Read Ebook: History Of Egypt Chaldæa Syria Babylonia and Assyria Volume 1 (of 12) by Maspero G Gaston Sayce A H Archibald Henry Editor McClure M L Translator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 237 lines and 93290 words, and 5 pages

The organization of the Delta, it would appear, was more slowly brought about. It must have greatly resembled that of the lowlands of Equatorial Africa, towards the confluence of the Bahr el Abiad and the Bahr el Ghaz?l. Great tracts of mud, difficult to describe as either solid or liquid, marshes dotted here and there with sandy islets, bristling with papyrus reeds, water-lilies, and enormous plants through which the arms of the Nile sluggishly pushed their ever-shifting course, low-lying wastes intersected with streams and pools, unfit for cultivation and scarcely available for pasturing cattle. The population of such districts, engaged in a ceaseless struggle with nature, always preserved relatively ruder manners, and a more rugged and savage character, impatient of all authority. The conquest of this region began from the outer edge only. A few principalities were established at the apex of the Delta in localities where the soil had earliest been won from the river. It appears that one of these divisions embraced the country south of and between the bifurcation of the Nile: A?n? of the North, the Heliopolis of the Greeks, was its capital. In very early times the principality was divided, and formed three new states, independent of each other. Those of A?n? and the Haunch were opposite to each other, the first on the Arabian, the latter on the Libyan bank of the Nile. The district of the White Wall marched with that of the Haunch on the north, and on the south touched the territory of the Oleander. Further down the river, between the more important branches, the governors of Sai's and of Bubastis, of Athribis and of Busiris, shared among themselves the primitive Delta. Two frontier provinces of unequal size, the Arabian on the east in the Wady Tumilat, and the Libyan on the west to the south of Lake Mareotis, defended the approaches of the country from the attacks of Asiatic Bed?wins and of African nomads. The marshes of the interior and the dunes of the littoral, were not conducive to the development of any great industry or civilization. They only comprised tracts of thinly populated country, like the principalities of the Harpoon and of the Cow, and others whose limits varied from century to century with the changing course of the river. The work of rendering the marshes salubrious and of digging canals, which had been so successful in the Nile Valley, was less efficacious in the Delta, and proceeded more slowly. Here the embankments were not supported by a mountain chain: they were continued at random across the marshes, cut at every turn to admit the waters of a canal or of an arm of the river. The waters left their usual bed at the least disturbing influence, and made a fresh course for themselves across country. If the inundation were delayed, the soft and badly drained soil again became a slough: should it last but a few weeks longer than usual, the work of several generations was for a long time undone. The Delta of one epoch rarely presented the same aspect as that of previous periods, and Northern Egypt never became as fully mistress of her soil as the Egypt of the south.

These first principalities, however small they appear to us, were yet too large to remain undivided. In those times of slow communication, the strong attraction which a capital exercised over the provinces under its authority did not extend over a wide radius. That part of the population of the Terebinth, living sufficiently near to Si?t to come into the town for a few hours in the morning, returning in the evening to the villages when business was done, would not feel any desire to withdraw from the rule of the prince who governed there. On the other hand, those who lived outside that restricted circle were forced to seek elsewhere some places of assembly to attend the administration of justice, to sacrifice in common to the national gods, and to exchange the produce of the fields and of local manufactures. Those towns which had the good fortune to become such rallying-points naturally played the part of rivals to the capital, and their chiefs, with the district whose population, so to speak, gravitated around them, tended to become independent of the prince. When they succeeded in doing this, they often preserved for the new state thus created, the old name, slightly modified by the addition of an epithet. The primitive territory of Si?t was in this way divided into three distinct communities; two, which remained faithful to the old emblem of the tree--the Upper Terebinth, with Si?t itself in the centre, and the Lower Terebinth, with K?sit to the north; the third, in the south and east, took as their totem the immortal serpent which dwelt in their mountains, and called themselves the Serpent Mountain, whose chief town was that of the Sparrow Hawk. The territory of the Oleander produced by its dismemberment the principality of the Upper Oleander, that of the Lower Oleander, and that of the Knife. The territory of the Harpoon in the Delta divided itself into the Western and Eastern Harpoon. The fission in most cases could not have been accomplished without struggles; but it did take place, and all the principalities having a domain of any considerable extent had to submit to it, however they may have striven to avoid it. This parcelling out was continued as circumstances afforded opportunity, until the whole of Egypt, except the half desert districts about the cataract, became but an agglomeration of petty states nearly equal in power and population.

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 Sah? 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 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.

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 Napr?t was identified with the ripe ear, or the grain of wheat;

Maskhon?t appeared by the child's cradle at the very moment of its birth; and Ranin?t presided over the naming and the nurture of the newly born. Neither Ranin?t, the fairy godmother, nor Maskhon?t 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.

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.

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.

This nation of gods, like nations of men, contained foreign elements, the origin of which was known to the Egyptians themselves. They knew that H?thor, the milch cow, had taken up her abode in their land from very ancient times, and they called her the Lady of P?an?t, after the name of her native country. B?s? 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.

