

[Illustration: 127.jpg OKION, SOTHIS, AND TWO HOKUS-PLANETS STANDING IN

THEIR BAKKS. 2]

2 From the astronomic ceiling in the tomb of Seti I.

(Lefébure, 4th part, pl. xxxvi.).

The Lion is sometimes shown as having a crocodile's tail. According

to Biot the Egyptian Lion has nothing in common with the Greek

constellation of that name, nor yet with our own, but was composed of

smaller stars, belonging to the Greek constellation of the Cup or to

the continuation of the Hydra, so that its head, its body, and its

tail would follow the [ ] of the Hydra, between the [ ] and [ ] of that

constellation, or the [ ] of the Virgin.

Most of the constellations never left the sky: night after night they

were to be found almost in the same places, and always shining with the

same even light.

[Illustration: 128.jpg SAHU-ORION. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a small bronze in the Gîzeh

Museum, published by Mariette, in the _Album photographique

du Musée de Boulaq_, pl. 9. The legs are a modern

restoration.

Others borne by a slow movement passed annually beyond the limits of

sight for months at a time. Five at least of our planets were known

from all antiquity, and their characteristic colours and appearances

carefully noted. Sometimes each was thought to be a hawk-headed Horus.

Ùapshetatûi, our Jupiter, Kahiri-(Saturn), Sobkû-(Mercury), steered

their barks straight ahead like Iâûhû and Râ; but Mars-Doshiri, the

red, sailed backwards. As a star Bonu, the bird (Yenus) had a dual

personality; in the evening it was Uati, the lonely star which is

the first to rise, often before nightfall; in the morning it became

Tiûnûtiri, the god who hails the sun before his rising and proclaims the

dawn of day.

Sahû and Sopdît, Orion and Sirius, were the rulers of this mysterious

world. Sahû consisted of fifteen stars, seven large and eight small,

so arranged as to represent a runner darting through space, while the

fairest of them shone above his head, and marked him out from afar to

the admiration of mortals.

[Illustration: 129.jpg ORION AND THE COW SOTHIS SEPARATED BY THE

SPARROW-HAWK. 1]

1 Scene from the rectangular zodiac of Denderah, drawn by

Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken with magnesium light

by Dûmichen.

With his right hand he flourished the _crux ansata_, and turning his

head towards Sothis as he beckoned her on with his left, seemed as

though inviting her to follow him. The goddess, standing sceptre in

hand, and crowned with a diadem of tall feathers surmounted by her most

radiant star, answered the call of Sahû with a gesture, and quietly

embarked in pursuit as though in no anxiety to overtake him. Sometimes

she is represented as a cow lying down in her bark, with tree stars

along her back, and Sirius flaming from between her horns.[*]

* The identity of the cow with Sothis was discovered by

Jollois and Devilliers. It is under this animal form that

Sothis is represented in most of the Græco-Roman temples,

at Denderah, Edfû, Esneh, Dêr el-Medîneh.

Not content to shine by night only, her bluish rays, suddenly darted

forth in full daylight and without any warning, often described upon the

sky the mystic lines of the triangle which stood for her name. It was

then that she produced those curious phenomena of the zodiacal light

which other legends attributed to Horus himself. One, and perhaps

the most ancient of the innumerable accounts of this god and goddess,

represented Sahû as a wild hunter. A world as vast as ours rested upon

the other side of the iron firmament; like ours, it was distributed into

seas, and continents divided by rivers and canals, but peopled by races

unknown to men. Sahû traversed it during the day, surrounded by genii

who presided over the lamps forming his constellation. At his appearing

"the stars prepared themselves for battle, the heavenly archers rushed

forward, the bones of the gods upon the horizon trembled at the sight

of him," for it was no common game that he hunted, but the very gods

themselves. One attendant secured the prey with a lasso, as bulls are

caught in the pastures, while another examined each capture to decide if

it were pure and good for food. This being determined, others bound the

divine victim, cut its throat, disembowelled it, cut up its carcass,

cast the joints into a pot, and superintended their cooking. Sahû did

not devour indifferently all that the fortune of the chase might bring

him, but classified his game in accordance with his wants. He ate the

great gods at his breakfast in the morning, the lesser gods at his

dinner towards noon, and the small ones at his supper; the old were

rendered more tender by roasting.

[Illustration: 131.jpg AMON-RÂ, AS MÎNÛ OF COPTOS, AND INVESTED WITH HIS

EMBLEMS. 1]

1 Scene on the north wall of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak;

drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger, taken in

1882. The king, Seti I., is presenting bouquets of leaves to

Amon-Mînû. Behind the god stands Isis (of Coptos), sceptre

and _crux ansata_ in hand.

As each god was assimilated by him, its most precious virtues were

transfused into himself; by the wisdom of the old was his wisdom

strengthened, the youth of the young repaired the daily waste of his

own youth, and all their fires, as they penetrated his being, served to

maintain the perpetual splendour of his light.

The nome gods who presided over the destinies of Egyptian cities, and

formed a true feudal system of divinities, belonged to one or other of

these natural categories. In vain do they present themselves under

the most shifting aspects and the most deceptive attributes; in vain

disguise themselves with the utmost care; a closer examination generally

discloses the principal features of their original physiognomies. Osiris

of the Delta, Khuûmû of the Cataract, Harshâfitû of Heracleopolis, were

each of them, incarnations of the fertilizing and life-sustaining Nile.

