AFRICAN ORIGIN OF RELIGION

5

Similarly, the fundamentals of the Egyptian religion are also of indigenous and not Asiatic origin, and it seems as if the standards of the gods, and perhaps of the sacred

of veneration to the peoples of the "New Race" before the advent of their conquerors from the East. It is clear that the "New Race" believed in a life beyond the grave, for they laid offerings of food, etc., in the graves of their dead, and unless they had such a belief they would never have made provision for their wants in a future life. This and other primitive beliefs were retained by the early dynastic Egyptians, who, however, added thereto religious ideas of a

different character, which were due partly to the newcomers and partly to natural development. Thus, with the Ist Dynasty we enter the iconic age of Egyptian religion, and it seems as if the god Osiris was already

6

ARCHAIC PERIOD-SUMMARY

fashioned in much the same form as that in which he appears even in the latest times. The oldest figure of a deity which we possess is that of the hippopotamus goddess Ta-urt, which is represented on p. 5; this image, which is now in the British Museum, must belong to the archaic period of Egyptian art, for it is made of the peculiar red breccia which is characteristic of that period. Its artistic treatment points to the same age, and we are probably right in assigning it to the time of the Ist and IInd Dynasties. The remarkable green slate object bearing the name of Nar-Mer (see Vol. I., pp. 185-187) by its reliefs proves that the cow-goddess Hathor was at that remote time a favourite object of veneration, and the British Museum possesses a flint, roughly worked in the shape of her head (Vol. I., p. 84, No. 32,124), which must be considerably older than the reign of När-Mer. Many other deities must have been known in the archaic period, and the name Mer-Nit shows us that the warrior-goddess, whose emblem was the shield with two arrows crossed upon it, already worshipped, and traces of the worship of Seker appear in the form of the hieroglyphic of the Hennu Boat, and of the bandy-legged figure, which in later days became the type of the triune god of the Resurrection, Ptah-Seker-Åsår. Horus, the sky-god, was certainly the supreme god at this period, but as yet no image of him in human hawk-headed form has been found; he always appears in the form of a hawk, and, indeed, it is worthy of note that in the archaic period the custom

was

BOOK OF THE DEAD IN SEMTI'S REIGN

7

of representing theriomorphic deities with human bodies had not yet grown up. At this period a considerable development in the religious ideas of the Egyptians seems to have taken place; incidentally an important proof of this is supplied by Manetho, who indicates that new institutions in connection with the worship of the bulls Apis and Mnevis, and of the ram of Mendes, were established by Ka-kau, a king of the IInd Dynasty. According to traditions which are preserved in the rubrics of some of its chapters, the Book of the Dead, in some form or other, must already have been in existence in the Ist Dynasty. Thus in the coffin of Menthu-hetep, a queen of the XIth Dynasty, we have two copies of the LXIVth Chapter; in the rubric to the first the name of the king during whose reign the chapter is said to have been "found" is given as Menthu-ḥetep, which is, of course, a mistake1 for Men-kau-Ra or Mycerinus, the fourth king of the IVth Dynasty, but in the rubric to the second the king's name is given as SEMTI or Hesepti. Thus it is clear that in the period of the XIth Dynasty it was believed that the chapter might alternatively be as old as the time of the Ist Dynasty. Again, in the Papyrus of Nu, a document which dates from the period of the first half of the XVIIIth Dynasty, we also have two copies of the LXIVth Chapter, and the shorter version is attributed to the time of SEMTI, or Hesepti, and the longer to that of Men-kau-Ra. When

1 See Goodwin, Aegyptische Zeitschrift, 1886, p. 54.

8

THE HENNU BOAT OF THE GOD SEKER

we remember that on the plaque of SEMTI (see Vol. I., p. 195) we find depicted a figure of this king dancing before a god, who is probably Osiris, and see thereon a figure of the Hennu Boat of the god Seker, and also consider that SEMTI's tomb was one of the finest of those of the early dynastic kings found at Abydos, it is certain that this king inaugurated some ceremonies in connection with the burial of the dead, or developed old ones to such an extent that his successors saw fit to associate certain chapters of the Book of the Dead with his name. And it is more than probable that he took some part personally in the "editing" or revision. of the chapters which are connected with his name; for had the scribes of a later period wished merely to ascribe great antiquity to the LXIVth Chapter, they could have done so more effectually by mentioning in connection with it the name of Menȧ or Menes, or the "Followers of Horus," than by referring it to the time of a king who was not the founder of the rule of the dynastic kings of Egypt. In any case Semti must have been a learned man, for he is also mentioned in a medical papyrus (see p. 199), and both he and Tcheser seem to have contributed largely to the medical knowledge of the period.

We have already referred to the tombs of the archaic period, and we have seen that the art of building structures in brick and stone had so far improved by the middle of the IIIrd Dynasty that Tcheser found himself possessed of such mechanical means and archi

THE STEP PYRAMID OF TCHESER

9

tectural knowledge as were necessary to enable him to build the oldest of the pyramids, i.e., the Step Pyramid at Sakkâra; the height of perfection to which the arts of the potters and of the workers in glaze had attained is shown by the beautiful blue glazed faïence tiles which were used to line the interior of this edifice. The art of making statues of any size in the round seems to date from the time of Besh, the first king of the IInd Dynasty, but the art of sculpturing in relief was known at a much earlier period, and indeed it seems to have been employed as far back as the time of the predecessors of Menes, to whose period many of the small figures in the round must also date. To this period, i.e., to the time of the "Followers of Horus," or the half-civilized predynastic rulers of Upper Egypt, must be assigned the two most archaic of the green slate objects already referred to in Vol. I., p. 184, the designs on which are here reproduced." A mere glance at these two objects is sufficient to convince the archaeologist that they are the most ancient of their class, and that they are, in point of date, considerably anterior to the sculptured reliefs of the kings Āḥa and Nar-mer. The larger of them is incomplete, and the small portion missing has never been found; the remainder consists of three large fragments, two of which

1 Specimens are preserved in the British Museum; see Nos. 2437, 2438, 2440, 2441, 2445.

2 See also Mr. Legge's comprehensive and sensible description of the whole class of objects in Proceedings Soc. Bibl. Arch., May, 1900; they are also mentioned in connection with Mycenaean theories by H. R. Hall, Oldest Civilization of Greece, p. 151 ff.