See W. M. F. Petrie,Egyptian Tales(2 vols., London, 1895); G. Maspero,Les Contes populaires de l’Égypte ancienne(3rd edition, Paris, 1906); W. Max Müller,Die Liebespoesie der alten Ägypter(Leipzig, 1899).
See W. M. F. Petrie,Egyptian Tales(2 vols., London, 1895); G. Maspero,Les Contes populaires de l’Égypte ancienne(3rd edition, Paris, 1906); W. Max Müller,Die Liebespoesie der alten Ägypter(Leipzig, 1899).
(F. Ll. G.)
C.Religion.—1.Introductory.—Copious as are the sources of information from which our knowledge of the Egyptian religion is drawn, there is nevertheless no aspect of the ancient civilization of Egypt that we really so little understand. While the youth of Egyptological research is in part responsible for this, the reason lies still more in the nature of the religion itself and the character of the testimony bearing upon it. For a true appreciation of the chaotic polytheism that reveals itself even in the earliest texts it would be necessary to be able to trace its development, stage by stage, out of a number of naive primitive cults; but the period of growth lies behind recorded history, and we are here reduced to hypotheses anda posteriorireconstructions. The same criticism applies, no doubt, to other religions, like those of Greece and Rome. In Egypt, however, the difficulty is much aggravated by the poor quality of the evidence. The religious books are textually very corrupt, one-sided in their subject-matter, and distributed over a period of more than two thousand years. The greatest defect of all is their relative silence with regard to the myths. For the story of Isis and Osiris we have indeed the late treatise ascribed to Plutarch, and a few fragments of other myths may be culled from earlier native sources. But in general the tales that passed current about the gods are referred to only in mysterious and recondite allusions; as Herodotus for his own times explicitly testifies, a reticence in such matters seems to have been encouraged by the priests. Thus with regard to Egyptian theology we are very imperfectly informed, and the account that is here given of it must be looked upon as merely provisional. The actual practices of the cult, both funerary and divine, are better known, and we are tolerably familiar with the doctrines as to the future state of the dead. There is good material, too, for the study of Egyptian magic, though this branch has been somewhat neglected hitherto.
2.Main Sources.—(a)The Pyramid texts,a vast collection of incantations inscribed on the inner walls of five royal tombs of the Vth and VIth Dynasties at Sakkāra, discovered and first published by Maspero. Much of these texts is of extreme antiquity; one incantation at least has been proved to belong to an age anterior to the unification of the Northern and Southern kingdoms. Later copies also exist, but possess little independent critical value. The subject-matter is funerary,i.e.it deals with the fate of the dead king in the next life. Some chapters describe the manner in which he passes from earth to heaven and becomes a star in the firmament, others deal with the food and drink necessary for his continued existence after death, and others again with the royal prerogatives which he hopes still to enjoy; many are directed against the bites of snakes and stings of scorpions. It is possible that these incantations were recited as part of the funerary ritual, but there is no doubt that their mere presence in the tombs was supposed to be magically effective for the welfare of the dead. Originally these texts had an application to the king alone, but before the beginning of the XIIth Dynasty private individuals had begun to employ them on their own behalf. They seem to be relatively free from textual corruption, but the vocabulary still occasions much difficulty to the translator.
(b)The Book of the Deadis the somewhat inappropriate name applied to a large similar collection of texts of various dates, certain chapters of which show a tendency to become welded together into a book of fixed content and uniform order. A number of chapters contained in the later recensions are already found on the sarcophagi of the Middle Kingdom, together with a host of funereal texts not usually reckoned as belonging to the Book of the Dead; these have been published by Lepsius and Lacau. The above-mentioned nucleus, combined with other chapters of more recent origin, is found in the papyri of the XVIIIth-XXth Dynasties, and forms the so-called Theban recension, which has been edited by Naville in an important work. Here already more or less rigid groups of chapters may be noted, but individual manuscripts differ greatly in what they include and exclude. In the Saite period a sort of standard edition was drawn up, consisting of 165 chapters in a fixed order and with a common title “the book of going forth in the day”; this recension was published by Lepsius in 1842 from a Turin papyrus. Like the Pyramid texts, the Book of the Dead served a funerary purpose, but its contents are far more heterogeneous; besides chapters enabling the dead man to assume what shape he will, or to issue triumphant from the last judgment, there are listsof gates to be passed and demons to be encountered in the nether world, formulae such as are inscribed on sepulchral figures and amulets, and even hymns to the sun-god. These texts are for the most part excessively corrupt, and despite the translations of Pierret, Renouf and Budge, much labour must yet be expended upon them before they can rank as a first-rate source.
(c) The texts of theTombs of the Kings at Thebes(XVIIIth-XXth Dyn.) consist of a series of theological books compiled at an uncertain date; they have been edited by Naville and Lefébure. The chief of these, extant in a longer and a shorter version, is calledThe book of that which is in the Nether World(familiarly known as theAm Duat) and deals with the journey of the sun during the twelve hours of the night.The Book of Gatestreats of the same topic from a more theological standpoint.The Litanies of the Suncontain the acclamations with which the sun-god Re was greeted, when at eventide his bark reached the entrance of the nether world. Another treatise relates the destruction of mankind, and the circumstances that led to the creation of the heavens in the form of a cow.
(d) Among thelater religious booksone or two deserve a special mention, such asThe Overthrowing of Apophis, the serpent enemy of the sun-god;The Lamentations of Isis and Nephthysover their murdered brother Osiris;The Book of Breathings, a favourite book among the later Theban priests. Several of these books were used in the ritual of feast days, but all have received a secondary funerary employment, and are therefore found buried with the dead in their tombs.
(e) TheRitual textshave survived only in copies not earlier than the New Kingdom. The temple ritual employed in the daily cult is illustrated by the scenes depicted on the inner walls of the great temples: the formulae recited during the performance of the ceremonies are recorded at length in the temple of Seti I. (XIXth Dyn.) at Abydos, as well as in some later papyri in Berlin. The whole material has been collected and studied by Moret. The funerary ritual is known from texts in the Theban tombs (XVIIIth-XXth Dyn.) and papyri and sarcophagi of later date; older versions are contained in the Pyramid texts andThe Book of the Dead. Schiaparelli has done much towards gathering together this scattered material. The ritual observed during the process of embalmment is preserved in late papyri in Paris and Cairo published by Maspero.
(f) Themagicaldocuments have been comparatively little studied, in spite of their great interest. They deal for the most part with the hearing of diseases, the bites of snakes and scorpions, &c., but incidentally cast many sidelights on the mythology and superstitious beliefs. The best-known of these books is thePapyrus Harrispublished by F. J. Chabas, but other papyri of as great or greater importance are to be found in the Leiden, Turin and other collections. A curious book published by A. Erman contains spells to be used by mothers for the protection of their children. A papyrus in London contains a calendar of lucky and unlucky days. A late class of stelae, of which the best specimen has been published by Golenischeff, consists of spells of various kinds originally intended for the use of the living, but later employed for funerary purposes.
(g) Under the headingMiscellaneouswe must mention a number of sources of great value: the grave-stones, or stelae, especially those from Abydos, which throw much light on funerary beliefs; the greatPapyrus Harris, the longest of all papyri, which enumerates the gifts of Rameses III. (XXth Dyn.) to the various temples of Egypt; the hymns to the gods preserved in Cairo and Leiden papyri; and the inscriptions of the Ptolemaic temples (Dendera, Edfu, &c.), which teem with good religious material. Nor can any attempt here be made to summarize the remaining native Egyptian sources, literary and archaeological, that deserve notice.
(h) Among the classical writers, Plutarch in his treatiseConcerning Isis and Osirisis the most important. Diodorus also is useful. Herodotus, owing to his religious awe and dread of divulging sacred mysteries, is only a second-rate source.