Wherever there is some important change in the river, there they are

more especially installed and worshipped: Khnûmû at the place of its

entering into Egypt, and again at the town of Hâûrît, near the point

where a great arm branches off from the Eastern stream to flow towards

the Libyan hills and form the Bahr-Yûsuf: Harshâfitû at the gorges of

the Fayûm, where the Bahr-Yûsuf leaves the valley; and, finally, Osiris

at Mendes and at Busiris, towards the mouth of the middle branch, which

was held to be the true Nile by the people of the land. Isis of Bûto

denoted the black vegetable mould of the valley, the distinctive soil of

Egypt annually covered and fertilized by the inundation.[*]

* In the case of Isis, as in that of Osiris, we must mark

the original character; and note her characteristics as

goddess of the Delta before she had become a multiple and

contradictory personality through being confounded with

other divinities.

But the earth in general, as distinguished from the sky--the earth with

its continents, its seas, its alternation of barren deserts and fertile

lands--was represented as a man: Phtah at Memphis, Amon at Thebes, Mînû

at Coptos and at Panopolis. Amon seems rather to have symbolized the

productive soil, while Mînû reigned over the desert. But these were fine

distinctions, not invariably insisted upon, and his worshippers often

invested Amon with the most significant attributes of Mînû.

[Illustration: 133.jpg ANHÛRI. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze of the Saïte period,

in my own possession.

The Sky-gods, like the Earth-gods, were separated into two groups, the

one consisting of women: Hâthor of Denderah, or Nît of Sais; the other

composed of men identical with Horus, or derived from him: Anhûri-Shû of

Sebennytos and Thinis; Harmerati, Horus of the two eyes, at Pharbaethos;

Har-Sapdi, Horus the source of the zodiacal light, in the Wâdy Tumilât;

and finally Harhûdîti at Edfû. Râ, the solar disk, was enthroned at

Heliopolis, and sun-gods were numerous among the nome deities, but they

were sun-gods closely connected with gods representing the sky, and

resembled Horus quite as much as Râ. Whether under the name of Horus

or of Anhûri, the sky was early identified with its most brilliant

luminary, its solar eye, and its divinity was as it were fused into that

of the Sun. Horus the Sun, and Râ, the Sun-Cod of Heliopolis, had so

permeated each other that none could say where the one began and the

other ended. One by one all the functions of Râ had been usurped by

Horus, and all the designations of Horus had been appropriated by Râ.

The sun was styled Harmakhûîti, the Horus of the two mountains--that is,

the Horus who comes forth from the mountain of the east in the morning,

and retires at evening into the mountain of the west;[*] or Hartimâ,

Horus the Pikeman, that Horus whose lance spears the hippopotamus or the

serpent of the celestial river; or Harnûbi, the Golden Horus, the great

golden sparrow-hawk with mottled plumage, who puts all other birds

to flight; and these titles were indifferently applied to each of the

feudal gods who represented the sun.

* From the time of Champollion, Harmakhûîti has been

identified with the Harmachis of the Greeks, the great

Sphinx.

[Illustration: 134.jpg THE HAWK-HEADED HOKUS.2]

2 A bronze of the Saïte period, from the Posno collection,

and now in the Louvre; drawn by Faucher-Gudin. The god is

represented as upholding a libation vase with both hands,

and pouring the life-giving water upon the king, standing,

or prostrate, before him. In performing this ceremony, he

was always assisted by another god, generally by Sit,

sometimes by Thot or Anubis.

The latter were numerous. Sometimes, as in the case of Harkhobi, Horus

of Khobiû,[*] a geographical qualification was appended to the generic

term of Horus, while specific names, almost invariably derived from

the parts which they were supposed to play, were borne by others. The

sky-god worshipped at Thinis in Upper Egypt, at Zarît and at Sebennytos

in Lower Egypt, was called Anhuri. When he assumed the attributes of

Râ, and took upon himself the solar nature, his name was interpreted as

denoting the conqueror of the sky. He was essentially combative. Crowned

with a group of upright plumes, his spear raised and ever ready to

strike the foe, he advanced along the firmament and triumphantly

traversed it day by day.[**] The sun-god who at Medamôfc Taûd and Erment

had preceded Amon as ruler of the Theban plain, was also a warrior,

and his name of Montû had reference to his method of fighting. He was

depicted as brandishing a curved sword and cutting off the heads of his

adversaries.[***]

* _Harkhobi, Harâmkhobiû_ is the Horus of the marshes

(_khobiû_) of the Delta, the lesser Horus the son of Isis,

who was also made into the son of Osiris.

** The right reading of the name was given as far back as

Lepsius. The part played by the god, and the nature of the

link connecting him with Shû, have been explained by

Maspero. The Greeks transcribed his name Onouris, and

identified him with Ares.

*** Montû preceded Amon as god of the land between Kûs and

Gebelên, and he recovered his old position in the Græco-

Roman period after the destruction of Thebes. Most

Egyptologists, and finally Brugsch, made him into a

secondary form of Amon, which is contrary to what we know of

the history of the province. Just as Onû of the south

(Erment) preceded Thebes as the most important town in that

district, so Montû had been its most honoured god. Heer

Wiedemann thinks the name related to that of Amon and

derived from it, with the addition of the final _tû_.

