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except as simple names, and the unity of God is asserted in the noblest language of monotheistic religion. There are many very eminent scholars who, with full knowledge of all that can be said to the contrary, maintain that the Egyptian religion is essentially monotheistic, and that the multiplicity of gods is only due to the personification of "the attributes, characters and offices of the supreme God."

Is the Religion really Monotheistic ?

No scholar is better entitled to be heard on this subject than the late M. Emmanuel Rougé, whose matured judgment is as follows:1

"No one has called in question the fundamental meaning of the principal passages by the help of which we are able to establish what ancient Egypt has taught concerning God, the world and man. I said God, not the gods. The first characteristic of the religion is the Unity [of God] most energetically expressed: God, One, Sole and Only; no others with Him.—He is the Only Being-living in truth.-Thou art One, and millions of beings proceed from thee.--He has made everything, and he alone has not been made. The clearest, the simplest, the most precise conception.

1 "Conférence sur la religion des anciens Egyptiens, prononcée au Cercle Catholique, 14 avril, 1869," published in the Annales de la Philosophie Chrétienne, tome XX. p. 327.

"But how reconcile the Unity of God with Egyptian Polytheism. History and geography will perhaps elucidate the matter. The Egyptian religion comprehends a quantity of local worships. The Egypt which Menes brought together entire under his sceptre was divided into nomes, each having a capital town; each of these regions has its principal god designed by a special name; but it is always the same doctrine which re-appears under different names. One idea predominates, that of a single and primeval God; everywhere and always it is One Substance, self-existent, and an unapproachable God."

M. de Rougé then says that from, or rather before, the beginning of the historical period, the pure monotheistic religion passed through the phase of Sabeism; the Sun, instead of being considered as the symbol of life, was taken as the manifestation of God Himself. The second characteristic of the religion was "a mystery which does honour to the theological intellect of the Egyptians. God is self-existent; he is the only being who has not been begotten; hence the idea of considering God under two aspects, the Father and the Son. In most of the hymns we come across this idea of the Double Being who engendereth Himself, the Soul in two Twins-to signify two Persons never to be separated. A hymn of the Leyden Museum . . . . calls Him 'the One of One.'

"Are these noble doctrines then the result of cen

turies? Certainly not; for they were in existence more than two thousand years before the Christian era. On the other hand, Polytheism, the sources of which we have pointed out, developes itself and progresses without interruption until the time of the Ptolemies. It is, therefore, more than five thousand years since, in the valley of the Nile, the hymn began to the Unity of God and the immortality of the soul, and we find Egypt in the last ages arrived at the most unbridled Polytheism. The belief in the Unity of the Supreme God and in his attributes as Creator and Lawgiver of man, whom he has endowed with an immortal soulthese are the primitive notions, enchased, like indestructible diamonds, in the midst of the mythological superfetations accumulated in the centuries which have passed over that ancient civilization."

Although some of the texts here alluded to have most probably a somewhat different meaning from that which M. de Rougé ascribes to them, the facts upon which he relies are in the main unassailable. It is incontestably true that the sublimer portions of the Egyptian religion are not the comparatively late result of a process of development or elimination from the grosser. The sublimer portions are demonstrably ancient; and the last stage of the Egyptian religion, that known to the Greek and Latin writers, heathen or Christian, was by far the grossest and most corrupt. M. de Rougé is no doubt correct in his assertion that

in the several local worships one and the same doctrine re-appears under different names and symbols. But he does not venture to assert that at any time within the historical period the worship of one God was anywhere practised to the exclusion of a plurality of gods. He only infers from the course of history that, as polytheism was constantly on the increase, the monotheistic doctrines must have preceded it. Another conclusion, however, is suggested by the Egyptian texts to which he refers. The polytheistic and the so-called monotheistic doctrines constantly appear together in one context; not only in the sacred writings handed down. by tradition, and subjected to interpolations and corruptions of every kind, but even more frequently in literary compositions of a private nature, where no one would dream of suspecting interpolation. Throughout the whole range of Egyptian literature, no facts appear to be more certainly proved than these: (1) that the doctrine of one God and that of many gods were taught by the same men; (2) that no inconsistency between the two doctrines was thought of. Nothing, of course, can be more absurd if the Egyptians attached the same meaning to the word God that we do. But there may perhaps be a sense of the word which admits of its use for many as well as for one. We cannot do better at starting than endeavour to ascertain what the Egyptians really meant when they used the word nutar, which we translate "god."

Evidence as to the Meaning of the word Nutar.

At first sight, the Egyptian language is less likely to throw light upon the subject than might be expected if it really belonged to the same stage of speech as either the Indo-European or the Semitic languages. In these languages almost every word is closely allied to several others connected together by derivation from a common root, and the primitive notion conveyed by the word in question can be illustrated by the signification of the kindred words and their root. Generally speaking, however, in Egyptian every word is isolated. There is no distinction between word, stem and root. The same Egyptian word may sometimes have different significations; but this, as a rule, only means that the one notion which is expressed by a word in Egyptian has no single word corresponding to it in English, French or German. It seldom happens that we can advance a step beyond such a fact as that the word nutar is rightly translated "god." I am glad, however, to be able to affirm with certainty that in this particular case we can accurately determine the primitive notion attached to the word. None of the explanations hitherto given of it can be considered satisfactory. That which I am about to propose will, I believe, be generally accepted by scholars, because it is arrived at as the result of a special study of all the published passages in which the word occurs. Such a

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