3.The Gods.—The end of the pre-dynastic period, in which we dimly descry a number of independent tribes in constant warfare with one another, was marked by the rise of a united Egyptian state with a single Pharaonic ruler at its head. The era of peace thus inaugurated brought with it a rapid progress in all branches of civilization; and there soon emerged not only a national art and a condition of material prosperity shared by the entire land in common, but also a state religion, which gathered up the ancient tribal cults and floating cosmical conceptions, and combining them as best it could, imposed them on the people as a whole. By the time that the Pyramid texts were put into writing, doubtless long before the Vth Dynasty, this religion had assumed a stereotyped appearance that clung to it for ever afterwards. But the multitude of the deities and the variety of the myths that it strove to incorporate prevented the development of a uniform theological system, and the heterogeneous origin of the religion remained irretrievably stamped upon its face. Written records were few at the time when the pantheon was built up, so that the process of construction cannot be followed historically from stage to stage; but it is possible by arguing backwards from the later facts to discern the main tendencies at work, and the principal elementary cults that served as the materials.
The gods of the pre-dynastic period may be divided into two chief groups, the tribal or local divinities and the cosmic or explanatory deities. At the beginning each tribe had its own particular god, who in essence was nothingClassification of pre-dynastic gods.but the articulate expression of the inner cohesion and of the outward independence of the tribe itself, but who outwardly manifested himself in the form of some animal or took up his abode in some fetish of wood or stone. In times of peace this visible emblem of the god’s presence was housed in a rude shrine, but in war-time it was taken thence and carried into the battlefield on a standard. We find such divine standardsoften depicted on the earliest monuments, and among the symbols placed upon them may be detected the images of many deities destined to play an important part in the later national pantheon, such as the falcon Horus, the wolf Wepwawet (Ophois), the goddess Neith, symbolized by a shield transfixed with arrows, and the god Min, the nature of whose fetish is obscure. In course of time the tribes became localized in particular districts, under the influence of a growing central authority, and their gods then passed from tribal into local deities. Hence it came about that the provincial districts or nomes, as they were called, often derived their names from the gods of tribes that settled in them, these names being hieroglyphically written with the sign for “district” surmounted by standards of the type above described,e.g., “the nome of the dog Anubis,” the 17th or Cynopolite nome of Upper Egypt. In this way a large number of deities came to enjoy special reverence in restricted territories,e.g.the ramKhnum in Elephantine, the jerboa or okapi (?)Seth in Ombos, the ibisThoth in Hermopolis Magna, and of the gods named above, Horus in Hieraconpolis, Wepwawet in Assiut, Neith in Sais, and Min in Coptos. As towns and villages gradually sprang up, they too adopted as their patron some one or other of the original tribal gods, so that these came to have different seats of worship all over Egypt. For this reason it is often hard to tell where the primitive cult-centre of a particular deity is to be sought; thus Horus seems equally at home both at Buto in the Delta and at Hieraconpolis in Upper Egypt, and the earliest worship of Seth appears to have been claimed no less by Tanis in the north than by Ombos in the south. The effect of the localization of gods in many different places was to give them a double aspect; so, for instance, Khnum the god of Elephantine could in one minute be regarded as identical withKhnum the god of Esna, while in the next minute and without any conscious sense of contradiction the two might be looked upon as entirely separate beings. In order that there might be no ambiguity as to what divinity was meant, it became usual, in speaking of any local deity, to specify the place of which he was “lord.” The tendency to create new forms of a god by instituting his worship in new local centres persisted throughout the whole course of Egyptian history, unhindered by the opposite tendency which made national out of local gods. Some of the cosmic gods, like the sun-god Re of Heliopolis and of Hermonthis, early acquired a local in addition to their cosmic aspect.
In the innermost principle of their existence, as patrons and protectors of restricted communities, the primitive tribal gods did not differ from one another. But externally they were distinguishable by the various shapes that their worshippers ascribed to them; and there can be little doubt that even in the beginning each had his own special attributes and particular mythical traits. These, however, may have borne little resemblance to the later conceptions of the same gods with which we are made familiar by the Pyramid texts. Thus we have no means of ascertaining what the earliest people of Sais thought about their goddess Neith, though her fetish would seem to point to her warlike nature. Nor are we much wiser in respect of those primitive tribal gods that are represented on the oldest monuments in animal form. For though we may be sure that the shape of an animal was that in which these gods were literally visible to their worshippers, yet it is impossible to tell whether some one living animal was chosen to be the earthly tenement of the deity, or whether he revealed himself in every individual of a species, or whether merely the cult-image was roughly hewn into the shape of an animal. Not too much weight must be attached to later evidence on this point; for the New Kingdom and still more the Graeco-Roman period witnessed a strange recrudescence of supposed primitive cults, to which they gave a form that may or may not have been historically exact. In some places whole classes of animals came to be deemed sacred. Thus at Bubastis, where the cat-headed Bast (Ubasti) was worshipped, vast cemeteries of mummified cats have been found; and elsewhere similar funerary cults were accorded to crocodiles, lizards, ibises and many other animals. In Elephantine Khnum was supposed to become incarnate in a ram, at whose death the divinity left him and took up his abode in another. So too the bull of Apis (a black animal with white spots) was during its lifetime regarded as a reincarnation of Ptah, the local god of Memphis, and similarly the Mnevis and Bacis bulls were accounted to be “the living souls” of Etom of Heliopolis and of Re of Hermonthis respectively; these latter cults are certainly secondary, for Ptah himself was never, either early or late, depicted otherwise than in human form, as a mummy or as a dwarf; and Etom and Re are but different names of the sun-god. The form of a snake, attributed to many local goddesses, especially in later times (e.g.Meresger of the Theban necropolis), was borrowed from the very ancient deity Outo (Buto); the semblance of a snake became so characteristic of female divinities that even the word “goddess” was written with the hieroglyph of a snake. Other animal shapes particularly affected by goddesses were those of a lioness (Sakhmi, Pakhe) or a cow (Hathor, Isis). The primitive animal gods are not to be confused with the animal forms ascribed to many cosmic deities; thus when the sun-god Re was pictured as a scarabaeus, or dung-beetle, rolling its ball of dung behind it, this was certainly mere poetical imagery. Or else a cosmic god might assume an animal shape through assimilation with some tribal god, as when Re was identified with Horus and therefore depicted as a falcon.
With the advance of civilization and the transformation of the tribal gods into national divinities, the beliefs held about them must have become less crude. At a very early date the anthropomorphizing tendency caused the animal deities to be represented with human bodies, though as a rule they retained their animal heads; so in the case of Seth as early as the IInd Dynasty. The other gods carry their primitive fetishes in their hands (like Neith, who is depicted holding arrows) or on their heads (so Nefertem [Iphthimis] with his lotus-flower). At the same time the gods began to acquire human personalities. In a few instances this may have come about by the emphasizing of a really primitive trait; as when the wolf Ophois, in consonance with the predatory nature of that animal, developed into a god of war. In other cases the transitional steps are shrouded in mystery; we do not know, for example, why the ibis Thoth subsequently became the patron of the fine arts, the inventor of writing, and the scribe of the gods. But the main factor in this evolutionary process was undoubtedly the formation of myths, which brought gods of independent origin into relation with one another, and thus imbued them with human passions and virtues. Here dim historic recollections often determined the features of the story, and in one famous legend that knits together a group of gods all seemingly local in origin we can still faintly trace how the tale arose, was added to, and finally crystallized in a coherent form.