Each of the feudal gods naturally cherished pretensions to universal

dominion, and proclaimed himself the suzerain, the father of all the

gods, as the local prince was the suzerain, the father of all men; but

the effective suzerainty of god or prince really ended where that of his

peers ruling over the adjacent nomes began.

[Illustration: 136.jpg THE HOEUS OF HIBONÛ, ON THE BACK OF THE GAZELLE.]

The goddesses shared in the exercise of supreme power, and had the same

right of inheritance and possession as regards sovereignty that women

had in human law.[*] Isis was entitled lady and mistress at Bûto, as

Hâthor was at Denderah, and as Nit at Sais, "the firstborn, when as yet

there had been no birth." They enjoyed in their cities the same honours

as the male gods in theirs; as the latter were kings, so were they

queens, and all bowed down before them. The animal gods, whether

entirely in the form of beasts, or having human bodies attached to

animal heads, shared omnipotence with those in human form. Horus of

Hibonû swooped down upon the back of a gazelle like a hunting hawk,

Hâthor of Denderah was a cow, Bastit of Bubastis was a cat or a tigress,

while Nekhabit of El Kab was a great bald-headed vulture.[**] Hermopolis

worshipped the ibis and cynocephalus of Thot; Oxyrrhynchus the

_mor-myrus_ fish;[***] and Ombos and the Fayûm a crocodile, under the

name of Sobkû,[****] sometimes with the epithet of Azaï, the brigand.[v]

* In attempts at reconstituting Egyptian religions, no

adequate weight has hitherto been given to the equality of

gods and goddesses, a fact to which attention was first

called by Maspeeo (_Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie

Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. p. 253, et seq.).

** Nekhabît, the goddess of the south, is the vulture, so

often represented in scenes of war or sacrifice, who hovers

over the head of the Pharaohs. She is also shown as a

vulture-headed woman.

*** We have this on the testimony of classic writers,

Steabo, book xvii. p. 812, _De Iside et Csiride_, § vii.,

1872, Paethey's edition, pp. 9, 30, 128. ^Elianus, Hist,

anim., book x. § 46.

**** Sobhû, Sovkû is the animal's name, and the exact

translation of Sovû would be crocodile-god. Its Greek

transcription is [ ]. On account of the assonance of the

names he was sometimes confounded with _Sivû, Sibû_ by the

Egyptians themselves, and thus obtained the titles of that

god. This was especially the case at the time when Sit

having been proscribed, Sovkû the crocodile, who was

connected with Sit, shared his evil reputation, and

endeavoured to disguise his name or true character as much

as possible.

v Azaï is generally considered to be the Osiris of the

Fayûm, but he was only transformed into Osiris, and that by

the most daring process of assimilation. His full name

defines him as _Osiri Azaï hi halt To-sit (Osiris the

Brigand, who is in the Fayûm)_, that is to say, as Sovkû

identified with Osiris.

[Illustration: 138.jpg THE CAT-HEADED BAST. 4]

4 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a green enamelled figure in

my possession (Saïte period).

We cannot always understand what led the inhabitants of each nome to

affect one animal rather than another. Why, towards Græco-Roman times,

should they have worshipped the jackal, or even the dog, at Siût?[**]

How came Sit to be incarnate in a fennec, or in an imaginary

quadruped?[***] Occasionally, however, we can follow the train of

thought that determined their choice.

** Uapuaîtû, the _guide of the celestial ways_, who must not

be confounded with Anubis of the Cynopolite nome of Upper

Egypt, was originally the feudal god of Siût. He guided

human souls to the paradise of the Oasis, and the sun upon

its southern path by day, and its northern path by night.

*** Champollion, Rosellini, Lepsius, have held that the

Typhonian animal was a purely imaginary one, and Wilkinson

says that the Egyptians themselves admitted its unreality by

representing it along with other fantastic beasts. This

would rather tend to show that they believed in its actual

existence (cf. p. 112 of this History). Plbyte thinks that

it may be a degenerated form of the figure of the ass or

oryx.

The habit of certain monkeys in assembling as it were in full court,

and chattering noisily a little before sunrise and sunset, would almost

justify the as yet uncivilized Egyptians in entrusting cynocephali with

the charge of hailing the god morning and evening as he appeared in the

east, or passed away in the west.

[Illustration: 139.jpg TWO IMAGES]

If Râ was held to be a grasshopper under the Old Empire, it was because

he flew far up in the sky like the clouds of locusts driven from Central

Africa which suddenly fall upon the fields and ravage them. Most of the

Nile-gods, Khnûmû, Osiris, Harshafitû, were incarnate in the form of a

ram or of a buck. Does not the masculine vigour and procreative rage

of these animals naturally point them out as fitting images of the

life-giving Nile and the overflowing of its waters? It is easy to

understand how the neighbourhood of a marsh or of a rock-encumbered

rapid should have suggested the crocodile as supreme deity to the

inhabitants of the Fayûm or of Ombos. The crocodiles there multiplied so

rapidly as to constitute a serious danger; there they had the mastery,

and could be appeased only by means of prayers and sacrifices.

When instinctive terror had been superseded by reflection, and some

explanation was offered of the origin of the various cults, the very

nature of the animal seemed to justify the veneration with which it was

regarded. The crocodile is amphibious; and Sobkû was supposed to be

a crocodile, because before the creation the sovereign god plunged

recklessly into the dark waters and came forth to form the world, as the

crocodile emerges from the river to lay its eggs upon the bank.

