Cause, and lead, as the notion of Cause will always lead reflecting men, in spite of the protests of critical philosophers, to the admission of One First Cause or Power from which all others are derived. But, as we know equally well from the history of speculation, the notions of Power and Substance may be identified, and it is easy to imagine one universal Force in nature, in itself eternal and unchangeable, but manifesting itself in the most different forms. In both cases the result is Unity; Theistic in the first case, Pantheistic in the second. I shall have occasion to speak of the complete and final triumph of the latter of these conceptions. But the triumph did not take place till a comparatively late period, and till then the Egyptian religion may be considered as susceptible of either a Theistic or a Pantheistic interpretation. In either case the gods of the mythology represent the real or imaginary powers of the universe; and what these powers were in the most primitive conception entertained of them by the Egyptians, can only be discovered by the same scientific process which has been applied with such success to the mythology of the Indo-European

races.

Myth and Legend.

The most common opinion held by the best scholars only a few years ago was, that however many gods the Egyptians might have, they had no mythology properly speaking. The only myth they were supposed to

possess was that about Osiris, and even this was imagined to have been brought into shape through Hellenic influences. This opinion is altogether an erroneous one: it confuses the notion of myth with that of mythological tale or legend; and whilst the Egyptians really had an abundance of legendary tales, their myths are simply innumerable. The tale of Osiris is as old as Egyptian civilization itself; that is, very much more than two thousand years before Hellenic influences came into operation.

Several mythological tales of considerable extent are now well known to us. The legend of the revolt of the first men against the god Ra and his destruction of them was discovered by M. Naville in one of the tombs at Bibān-el-molūk. A long narrative of the victories of Horus was copied by the same accomplished scholar from the walls of the temple at Edfu. It is written in the style of the heroic annals of the kings of Egypt, and accounts for the names of geographical localities by the exploits of the divine warrior. The tale of Osiris, as told in the Greek work attributed to Plutarch, is made up out of several genuine Egyptian legends, and the wanderings of the widowed Isis formed the subject of many legendary narratives. But the religious texts are literally crowded with allusions to mythological legends, and these allusions, though they are necessarily obscure to us, must have been familiar to the Egyptians.

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The mythological legend grew out of the myth, but must not be confounded with it. The myth was in Egypt, what it was everywhere else, a mere phrase, often consisting of not more than a single word, descriptive of some natural phenomenon, such as the rising or setting of the sun, the struggle between light and darkness, and the alternate victory of the one or the other. The science of Language has established the fact that all names were general terms; and one of the most eminent masters of the science1 begins a work on "Proper Names" by laying it down as a first principle that for the etymologist there are no such things as proper names," but only "appellatives." These appellatives, when applied to natural phenomena, are either such predicates as the most prosaic observer might use at the present day, or they are metaphorical. An early stage of language is always highly metaphorical, its terms being derived from sensuous perception, and being ill adapted to express abstract ideas. Many roots were required to express the different stages or determinations of a single notion. Even in reference to so simple a notion as that expressed by the verb to see, the Greeks had recourse to no less than three roots (in δράω, ὄψομαι, είδον), according as the action was considered as continued, completed or momentary. We ourselves say I go, but I went; je vais, nous allons,

1 Pott, "Die Personennamen."

j'irai. As the motives for applying an appellative to a phenomenon are many, it is evident that many myths may refer to the same phenomenon under different names. And every myth which involves a metaphor naturally suggests a legend, which in its turn is susceptible of an indefinite amount of development in the hands of poets or other mythographers, long after the primitive meaning of the myth has been forgotten.

It is therefore only through a radical misconception of the nature of a myth that attempts can be made to discover a consistent system in the mythology of any country. One myth was originally quite independent of every other.

Another serious mistake is to suppose that all the details of a mythological legend are of equal importance. The Psalmist speaks of a tabernacle in the heavens set for the sun, whom he compares to "a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoicing as a strong man to run a race." Call the sun the Bridegroom or the Racer (and he is so named in several mythologies), and a series of images will at once be suggested correlative to each of these names, and adventures will be invented to suit them. But these details are no real part of the myth, and frequently conceal its true meaning. One of the chief difficulties in dealing with a myth lies in distinguishing the essential from the nonessential portions of the legend to which it has given rise.

may

On the other hand, the moment we understand the nature of a myth, all impossibilities, contradictions and immoralities disappear. If a mythical personage really be nothing more than a name of the sun, his birth be derived from ever so many different mothers. He may be the son of the Sky or of the Dawn or of the Sea or of Night. He may be identical with other mythical personages which are also names of the sun, and yet be absolutely different from them, as the midday sun differs from the rising and from the setting sun, or the sun of to-day from that of yesterday. He may be the husband of his own mother without the guilt or stain of incest. All myths are strictly true, but they can only be harmonized when translated into the language of physical reality.

All phenomena which attracted sufficient attention furnished matter for myths. It had been remarked, for instance, that certain stars never set, whereas all others, after performing their course, sink below the horizon. The Egyptians expressed this by the myth of the Crocodile of the West which fed upon the Achmu Uretu (the setting stars).1 Thunder and lightning, storm and wind and cloud and rain, were no doubt duly personified, but they occupy a very small part of the mythology, which is almost exclusively

1 Todt. 32, 2. The translation of axmu uretu by "restless" is inadmissible. See M. Chabas, "Papyrus Magique," p. 84. We have nothing here to do with planets and fixed stars.