Osiris was a wise and beneficent king, who reclaimed the Egyptians from savagery, gave them laws and taught them handicrafts. The prosperous reign of Osiris was brought to a premature close by the machinations of his wicked brother Seth, who with seventy-two fellow-conspirators invited him to a banquet, induced him to enter a cunningly-wrought coffin made exactly to his measure, then shut down the lid and cast the chest into the Nile. Isis, the faithful wife of Osiris, set forth in search of her dead husband’s body, and after long and adventure-fraught wanderings, succeeded in recovering it and bringing it back to Egypt. Then while she was absent visiting her son Horus in the city of Buto, Seth once more gained possession of the corpse, cut it into fourteen pieces, and scattered them all over Egypt. But Isis collected the fragments, and wherever one was found, buried it with due honour; or, according to a different account, she joined the limbs together by virtue of her magical powers, and the slain Osiris, thus resurrected, henceforth reigned as king of the dead in the nether world. When Horus grew up he set out to avenge his father’s murder, and after terrible struggles finally conquered and dispossessed his wicked uncle; or, as another version relates, the combatants were separated by Thoth, and Egypt divided between them, the northern part falling to Horus and the southern to Seth. Such is the story as told by Plutarch, with certain additions and modifications from older native sources. There existed, however, a very ancient tradition according to which Horus and Seth were hostile brothers, not nephew and uncle; and many considerations may be urged in support of the thesis which regards their struggles as reminiscences of wars between two prominent tribes or confederations of tribes, one of which worshipped the falcon Horus while the other had the okapi (?) Seth as its patron and champion. The Horus-tribes were the victors, and it was from them that the dynastic line sprang; hence the Pharaoh always bore the name of Horus, and represented in his own hallowed person the ancient tribal deity. Of Osiris we can only state that he was originally the local god of Busiris, whatever further characteristics he primitively possessed being quite obscure. Isis was perhaps the local goddess of Buto, a town not far distant from Busiris; this geographical proximity would suffice to explain her connexion with Osiris in the tale. A legend now arose, we know not how or why, which made Seth the brother and murderer of Osiris; and this led to a fusion of the Horus-Seth and the Seth-Isis-Osirismotifs. The relationships had now to be readjusted, and the most popular view recognized Horus as the son and avenger of Osiris. The more ancient account survived, however, in the myth that Osiris, Horus, Seth, Isis and Nephthys (a goddess who plays but a minor part in the Osiris cycle) were all children of the earth-god Keb and the sky-goddess Nut, born on the five consecutive days added on at the end of the year (the so-called epagomenal days). Later generations reconciled these contradictions by assuming the existence of two Horuses, one, the brother of Osiris, Seth and Isis, being named Haroeris,i.e.Horus the elder, while the other, the child of Isis and Osiris, was called Harpocrates,i.e.Horus the child.
The second main class of divinities that entered into the composition of the Egyptian pantheon was due to that innate and universal speculative bent which seeks, and never fails to find, an explanation of the facts of the externalCosmic deities.world. Behind the great natural phenomena that they perceived all around them, the Egyptians, like other primitive folk, postulated the existence of divine wills not dissimilar in kind to their own, though vastly superior in power. Chief among these cosmic deities was the sun-god Re, whose supremacy seemed predestined under the cloudless sky of Egypt. The oldest conceptions represented Re as sailing across the heavens in a ship called “Manzet,” “the bark of the dawn”; at sunset he stepped aboard another vessel named “Mesenktet,” “the bark of the dusk,” which bore him back from west to east during the night. Later theories symbolized Re in many different ways. For some he was identical with Horus, and then he was falcon-headed and was called Hor-akhti, the Horus of the horizons. Others pictured him to themselves as a tiny infant in the early dawn, as full-grown at noon, and as an infirm old man in the evening. When the sky was imagined as a cow, he was a calf born anew every morning. The moon was a male deity, who likewise fared across the heavens in a boat; hence he was often named Chons, “the sailor.” The ibis-god Thoth was early identified with the moon. The stars and planets were likewise gods. Among them the bright star Sirius was held in special esteem; it was a goddess Sothis (Sopde), often identified by the Egyptians with Isis. The constellations that seemed unceasingly to speed across the sky were named “the never-resting ones,” and the circumpolar stars, which never sink beneath the horizon, were known as “the imperishables.” Concerning earth and sky there were many different opinions. Some thought that the sky was a goddess Nut, whom the god Show held aloof from her husband Keb the earth, on whose back the plants and trees grew. Others believed in a celestial ocean, personified under the name of Nun, over which the heavenly bodies sailed in boats. At a later date the sky was held to be a cow (Hathor) whose four feet stood firm upon the soil; or else a vast face, in which the right eye was the sun and the left eye the moon. Alongside these fanciful conceptions there existed a more sober view, according to which the earth was a long oval plain, and the sky an iron roof supported by the tops of mountains or by four pillarsat the cardinal points. Beneath the ground lay a dark and mysterious region, now conceived as an inverse heaven (Nenet), now as a vast series of caverns whose gates were guarded by demons. This nether world was known as the Duat (Dat, Têi), and through it passed the sun on his journey during the hours of night; here too, as many thought, dwelt the dead and their king Osiris. That great natural feature of Egypt, the Nile, was of course one of the gods; his name was Hapi, and as a sign of his fecundity he had long pendulous breasts like a woman. In contradistinction to the tribal gods, it rarely happened that the cosmic deities enjoyed a cult. But there are a few important exceptions: Re in Heliopolis (here identified with a local god Etom) and in Hermonthis; Hathor at Dendera and elsewhere. Certain of the tribal gods early became identified with cosmic divinities, and the latter thus became the objects of a cult; so, for instance, the Horus of Edfu was a sun-god, and Thoth in Hermopolis Magna was held to be the moon.
An extension of the principle that created the cosmic gods gave rise to a large number of minor deities and demons. Day and night, the year, the seasons, eternity, and many similar conceptions were each represented by a godMinor deities and demons.or goddess of their own, who nevertheless possessed but a shadowy and doubtful existence. Human attributes like Taste, Knowledge, Joy and so forth were likewise personified, no less than abstract ideas such as Fate, Destiny and others; rather more clearly defined than the rest was Maat, the goddess of Truth and Right, who was fabled to be the daughter of Re and may even have had a cult. Certain gods were purely functional, that is to say, they appeared at special times to perform some appointed task, at the completion of which they vanished. Such were Nepri, the god of the corn-harvest; Meskhonit, the goddess who attended every child-bed; Tait, the goddess of weaving. Numberless semi-divine beings had no other purpose than to fill out the myths, as, for instance, the chattering apes that greeted the sun-god Re as he rose above the eastern horizon, and the demons who opened the gates of the nether world at the approach of the setting sun.
We take this opportunity of mentioning sundry other divinities who were later introduced to swell the already overcrowded ranks of the pantheon. Contact with foreign lands brought with it several new deities, Baal, Anat andForeign deities.Resheph from Syria, and the misshapen dwarf Bes from the south; earlier than these, the Astarte of Byblus, whom the Egyptians identified with Hathor. In Thebes Amenophis I. and his spouse Nefertari were worshipped as patron gods of the necropolis many centuries after their death. Two men of exceptional wisdom received divine honours, and had temples of their own in the Ptolemaic period; these were Imouthes, who had lived under Zoser of the IIIrd Dynasty, and Amenophis son of Hapu, a contemporary of the third king of the same name (XVIIIth Dyn.). The hill of Sheikh Abd-el-gurna at Thebes was looked upon as a particularly holy place, and was revered as a goddess. Almost anything that was regarded with awe, any object used in the divine ritual could at a given moment be envisaged as a deity. Thus the boat of Osiris (Neshemet) and those of the sun-god were goddesses; and various wands and sceptres belonging to certain gods were imagined as harbouring the divine being. Truly it might have been said in ancient Egypt: of the making of gods there is no end!
For such order as can be discerned in the mythological conceptions of the Egyptians the priesthood was largely responsible. At a very early date the theological school of Heliopolis undertook the task of systematizing the gods and theTheological combinations.myths, and it is mainly to them that is due the Egyptian religion as we find it in the Pyramid texts. Their influence is particularly conspicuous in the prominent place accorded to the sun-god Re, and in the creation-legend that made him the father of gods and men. First of all living things was Re; legend told how he arose as a naked babe from a lotus-flower that floated on the primeval ocean Nun. Others held the view that he crept from an egg that lay on a hill in the midst of a lake called Desdes; and a third, more barbarous, tale related his obscene act of self-procreation. Re became the father of the pair of gods Show and Tefnut (Tphenis), who emanated from his spittle. They again gave birth to Keb and Nut, from whom in their turn sprang Osiris and Seth, Isis and Nephthys. These nine gods were together known as the great Ennead or cycle of nine. A second series of nine deities, with Horus as its first member, was invented at the same time or not long afterwards, and was called the Lesser Ennead. In later times the theory of the Ennead became very popular and was adopted by most of the local priesthoods, who substituted their own favourite god for Re, sometimes retaining and sometimes changing the names of the other eight deities. Thus locally many different gods came to be viewed as the creators of the world. Only in two instances, however, did a local god ever obtain wide acceptance in the capacity of demiurge: Ptah of Memphis, who was famed as an artist and master-builder, and Khnum of Elephantine, who was said to have moulded mankind on the potter’s wheel.