Most of the feudal divinities began their lives in solitary grandeur,

apart from, and often hostile to, their neighbours. Families were

assigned to them later.[*]

* The existence of the Egyptian triads was discovered and

defined by Champollion. These triads have long served as the

basis upon which modern writers have sought to establish

their systems of the Egyptian religion. Brugsch was the

first who rightly attempted to replace the triad by the

Ennead, in his book Religion und Mythologie der alten

Ægypter. The process of forming local triads, as here set

forth, was first pointed out by Maspero (_Études de

Mythologie et d'Archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. p. 269,

et seq.).

Each appropriated two companions and formed a trinity, or as it is

generally called, a triad. But there were several kinds of triads. In

nomes subject to a god, the local deity was frequently content with one

wife and one son; but often he was united to two goddesses, who were at

once his sisters and his wives according to the national custom.

[Illustration: 141.jpg NIT OF SAÏS.]

Thus, Thot of Hermopolis possessed himself of a harem consisting of

Seshaît-Safk-hîtâbûi and Hahmâûît. Tûmû divided the homage of the

inhabitants of Helio-polis with Nebthôtpît and with Iûsasît. Khnûmû

seduced and married the two fairies of the neighbouring cataract--Anûkît

the constrainer, who compresses the Nile between its rocks at Philse and

at Syene, and Satît the archeress, who shoots forth the current straight

and swift as an arrow.[*] Where a goddess reigned over a nome, the triad

was completed by two male deities, a divine consort and a divine son.

Nît of Sai's had taken for her husband Osiris of Mendes, and borne him a

lion's whelp, Ari-hos-nofir.[**]

* Maspero, _Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie

Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. p. 273, et seq.

** _Arihosnofir_ means _the lion whose gaze has a

beneficent fascination_. He also goes under the name of

_Tutu_, which seems as though it should be translated "_the

bounding_,"--a mere epithet characterizing one gait of the

lion-god's.

Hâthor of Denderah had completed her household with Haroêris and a

younger Horus, with the epithet of Ahi--he who strikes the sistrum.[*]

* Brugsch explains the name of Ahi as meaning _he who

causes his waters to rise_, and recognizes this personage as

being, among other things, a form of the Nile. The

interpretation offered by myself is borne out by the many

scenes representing the child of Hâthor playing upon the

sistrum and the _monâît_. Moreover, _ahi, ahît_ is an

invariable title of the priests and priestesses whose office

it is, during religious ceremonies, to strike the sistrum,

and that other mystic musical instrument, the sounding whip

called _monâît_.

[Illustration: 142.jpg IMHOTPÛ. 2]

2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze statuette encrusted

with gold, in the Gîzeh Museum. The seat is alabaster,

and of modern manufacture.

A triad containing two goddesses produced no legitimate offspring, and

was unsatisfactory to a people who regarded the lack of progeny as a

curse from heaven; one in which the presence of a son promised to

ensure the perpetuity of the race was more in keeping with the idea of a

blessed and prosperous family, as that of gods should be. Triads of

the former kind were therefore almost everywhere broken up into two new

triads, each containing a divine father, a divine mother, and a divine

son. Two fruitful households arose from the barren union of Thot

with Safkhîtâbûi and Nahmâûît: one composed of Thot, Safkhîtâbûi, and

Harnûbi, the golden sparrow-hawk;[***] into the other Nahmâûît and her

nursling Nofirhorû entered.

*** This somewhat rare triad, noted by Wilkinson, is

sculptured on the wall of a chamber in the Tûrah quarries.

[Illustration: 143.jpg NOFIRTÛMÛ. 3]

3 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze statuette incrusted

with gold, in the Gîzeh Museum.

The persons united with the old feudal divinities in order to form

triads were not all of the same class. Goddesses, especially, were made

to order, and might often be described as grammatical, so obvious is the

linguistic device to which they owe their being. From Râ, Amon, Horus,

Sobkû, female Ras, Anions, Horuses, and Sobkûs were derived, by the

addition of the regular feminine affix to the primitive masculine

names--Râît, Amonît, Horît, Sobkît.[*] In the same way, detached

cognomens of divine fathers were embodied in divine sons. Imhotpû, "he

who comes in peace," was merely one of the epithets of Phtah before he

became incarnate as the third member of the Memphite triad.[**] In other

cases, alliances were contracted between divinities of ancient stock,

but natives of different nomes, as in the case of Isis of Bûto and the

Mendesian Osiris; of Haroêris of Edfu and Hâthor of Denderah.

* Maspero, _Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie

Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. 7, 8, 256.

** Imhotpû, the Imouthes of the Greeks, and by them

identified with Æsculapius, was discovered by Salt, and his

name was first translated as _he who comes with offering_.

The translation, _he who comes in peace_, proposed by E. de

Rougé, is now universally adopted. Imhotpû did not take form

until the time of the New Empire; his great popularity at

Memphis and throughout Egypt dates from the Saïte and Greek

periods.

In the same manner Sokhît of Letopolis and Bastît of Bubastis were

appropriated as wives to Phtah of Memphis, Nofirtûmû being represented

as his son by both unions.[*] These improvised connections were

generally determined by considerations of vicinity; the gods of

conterminous principalities were married as the children of kings of two

adjoining kingdoms are married, to form or to consolidate relations,

and to establish bonds of kinship between rival powers whose unremitting

hostility would mean the swift ruin of entire peoples.

