Part 3 (2/2)
To a.s.sist him in this work he placed a pillar at each of the cardinal points, and the ”supports of Shu” are thus the props of the sky.
3. TEFNUT was the twin-sister of Shu; as a power of nature she typified moisture or some aspect of the sun's heat, but as a G.o.d of the dead she seems to have been, in some way, connected with the supply of drink to the deceased. Her brother Shu was the right eye of Temu, and she was the left, _i.e._, Shu represented an aspect of the Sun, and Tefnut of the Moon. The G.o.ds Temu, Shu, and Tefnut thus formed a trinity, and in the story of the creation the G.o.d Temu says, after describing how Shu and Tefnut proceeded from himself, ”thus from being one G.o.d I became three.”
4. SEB was the son of the G.o.d Shu. He is called the ”Erp[=a],” _i.e._, the ”hereditary chief” of the G.o.ds, and the ”father of the G.o.ds,”
these being, of course, Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. He was originally the G.o.d of the earth, but later he became a G.o.d of the dead as representing the earth wherein the deceased was laid. One legend identifies him with the goose, the bird which, in later times was sacred to him, and he is often called the ”Great Cackler,” in allusion to the idea that he made the primeval egg from which the world came into being.
5. NUT was the wife of Seb and the mother of Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. Originally she was the personification of the sky, and represented the feminine principle which was active at the creation of the universe. According to an old view, Seb and Nut existed in the primeval watery abyss side by side with Shu and Tefnut; and later Seb became the earth and Nut the sky. These deities were supposed to unite every evening, and to remain embraced until the morning, when the G.o.d Shu separated them, and set the G.o.ddess of the sky upon his four pillars until the evening. Nut was, naturally, regarded as the mother of the G.o.ds and of all things living, and she and her husband Seb were considered to be the givers of food, not only to the living but also to the dead. Though different views were current in Egypt as to the exact location of the heaven of the beatified dead, yet all schools of thought in all periods a.s.signed it to some region in the sky, and the abundant allusions in the texts to the heavenly bodies--that is, the sun, moon, and stars--which the deceased dwells with, prove that the final abode of the souls of the righteous was not upon earth. The G.o.ddess Nut is sometimes represented as a female along whose body the sun travels, and sometimes as a cow; the tree sacred to her was the sycamore.
6. Osiris was the son of Seb and Nut, the husband of Isis and the father of Horus. The history of this G.o.d is given elsewhere in this book so fully that it is only necessary to refer briefly to him. He was held to be a man although of divine origin; he lived and reigned as a king on this earth; he was treacherously murdered by his brother Set, and his body was cut up into fourteen pieces, which were scattered about Egypt; after his death, Isis, by the use of magical formulae supplied to her by Thoth, succeeded in raising him to life, and he begot a son called Horus; when Horus was grown up, he engaged in combat with Set, and overcame him, and thus ”avenged his father”; by means of magical formulae, supplied to him by Thoth, Osiris reconst.i.tuted and revivified his body, and became the type of the resurrection and the symbol of immortality; he was also the hope, the judge, and the G.o.d of the dead, probably even in pre-dynastic times.
Osiris was in one aspect a solar deity, and originally he seems to have represented the sun after it had set; but he is also identified with the moon. In the XVIIIth dynasty, however, he is already the equal of R[=a], and later the attributes of G.o.d and of all the ”G.o.ds”
were ascribed to him.
7. Isis was the wife of Osiris and mother of Horus; as a nature G.o.ddess she had a place in the boat of the sun at the creation, when she probably typified the dawn. By reason of her success in revivifying her husband's body by means of the utterance of magical formulae, she is called the ”lady of enchantments.” Her wanderings in search of her husband's body, and the sorrow which she endured in bringing forth and rearing her child in the papyrus swamps of the Delta, and the persecution which she suffered at the hands of her husband's enemies, form the subject of many allusions in texts of all periods. She has various aspects, but the one which appealed most to the imagination of the Egyptians, was that of ”divine mother”; in this character thousands of statues represent her seated and suckling her child Horus whom she holds upon her knees.
8. Set was the son of Seb and Nut, and the husband of Nephthys. At a very early period he was regarded as the brother and friend of ”Horus the Elder,” the Aroueris of the Greeks, and Set represented the night whilst Horus represented the day. Each of these G.o.ds performed many offices of a friendly nature for the dead, and among others they set up and held the ladder by which the deceased made his way from this earth to heaven, and helped him to ascend it. But, at a later period, the views of the Egyptians concerning Set changed, and soon after the reign of the kings called ”Seti,” _i.e._, those whose names were based upon that of the G.o.d, he became the personification of all evil, and of all that is horrible and terrible in nature, such as the desert in its most desolate form, the storm and the tempest, etc. Set, as a power of nature, was always waging war with Horus the Elder, _i.e._, the night did battle with the day for supremacy; both G.o.ds, however, sprang from the same source, for the heads of both are, in one scene, made to belong to one body. When Horus, the son of Isis, had grown up, he did battle with Set, who had murdered Horus's father Osiris, and vanquished him; in many texts these two originally distinct fights are confused, and the two Horus G.o.ds also. The conquest of Set by Horus in the first conflict typified only the defeat of the night by the day, but the defeat of Set in the second seems to have been understood as the victory of life over death, and of good over evil. The symbol of Set was an animal with a head something like that of a camel, but it has not yet been satisfactorily identified; figures of the G.o.d are uncommon, for most of them were destroyed by the Egyptians when they changed their views about him.
