Part 33 (1/2)
A careful perusal of the preceding texts conveys an idea of the immense lapse of time it must have required for the state religion of Egypt to have developed itself and crystallized into a complicated ritual, the true significance of which, doubtlessly, gradually receded from view. The nave primitive symbolization of the union of heaven and earth by the actual marriage of king and queen, followed by general marriage festivities, had naturally created, in course of time, a distinct privileged caste rendered ”divine” by the circ.u.mstances attending their conception and birth. Once in existence the maintenance and insurance of the divine line of descent would naturally enforce the intermarriage of its members and the sequestration and guarded seclusion of the royal women and the virgin priestesses from whose ranks the destined mothers of the divine children were selected.
A more ancient form of symbolizing the union of heaven and earth seems to have been the cult of Apis, which, according to Maspero, preceded the building of the pyramids and could scarcely have arisen before the adoption of the cow or bull, ua, as the rebus of Polaris, the One=ua. A survival of Apis cult seems to be the allegorical sacred t.i.tle ”bull”
(Osiris-Apis) bestowed upon the king, of ”cow” upon the queen and ”calf”
upon their offspring, the young Horus. In later times the king was ent.i.tled ”the ram” and wore his fleece and horns on visiting the queen. As a natural sequence, the fruit of their union was spoken of as ”the lamb.”
According to Herodotus (II, pp. 27-29, Cary's translation), ”the sacred Apis, or Epaphus is the calf of a cow incapable of conceiving another offspring; and the Egyptians say that lightning descends upon the cow from heaven and that from thence it brings forth Apis.” ”The Egyptian magistrates said ... the G.o.d [in the form of Apis] manifested himself at distant intervals ... and when this manifestation took place the Egyptians immediately put on their richest apparel and kept festive holiday.”
As stated by Mr. Wallis Budge, Apis wors.h.i.+p was established at Memphis by Ka-kau, the second king of the second dynasty B.C. 4100. The veneration accorded to the bull, cow and calf, as embodiments of the dual principles of nature, in separate and in single form, seems to have been accorded in other localities to different animal forms and to have been replaced, in later times, by triads, composed of a G.o.d, G.o.ddess and their offspring, each great centre ultimately possessing their particular triad, the living images of which were the high-priest, high-priestess and their ”divine”
offspring. It should be noted that a group consisting of 8+1=nine G.o.ds, high priests or prophets, accompanied the triad, the result being twelve ”deities” in all, of which one=the child, was an embodiment of two principles and was the ka=the divine twain.
The transition of Apis wors.h.i.+p from the animal to the human form was accomplished during the reign of the Ptolemies (B.C. 305-42) when Serapis or Osiris-Apis was introduced into Egypt and represented as a man with the head of a bull, wearing a disk and uraeus. Long before this, however, androsphinxes and other combinations of the human and animal form had existed in Egypt. At Thebes the divine triad was formed by Amen-Ra, Mut-Hathor and Chonsu; at Edfu and Denderah we find Osiris, Isis-Sothis-Hathor and Horus. On the other hand, a curious inscription in the temple at Denderah, translated by Brugsch (II, p. 512), actually describes Amen-Ra as ”the great G.o.d in Denderah, who periodically rejuvenates himself and _becomes a beautiful boy, who is the concealed or hidden G.o.d, whose name is hidden_; who is the Horus with colored wings, coming forth in the upper hemisphere of Edfu, the lord of the double heaven.”
The inference one might be tempted to make from this and other texts is that, at one period, a human babe, the fruit of a royal or sacerdotal union, was born in the temple on what const.i.tuted New Year's Day and was secretly wors.h.i.+pped there during the ensuing year, as the living image of Amen-Ra, the hidden G.o.d and ”divine twain.” I venture to point out that the adoption of the child as the image of the divinity was the logical sequence to the preceding employment of the bull as a rebus for the words ua=one and ka=twain; that the consecration of the human form must, undoubtedly, have given a strong impulse to statuary, and that the sanctification of the child correspondingly exalted motherhood and lent a particular consecration to the marriage of its ”divine parents.” The following facts, culled at random, afford a limit of the transitions and further developments which took place in Egypt in course of time.