The system of triads, begun in primitive times and con-, tinned

unbrokenly up to the last days of Egyptian polytheism, far from in any

way lowering the prestige of the feudal gods, was rather the means

of enhancing it in the eyes of the multitude. Powerful lords as the

new-comers might be at home, it was only in the strength of an auxiliary

title that they could enter a strange city, and then only on condition

of submitting to its religious law. Hâthor, supreme at Denderah, shrank

into insignificance before Haroêris at Edfû, and there retained only the

somewhat subordinate part of a wife in the house of her husband.[**]

* Originally, Nofirtûmû appears to have been the son of cat

or lioness-headed goddesses, Bastît and Sokhît, and from

them he may have inherited the lion's head with which he is

often represented. His name shows him to have been in the

first place an incarnation of Atûmû, but he was affiliated

to the god Phtah of Memphis when that god became the husband

of his mothers, and preceded Imhotpû as the third personage

in the oldest Memphite triad.

** Each year, and at a certain time, the goddess came in

high state to spend a few days in the great temple of Edfû,

with her husband Haroêris.

On the other hand, Haroêris when at Denderah descended from the supreme

rank, and was nothing more than the almost useless consort of the lady

Hâthor. His name came first in invocations of the triad because of his

position therein as husband and father; but this was simply a concession

to the propriety of etiquette, and even though named in second place,

Hâthor was none the less the real chief of Denderah and of its divine

family.[*] Thus, the principal personage in any triad was always the

one who had been patron of the nome previous to the introduction of the

triad: in some places the father-god, and in others the mother-goddess.

* The part played by Haroêris at Denderah was so

inconsiderable that the triad containing him is not to be

found in the temple. "In all our four volumes of plates, the

triad is not once represented, and this is the more

remarkable since at Thebes, at Memphis, at Philse, at the

cataracts, at Elephantine, at Edfû, among all the data which

one looks to find in temples, the triad is most readily

distinguished by the visitor. But we must not therefore

conclude that there was no triad in this case. The triad of

Edfû consists of Hor-Hut, Hâthor, and Hor-Sam-ta-ui. The

triad of Denderah contains Hâthor, Hor-Hut, and Hor-Sam-ta-

ui. The difference is obvious. At Edfû, the male principle,

as represented by Hor-Hut, takes the first place, whereas

the first person at Denderah is Hâthor, who represents the

female principle" (Mariette, _Dendérah_, Texte, pp. 80, 81).

[Illustration: 145.jpg HORUS]

2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from a statuette in the Gîzeh

Museum (Mariette, _Album du Musée de Boulaq_, pl. 4).

The son in a divine triad had of himself but limited authority. When

Isis and Osiris were his parents, he was generally an infant Horus,

naked, or simply adorned with necklaces and bracelets; a thick lock of

hair depended from his temple, and his mother squatting on her heels,

or else sitting, nursed him upon her knees, offering him her breast.[*]

Even in triads where the son was supposed to have attained to man's

estate, he held the lowest place, and there was enjoined upon him the

same respectful attitude towards his parents as is observed by children

of human race in the presence of theirs. He took the lowest place at all

solemn receptions, spoke only with his parents' permission, acted only

by their command and as the agent of their will. Occasionally he was

vouchsafed a character of his own, and filled a definite position, as at

Memphis, where Imhotpû was the patron of science.[**]

* For representations of Harpocrates, the child Horus, see

Lanzone, _Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia_, pis. ccxxvii.,

ccxxviii., and particularly pl. cccx. 2, where there is a

scene in which the young god, represented as a sparrow-hawk,

is nevertheless sucking the breast of his mother Isis with

his beak.

** Hence he is generally represented as seated, or

squatting, and attentively reading a papyrus roll, which

lies open upon his knees; cf. the illustration on p. 142.

But, generally, he was not considered as having either office or marked

individuality; his being was but a feeble reflection of his father's,

and possessed neither life nor power except as derived from him. Two

such contiguous personalities must needs have been confused, and, as

a matter of fact, were so confused as to become at length nothing more

than two aspects of the same god, who united in his own person degrees

of relationship mutually exclusive of each other in a human family.

Father, inasmuch as he was the first member of the triad; son, by virtue

of being its third member; identical with himself in both capacities, he

was at once his own father, his own son, and the husband of his mother.

Gods, like men, might be resolved into at least two elements, soul and

body;[*] but in Egypt, the conception of the soul varied in different

times and in different schools. It might be an insect--butterfly,

bee, or praying mantis;[**] or a bird--the ordinary sparrow-hawk, the

human-headed sparrow-hawk, a heron or a crane--bi, haï--whose

wings enabled it to pass rapidly through space;[***] or the black

shadow--khaîbît--that is attached to every body, but which death sets

free, and which thenceforward leads an independent existence, so that it

can move about at will, and go out into the open sunlight.

* In one of the Pyramid texts, Sâhû-Orion, the wild hunter,

captures the gods, slaughters and disembowels them, cooks

their joints, their haunches, their legs, in his burning

cauldrons, and feeds on their souls as well as on their

bodies. A god was not limited to a single body and a single

soul; we know from several texts that Râ had _seven souls

and fourteen doubles_.

** Mr. Lepage-Renouf supposes that the soul may have been

considered as being a butterfly at times, as in Greece. M.

Lefébure thinks that it must sometimes have been incarnate

as a wasp--I should rather say a bee or a praying mantis.