Already in the Pyramid texts the importance of Osiris almost rivals that of Re. His worship does not seem to have been due to Heliopolitan influence, and may possibly have been propagated by active missionary effort. It is apparently through the funeral cult that Osiris so early took a firm hold on the imagination of the people; for at a very ancient date he was identified with every dead king, and it needed but a slight extension of this idea to make him into a king of the dead. In later times the moral aspect of his tale was doubtless the main cause of its continued popularity; Osiris was named Onnophris, “the good Being”par excellence, and Seth was contrasted with him as the author and the root of all evil. Still the Egyptians themselves seemto have been somewhat at a loss to account for the great veneration that they paid to Osiris. Successive theories interpreted him as the god of the earth, as the god of the Nile, as a god of vegetation, as a moon-god and as a sun-god; and nearly every one of these theories has been claimed to be the primitive truth by some scholar or another.
Nowhere is the conservatism of the Egyptians more clearly displayed than in the tenacity with which they clung to the old forms of the theology, such as we have essayed to describe. Neither the influx of new deities nor the diligence of the priestly authors and commentators availed to break down the cast-iron traditions with which the compilers of the Pyramid texts were already familiar. It is true that with the displacement of the capital town certain local deities attained a degree of power that, superficially regarded, seems to alter the entire perspective of the religion. Thus Ammon, originally the obscure local god of Thebes, was raised by the Theban monarchs of the XIIth and of the XVIIIth to XXIst Dynasties to a predominant position never equalled by any other divinity; and, by similar means, Suchos of the Fayum, Ubasti of Bubastis, and Neith of Sais, each enjoyed for a short space of time a consideration that no other cause would have secured to them. But precisely the example of Ammon proves the hopelessness of any attempt to change the time-honoured religious creed; his priests identified him with the sun-god Re, whose cult-centre was thus merely transferred a few hundred miles to the South. Nor could even the violent religious revolution of Akhenaton (Amenophis IV.), of which we shall later have occasion to speak, sweep away for ever beliefs that had persisted for so many generations.
But if the facts of the religion, broadly viewed, never underwent a change, the interpretation of those facts did so in no small degree. The religious books were for the most part written in archaic language, which was only imperfectly understood by the priests of later times; and hence great scope was given to them to exercise their ingenuity as commentators. By the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty some early chapters of the Book of the Dead had been provided with a triple commentary. Unfortunately the methods pursued were as little reasonable as those adopted by the medieval Jewish Rabbis; instead of the context being studied as a whole, with a view to the recovery of its literal sense, each single verse was considered separately, and explained as an allusion to some obscure myth or as embodying some mystical meaning. Thus so far from simplifying or really elucidating the religion, these priestly labours tended rather to confuse one legend with another and to efface the personality of individual gods. The ease with which one god could be identified with another is perhaps the most striking characteristic of later Egyptian theology. There are but few of the greater deities who were not at some time or another identified with the solar god Re. His fusion with Horus and Etom has already been noted; further we find an Ammon-Re, a Sobk-Re, a Khnum-Re; and Month, Onouris, Show and Osiris are all described as possessing the attributes of the sun. Ptah was early assimilated to the sepulchral gods Sokaris and Osiris. Pairs of deities whose personalities are often blended or interchanged are Hathor and Nut, Sakhmi and Pakhe, Seth and Apophis. So too in Abydos, his later home, Osiris was identified with Khante-Amentiu (Khentamenti, Khentamenthes), “the chief of those who are in the West,” a name that was given to a vaguely-conceived but widely-venerated divinity ruler of the dead. Many factors helped in the process of assimilation. The unity of the state was largely influential in bringing about the suppression of local differences of belief. The less important priesthoods were glad to enhance the reputation of the deity they served by identifying him with some more important god. And the mystical bent of the Egyptians found satisfaction in the multiplicity of forms that their gods could assume; among the favourite epithets which the hymns apply to divinities are such as “mysterious of shapes,” “multiple of faces.”
The goal towards which these tendencies verged was monotheism; and though this goal was only once, and then quite ephemerally, reached, still the monotheistic idea was at most periods, so to speak, in the air. Sometimes the qualities common to all the gods were abstracted, and the resultant notionMonotheistic tendency.spoken of as “the god.” At other times, and especially in the hymns addressed to some divinity, all other gods were momentarily forgotten, and he was eulogized as “the only one,” “the supreme,” and so forth. Or else several of the chief deities were consciously combined and regarded as different emanations or aspects of a Sole Being; thus a Ramesside hymn begins with the words “Three are all the gods, Ammon, Re and Ptah,” and then it is shown how these three gods, each in his own particular way, gave expression and effect to a single divine purpose.
For a brief period at the end of the XVIIIth Dynasty a real monotheism, as exclusive as that of Judaism or of Islam, was adopted as the state religion of Egypt. The young Pharaoh Amenophis IV. seems to have been fired byAkhenaton.genuine fanatical enthusiasm, though political motives, as well as doctrinal considerations, may have prompted him in the planning of his religious revolution (see also § History). The Theban god Ammon-Re was then supreme, and the ever-growing power of his priesthood may well have inflamed the jealousy of their Heliopolitan rivals. Amenophis began his reign in Thebes as an adherent of the traditional faith, but after a few years he abandoned that town and built a new capital for his god Aton 200 m. farther north, at a place now called El Amarna. The new deity was a personification of the sun’s disk. The name Re was suppressed, as too intimately associated with that of Ammon; and Ammon, together with all the other gods, was put to the ban. Amenophis even changed his own name, of which the name of Ammon formed an element, to Akhenaton, “the brilliancy of the Aton,” and the capital was called Khitaton, “The Horizon of the Aton.” The new dogmas were known as “the Teaching,” and their tenets, as revealed in the poems composed in honour of the Aton, breathe the purest and most exalted monotheistic spirit. The movement had, no doubt, met with serious opposition from the very start, and the reaction soon set in. The immediate successors of Akhenaton strove to follow in his footsteps, but the conservative nature of Egypt quickly asserted itself. Not sixty years after the accession of Akhenaton, his city was abandoned, its rulers branded as heretics, and the old religion restored in Thebes as completely as if the Aton had never existed.
Having thus failed to become rational, Egyptian theology took refuge in learning. The need for a more spiritual and intellectual interpretation of the pantheon still remained, and gave rise to a number of theological sciences. The names of the gods and the places of their worship were catalogued and classified, and manuals were devoted to the topography of mythological regions. Much ingenuity was expended on the development of a history of the gods, the groundwork of which had been laid in much earlier times. Re was not only the creator of the world, but he was also the first king of Egypt. He was followed on the throne by the other eight members of his Ennead, then by the lesser Ennead and by other gods, and finally by the so-called “worshippers of Horus.” The latter were not wholly mythical personages, though they were regarded as demigods (Manetho calls them “the dead,”νέκυες); they have been shown to be none other than the dim rulers of the predynastic age. The Pharaohs of the historic period were thus divine, not only by virtue of their connexion with Horus (see above), but also as descendants of Re; and the king of Egypt was called “the good god” during his lifetime, and “the great god” after his death. The later religious literature is much taken up with the mythical and semi-mythical dynasties of kings, and the priests compiled, with many newly-invented details, the chronicles of the wars they were supposed to have waged.
In a similar manner, the ethical and allegorical methods of interpretation came into much greater prominence towards the end of the New Kingdom. The Osirian legend, as we have already seen, was early accepted as symbolizing the conflict between good and evil. So too the victories of Re over the serpent named Apophis were more or less clearly understood as a simile ofthe antithetical nature of light and darkness. In one text at least as ancient as the XVIIIth Dynasty (the copy that we have datesLater developments.only from the Ethiopian period) an ingenious attempt is made to represent Ptah as the source of all life: from him, it is said, emanated Horus as “heart” or “mind” and Thoth as “tongue,” and through the conjoint action of these two, the mind conceiving the design and the tongue uttering the creative command, all gods and men and beasts obtained their being. Of this kind of speculation much more must have existed than has reached us. It is doubtless such explanations as these that the Greeks had in view when they praised the wisdom of the ancient Egyptians; and in the classical period similar semi-philosophical interpretations altogether supplanted, among the learned at least, the naive literal beliefs of earlier times. Plutarch in his treatise on Isis and Osiris well exemplifies this standpoint: for him every god and every rite is symbolic of some natural or moral truth.