Before proceeding, special mention must be made of one important point which throws a flood of light upon the extent of the development of separate cults of sun and moon and the inst.i.tution of solar and lunar calendars which respectively governed the activities of the male and female populations. As this matter will be fully treated in my calendar monograph I shall merely note here that Brugsch cites texts proving the existence and simultaneous use of the two calendars, and the supreme importance accorded to the new moon of the month Epiphi on whose appearance the ”G.o.ddess Isis-Hathor of Denderah embarked on her sacred barge and proceeded up the river, from her city to Edfu (Apollinopolis magna) where she joined his majesty ..., her father, ... the incomparable sun-G.o.d Ra, the first of Apollinopolis, the golden disk, whose children are numerous....” It is further stated that the G.o.d and G.o.ddess became inseparable like sun and moon. Brugsch states that the appearance of the said new moon, which was also a.s.sociated with the heliacal rising of Sirius, would range from Aug. 18 to Sept. 16, Jul. Cal. (see _op. cit._ II, pp. 282-1). The appearance of the G.o.ddess was the signal for the opening of a season of general ”feasting and drinking, rejoicing, singing and dancing” throughout the land, to which the name Tekhu is given in some texts. This is translated by Brugsch as ”the intoxication of gladness or joy;” it ”coincided with the highest level attained by the overflow of the Nile,” and its modern survival is the annual ”marriage of the Nile” which takes place on the 23d of August.
It is curious to note how the original carrying out of primitive and nave rites by the queen and high-priestess gradually caused her presence to be regarded as essential for the ”drawing out of the Nile from its source”
and her person to be surrounded with utmost veneration and sanct.i.ty. As Prof. Flinders Petrie states, speaking of as far back as B.C. 1383-1365: ”The marriage to a royal high priestess of Amen was, of course, purely a political necessity to legitimate the king's position.”
”It would seem that Hor-em-heb was not married to Nezem-mut until his accession, when he legalized his position by becoming husband of the high-priestess of Amen, as in the arrangement of the later dynasties. This marriage was an affair of politics solely, considering the age of the parties; h.o.r.emheb was probably between fifty and sixty at the time and if the queen was the same as Nefert.i.ti's sister Nezem-mut, she must have been about the same age as h.o.r.emheb” (_op. cit._ pp. 183, 250). How long the female Egyptian ruler maintained her sway may, perhaps, best be seen by the following texts describing the political homage paid to the living G.o.ddess of the Egyptians under Ptolemaic and Roman rules.
One inscription clearly shows that, at the time of Ptolemy IX, Euergetes II, the living Isis was acknowledged as the sole ruler of the land of the south by the king and his wife, queen Cleopatra III, who jointly occupied the throne of northern Egypt. Jointly the latter dedicated a beautiful hall to the G.o.ddess Isis, as a place in which to celebrate the Tekhu feast and in which she might linger at this season (Brugsch, _op. cit._ II, p.
284). I have found indications in other works that, in other localities, the G.o.ddess entered a secret chamber in the earth or pyramid or celebrated her sacred mysteries and festival on the sacred boat of the sun, in the sacred sea or lake belonging to the temple. In these cases it is obvious that the dominant idea was the performance of the sacred rites in the sacred centre or middle.
At a later period Cleopatra VII ascended the female throne at the age of seventeen and became high-priestess of Amen, the living image of Isis. It was understood that as soon as her brother Ptolemy XIV, then aged twelve, should come of age, she was to marry him. Partly for political reasons, akin to those which had caused king h.o.r.emheb, on his accession, to marry the high priestess of Amen, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony become in succession the consorts of Cleopatra, after whose death Egypt became a Roman province. But the ”land of the south,” and traditional, divine, feminine rulers.h.i.+p, lingered on. Under the third prefect, aelius Gallus, Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, invades Egypt at the head of her army.