*** The simple sparrow-hawk is chiefly used to denote the

soul of a god; the human-headed sparrow-hawk, the heron, or

the crane is used indifferently for human or divine souls.

It is from Horapollo that we learn this symbolic

significance of the sparrow-hawk and the pronunciation of

the name of the soul as _bai_.

[Illustration: 147.jp THE BLACK SHADOW COMING OUT INTO THE SUNLIGHT. 4]

4 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Naville's _Das Thebanische

Todtenbuch, vol. i. pl. civ._

Finally, it might be a kind of light shadow, like a reflection from

the surface of calm water, or from a polished mirror, the living and

coloured projection of the human figure, a double--_ka_--reproducing in

minutest detail the complete image of the object or the person to whom

it belonged.[*]

* The nature of the double has long been misapprehended by

Egyptologists, who had even made its name into a kind of

pronominal form. That nature was publicly and almost

simultaneously announced in 1878, first by Maspero, and

directly afterwards by Lepage-Renouf.

[Illustration: 148.jpg THE AUGUST SOULS OF OSIRIS AnD HORUS IN ADORATION

BEFORE THE SOLAR DISK. 1]

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Dûmichen, of

a scene on the cornice of the front room of Osiris on the

terrace of the great temple of Denderah. The soul on the

left belongs to Horus, that on the right to Osiris, lord of

Amentît. Each bears upon its head the group of tall feathers

which is characteristic of figures of Anhûri (cf. p. 103).

The soul, the shadow, the double of a god, was in no way essentially

different from the soul, shadow, or double of a man; his body, indeed,

was moulded out of a more rarefied substance, and generally invisible,

but endowed with the same qualities, and subject to the same

imperfections as ours. The gods, therefore, on the whole, were more

ethereal, stronger, more powerful, better fitted to command, to enjoy,

and to suffer than ordinary men, but they were still men. They had

bones,[**] muscles, flesh, blood; they were hungry and ate, they were

thirsty and drank; our passions, griefs, joys, infirmities, were also

theirs. The _sa_, a mysterious fluid, circulated throughout their

members, and carried with it health, vigour, and life.

** For example, the text of the _Destruction of Men_, and

other documents, teach us that the flesh of the aged sun had

become gold, and his bones silver. The blood of Râ is

mentioned in the _Book of the Dead_, as well as the blood of

Isis and of other divinities.

They were not all equally charged with it; some had more, others less,

their energy being in proportion to the amount which they contained. The

better supplied willingly gave of their superfluity to those who lacked

it, and all could readily transmit it to mankind, this transfusion being

easily accomplished in the temples. The king, or any ordinary man who

wished to be thus impregnated, presented himself before the statue of

the god, and squatted at its feet with his back towards it. The statue

then placed its right hand upon the nape of his neck, and by making

passes, caused the fluid to flow from it, and to accumulate in him as

in a receiver. This rite was of temporary efficacy only, and required

frequent renewal in order that its benefit might be maintained.

[Illustration: 150.jpg THE KING AFTER HIS CORONATION RECEIVING THE

IMPOSITION OF THE SA. 1]

1 Drawn by Boudier from a photograph by M. Gay et, taken in

1889, of a scene in the hypostyle hall at Lûxor. This

illustration shows the relative positions of prince and god.

Anion, after having placed the pschent upon the head of the

Pharaoh Amenôthes III., who kneels before him, proceeds to

_impose the sa_.

By using or transmitting it the gods themselves exhausted their _sa_ of

life; and the less vigorous replenished themselves from the stronger,

while the latter went to draw fresh fulness from a mysterious pond

in the northern sky, called the "pond of the Sa."[*] Divine bodies,

continually recruited by the influx of this magic fluid, preserved their

vigour far beyond the term allotted to the bodies of men and beasts.

Age, instead of quickly destroying them, hardened and transformed them

into precious metals. Their bones were changed to silver, their flesh to

gold; their hair, piled up and painted blue, after the manner of great

chiefs, was turned into lapis-lazuli.[**]

* It is thus that in the _Tale of the Daughter of the

Prince of Bakhtan_ we find that one of the statues of the

Theban Konsû supplies itself with _sa_ from another statue

representing one of the most powerful forms of the god. The

_pond of Sa_, whither the gods go to draw the magic fluid,

is mentioned in the Pyramid texts.

** Cf. the text of the _Destruction of Men_ (Il. 1, 2)

referred to above, where age produces these transformations

in the body of the sun. This changing of the bodies of the

gods into gold, silver, and precious stones, explains why

the alchemists, who were disciples of the Egyptians, often

compared the transmutation of metals to the metamorphosis of

a genius or of a divinity: they thought by their art to

hasten at will that which was the slow work of nature.

This transformation of each into an animated statue did not altogether

do away with the ravages of time. Decrepitude was no less irremediable

with them than with men, although it came to them more slowly; when the

sun had grown old "his mouth trembled, his drivelling ran down to earth,

his spittle dropped upon the ground."

None of the feudal gods had escaped this destiny; for them as for

mankind the day came when they must leave the city and go forth to the

tomb.[*]

* The idea of the inevitable death of the gods is expressed

in other places as well as in a passage of the eighth

chapter of the Booh of the Dead (Naville's edition), which

has not to my knowledge hitherto been noticed: "I am that

Osiris in the West, and Osiris knoweth his day in which he

shall be no more;" that is to say, the day of his death

when he will cease to exist. All the gods, Atûmû, Horus, Râ,

Thot, Phtah, Khnûmû, are represented under the forms of

mummies, and this implies that they are dead. Moreover,

their tombs were pointed out in several places in Egypt.