The final stages of the Egyptian religion are marked by a renewed popularity of all its more barbarous elements. Despairing, as it would seem, of discovering the higher wisdom that the more philosophic of the priests supposed that religion to conceal, the simpler-minded sought to work out their own salvation by restoring the worship of the gods to its most primitive forms. Hence came the fanatical revival of animal-worship which led to feud and bloodshed between neighbouring towns—a feature of Egyptian religion that at once amused and scandalized contemporary Greek and Latin authors (Plut. De Iside, 72; Juv. xv. 33). Nevertheless Egyptian cults, and particularly those of Serapis and Isis, found welcome acceptance on European soil; and the shrines of Egyptian deities were established in all the great cities of the Roman Empire. Serapis was a god imported by the first Ptolemy from Sinope on the Black Sea, who soon lost his own identity by assimilation with Osiris-Apis, the bull revered in Memphis. Far down into the Roman age the worship of Serapis persisted and flourished, and it was only when the Serapeum of Alexandria was razed to the ground by order of Theodosius the Great (a.d.391) that the death-blow of the old Egyptian religion was struck.
Notes are here added on some divinities who have received inadequate or no attention in the preceding pages. For information as to Ammon, Anubis, Apis, Bes, Bubastis, Buto, Isis and Thoth, reference must be made to the special articles on these gods.Arsaphes, in EgyptianHarshafe, “he who is upon his lake,” the ram-headed god of Heracleopolis Magna, gained an ephemeral importance during the IXth Dynasty, which arose from his town. Outwardly, he resembles Khnum. Little is known about him, and he is seldom mentioned. The burial-place of his priests in later times was in 1904 discovered at Abusir el Meleq.Chons, “he who travels by boat,” perhaps originally a mere epithet of the moon-god Ioh or Thoth, is chiefly familiar as the third member of the Theban triad. As such he is represented as a youthful god, wearing a skull-cap surmounted by the moon. His cult was revived and became popular in Ptolemaic times. A curious story about the sending of his statue to Mesopotamia to heal a daughter of the king of Bakhtan is related upon a stele that purports to date from the Ramesside period: it has been proved to be a pious fraud invented by the priests not earlier than the Greek period.Hathor, whose name means “house of Horus,” was at all times a very important deity. She is depicted as a cow, or with a broad human countenance, the cow’s ears just showing from under a massive wig. Probably at first a goddess of the sky, she is early mentioned in connexion with Re. Later she was often identified with Isis, and her name was used to designate foreign goddesses like those of Puoni and Byblus. Unlike most cosmic deities, she was worshipped in many localities, chief among which was Dendera, where her magnificent temple, of Ptolemaic date, still stands. “The seven Hathors” is a name given to certain fairies, who appeared shortly after the birth of an infant, and predicted his future.KhnumorKhnoum, a ram-headed god, whose principal place of worship was the island of Elephantine (there associated with Satis and Anukis), but also revered elsewhere,e.g.together with Nebtu in Esna. He enjoyed great repute as a creator, and was supposed to use the potter’s wheel for the purpose. In this capacity he is sometimes accompanied by the frog-headed goddess Heket.Month, a hawk-headed god of the Thebaid: in Thebes itself his cult was superseded by that of Ammon, but it persisted in Hermonthis. He was often given the solar attributes, and was credited as a great warrior.Min, the god of Coptos and Panopolis (Akhmim), seems to have been early looked upon as a deity of the harvest and crops. His cult dates from the earliest times. Represented as ithyphallic, with two tall plumes on his head, the right arm upraised and bearing a scourge. In old times he is identified with Horus: later Ammon was confused with him, and depicted in his image.Nechbet(Nekhbi, Nekhebi), the vulture-goddess of El Kab, called Eileithyia by the Greeks. She gained an ascendancy as patroness of the south at the time when the two kingdoms were striving for the mastery. It is as such, in opposition to Buto the goddess of the north, that she is most often named on the monuments.Neith, the very ancient and important goddess of Sais, the Greek Athene. On the earliest monuments she is represented by a shield transfixed by arrows. Later she wears the crown of Lower Egypt, and carries in her hands a bow and arrows, a sign of her warlike character. In the XXVIth Dynasty, when a line of Pharaohs sprang from Sais, she regained a prominent position, and was given many cosmogonic attributes, including the title of mother of Re.Nephthys, the sister of Osiris and wife of Seth, daughter of Keb and Nut, plays a considerable rôle in the Osiris story. She sided with Isis and aided her to bring Osiris back to life. Isis and Nephthys are often mentioned together as protectresses of the dead.Onouris, EgyptianEn-hūri, “sky-bearer,” the god of Thinis. Later identified with Shu (Show), who holds heaven and earth apart.Ptah, the Hephaestus of the Greeks, a demiurgic and creative god, special patron of hand-workers and artisans. Worshipped in Memphis, he perhaps owed his importance more to the political prominence of that town than to anything else. He was early identified with an ancient but obscure god Tenen, and further with the sepulchral deity Sokaris. He is represented either as a closely enshrouded figure whose protruding hands grasp a composite sceptre, the whole standing on a pedestal within a shrine; or else as a misshapen dwarf.Sakhmi, a lion-headed goddess of war and strife, whose name signifies the mighty. She was worshipped at Latopolis (Esna), but also at a late date as a member of the Memphite triad, with Ptah as husband and Nefertem (Iphthimis) as son: often, too, confounded with Ubasti.Seth(Egyptian Sēt, Stḫ or Stš), by the Greeks called Typhon, was depicted as an animalthat has been compared with the jerboa by some, and with the okapi by others, but which the Egyptians themselves occasionally conceived to be nothing but a badly drawn ass. In historic times his cult was celebrated at Tanis and Ombos. He regained a certain prestige as god of the Hyksos rulers, and two Pharaohs of the XIXth Dynasty derived their name Sethos (Seti) from him. But, generally speaking, he was abominated as a power of evil, and his figure was often obliterated on the monuments. He is named in similes as a great warrior, and as such and “son of Nut” he is identified with the Syrian Baal.
Notes are here added on some divinities who have received inadequate or no attention in the preceding pages. For information as to Ammon, Anubis, Apis, Bes, Bubastis, Buto, Isis and Thoth, reference must be made to the special articles on these gods.
Arsaphes, in EgyptianHarshafe, “he who is upon his lake,” the ram-headed god of Heracleopolis Magna, gained an ephemeral importance during the IXth Dynasty, which arose from his town. Outwardly, he resembles Khnum. Little is known about him, and he is seldom mentioned. The burial-place of his priests in later times was in 1904 discovered at Abusir el Meleq.
Chons, “he who travels by boat,” perhaps originally a mere epithet of the moon-god Ioh or Thoth, is chiefly familiar as the third member of the Theban triad. As such he is represented as a youthful god, wearing a skull-cap surmounted by the moon. His cult was revived and became popular in Ptolemaic times. A curious story about the sending of his statue to Mesopotamia to heal a daughter of the king of Bakhtan is related upon a stele that purports to date from the Ramesside period: it has been proved to be a pious fraud invented by the priests not earlier than the Greek period.
Hathor, whose name means “house of Horus,” was at all times a very important deity. She is depicted as a cow, or with a broad human countenance, the cow’s ears just showing from under a massive wig. Probably at first a goddess of the sky, she is early mentioned in connexion with Re. Later she was often identified with Isis, and her name was used to designate foreign goddesses like those of Puoni and Byblus. Unlike most cosmic deities, she was worshipped in many localities, chief among which was Dendera, where her magnificent temple, of Ptolemaic date, still stands. “The seven Hathors” is a name given to certain fairies, who appeared shortly after the birth of an infant, and predicted his future.
KhnumorKhnoum, a ram-headed god, whose principal place of worship was the island of Elephantine (there associated with Satis and Anukis), but also revered elsewhere,e.g.together with Nebtu in Esna. He enjoyed great repute as a creator, and was supposed to use the potter’s wheel for the purpose. In this capacity he is sometimes accompanied by the frog-headed goddess Heket.
Month, a hawk-headed god of the Thebaid: in Thebes itself his cult was superseded by that of Ammon, but it persisted in Hermonthis. He was often given the solar attributes, and was credited as a great warrior.