She was defeated, but the position of the high-priestess of Amen, the living Isis, continued to be such as to exact the homage and an act of propitiation from the Roman Emperor.
An inscription, from the time of Augustus, records that a beautiful monument, or ”house,” had been erected by the ”lord of the land, the autocrator, the son of the sun, Caesar,” and was presented, at the time of the Isis festival, to its possessor, the great Isis, the mother of the G.o.d, the mistress of the lying-in-house, the splendid and mighty queen of Philae, the benevolent princess of Abaton, the daughter of the sun. She is likewise named ”she who is great or whose greatness extends towards the four quarters” and is designated as ”the royal wife of the majesty of Osiris and the royal mother of Horus, the victorious bull,” _i. e._ the ka. It is stated that ”she found the house of birth brilliantly adorned and well arranged in every way” and she installed herself in its interior on a given day, so as to bring forth her son in these surroundings. One of the rewards promised to Caesar for the delicate attention and gift bestowed upon the G.o.ddess is ”eternal and permanent occupation of the throne of Horus, the first of the living ones.” According to the Esne calendar a ”divine birth” actually took place on a given date. Brugsch, referring to Plutarch and calendar texts, shows that the commencement of the Isis festival dated from the time when Isis a.s.sumed a phylactery, or amulet, to indicate that she had conceived.
Another inscription shows that Tiberius Claudius had caused the house to be renovated for ”the mighty G.o.ddess Isis, the life giving mistress of Abaton, the good Hathor, the queen of the land of Nubia, the divine mother of the golden (Nub) Horus, the benevolent sister of Osiris, the great protectress who guards his son.” As Tiberius Claudius, in this text named himself her loving son, it is obvious that the day had pa.s.sed away when solely her own divine son Horus would be the one legitimate and divine heir to the Egyptian throne. It is interesting to surmise what became of the children whose ”divine births” continued to be celebrated as a sacred occurrence to which even a Roman Emperor yielded homage. The natural sequence would have been that, accompanied by a band of devoted followers, the sons of the sun, the young bulls, _i. e._ the ka, or divine twain, and their sisters, would seek distant lands in which jointly to establish new kingdoms on the ancient, familiar plan.
Collectively, the preceding evidence has afforded a realization of some of the curious but natural results of the prolonged cult of the dual principles of nature in Egypt, the most remarkable being, perhaps, the creation of a distinct, ”divine” caste of individuals, from the nave adoption of marriage and birth as consecrated religious rites, symbolical of the union of heaven and earth and the production of new life. While at one time, and in certain localities, this mode of symbolism obviously took the upper hand and fostered the growth of the artificial idea of the ”divine rights of royalty,” there are evidences that, simultaneously, the union of the dual principles of nature was symbolized in one or more different archaic and primitive ways. These appear to have been separately adopted in various centres of thought where the disastrous and debasing consequences of the a.s.sociation of the idea of s.e.x with the cult of heaven and earth, light and darkness, etc., were realized with disapproval.
We thus find that, even at Edfu, the ceremonial rite of lighting new sacred fire by means of a wooden instrument and friction was performed on the great Isis festival which was marked by the ”divine birth.” According to the calendar of Canopus this fell on the first day of Payni, and a prescribed illumination of the temples and palace was kept up until the 30th or last day of the month. In the most ancient Egyptian calendars the ”lighting of light” at the same period is also recorded (Brugsch, _op.
cit._ II, p. 470) and, according to Herodotus, the festival was named ”the lighting of lamps” and was observed throughout all Egypt. He adds that ”a religious reason is given why this night is illuminated and so honored”
(II, 61 and 62).
The influence of increasing astronomical knowledge likewise shows itself in the joint observation of the movements of sun, moon and stars and the determination of the relative positions of the latter to the sun at the periods of the equinoxes and solstices. Without taking period or sequence into consideration for the present, I merely note that we find evidence that, at one time, images of sun and moon, of the right and left eyes of Ra, or statues of Hathor-Isis and Osiris, replaced their living images in religious ceremonies.