The ancients long refused to believe that death was natural

and inevitable. They thought that life, once began, might go on

indefinitely: if no accident stopped it short, why should it cease of

itself? And so men did not die in Egypt; they were assassinated. The

murderer often belonged to this world, and was easily recognized as

another man, an animal, some inanimate object such as a stone loosened

from the hillside, a tree which fell upon the passer-by and crushed him.

But often too the murderer was of the unseen world, and so was hidden,

his presence being betrayed in his malignant attacks only. He was a god,

an evil spirit, a disembodied soul who slily insinuated itself into the

living man, or fell upon him with irresistible violence--illness being a

struggle between the one possessed and the power which possessed him.

As soon as the former succumbed he was carried away from his own people,

and his place knew him no more. But had all ended for him with the

moment in which he had ceased to breathe? As to the body, no one was

ignorant of its natural fate. It quickly fell to decay, and a few years

sufficed to reduce it to a skeleton. And as for the skeleton, in the

lapse of centuries that too was disintegrated and became a mere train of

dust, to be blown away by the first breath of wind. The soul might

have a longer career and fuller fortunes, but these were believed to

be dependent upon those of the body, and commensurate with them. Every

advance made in the process of decomposition robbed the soul of some

part of itself; its consciousness gradually faded until nothing was left

but a vague and hollow form that vanished altogether when the corpse had

entirely disappeared. Erom an early date the Egyptians had endeavoured

to arrest this gradual destruction of the human organism, and their

first effort to this end naturally was directed towards the preservation

of the body, since without it the existence of the soul could not be

ensured. It was imperative that during that last sleep, which for

them was fraught with such terrors, the flesh should neither become

decomposed nor turn to dust, that it should be free from offensive odour

and secure from predatory worms.

They set to work, therefore, to discover how to preserve it. The oldest

burials which have as yet been found prove that these early inhabitants

were successful in securing the permanence of the body for a few decades

only. When one of them died, his son, or his nearest relative, carefully

washed the corpse in water impregnated with an astringent or aromatic

substance, such as natron or some solution of fragrant gums, and then

fumigated it with burning herbs and perfumes which were destined to

overpower, at least temporarily, the odour of death.[*]

* This is to be gathered from the various Pyramid texts

relating to the purification by water and to fumigation: the

pains taken to secure material cleanliness, described in

these formulas, were primarily directed towards the

preservation of the bodies subjected to these processes, and

further to the perfecting of the souls to which these bodies

had been united.

Having taken these precautions, they placed the body in the grave,

sometimes entirely naked, sometimes partially covered with its ordinary

garments, or sewn up in a closely fitting gazelle skin. The dead man

was placed on his left side, lying north and south with his face to the

east, in some cases on the bare ground, in others on a mat, a strip of

leather or a fleece, in the position of a child in the foetal state. The

knees were sharply bent at an angle of 45° with the thighs, while the

latter were either at right angles with the body, or drawn up so as

almost to touch the elbows. The hands are sometimes extended in front

of the face, sometimes the arms are folded and the hands joined on the

breast or neck. In some instances the legs are bent upward in such a

fashion that they almost lie parallel with the trunk. The deceased could

only be made to assume this position by a violent effort, and in

many cases the tendons and the flesh had to be cut to facilitate the

operation. The dryness of the ground selected for these burial-places

retarded the corruption of the flesh for a long time, it is true, but

only retarded it, and so did not prevent the soul from being finally

destroyed. Seeing decay could not be prevented, it was determined

to accelerate the process, by taking the flesh from the bones before

interment. The bodies thus treated are often incomplete; the head is

missing, or is detached from the neck and laid in another part of the

pit, or, on the other hand, the body is not there, and the head only is

found in the grave, generally placed apart on a brick, a heap of stones,

or a layer of cut flints. The forearms and the hands were subjected to

the same treatment as the head. In many cases no trace of them appears,

in others they are deposited by the side of the skull or scattered

about haphazard. Other mutilations are frequently met with; the ribs are

divided and piled up behind the body, the limbs are disjointed or the

body is entirely dismembered, and the fragments arranged upon the ground

or enclosed together in an earthenware chest.

These precautions were satisfactory in so far as they ensured the

better preservation of the more solid parts of the human frame, but the

Egyptians felt this result was obtained at too great a sacrifice. The

human organism thus deprived of all flesh was not only reduced to

half its bulk, but what remained had neither unity, consistency, nor

continuity. It was not even a perfect skeleton with its constituent

parts in their relative places, but a mere mass of bones with no

connecting links. This drawback, it is true, was remedied by the

artificial reconstruction in the tomb of the individual thus completely

dismembered in the course of the funeral ceremonies. The bones were laid

in their natural order; those of the feet at the bottom, then those

of the leg, trunk, and arms, and finally the skull itself. But the

superstitious fear inspired by the dead man, particularly of one thus

harshly handled, and particularly the apprehension that he might revenge

himself on his relatives for the treatment to which they had subjected

him, often induced them to make this restoration intentionally

incomplete. When they had reconstructed the entire skeleton, they

refrained from placing the head in position, or else they suppressed

one or all of the vertebras of the spine, so that the deceased should be

unable to rise and go forth to bite and harass the living. Having taken

this precaution, they nevertheless felt a doubt whether the soul could

really enjoy life so long as one half only of the body remained, and the

other was lost for ever: they therefore sought to discover the means

of preserving the fleshy parts in addition to the bony framework of the

body. It had been observed that when a corpse had been buried in the

desert, its skin, speedily desiccated and hardened, changed into a case

of blackish parchment beneath which the flesh slowly wasted away,[*] and

the whole frame thus remained intact, at least in appearance, while its

integrity ensured that of the soul.