Min, the god of Coptos and Panopolis (Akhmim), seems to have been early looked upon as a deity of the harvest and crops. His cult dates from the earliest times. Represented as ithyphallic, with two tall plumes on his head, the right arm upraised and bearing a scourge. In old times he is identified with Horus: later Ammon was confused with him, and depicted in his image.
Nechbet(Nekhbi, Nekhebi), the vulture-goddess of El Kab, called Eileithyia by the Greeks. She gained an ascendancy as patroness of the south at the time when the two kingdoms were striving for the mastery. It is as such, in opposition to Buto the goddess of the north, that she is most often named on the monuments.
Neith, the very ancient and important goddess of Sais, the Greek Athene. On the earliest monuments she is represented by a shield transfixed by arrows. Later she wears the crown of Lower Egypt, and carries in her hands a bow and arrows, a sign of her warlike character. In the XXVIth Dynasty, when a line of Pharaohs sprang from Sais, she regained a prominent position, and was given many cosmogonic attributes, including the title of mother of Re.
Nephthys, the sister of Osiris and wife of Seth, daughter of Keb and Nut, plays a considerable rôle in the Osiris story. She sided with Isis and aided her to bring Osiris back to life. Isis and Nephthys are often mentioned together as protectresses of the dead.
Onouris, EgyptianEn-hūri, “sky-bearer,” the god of Thinis. Later identified with Shu (Show), who holds heaven and earth apart.
Ptah, the Hephaestus of the Greeks, a demiurgic and creative god, special patron of hand-workers and artisans. Worshipped in Memphis, he perhaps owed his importance more to the political prominence of that town than to anything else. He was early identified with an ancient but obscure god Tenen, and further with the sepulchral deity Sokaris. He is represented either as a closely enshrouded figure whose protruding hands grasp a composite sceptre, the whole standing on a pedestal within a shrine; or else as a misshapen dwarf.
Sakhmi, a lion-headed goddess of war and strife, whose name signifies the mighty. She was worshipped at Latopolis (Esna), but also at a late date as a member of the Memphite triad, with Ptah as husband and Nefertem (Iphthimis) as son: often, too, confounded with Ubasti.
Seth(Egyptian Sēt, Stḫ or Stš), by the Greeks called Typhon, was depicted as an animalthat has been compared with the jerboa by some, and with the okapi by others, but which the Egyptians themselves occasionally conceived to be nothing but a badly drawn ass. In historic times his cult was celebrated at Tanis and Ombos. He regained a certain prestige as god of the Hyksos rulers, and two Pharaohs of the XIXth Dynasty derived their name Sethos (Seti) from him. But, generally speaking, he was abominated as a power of evil, and his figure was often obliterated on the monuments. He is named in similes as a great warrior, and as such and “son of Nut” he is identified with the Syrian Baal.
4.The Divine Cult.—In the midst of every town rose the temple of the local god, a stately building of stone, strongly contrasting with the mud and plaster houses in which even the wealthiest Egyptians dwelt. It was called the “house of the god”, and in it the deity was supposed to reside, attended by his “servants”the priests. There was indeed a certain justification for this contention, even when a contrary theory assigned to the divinity a place in the sky, as in the case of the lunar divinity Thoth; for in the inmost sanctuary stood a statue of the god, which served as his representative for the purposes of the cult. Originally each temple was dedicated to one god only; but it early became usual to associate with him a mate of the opposite sex, besides a third deity who might be represented either as a second wife or as a child. As examples of such triads, as they are called, may be mentioned that of Thebes, consisting of Ammon, Mut and Chons, father, mother and child; and as typical of the other kind, where a god was accompanied by two goddesses, that of Elephantine, consisting of Khnum, Satis and Anukis. The needs of the god were much the same as those of mortals; no more than they could he dispense with food and drink, clothes for his apparel, ointment for his limbs, and music and dancing to rejoice his heart. The only difference was that the divine statue was half-consciously recognized as a lifeless thing that required carefully regulated rites and ceremonies to enable it to enjoy the good things offered to it. Early every morning the officiating priest proceeded to the holy of holies, after the preliminaries of purification had cleansed him from any miasma that might interfere with the efficacy of the rites. Then with the prescribed gestures, and reciting appropriate formulae all the while, he broke the seal upon the door of the shrine, loosed the bolts, and at last stood face to face with thegod. There followed a series of prostrations and adorations, culminating in the offering of a small image of Maat, the goddess of Truth. This seems to have been the psychological moment of the entire service: hitherto the statue had been at best a god inposse; now the symbolical act placed him in possession of all his faculties, he was a god in truth, and could participate like any mortal in the food and luxuries that his servants put before him. The daily ceremony closed with ablutions, anointings and a bountiful feast of bread, geese, beer and oxen; having taken his fill of these, the god returned to his shrine until the next morning, when the ritual was renewed. The words that accompanied the manual gestures are, in the rituals that have come down to us, wholly dominated by the myth of Osiris: it is often hard to discern much connexion between the acts and the formulae recited, but the main thought is clearly that the priest represents Horus, the pious son of the dead divinity Osiris. That this conception is very old is proved by the fact that even in the Pyramid texts “the eye of Horus” is a synonym for all offerings: an ancient tale of which only shreds have reached us related how Seth had torn the eye of Horus from him, though not before he himself had suffered a still more serious mutilation; and by some means, we know not how, the restoration of the eye was instrumental in bringing about the vindication of Osiris. As to the manual rites of the daily cult, all that can here be said is that incense, purifications and anointings with various oils played a large part; the sacrifices consisted chiefly of slaughtered oxen and geese; burnt offerings were a very late innovation.
At an early date the rites practised in the various temples were conformed to a common pattern. This holds good not only for the daily ritual, but also for many festivals that were celebrated on the same day throughout the whole length of the land. Such were the calendrical feasts, called “the beginnings of the seasons,” and including, for example, the monthly and half-monthly festivals, that of the New Year and that of the rising of Sirius (Sothis). But there were also local feast days like that of Neith in Sais (Hdt. ii. 62) or that of Ammon in southern Opi (Luxor). These doubtless had a more individual character, and often celebrated some incident supposed to have occurred in the lifetime of the god. Sometimes, as in the case of the feast of Osiris in Abydos, a veritable drama would be enacted, in which the whole history of the god, his sufferings and final triumph were represented in mimic form. At other times the ceremonial was more mysterious and symbolical, as in the feast of the raising of the Ded-columnwhen a column of the kind was drawn by cords into an upright position. But the most common feature of these holy days was the procession of the god, when he was carried on the shoulders of the priests in his divine boat far beyond the precincts of his temple; sometimes, indeed, even to another town, where he paid a visit to the god of the place. These occasions were public holidays, and passed amid great rejoicings. The climax was reached when at a given moment the curtains of the shrine placed on the boat were withdrawn, and the god was revealed to the eyes of the awe-struck multitude. Music and dancing formed part of the festival rites.
As with the rites and ceremonies, so also the temples were early modelled upon a common type. Lofty enclosure walls, adorned with scenes from the victorious campaigns of the Pharaoh, shut off the sacred buildings from theTemples.surrounding streets. A small gateway between two massive towers or pylons gave admittance to a spacious forecourt open to the sky, into which the people were allowed to enter at least on feast days. Farther on, separated from the forecourt by smaller though still massive pylons, lay a hypostyle hall, so called from its covered colonnades; this hall was used for all kinds of processions. Behind the hypostyle hall, to which a second similar one might or might not be added, came the holy of holies, a dark narrow chamber where the god dwelt; none but the priests were admitted to it. All around lay the storehouses that contained the treasures of the god and the appurtenances of the divine ritual. The temples of the earliest times were of course far more primitive than this: from the pictures that are all that is now left to indicate their nature, they seem to have been little more than huts or sheds in which the image of the god was kept. One temple of a type different from that above described has survived at Abusir, where it has been excavated by German explorers. It was a splendid edifice dedicated to the sun-god Re by a king of the Vth Dynasty, and was probably a close copy of the famous temple of Heliopolis. The most conspicuous feature was a huge obelisk on a broad superstructure: the obelisk always remained closely connected with the solar worship, and probably took the place of the innermost shrine and statue of other temples. The greater part of the sanctuary was left uncovered, as best befitted a dwelling-place of the sun. Outside its walls there was a huge brick model of the solar bark in which the god daily traversed the heavens.
