Volume II Part 10 (1/2)

It is impossible here to do more than indicate the kind of modification which Egyptian religion underwent. Throughout it remained constant in certain features, namely, the _local_ character of its G.o.ds, their usefulness to the dead (their _Chthonian_ aspect), their tendency to be merged into the sun, Ra, the great type and symbol and source of life, and, finally, their inability to shake off the fur and feathers of the beasts, the earliest form of their own development. Thus life, death, sky, sun, bird, beast and man are all blended in the religious conceptions of Egypt. Here follow two hymns to Osiris, hymns of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties, which ill.u.s.trate the confusion of lofty and almost savage ideas, the coexistence of notions from every stage of thought, that make the puzzle of Egyptian mythology.

”Hail to thee, Osiris, eldest son of Seb, greatest of the six deities born of Nut, chief favourite of thy father, Ra, the father of fathers; king of time, master of eternity; one in his manifestations, terrible.

When he left the womb of his mother he united all the crowns, he fixed the urseus (emblem of sovereignty) on his head. G.o.d of many shapes, G.o.d of the unknown name, thou who hast many names in many provinces; if Ra rises in the heavens, it is by the will of Osiris; if he sets, it is at the sight of his glory.”*

In another hymn** Osiris is thus addressed: ”King of eternity, great G.o.d, risen from the waters that were in the beginning, strong hawk, king of G.o.ds, master of souls, king of terrors, lord of crowns, thou that art great in Hnes, that dost appear at Mendes in the likeness of a ram, monarch of the circle of G.o.ds, king of Amenti (Hades), revered of G.o.ds and men, who so knoweth humility and reckoneth deeds of righteousness, thereby knows he Osiris.”***

* From Abydos, nineteenth dynasty. Maspero, _Musee de Boulaq_, pp. 49,50.

** Twentieth dynasty. _Op. cit._, p. 48.

*** ”This phase of religious thought,” says Mr. Page Renouf, speaking of what he calls _monotheism_, ”is chiefly presented to us in a large number of hymns, beginning with the earliest days of the eighteenth dynasty. It is certainly much more ancient, but.... none of the hymns of that time have come down to us.” See a very remarkable pantheistic hymn to Osiris, ”lord of holy transformations,” in a pa.s.sage cited, _Hib. Lect_., p. 218, and the hymns to Amnion Ra, ”closely approaching the language of monotheism,” pp. 225, 226. Excellent examples of pantheistic litanies of Ra are translated from originals of the nineteenth dynasty, in _Records of the Past_, viii. 105-128. The royal Osiris is identified with Ra. Here, too, it is told how Ra smote Apap, the serpent of evil, the Egyptian Ahi.

Here the n.o.blest moral sentiments are blended with Oriental salutations in the wors.h.i.+p of a G.o.d who, for the moment, is recognised as lord of lords, but who is also a ram at Mendes. This apparent confusion of ideas, and this a.s.sertion of supremacy for a G.o.d who, in the next hymn, is subjected to another G.o.d, mark civilised polytheism; but the confusion was increased by the extreme age of the Egyptian faith, and by the doubt that prevailed as to the meaning of tradition. ”The seventeenth chapter of the _Book of the Dead_” which seems to contain a statement of the system of the universe as understood at Heliopolis under the first dynasties, ”is known to us by several examples of the eleventh and twelfth dynasties.” _Each of the verses had already been interpreted in three or four different ways_; so different, that, according to one school, the Creator, _Ra-Show_, was the solar fire; according to another school, not the fire, but the waters! The _Book of the Dead_, in fact, is no book, but collections of pamphlets, so to speak, of very different dates. ”Plan or unity cannot be expected,” and glosses only some four thousand years old have become imbedded in really ancient texts.* Fifteen centuries later the number of interpretations had considerably increased.**

Where the Egyptians themselves were in helpless doubt, it would be vain to offer complete explanations of their opinions and practices in detail; but it is possible, perhaps, to account for certain large elements of their beliefs, and even to untie some of the knots of the Osirian myth.

The strangest feature in the rites of Egypt was animal-wors.h.i.+p, which appeared in various phases. There was the local adoration of a beast, a bird, or fish, to which the neighbours of other districts were indifferent or hostile. There was the presence of the animal in the most sacred _penetralia_ of the temple; and there was the G.o.d conceived of, on the whole, as anthropomorphic, but often represented in art, after the twelfth dynasty, as a man or woman with the head of a bird or beast.***

* Cf. Tiele, _Hist Egypt_. Rel., pp. 26-29, and notes.

