It this relationship. A deity was said to be Lord of Abydos, mistress of Senem, presiding in Thebes, inhabiting Hermopolis; sometimes a particle was interposed between the name of the god and that of the town, as "Anubis from Sechem," "Neith of Sais;" sometimes one or more epithets were added, as "the mighty," “the beneficent," "the august;" sometimes the name of an animal which was the recognized symbol of the god, a bull, a ram or a lion. Special titles were given to divinities according to the place in which they were worshipped: Osiris, for instance, was called che, "the child," at Thebes; he was ura, "the great one," at Heliopolis; ati, "the sovereign," at Memphis. happened frequently that in the same town one god was worshipped under different aspects, or as proceeding from different localities, and treated as though there were different divine persons of the same name. Chonsu in Thebes, under the name nefer-hotep, is entreated to lend his miraculous power to Chonsu in Thebes under the name ari secher. We read of Set the god of Senu, Set of Uau, Set of Un and Set of Meru. Other forms of Set are well known, but those I have cited are brought together in one inscription as children of the god Tmu. I find invocations in a very early inscription addressed to the Anubis of six different localities. Apis is the son of Ptah, of Tmu, of Osiris and of Sokari. Are all these fathers of Apis one person? Horus is the son of the goddess Isis, Isis but he is also the son of the goddess Hathor. must then be the same as Hathor, unless mythology is proof against logic. Let us admit this, and also that Seb, the father of Isis, is identical with Ra, the father of Hathor; but what shall we say on being told that Horus was born in Tattu (the Mendes of the Greeks), and also that he was born in Cheb? Geographical localities do not so easily lend themselves to identification. In a well-known text, Horus is called the son of Isis and Osiris, but shortly afterwards Seb is named as his father. Students of mythology will not be astonished or scandalized if they discover that Osiris is at once the father, brother, husband and son of Isis, and also the son of their child Horus. They will read a text on the alabaster sarcophagus of Seti I., now in the Soane Museum, which speaks of "the son who proceeds from the father, and the father who proceeds from his son," and if their studies are rightly conducted, the mystery will not be hard to understand. The Deities Innumerable. The Egyptian deities are innumerable. There were countless gods in heaven and below the earth. Every town and village had its local patrons. Every month of the year, every day of the month, every hour of the day and of the night, had its presiding divinity, and all these gods had to be propitiated by offerings. I several times made the attempt to draw up an index of the divine names occurring in the texts, but found it necessary to abandon the enterprize. What can all these gods mean? Mean Notions concerning these Deities. Nothing can be more clear than that under the name of God the Egyptians did not understand, as we do, a being without body, parts or passions. The bodies of the gods are spoken of as well as their souls, and they have both parts and passions; they are described as suffering from hunger and thirst, old age, disease, fear and sorrow. They perspire, their limbs quake, their head aches, their teeth chatter, their eyes weep, their nose bleeds, "poison takes possession of their flesh, even as the Nile takes possession of the land." They may be stung by reptiles and burnt by fire. They shriek and howl with pain and grief. All the great gods require protection. Osiris is helpless against his enemies, and his remains are protected by his wife and sister. Hathor extends her wings as a protection over the victorious Horus, or, as one form of the legend expresses it, "she protects him with her body as a divine cow;" yet Hathor in her turn needs protection, and even the sun-god Ra, though invested with the predicates of supreme divinity, requires the aid of the goddess Isis. All the gods are liable to be forced to grant the prayers of men, through fear of threats which it is inconceivable to us that any intelligence but that of idiots should have believed. There are many aspects of this religion, and some of them are extremely ridiculous. The very impulse, however, which prompts us to laugh at the religion of our fellow-men, ought to suggest a doubt whether we have really caught their meaning. Simplification of the List. We are tempted, in our bewilderment at the number of the gods, to ask whether the process of reduction is not applicable to them as well as that of multiplication. And we discover to our relief that such a process is actually suggested to us by documents of indisputable authority, which show that the same god is often known under many names. In the Litanies of the god Rā, which are inscribed on the walls of the royal tombs at Bibān-el-molūk, the god is invoked under seventyfive different names. A monument published in Burton's Excerpta Hieroglyphica gives the names, or rather a selection of the names, of Ptah, the principal god of Memphis. The Book of the Dead has a chapter entirely consisting of the names of Osiris. The inscriptions of the temple of Dendera give a long list of the names of the goddess Hathor. She is identified not only with Isis, but with Sechet at Memphis, Neith at Sais, Saosis at Heliopolis, Nehemauit at Hermopolis, Bast at Bubastis, Sothis at Elephantine, and many other goddesses. These authorities alone are sufficient, almost at a glance, to convince us that not only are some inferior deities mere aspects of the greater gods, but that several at least of the greater gods themselves are but different aspects of one and the same. Lepsius, in his Dissertation on the gods of the first order, has published several lists of these divinities taken from monuments of different periods, the most ancient list being taken from an altar of the sixth dynasty. On comparing these lists together, it is again plain that Mentu and Tmu, two of the great gods of Thebes, are merely aspects of the sun-god Rā. The entire list of the gods of the first order is easily reduced to two groups; the first representing the sungod Rā and his family, and the second Osiris and his family. It is most probable that neither Ptah nor Amon were originally at the head of lists, but obtained their places as being chief divinities of the capitals Memphis and Thebes. Both these gods are identified with the sun-god Ra, and so indeed are all the chief local divinities. The whole mythology of Egypt may be said to turn upon the histories of Ra and Osiris, and these histories run into each other, sometimes in inextricable confusion, which ceases to be wonderful when texts are discovered which simply identify Osiris and Rā. And, finally, other texts are known wherein Rā, Osiris, Amon and all the other gods disappear, |