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 Ba?l? and his retinue of Astartes, Anitis, Eeshephs, and Kadsh?s. 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.

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.

Where the sky was looked upon as the incarnation of a goddess, R? 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.

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.

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 H?thor a heifer.

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 N??t," 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 N??t, 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.

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, Ap?pi, 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, R? emerged from the darkness and again went on his way, while Ap?pi sank back into the abyss, paralysed by the magic of the gods, and pierced with many a wound.

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.

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.

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 suggested to the Egyptians the haunch of an ox placed on the northern edge of the horizon.

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.

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. ?apshetat?i, our Jupiter, Kahiri-, Sobk?-, steered their barks straight ahead like I??h? and R?; but Mars-Doshiri, the red, sailed backwards. As a star Bonu, the bird 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 Ti?n?tiri, the god who hails the sun before his rising and proclaims the dawn of day.

Sah? and Sopd?t, Orion and Sirius, were the rulers of this mysterious world. Sah? 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.

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 Sah? 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. Sah? 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. Sah? 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.

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, Khu?m? of the Cataract, Harsh?fit? 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: Khn?m? at the place of its entering into Egypt, and again at the town of H??r?t, near the point where a great arm branches off from the Eastern stream to flow towards the Libyan hills and form the Bahr-Y?suf: Harsh?fit? at the gorges of the Fay?m, where the Bahr-Y?suf 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 B?to denoted the black vegetable mould of the valley, the distinctive soil of Egypt annually covered and fertilized by the inundation.

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, M?n? at Coptos and at Panopolis. Amon seems rather to have symbolized the productive soil, while M?n? 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 M?n?.

The Sky-gods, like the Earth-gods, were separated into two groups, the one consisting of women: H?thor of Denderah, or N?t of Sais; the other composed of men identical with Horus, or derived from him: Anh?ri-Sh? of Sebennytos and Thinis; Harmerati, Horus of the two eyes, at Pharbaethos; Har-Sapdi, Horus the source of the zodiacal light, in the W?dy Tumil?t; and finally Harh?d?ti at Edf?. R?, 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 R?. Whether under the name of Horus or of Anh?ri, 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 R?, 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 R? had been usurped by Horus, and all the designations of Horus had been appropriated by R?. The sun was styled Harmakh??ti, 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 Hartim?, Horus the Pikeman, that Horus whose lance spears the hippopotamus or the serpent of the celestial river; or Harn?bi, 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.

The latter were numerous. Sometimes, as in the case of Harkhobi, Horus of Khobi?, 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 Zar?t and at Sebennytos in Lower Egypt, was called Anhuri. When he assumed the attributes of R?, 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 Medam?fc Ta?d and Erment had preceded Amon as ruler of the Theban plain, was also a warrior, and his name of Mont? had reference to his method of fighting. He was depicted as brandishing a curved sword and cutting off the heads of his adversaries.

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.

We cannot always understand what led the inhabitants of each nome to affect one animal rather than another. Why, towards Graeco-Roman times, should they have worshipped the jackal, or even the dog, at Si?t? 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.

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.

If R? 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, Khn?m?, Osiris, Harshafit?, 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 Fay?m 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 Sobk? 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.

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.

Thus, Thot of Hermopolis possessed himself of a harem consisting of Sesha?t-Safk-h?t?b?i and Hahm???t. T?m? divided the homage of the inhabitants of Helio-polis with Nebth?tp?t and with I?sas?t. Khn?m? seduced and married the two fairies of the neighbouring cataract--An?k?t the constrainer, who compresses the Nile between its rocks at Philse and at Syene, and Sat?t 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. N?t of Sai's had taken for her husband Osiris of Mendes, and borne him a lion's whelp, Ari-hos-nofir.

H?thor of Denderah had completed her household with Haro?ris and a younger Horus, with the epithet of Ahi--he who strikes the sistrum.

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 Safkh?t?b?i and Nahm???t: one composed of Thot, Safkh?t?b?i, and Harn?bi, the golden sparrow-hawk; into the other Nahm???t and her nursling Nofirhor? entered.

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 R?, Amon, Horus, Sobk?, female Ras, Anions, Horuses, and Sobk?s were derived, by the addition of the regular feminine affix to the primitive masculine names--R??t, Amon?t, Hor?t, Sobk?t. In the same way, detached cognomens of divine fathers were embodied in divine sons. Imhotp?, "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 B?to and the Mendesian Osiris; of Haro?ris of Edfu and H?thor of Denderah.

In the same manner Sokh?t of Letopolis and Bast?t of Bubastis were appropriated as wives to Phtah of Memphis, Nofirt?m? 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. H?thor, supreme at Denderah, shrank into insignificance before Haro?ris at Edf?, and there retained only the somewhat subordinate part of a wife in the house of her husband.

On the other hand, Haro?ris when at Denderah descended from the supreme rank, and was nothing more than the almost useless consort of the lady H?thor. 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, H?thor 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 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 Imhotp? was the patron of science.

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, ha?--whose wings enabled it to pass rapidly through space; or the black shadow--kha?b?t--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.

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.

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.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet