248 DEITIES TRACEABLE TO ONE ORIGINAL. APP. BOOK M. becomes Siva, or Mahadiva, "Great god;" and as Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, is the Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer, which last answers to the regenerator of what only changes its form; and reproduces what he destroys. (See Sir W. Jones, vol. i. p. 249; and Asiat. Res. vol. vii. p. 280; and my note on ch. 123, Book ii.) 9 The same original belief in one god may be observed in Greek mythology; and this accordance of early traditions agrees with the Indian notion that "truth was originally deposited with men, but gradually slumbered and was forgotten; the knowledge of it however returning like a recollection." For in Greece, Zeus was also universal, and onnipotent, the one god, containing all within himself; and he was the Monad, the beginning and end of all. (Somn. Scip. c. 6; Aristot. de Mund. 7.) (line 2.) (line 8.) Ζεὺς κεφαλή· Ζεὺς μέσσα, Διὸς δ ̓ ἐκ πάντα τέτυκται. Ζεύς ἐστιν αἰθὴρ, Ζεὺς δὲ γῆ, Ζεὺς δ ̓ οὐρανός· (Comp. Clemens Strom. v. p. 603.) Orphic Fragm. He At the same time each of the various offices of the Deity was known under its peculiar title. (See note A. in App. to Book i.) Jupiter was also prefixed to the names of foreign gods, as Jupiter-Ammon, Jupiter-Sarapis, Jupiter-Baal-Markos, and many others; and though the Sun had its special Deity, altars were raised to Jupiter-the-Sun. was also the manifestation of the Deity, like Osiris, who was the son of Seb, the Saturn of the Egyptians. Thus Osiris, Amun, and Noum, though so unlike, were each supposed by the Greeks to answer to Jupiter. Hesiod, too, calls Jupiter the youngest of the gods; as Osiris was in the third order of Deities, though the greatest of all; and the correspondence was completed by both being thought to have died. This notion, common to Egypt, Syria, and Crete, as to the Booddhists, and other people, is one of many instances of the occurrence of similar religious views in different countries (see notes 2,3, ch. 171); but there is also evidence of the Greeks having borrowed much from Egypt in their early mythology, as well as in later times, after their religion had long been formed; and the worship of Isis spread from Egypt to Greece and its islands, as it afterwards did to Rome. But the corrupt practices introduced at Alexandria, and more especially at Canopus, and thence carried to Europe, were no part of the Egyptian religion; they proceeded from the gross views taken, through ignorance, of certain allegorical representations, and were quite opposed, in their sensual and material character, to the simple expression of the hieroglyphical mind of Egypt. It is easy to perceive in all the religions of antiquity why so many divinities resemble each other, why they differ in some points, and how they may be traced to one original; while others, being merely local, have a totally different character. Though they began by subdividing the one Deity, they subsequently laboured to show that all the gods were СПАР. ІІІ. PHILOSOPHICAL VIEW OF THE GREEKS. 249 one; and this last, which was one of the great mysteries of Egypt, was much insisted upon by the philosophers of Greece. Even the names of some Deities show they came from one and the same, as Zeus-Dios, Dis, Iav, Jovi, Dius-piter, Dies-piter, Jupiter, (Iapeter ?), Iacchus, and Janus, who was said to be a character of Apollo, as Jana was Diana (Macrob. Saturn. i. 5), corresponding to Phoebus and Phoebe; and Macrobius not only identifies most of the gods with the Sun, but makes Apollo and Bacchus, though so very dissimilar, the same (Saturn. i. 20). Again, the Olympian, or heavenly, and the inferial gods were essentially the same; Pluto was only a character of Jupiter; and Ceres and Bacchus belonged to both classes, in which they resembled Isis and Osiris. The same notion led to the belief in a Sol inferus-a deity particularly Egyptian, and connected with the Sun-gods. The Deity once divided, there was no limit to the number of his attributes of various kinds and of different grades; and in Egypt everything that partook of the divine essence became a god. Emblems were added to the catalogue; and though not really deities, they called forth feelings of respect, which the ignorant would not readily distinguish from actual worship. The Greeks, too, besides the greater gods, gave a presiding spirit to almost every part of visible Nature; trees of various kinds had their dryads, hama-dryads, and other nymphs; rivers, lakes, marshes, and wells had their Naiads, as plains, mountains, caves, and the like, had their presiding spirits; and each "genius loci" of later times varied with the place. These were mere personifications,an inferior grade of Nature-gods,-who had no mysteries, and could not be identified with the one original Deity, as the local divinities of Egyp tian towns were different from those who held a rank in the first, second, and third orders of gods. Tree-worship, and the respect for holy mountains, were African as well as Egyptian superstitions; and they extended also to Asia. Besides the evidence of a common origin, from the analogies in the Egyptian, Indian, Greek, and other systems, we perceive that mythology had advanced to a certain point before the early migrations took place from central Asia. And if in aftertimes each introduced local changes, they often borrowed so largely from their neighbours, that a strong resemblance was maintained; and hence the religions resembled each other, partly from having a common origin, partly from direct imitation, and partly from adaptation; which last continued to a late period. The philosophical view taken by the Greeks of the nature of the Deity was also different from their mythological system; and that followed by Thales and others was rather metaphysical than religious. Directly they began to adopt the inquiry into the nature of the Deity, they admitted that he must be One and Supreme; and he received whatever name appeared to convey the clearest notion of the First Principle. How far any of their notions, or at least the inquiry that led to them, may be traced to an acquaintance with Egyptian speculation, it is difficult to determine; Thales, and many more philosophers, studied in Egypt, and must have begun, or have sought to promote, their in 250 EGYPTIAN THEORY OF CREATION. APP. BOOK II. quiry during their visit to the learned people of that age; and in justice to them we must admit that they went to study there for some purpose. At all events their early thoughts could not but have been greatly influenced by an intercourse with Egypt, though many a succeeding philosopher suggested some new view of the First Cause; speculation taking a varied range, and often returning under different names to a similar conclusion. Still, many early Greek philosophers admitted not only an ideal deity as a first cause, a divine intelligence, the "holy infinite spirit" of Empedocles, or other notions of the One; but, like Alemaon of Crotona (according to some a pupil of Pythagoras, according to others of the Ionian school), "attributed a divinity to the sun and stars as well as to the mind" (Cic. Nat. Deor. i.). Plato, too, besides the incorporeal God, admits "the heavens, stars, and earth, the mind, and those gods handed down from our ancestors " to be the Deity; and Chrysippus, called by Cicero (Nat. Deor. i. and iii.) the most subtle of the Stoics, extended the divine catalogue still farther; which recalls the Egyptian system of a metaphysical and a mysterious view of the divine nature, and at the same time the admission of a worship of the Sun. (See note on chap. 51, and note on ch. 123, B. ii.) 6 Of the Egyptian theory of the creation some notion may perhaps be obtained from the account given in Ovid (Met. i. and xxv.) borrowed from the Pythagoreans; as of their belief in the destruction of the earth by fire, adopted by the Stoics. (Ovid. Met. i. 256; Senecca, Nat. Quæst. iii. 13 and 28; Plut. de Placit. Phil iv. 7.) They even thought it had been subject to several catastrophes, "not to one deluge only, but to many;" and believed in a variety of destructions "that have been, and again will be, the greatest of these arising from fire and water (Plat. Tim. pp. 466, 467). The idea that the world had successive creations and destructions is also expressly stated in the Indian Manu. But though some subjects seem to point to the creation, in the tombs of the kings, perhaps also to the destruction (as well as to man's future punishment) of the world by fire, there are few direct indications of its creation beyond some mysterious allusions to the agency of Pthah (the creator), or the representation of Noum (Nef), the divine spirit passing in his boat "on the waters," or fashioning the clay on a potter's wheel. This last is also done by Pthah, which seems to correspond with the doctrine of Empedocles, as well as with the notion expressed in Genesis that the matter already existed "without form and void" (tohóo oo bohóo); and not that it was then for the first time called into existence. For, (as Mr. Stuart Poole has observed) the same expression, tohóo oo bohóo, is used in Jeremiah (iv. 23), where the land" without form and void was only "desolate," not destroyed nor brought "to a full end" (v. 27), but depopulated and deprived of light. (Cp. Ps. civ. 30.) They probably had a notion of the indefinite period that intervened between "the beginning" and the creation of man, which is in accordance with the Bible account, as St. Gregory Nazianzen and others have supposed, and which seems to be pointed out by the Hebrew text, where in the two first verses the past tense of the verbs (" God created" (bará) and "the earth was without form ") is used; while in the 3rd, and some CHAP. III. . CREATION OF THE WORLD IN AUTUMN. 251 other verses, we have iamer (" says "), and ibra (" creates "); for though these have a past sense, that construction is not a necessary one, and the verb might have been placed after, instead of before, the noun, as in the 2nd verse. The creation of plants before animals, as in " the third day of Genesis, was also an ancient, perhaps an Egyptian, belief; and "Empedocles says the first of all living things were trees, that sprang from the earth before the sun expanded itself." (Comp. Plut. de Plac. Phil. v. c. 26.) The tradition among the Hebrews of the world having been created in autumn was borrowed from Egypt, to which climate only (as Miss F. Corbaux has shown) the idea that autumn was the period of the world's creation, or renewal, would apply.-[G. W.] 252 VARIATIONS IN THE RISE OF THE NILE. APP. BOOK II. CHAPTER IV. "WHEN MERIS WAS KING," &c.-Chap. 13. Oldest Nilometer. Rise of the Nile 16 cubits. Differed in different parts of Egypt. "When Maris was king," says Herodotus, "the Nile overflowed all Egypt below Memphis, as soon as it rose so little as 8 cubits," and this, he adds, was not 900 years before his visit, when it required 15 or 16 cubits to inundate the country. But the 16 figures of children (or cubits, Lucian. Rhet. Præc. sec. 6) on the statue of the Nile at Rome show that it rose 16 cubits in the time of the Roman Empire; in 1720 sixteen cubits were still cited as the requisite height for irrigating the land about Memphis; and the same has continued to be the rise of the river at old Cairo to this day. For the proportion is always kept up by the bed of the river rising in an equal ratio with the land it irrigates, and the notion of Savary and others that the Nile no longer floods the Delta, is proved by experience to be quite erroneous. This also dispels the gloomy prognostications of Herodotus that the Nile will at some time cease to inundate the land. The Mekeeas pillar at old Cairo, it is true, is calculated to contain 24 cubits, but this number merely implies "completion," and it has been ascertained by M. Coste that the 24 Cairene cubits are only equal to about 16 or 16 real cubits. The height of the inundation varies of course, as it always did, in different parts of Egypt, being about 40 feet at Asouan, 36 at Thebes, 25 at Cairo, and 4 at the Rosetta and Damietta mouths; and Plutarch gives 28 cubits as the highest rise at Elephantine, 15 at Memphis, and 7 at Xois and Mendes, in the Delta (de Isid. s. 43). The Nilometer at Elephantine is the one seen by Strabo, and used under the Empire, as the rise of the Nile is recorded there in the 35th year of Augustus, and in the reigns of other Emperors. The highest remaining scale is 27 cubits; but it has no record of the inundation at that height, though Plutarch speaks of 28; and the highest recorded there is of 26 cubits, 4 palins, and 1 digit. This, at the ratio stated by Plutarch, would give little more than 14 at Memphis; but Pliny (v. 9) says the proper rise of the Nile is 16 cubits, and the highest known was of 18 in the reign of Claudius, which was extraordinary and calamitous. Ammianus Marcellinus (22), in the time of Julian, also says, no landed proprietor wishes for more than 16 cubits." The same is stated by El Edrisi and other Arab writers. |