Sometimes the entire ritual seems to have consisted in the union of water, the produce of heaven, with seeds, the produce of earth; the ensuing germination and production of young shoots being deemed sacred and symbolical of the renewal of life. The fact that statuettes of Osiris have actually been found, made of paste containing various seeds, distinctly shows that, like the Babylonian Baal, the Egyptian male divinity was identified with the earth. Another indication of this is furnished by the descriptions of the feast of Pan, which fell at the period of the spring equinox. At this period the crop of dura, which had been sown by the king in the sacred fields at Denderah, at the time of the ”Osiris mysteries,”
immediately after the inundation had receded and ”the earth was laid bare,” became ripe. The ceremony of cutting the first sheaf of dura was performed by the king, with the silex sickle=khepes.
While Osiris was thus directly a.s.sociated with the produce of the earth there are also evidences that, just as Isis became identified with birth and life, her consort became the lord of death and of the underworld.
Mysterious rites and human sacrifices seem to have been inst.i.tuted in his honor. According to obscure myths Osiris himself had been foully murdered, his body cut into fourteen pieces and cast over the length and breadth of the land. His head was supposed to be preserved at Abydos, the chief centre of his wors.h.i.+p, and shrines were erected over the other portions of his body. It will be a matter for further research to investigate whether the ”mysteries of Osiris” did not include the dramatization of the death of Osiris, in which a human victim personified the G.o.d and was actually killed and dismembered.
It is, perhaps, worth noting here, as an a.n.a.logy, how appropriately the ancient Mexican annual sacrifice of a youth, chosen among the most perfect, might have answered as a rendition of the drama of Osiris. The body of the victim was divided and the pieces distributed to a fixed number of priests and chieftains, who partook of them as sacred food. The head was preserved in the Great Temple itself, on the Tzompantli, and the large number of skulls seen there by the Spaniards const.i.tuted a proof of the great antiquity of the custom. The blood of the victim, poured upon seeds, seems to have been considered essential for bringing about the germination of the sacred shoots and typical of the union of the dual principles of nature and of life springing from death. Idols, formed of seeds moistened with human blood, were distributed to the partic.i.p.ants in the ceremony. According to some authors this sacred paste, and not pieces of human flesh, const.i.tuted the consecrated food, eaten according to the prescribed ritual.
How far a.n.a.logous rites were performed in Egypt remains to be seen; it is, at all events, certain that, by slow degrees, the cult of the dual principles of nature gave rise to the inst.i.tution of strange unnatural rites, the original nave meanings of which became obscured, debased or lost. While various localities of Egypt, notably Thebes and Abydos, appear to have become the birthplace of curious aberrations of the human intellect, there was one ancient and great centre of learning where monotheism and the knowledge of the fundamental scheme appear to have been preserved intact, namely, at Heliopolis, the ancient On or Anu of the North, named the ”House of the Sun” by Jeremiah and ”the Eye or Fountain of the Sun” by the Arabs. According to Mr. Wallis Budge, ”its ruins cover an area three miles square ... the greatest and oldest Egyptian College or University for the education of the priesthood and laity stood here....
During the XXth dynasty the temple of Heliopolis was one of the largest and wealthiest of all Egypt and its staff was numbered by thousands. When Cambyses visited Egypt the glory of Heliopolis was well on the wane and, after the removal of the priesthood and sages of the temple to Alexandria, by Ptolemy II (B.C. 286), its downfall was well a.s.sured. When Strabo visited it (B.C. 24) the greater part of it was in ruins.... Heliopolis had a large population of Jews and it will be remembered that Joseph married the daughter of a priest of On (Annu).... Macrobius says that the Heliopolis of Syria or Baalbek, was founded by a body of priests who left the ancient city of Heliopolis of Egypt” (The Nile, p. 132).
Indirectly we learn the tenor of the doctrines and ideas held by the sages of Heliopolis at one period by the remarkable attempt to reform the religion of Egypt, carried out by their pupil, Amenhotep IV (about B.C.