As the power of the Pharaohs increased, the maintenance of the cult became one of the most important affairs of state. The most illustrious monarchs prided themselves no less on the buildings they raised in honour of the gods than on the successful wars they waged: indeed the wars won a religious significance through the gradual elevation of the god of the capital to god of the nation, and a large part of the spoils was considered the rightful perquisite of the latter. Countless were the riches that the kings heaped upon the gods in the hope of being requited with long life and prosperity on the throne of the living. It became the theory that the temples were the gifts of the Pharaoh to his fathers the gods, and therefore in the scenes of the cult that adorn the inner walls it is always he who is depicted as performing the ceremonies. As a matter of fact the priesthoodsPower of the priests.were much more independent than was allowed to appear. Successive grants of land placed no small portion of the entire country in their hands, and the administration of the temple estates gave employment to a large number of officials and serfs. In the New Kingdom the might of the Theban god Ammon gradually became a serious menace to the throne: in the reign of Rameses III. he could boast of more than 80,000 dependants, and more than 400,000 cattle. It is not surprising that a few generations later the high priests of Ammon supplanted the Pharaohs altogether and founded a dynasty of their own.
At no period did the priests form a caste that was quite distinctly separated from the laity. In early times the feudal lords were themselves the chief priests of the local temples. Under them stood a number of subordinate priests, both professional and lay. Among the former were thekher-heb, a learned man entrusted with the conduct of the ceremonies, and the “divine fathers,” whose functions are obscure. The lay priests were divided into four classes that undertook the management of the temple in alternate months; their collective name was the “hour-priesthood.” Perhaps it was to them that the often recurring titleoueb, “the pure,” should properly be restricted, though strict rules as to personal purity, dress and diet were demanded of all priests. The personnel of the temple was completed by various subordinate officials, doorkeepers, attendants and slaves. In the New Kingdom the leading priests were more frequently mere clerics than theretofore, though for instance the high priest of Ammon was often at the same time the vizier of southern Egypt. In some places the highest priests bore special names, such as theOuer maa, “the Great Seer,” of Re in Heliopolis, or theKhorp himet, “chief artificer,” of the Memphite Ptah. Women could also hold priestly rank, though apparently in early times only in the service of goddesses; “priestess of Hathor” is a frequent title of well-born ladies in the Old Kingdom. At a later date many wealthy dames held the office of “musicians” (shemat) in the various temples. In the service of the Theban Ammon two priestesses called “the Adorer of the God” and the “Wife of the God” occupied very influential positions, and towards the Saite period it was by no means unusual for the king to secure these offices for his daughters and so to strengthen his own royal title.
5.The Dead and their Cult.—While the worship of the godstended more and more to become amonopolyof the state and the priests, and provided no adequate outlet for the religious cravings of the people themselves, this deficiency was amply supplied by the care which they bestowed upon their dead: the Egyptians stand alone among the nations of the world in the elaborate precautions which they took to secure their own welfare beyond the tomb. The belief in immortality, or perhaps rather the incapacity to grasp the notion of complete annihilation, is traceable from the very earliest times: the simplest graves of the prehistoric period, when the corpses were committed to the earth in sheepskins and reed mats, seldom lack at least a few poor vases or articles of toilet for use in the hereafter. In proportion as the prosperity of the land increased, and the advance of civilization afforded the technical means, so did these primitive burials give place to a more lavish funereal equipment. Tombs of brick with a single chamber were succeeded by tombs of stone with several chambers, until they really merited the name of “houses of eternity” that the Egyptians gave to them. The conception of the tomb as the residence of the dead is the fundamental notion that underlies all the ritual observances in connexion with the dead, just as the idea of the temple as the dwelling-place of the god is the basis of the divine cult. The parallelism between the attitude of the Egyptians towards the dead and their attitude towards the gods is so striking that it ought never to be lost sight of: nothing can illustrate it better than the manner in which the Osirian doctrines came to permeate both kinds of cult.
The general scheme of Egyptian tombs remained the same throughout the whole of the dynastic period, though there were many variations of detail. By preference they were built in the Western desert, the Amente, near theTombs.place where the sun was seen to go to rest, and which seemed the natural entrance to the nether world. A deep pit led down to the sepulchral chamber where the dead man was deposited amid the funereal furniture destined for his use; and no device was neglected that might enable him to rest here undisturbed. This aim is particularly conspicuous in the pyramids, the gigantic tombs which the Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom constructed for themselves: the passages that lead to the burial chamber were barred at intervals by vast granite blocks, and the narrow opening that gave access to them was hidden from view beneath the stone casing of the pyramid sides. Quite separate from this part of the tomb lay the rooms employed for the cult of the dead: their walls were often adorned with pictures from the earthly life of the deceased, which it was hoped he might still continue to enjoy after death. The innermost chamber was the chapel proper: on its western side was sculptured an imitation door for the dead man to pass through, when he wished to participate in the offerings brought by pious relatives. It was of course only the few who could afford elaborate tombs of the kind: the poor had to make shift with an unpretentious grave, in which the corpse was placed enveloped only by a few rags or enclosed in a rough wooden coffin.
The utmost care was taken to preserve the body itself from decay. Before the time of the Middle Kingdom it became usual for the rich to have their bodies embalmed. The intestines were removed and placed in four vases (theEmbalming and burial.so-called Canopic jars) in which they were supposed to enjoy the protection of the four sons of Horus, the man-headed Mesti, the ape-headed Hapi, the jackal Duamutef and the falcon Kebhsenuf. The corpse was treated with natron and asphalt, and wound in a copious swathing of linen bandage, with a mask of linen and stucco on the face. The “mummy” thus prepared was then laid on its side like a sleeper, the head supported by a head-rest, in a sarcophagus of wood or stone. The operations in connexion with the mummy grow more and more elaborate towards the end of the Pharaonic period: already in the New Kingdom the wealthiest persons had their mummies laid in several coffins, each of which was gaudily painted with mythological scenes and inscriptions. The costliest process of embalmment lasted no less than seventy days. Many superstitious rites had to be observed in the course of the process: a late book has preserved to us the magical formulae that were repeated by the wisekher-hebpriest (who in the necropolis performed the functions of taricheutes, “embalmer”), as each bandage was applied.
A large number of utensils, articles of furniture and the like were placed in the burial-chamber for the use of the dead—jars, weapons, mirrors, and even chairs, musical instruments and wigs. In the early times statuettes of servants, representing them as engaged in their various functions (brewers, bakers, &c.), were included for the same purpose; they were supposed to perform their menial functions for their deceased lord in the future life. In the Middle Kingdom these are gradually replaced by small models of the mummy itself, and the belief arose that when their owner was called upon to perform any distasteful work in the nether world, they would answer to his name and do the task for him. The laterushebti-figures, little statuettes of wood, stone or faience, of which several hundreds are often found in a single tomb, are confused survivals of both of the earlier classes of statuettes. Still more important than all such funereal objects are the books that were placed in the grave for the use of the dead: in the pyramids they are written on the walls of the sepulchral chamber and the passages leading to it; in the Middle Kingdom usually inscribed on the inner sides of the sarcophagus; in later times contained in rolls of papyrus. The Pyramid texts and theBook of the Deadare the most important of these, and teach us much about the dangers and needs that attended the dead man beyond the tomb, and about the manner in which it was thought they could be counteracted.
The burial ceremony itself must have been an imposing spectacle. In many cases the mummy had to be conveyed across the Nile, and boats were gaily decked out for this purpose. On the western bank a stately procession conducted the deceased to his last resting-place. At the door of the tomb the final ceremonies were performed; they demanded a considerable number of actors, chief among whom were thesem-priest and thekher-hebpriest. It was a veritable drama that was here enacted, and recalled in its incidents the story of Osiris, the divine prototype of all successive generations of the Egyptian dead.