** Maspero, _Musee de Boulaq_, p. 149.

*** As to the animals which were sacred and might not be eaten in various nomes, an account will be found in Wilkinson's _Ancient Egyptians_, ii. 467. The English reader will find many beast-headed G.o.ds in the ill.u.s.trations to vol. iii. The edition referred to is Birch's, London, 1878.

A more scientific authority is Lanzoni, _Dizion. Mit_.

These points in Egyptian religion have been the great puzzle both of antiquity and of modern mythology. The common priestly explanations varied. Sometimes it was said that the G.o.ds had concealed themselves in the guise of beasts during the revolutionary wars of Set against Horus.*

Often, again, animal-wors.h.i.+p was interpreted as symbolical; it was not the beast, but the qualities which he personified that were adored.**

Thus Anubis, really a jackal, is a dog, in the explanations of Plutarch, and is said to be wors.h.i.+pped for his fidelity, or because he can see in the night, or because he is the image of time. ”As he brought forth all things out of himself, and contains all things within himself, he gets the t.i.tle of dog.”*** Once more, and by a nearer approach to what is probably the truth, the beast-G.o.ds were said to be survivals of the badges (representing animals) of various tribal companies in the forces of Osiris. Such were the ideas current in Graeco-Roman speculation, nor perhaps is there any earlier evidence as to the character of native interpretation of animal-wors.h.i.+p. The opinion has also been broached that beast-wors.h.i.+p in Egypt is a refraction from the use of hieroglyphs.

If the picture of a beast was one of the signs in the writing of a G.o.d's name, adoration might be transferred to the beast from the G.o.d. It is by no means improbable that this process had its share in producing the results.**** Some of the explanations of animal-wors.h.i.+p which were popular of old are still in some favour.

* De Is. et Os., lxxii.

** Op. cit., xi.

*** Ibid., xliv.

**** Pietschmann, op. cit., p. 163, contends that the animal-wors.h.i.+p is older than these Egyptian modes of writing the divine names, say of Amnion Ra or Hathor. Moreover, the signs were used in writing the names because the G.o.ds were conceived of in these animal shapes.

Mr. Le Page Renouf appears to hold that there was something respectably mythical in the wors.h.i.+p of the inhabitants of zoological and botanical gardens, something holy apparent at least to the devout.* He quotes the opinion attributed to Apollonius of Tyana, that the beasts were symbols of deity, not deities, and this was the view of ”a grave opponent”.

Mr. Le Page Renouf also mentions Porphyry's theory, that ”under the semblance of animals the Egyptians wors.h.i.+p the universal power which the G.o.ds have revealed in the various forms of living nature”.** It is evident, of course, that all of these theories may have been held by the learned in Egypt, especially after the Christian era, in the times of Apollonius and Porphyry; but that throws little light on the motives and beliefs of the pyramid-builders many thousands of years before, or of the contemporary peasants with their wors.h.i.+p of cats and alligators. In short, the systems of symbolism were probably made after the facts, to account for practices whose origin was obscure. Yet another hypothesis is offered by Mr. Le Page Renouf, and in the case of Set and the hippopotamus is shared by M. Maspero. Tiele also remarks that some beasts were promoted to G.o.dhead comparatively late, because their names resembled names of G.o.ds.***

* _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 6, 7.

** _De Abst_., iv. c. 9.

*** _Theolog. Tidjsch_., 12th year, p. 261.

The G.o.ds, in certain cases, received their animal characteristics by virtue of certain unconscious puns or mistakes in the double senses of words. Seb is the earth. Seb is also the Egyptian name for a certain species of goose, and, in accordance with the _h.o.m.onymous_ tendency of the mythological period of all nations, the G.o.d and the bird were identified.* Seb was called ”the Great Cackler”.** Again, the G.o.d Thoth was usually represented with the head of an ibis. A mummied ibis ”in the human form is made to represent the G.o.d Thoth”.*** This connection between Thoth and the ibis Mr. Le Page Renouf explains at some length as the result of an etymological confusion.**** Thus metaphorical language reacted upon thought, and, as in other religions, obtained the mastery.

While these are the views of a distinguished modern Egyptologist, another Egyptologist, not less distinguished, is of an entirely opposite opinion as to the question on the whole. ”It is possible, nay, certain,”