9. NEPHTHYS was the sister of Isis and her companion in all her wanderings and troubles; like her she had a place in the boat of the Sun at creation, when she probably typified the twilight or very early night. She was, according to one legend, the mother of Anubis by Osiris, but in the texts his father is declared to be R[=a]. In funeral papyri, stelae, etc., she always accompanies Isis in her ministrations to the dead, and as she a.s.sisted Osiris and Isis to defeat the wickedness of her own husband (Set), so she helped the deceased to overcome the powers of death and the grave.
Here then we have the nine G.o.ds of the divine company of Heliopolis, but no mention is made of Horus, the son of Isis, who played such an important part in the history of his father Osiris, and nothing is said about Thoth; both G.o.ds are, however, included in the company in various pa.s.sages of the text, and it may be that their omission from it is the result of an error of the scribe. We have already given the chief details of the history of the G.o.ds Horus and Thoth, and the princ.i.p.al G.o.ds of the other companies may now be briefly named.
NU was the ”father of the G.o.ds,” and progenitor of the ”great company of the G.o.ds”; he was the primeval watery ma.s.s out of which all things came.
PTAH was one of the most active of the three great G.o.ds who carried out the commands of Thoth, who gave expression in words to the will of the primeval, creative Power; he was self-created, and was a form of the Sun-G.o.d R[=a] as the ”Opener” of the day. From certain allusions in the Book of the Dead he is known to have ”opened the mouth”
[Footnote: ”May the G.o.d Ptah open my mouth”; ”may the G.o.d Shu open my mouth with his implement of iron wherewith he opened the mouth of the G.o.ds” (Chap. XXIII.)] of the G.o.ds, and it is in this capacity that he became a G.o.d of the cycle of Osiris. His feminine counterpart was the G.o.ddess SEKHET, and the third member of the triad of which he was the chief was NEFER-TEMU.
PTAH-SEKER is the dual G.o.d formed by fusing Seker, the Egyptian name of the incarnation of the Apis Bull of Memphis, with Ptah.
PTAH-SEKER-AUSAR was a triune G.o.d who, in brief, symbolized life, death, and the resurrection.
KHNEMU was one of the old cosmic G.o.ds who a.s.sisted Ptah in carrying out the commands of Thoth, who gave expression in words to the will of the primeval, creative Power, he is described as ”the maker of things which are, the creator of things which shall be, the source of created things, the father of fathers, and the mother of mothers.” It was he who, according to one legend, fas.h.i.+oned man upon a potter's wheel.
KHEPERA was an old primeval G.o.d, and the type of matter which contains within itself the germ of life which is about to spring into a new existence; thus he represented the dead body from which the spiritual body was about to rise. He is depicted in the form of a man having a beetle for a head, and this insect became his emblem because it was supposed to be self-begotten and self-produced. To the present day certain of the inhabitants of the Sudan, pound the dried scarabaeus or beetle and drink it in water, believing that it will insure them a numerous progeny. The name ”Khepera” means ”he who rolls,” and when the insect's habit of rolling along its ball filled with eggs is taken into consideration, the appropriateness of the name is apparent. As the ball of eggs rolls along the germs mature and burst into life; and as the sun rolls across the sky emitting light and heat and with them life, so earthly things are produced and have their being by virtue thereof.
R[=A] was probably the oldest of the G.o.ds wors.h.i.+pped in Egypt, and his name belongs to such a remote period that its meaning is unknown. He was in all periods the visible emblem of G.o.d, and was the G.o.d of this earth to whom offerings and sacrifices were made daily; time began when R[=a] appeared above the horizon at creation in the form of the Sun, and the life of a man was compared to his daily course at a very early date. R[=a] was supposed to sail over heaven in two boats, the [=A]TET or M[=A] TET boat in which he journeyed from sunrise until noon, and the SEKTET boat in which he journeyed from noon until sunset. At his rising he was attacked by [=A]pep, a mighty ”dragon” or serpent, the type of evil and darkness, and with this monster he did battle until the fiery darts which he discharged into the body of =Apep scorched and burnt him up; the fiends that were in attendance upon this terrible foe were also destroyed by fire, and their bodies were hacked in pieces. A repet.i.tion of this story is given in the legend of the fight between Horus and Set, and in both forms it represented originally the fight which was supposed to go on daily between light and darkness. Later, however, when Osiris had usurped the position of R[=a], and Horus represented a divine power who was about to avenge the cruel murder of his father, and the wrong which had been done to him, the moral conceptions of right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood were applied to light and darkness, that is to say, to Horus and Set.
As R[=a] was the ”father of the G.o.ds,” it was natural that every G.o.d should represent some phase of him, and that he should represent every G.o.d. A good ill.u.s.tration of this fact is afforded by a Hymn to R[=a], a fine copy of which is found inscribed on the walls of the sloping corridor in the tomb of Seti I., about B.C. 1370, from which we quote the following:--
11. ”Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, who dost enter into the habitations of Ament, behold [thy] body is Temu.
12. ”Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, who dost enter into the hidden place of Anubis, behold, [thy] body is Khepera.
13. ”Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, whose duration of life is greater than that of the hidden forms, behold [thy] body is Shu.
14. ”Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, .... behold [thy] body is Tefnut.
15. ”Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, who bringest forth, green things in their season, behold [thy] body is Seb.
16. ”Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, thou mighty being who dost judge,... behold [thy] body is Nut.
<script>