However carefully the preliminary rites of embalmment and burial might have been performed, however sumptuous the tomb wherein the dead man reposed, he was nevertheless almost entirely at the mercy of the living forThe soul.his welfare in the other world: he was as dependent on a continued cult on the part of the surviving members of his family as the gods were dependent on the constant attendance of their priests. That portion of a man’s individuality which required, even after death, food and drink, and the satisfaction of sensuous needs, was called by the Egyptians theka, and represented in hieroglyphs by the uplifted hands. Thiskawas supposed to be born together with the person to whom it belonged, and on the very rare occasions when it is depicted, wears his exact semblance. The conception of this psychical entity is too vaguely formulated by the Egyptians and too foreign to modern thought to admit of exact translation: of the many renderings that have been proposed, perhaps “double” is the most suitable. At all events thekahas to be distinguished from the soul, thebai(in hieroglyphsor), which was of more tangible nature, and might be descried hovering around the tomb in the form of a bird or in some other shape; for it was thought that the soul might assume what shape it would, if the funerary rites had been duly attended to. The gods had theirkaandbai, and the forms attributed to the latter are surprising; thus we read that the soul of the sky Nun is Re, that of Osiris the Goat of Mendes, the souls of Sobk are crocodiles, and those “of all the gods are snakes”; similarly the soul of Ptah was thought to dwell in the Apis bull, so that each successive Apis was during its lifetime the reincarnation of the god. Other parts of a man’s being to which at given moments and in particular contexts the Egyptians assigned a certain degree of separate existence are the “name”ran, the “shadow”,khaibet, and the “corpse”,khat.
It was, however, thekaalone to which the cult of the dead was directly addressed. This cult was a positive duty binding on the children of a dead man, and doubtless as a rule discharged by them with some regularity and conscientiousness; at least, on feast-days offerings would be brought to the tomb, and the ceremonies of purification and opening the mouth of the deceased would be enacted. But there could be little guarantee that later generations would perpetuate the cult. It therefore became usual under the Old Kingdom for the wealthiest persons to make testamentary dispositions by which certain other persons agreed for a consideration to observe the required rites at stated periods: they received the name of “servants of theka,” and stood in the same relation to the deceased as the priests to the gods. Or again, contracts might be made with a neighbouring temple, the priesthood of which bound itself to reserve for the contracting party some portion of the offerings that had already been used for the divine cult. There is probably a superstitious reason for the preference shown by the dead for offerings of this kind; no wish is commoner than that one may receive “bread and beer that had gone up on to the altar of the local god,” or “with which the god had been sated”; something of the divine sanctity still clung about such offerings and made them particularly desirable. In spite of all the precautions they took and the contracts they made, the Egyptians could never quite rid themselves of the dread that their tombs might decay and their cult be neglected; and they sought therefore to obtain by prayers and threats what they feared they might lose altogether. The occasional visitor to the tomb is reminded by its inscriptions of the many virtues of the dead man while he yet lived, and is charged, if he be come with empty hands, at least to pronounce the funerary formula; it will indeed cost him nothing but “the breath of his mouth”! Against the would-be desecrator the wrath of the gods is invoked: “with him shall the great god reckon there where a reckoning is made.”
The funerary customs that have been described are meaningless except on the supposition that the tomb was the regular dwelling-place of the dead. But just as the Egyptians found no contradiction between the view of the temple as the residence of the god and the conception of him as a cosmic deity, so too they often attributed to the dead a continued existence quite apart from the tomb. According to a widely-spread doctrine of great age the deceased Egyptian was translated to the heavens, where he lived on in the form of a star. This theme is elaborated with great detail in the Pyramid texts, where it is the dead king to whom this destiny is promised. It was perhaps only a restricted aristocracy who could aspire to such high honour: theikh, or “glorified being,” who has his place in the sky seems often to hold an intermediate position between the gods and the rank and file of the dead. But in a few early passages the required qualification appears to be rather moral integrity than exalted station. The life of the dead man in the sky is variously envisaged in different texts: at one moment he is spoken of as accompanying the sun-god in his celestial bark, at another as a mighty king more powerful than Re himself; the crudest fancy of all pictures him as a hunter who catches the stars and gods, and cooks and eats them. According to another conception that persisted in the imagination of the Egyptians longer than any of the ideas just mentioned, the home of the dead in the heavens was a fertile region not very differentfromEgypt itself, intersected by canals and abounding in corn and fruit; this place was called the Sokhet Earu or “field of Reeds.”
Even in the oldest texts these beliefs are blended inextricably with the Osirian doctrines. It is not so much as king of the dead that Osiris here appears, but every deceased Egyptian was regarded as himself an Osiris, as having undergone all the indignities inflicted upon the god, but finally triumphant over the powers of death and evil impersonated by Seth. This notion became so popular, that beside it all other views of the dead sink into insignificance; it permeates the funerary cult in all its stages, and from the Middle Kingdom onwards the dead man is regularly called “the Osiris so-and-so,” just as though he were completely identical with the god. One incident of the tale of Osiris acquired a deep ethical meaning in connexion with the dead. It was related how Seth had brought an accusation against Osiris in the great judgment hall of Heliopolis, and how the latter, helped by the skilful speaker Thoth, had emerged from the ordeal acquitted and triumphant. The belief gradually grew up that every dead man would have to face a similar trial before he could be admitted to a life of bliss in the other world. A well-known vignette in theBook of the Deaddepicts the scene. In a shrine sits Osiris, the ruler and judge of the dead, accompanied by forty-two assessors; and before him stands the balance on which the heart of the deceased man is to be weighed against Truth; Thoth stands behind and registers the result. The words that accompany this picture are still more remarkable: they form a long negative confession, in which the dead man declares that he has sinned neither against man nor against the gods. Not all the sins named are equally heinous according to modern conceptions; many of them deal with petty offences against religious usages that seem to us but trifling. But it is clear that by the time this chapter was penned it was believed that no man could attain to happiness in the hereafter if he had not been upright, just and charitable in his earthly existence. The date at which these conceptions became general is not quite certain, but it can hardly be later than the Middle Kingdom, when the dead man has the epithet “justified” appended to his name in the inscriptions of his tomb.
It was but a natural wish on the part of the Egyptians that they should desire to place their tombs near the traditional burying-place of Osiris. By the time of the XIIth Dynasty it was thought that this lay in Abydos, the town where the kings of the earliest times had been interred. But it was only in a few cases that such a wish could be literally fulfilled. It therefore became customary for those who possessed the means to dedicate at least a tombstone in the neighbourhood of “the staircase of the great god,” as the sacred spot was called. And those who had found occasion to visit Abydos in their lifetime took pleasure in recalling the part that they had there taken in the ceremonies of Osiris. Such pilgrims doubtless believed that the pious act would stand to their credit when the day of death arrived.
6.Magic.—Among the rites that were celebrated in the temples or before the statues of the dead were many the mystical meaning of which was but imperfectly understood, though their efficacy was never doubted. Symbolical or imitative acts, accompanied by spoken formulae of set form and obscure content, accomplished, by some peculiar virtues of their own, results that were beyond the power of human hands and brain. The priests and certain wise men were the depositaries of this mysterious but highly useful art, that was calledhikor “magic”; and one of the chief differences between gods and men was the superior degree in which the former were endowed with magical powers. It was but natural that the Egyptians should wish to employ magic for their own benefit or self-gratification, and since religion put no veto on the practice so long as it was exercised within legal bounds, it was put to a widespread use among them. When magicians made figures of wax representing men whom they desired to injure, this was of course an illegal act like any other, and the law stepped in to prevent it: one papyrus that has been preserved records the judicial proceedings taken in such a case in connexion with the harem conspiracy against Rameses III.
One of the chief purposes for which magic was employed was to avert diseases. Among the Egyptians, as in other lands, illnesses were supposed to be due to evil spirits or the ghosts of dead men who had taken up their abode in the body of the sufferer, and they could only be driven thence by charms and spells. But out of these primitive notions arose a real medicalscience: when the ailment could be located and its nature roughly determined, a more materialistic view was taken of it; and many herbs and drugs that were originally used for some superstitious reason, when once they had been found to be actually effective, easily lost their magical significance and were looked upon as natural specifics. It is extremely hard to draw any fixed line in Egypt between magic and medicine; but it is curious to note that simple diagnoses and prescriptions were employed for the more curable diseases, while magical formulae and amulets are reserved for those that are harder to cope with, such as the bites of snakes and the stings of scorpions.