* Such was the appearance of the bodies of Coptic monks of

the sixth, eighth, and ninth centuries, which I found in the

convent cemeteries of Contra-Syene, Taûd, and Akhmîm, right

in the midst of the desert.

An attempt was made by artificial means to reproduce the conservative

action of the sand, and, without mutilating the body, to secure at will

that incorruptibility without which the persistence of the soul was but

a useless prolongation of the death-agony. It was the god Anubis--the

jackal lord of sepulture--who was supposed to have made this discovery.

He cleansed the body of the viscera, those parts which most rapidly

decay, saturated it with salts and aromatic substances, protected it

first of all with the hide of a beast, and over this laid thick layers

of linen. The victory the god had thus gained over corruption was,

however, far from being a complete one. The bath in which the dead man

was immersed could not entirely preserve the softer parts of the body:

the chief portion of them was dissolved, and what remained after the

period of saturation was so desiccated that its bulk was seriously

diminished.

When any human being had been submitted to this process, he emerged from

it a mere skeleton, over which the skin remained tightly drawn: these

shrivelled limbs, sunken chest, grinning features, yellow and blackened

skin spotted by the efflorescence of the embalmer's salts, were not

the man himself, but rather a caricature of what he had been. As

nevertheless he was secure against immediate destruction, the Egyptians

described him as furnished with his shape; henceforth he had been purged

of all that was evil in him, and he could face with tolerable security

whatever awaited him in the future. The art of Anubis, transmitted to

the embalmers and employed by them from generation to generation,

had, by almost eliminating the corruptible part of the body without

destroying its outward appearance, arrested decay, if not for ever,

at least for an unlimited period of time. If there were hills at hand,

thither the mummied dead were still borne, partly from custom, partly

because the dryness of the air and of the soil offered them a further

chance of preservation. In districts of the Delta where the hills were

so distant as to make it very costly to reach them, advantage was

taken of the smallest sandy islet rising above the marshes, and there

a cemetery was founded. Where this resource failed, the mummy was

fearlessly entrusted to the soil itself, but only after being placed

within a sarcophagus of hard stone, whose lid and trough, hermetically

fastened together with cement, prevented the penetration of any

moisture. Reassured on this point, the soul followed the body to the

tomb, and there dwelt with it as in its eternal house, upon the confines

of the visible and invisible worlds.

Here the soul kept the distinctive character and appearance which

pertained to it "upon the earth:" as it had been a "double" before

death, so it remained a double after it, able to perform all functions

of animal life after its own fashion. It moved, went, came, spoke,

breathed, accepted pious homage, but without pleasure, and as it were

mechanically, rather from an instinctive horror of annihilation than

from any rational desire for immortality. Unceasing regret for the

bright world which it had left disturbed its mournful and inert

existence. "O my brother, withhold not thyself from drinking and from

eating, from drunkenness, from love, from all enjoyment, from following

thy desire by night and by day; put not sorrow within thy heart, for

what are the years of a man upon earth? The West is a land of sleep and

of heavy shadows, a place wherein its inhabitants, when once installed,

slumber on in their mummy-forms, never more waking to see their

brethren; never more to recognize their fathers or their mothers, with

hearts forgetful of their wives and children. The living water, which

earth giveth to all who dwell upon it, is for me but stagnant and dead;

that water floweth to all who are on earth, while for me it is but

liquid putrefaction, this water that is mine. Since I came into this

funereal valley I know not where nor what I am. Give me to drink of

running water!... Let me be placed by the edge of the water with my face

to the North, that the breeze may caress me and my heart be refreshed

from its sorrow." By day the double remained concealed within the tomb.

If it went forth by night, it was from no capricious or sentimental

desire to revisit the spots where it had led a happier life. Its organs

needed nourishment as formerly did those of its body, and of itself it

possessed nothing "but hunger for food, thirst for drink."[*] Want and

misery drove it from its retreat, and flung it back among the living.

It prowled like a marauder about fields and villages, picking up and

greedily devouring whatever it might find on the ground--broken meats

which had been left or forgotten, house and stable refuse--and,

should these meagre resources fail, even the most revolting dung and

excrement.[**]

* _Teti_, 11. 74, 75. "Hateful unto Teti is hunger, and

he eateth it not; hateful unto Teti is thirst, nor hath he

drunk it." We see that the Egyptians made hunger and thirst

into two substances or beings, to be swallowed as food is

swallowed, but whose effects were poisonous unless

counteracted by the immediate absorption of more satisfying

sustenance.

** King Teti, when distinguishing his fate from that of the

common dead, stated that he had abundance of food, and hence

was not reduced to so pitiful an extremity. "Abhorrent unto

Teti is excrement, Teti rejecteth urine, and Teti abhorreth

that which is abominable in him; abhorrent unto him is

faecal matter and he eateth it not, hateful unto Teti is

liquid filth." (_Teti_, 11. 68, 69_). The same doctrine is

found in several places in the Book of the Dead_.