Conclusion.

The interest which the history of Egyptian religion inspires must be derived solely from itself, not from any hypothetical connection with other systems.

We have seen Egypt a powerful and highly civilized kingdom not less than two thousand years before the birth of Moses, with religious beliefs and institutions at least externally identical with those which it possessed till the last years of its existence.

This religion, however, was not from the first that mere worship of brutes which strangers imagined in the days of its decline.

The worship of the sacred animals was not a principle, but a consequence; it presupposes the rest of the religion as its foundation, and it acquired its full development and extension only in the declining periods of the Egyptian history.

It is based upon symbols derived from the mythology.

côte méridionale de l'Arabie. Ils relâchaient soit dans un port situé en terre ferme, notamment Aden, ou bien dans quelqu' île, telle que Socotora. Là arrivaient les navires arabes, indiens et malais, avec les produits destinés à l'occident."--Reinaud, "Sur le royaume de la Mesène et de la Kharasène," in the Mem. de l'Acad. des Inscr. t. xxiv. pt. 2, p. 215. See also the chapter vi. (Du Commerce) of Lumbroso, "Recherches sur l'économie politique de l'Egypte sous les Lagides." M. Reinaud has also shown that the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, which displays an accuracy of information quite unknown to Strabo, Pliny or Ptolemy, was not written before the middle of the third century after Christ.

The mythology has exactly the same origin as the mythology of our own Aryan ancestors. The early language had no words to express abstract conceptions, and the operations of nature were spoken of in terms which would now be thought poetical or at least metaphorical, but were then the simplest expressions of popular intuition. The nomina became numina.

The Egyptian mythology, as far as I can see, dealt only with those phenomena of nature which are conspicuously the result of fixed law, such as the rising and setting of the sun, moon and stars.1 The recognition of law and order as existing throughout the universe, underlies the whole system of Egyptian religion. The Egyptian maat, derived, like the Sanskrit rita, from merely sensuous impressions, became the name for moral order and righteousness.

Besides the powers recognized by the mythology, the Egyptians from the very first spoke of the Power by whom the whole physical and moral government of the universe is directed, upon whom each individual depends, and to whom he is responsible.

The moral code which they identified with the law governing the universe, was a pure and noble one. The summary of it as given in the Book of the Dead has often been quoted: "He hath given bread to the hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked; he

1 See Preface.

hath given a boat to the shipwrecked; he hath made the offerings to the gods, and paid the due rites to the departed."

The rites are paid to the departed, because death is but the beginning of a new life, and that life will never end.

A sense of the Eternal and Infinite, Holy and Good, governing the world, and upon which we are dependent, of Right and Wrong, of Holiness and Virtue, of Immortality and Retribution-such are the elements of Egyptian religion. But where are these grand elements of a religion found in their simple purity?

Mythology, we know, is the disease which springs up at a peculiar stage of human culture, and is in its first stage as harmless as it is inevitable. It ceases to be harmless when its original meaning is forgotten, when, instead of being the simple expression of man's intuition of real facts, it obtains a mastery over his thought, and leads him to conclusions which are not involved in the original premisses. This disease of thought was terribly aggravated, I believe, by the early development of Art, and the forms which it assumed in Egypt. That Power which the Egyptians recognized without any mythological adjunct, to whom no temple was ever raised, "who was not graven in stone," "whose shrine was never found with painted figures," "who had neither ministrants nor offerings," and

"whose abode was unknown," must practically have been forgotten by the worshippers at the magnificent temples of Memphis, Heliopolis, Abydos, Thebes or Dendera, where quite other deities received the homage of prayer and praise and sacrifice.

A highly cultured and intelligent people like the Egyptians, it is true, did not simply acquiesce in the polytheistic view of things, and efforts are visible from the very first to cling to the notion of the Unity of God. The "self-existent" or "self-becoming" One, the One, the One of One, "the One without a second," "the Beginner of becoming, from the first," "who made all things, but was not made," are expressions which we meet constantly in the religious texts, and they are applied to this or that god, each in his turn being considered as the supreme God of gods, the Maker and Creator of all things. But the conclusion which seems to have remained was, that all gods were in fact but names of the One who resided in them all. But this God is no other than Nature. Both individuals and entire nations may long continue to hold this view, without drawing the inevitable conclusion, that if there is no other God than this, the world is really without a God. But when the conclusion is once brought home, it is, as we have seen in our own day, most eagerly accepted. But the fate of a religion which involves such a conclusion, and with that con

clusion the loss of faith in immortality, and even in the distinction of Right and Wrong, except as far as they are connected with ritual prescriptions, is inevitably sealed.1

1 On looking back over these pages, I find that I have quoted (p. 99) from Professor Max Müller an etymology of the Sanskrit Brahman which is at variance with his more mature judgment in Hibbert Lectures, p. 358, note.

At page 20, the name of M. Guyesse is too important to be omitted from the list of French scholars. M. Revillout, the most eminent Coptic scholar now in Europe, is also highly distinguished for his publication and interpretation of demotic records. To the German names I should add those of Pietschmann, Erman and Meyer.

And I do not think it out of place here to say, that as the thanks of scholars are due to private persons like Mr. Sharpe and the late Mr. Bonomi, for the publication of accurate Egyptian texts, no small amount of gratitude should be felt towards booksellers like Messrs. Hinrichs, of Leipzig, for the publication of so many inestimable works by Brugsch, Dümichen and Mariette, which, however indispensable to the student, have necessarily but a limited sale, and cannot be immediately remunerative.