The Religions of Ancient Egypt and Babylonia Part 11

The serpent, however, was not always venerated because it was feared. It lived underground, and was thus, in a special sense, the oldest inhabitant of the land, and the guardian of the soil. The Telmessians told Krsus that it was "a child of the earth."(170) The harmless snakes that frequent the village houses of modern Egypt are still regarded as the "protectors"

of the household. The bowl of milk is provided for them as regularly as it once was in Wales for the fairies, and many tales are told of the punishment a neglect of the household _?arras_ or "guardian" will entail.

For its poison continues to exist, though held in reserve, and is communicable by other means than the fangs. At Helwan near Cairo, for instance, I was told of one of these guardian snakes which once missed its female mate and supposed it had been killed. Thereupon it crept into the _zir_ or jar in which water is kept, and poisoned the water in it. But the female having soon afterwards made its appearance, it was observed to glide into a basin of milk, then to crawl along the ground so that the clotted dust might adhere to its body, and again to enter the _zir_. As the dust fouled the water, the people of the house knew that the latter must have been poisoned, and accordingly poured it on the ground. In this case the snake provided the remedy for the mischief it had the power to cause.(171)

But the Agathodaemon or serpent guardian of the house not only still survives among the fellahin of Egypt, serpent wors.h.i.+p still holds undiminished sway in the valley of the Nile. In a crater-like hollow of the mountain cliff of Shekh Heridi there are two domed tombs, dedicated not to a Christian or a Mohammedan saint, but to a snake and his female mate. Shekh Heridi, in fact, is a serpent, and the place he inhabits is holy ground. Pilgrimages are made annually to it, and the festival of the "Shekh," which takes place in the month that follows Ramadan, is attended by crowds of sailors and other devout believers, who encamp for days together in the neighbourhood of the shrine.

They have no doubt about the miraculous powers possessed by the snake. It is as thick as a man's thigh, and, if treated irreverently, breathes flames of fire into the face of the spectator, who immediately dies. If it is cut in pieces, the pieces reunite of their own accord, and the blood flowing from them marks a spot where gold is hidden in the ground.

Paul Lucas, in the early part of the eighteenth century, tells us that in his time it was called "the angel," and that shortly before his visit to the Nile it had cured a woman of Ekhmim of paralysis, from which she had suffered for eight years, by simply crawling up into her litter when she was brought to its dwelling-place. Paul Lucas himself was a witness of its supernatural gifts. It was brought to him by the keeper of the shrine when he was visiting a Bey on the opposite side of the river. Suddenly it disappeared, and was nowhere to be found; but a messenger, who was sent post haste to the shrine, returned with the information that "the angel was already there, and had advanced more than twenty steps to meet the dervish who takes care of it."(172)

Norden, a few years later, has a similar tale to relate. He was told that the serpent-saint "never dies," and that it "cures and grants favours to all those who implore its aid and offer sacrifices to it." The cures were effected by the mere presence of the snake, which came in person to those who desired its help. The Christians, he adds, admit the miraculous powers of the Shekh equally with the Mohammedans, only they explain them as due to a demon who clothes himself in a serpent's form.(173)

Saint or demon, however, Shekh Heridi is really the lineal descendant of a serpent which has been wors.h.i.+pped in its neighbourhood since the prehistoric days of Egypt. A bronze serpent with the head of Zeus Serapis has been found in the mounds of Benawit, on the western side of the Nile, which face the entrance to the shrine of the Shekh; and the nome in which the shrine is situated was that of Du-Hefi, "the mountain of the snake."

The serpent of Shekh Heridi, with his miraculous powers of healing, must thus have been already famous in the days when the nomes of Upper Egypt first received their names. The old neolithic population of the desert must have already venerated the snake that dwelt in the cleft of the rock above which now rises the sacred "tomb" of Shekh Heridi.(174)

The faith of the people dies hard. The G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, the theology and speculations of the official religion of Egypt, have pa.s.sed away, but the old beliefs and superst.i.tions which were already in possession of the land when the Pharaonic Egyptians first entered it, have survived both Christianity and Mohammedanism. The theological systems of Heliopolis or Thebes are like the sacred trees, which, according to Dr.

Schweinfurth,(175) were brought from Southern Arabia along with the deities with whose cult they were a.s.sociated; when the deities themselves ceased to be wors.h.i.+pped, the trees also ceased to be cultivated, and so disappeared from a soil wherein they had been but exotics. But the religion of the great ma.s.s of the people remained rooted as it were in the soil, like the palm or the acacia. It flowed like a strong current under the surface of the theology of the State, contemptuously tolerated by the latter, and in its turn but little affected by it. The theology of the State might incorporate and adapt the beliefs of the mult.i.tude; to the mult.i.tude the State theology was a "tale of little meaning, though the words were strong."

If we would know what the bulk of the people thought of those deities whom the higher cla.s.ses regarded as manifestations of a single ineffable and omnipotent divine power, we must turn to the folk-tales which were taken up and disfigured by the rationalising priests of a later period, when they combined together in a connected story all that had been said about the G.o.ds of the local sanctuaries. Each sanctuary came to possess its euhemerising legend of the chief divinity to whom it was consecrated; the divinity was transformed into an earthly king, and his history was concocted partly out of popular tales, a.s.sociated for the most part with particular relics and charms, partly from forced etymologies of proper names. At how early a date these artificial legends first came into existence we do not know, but we already meet with examples of them in the time of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties. They belong, however, to the age when the rationalistic process of resolving the G.o.ds into human princes had already begun,-the counter side of the process that had turned the Pharaoh into a G.o.d,-and their artificial character is betrayed by the attempt to extract history from learned but unscientific explanations of the origin of local and other names.

Here, for instance, is one which was compiled for the temple of the sun-G.o.d at Heliopolis, and is contained in a Turin papyrus of the age of the Twentieth Dynasty: "Account of the G.o.d who created himself, the creator of heaven, of earth, of the G.o.ds, of men, of wild beasts, of cattle, of reptiles, of fowls, and of fish; the king of men and G.o.ds, to whom centuries are but as years; who possesses numberless names which no man knoweth, no, not even the G.o.ds.

"Isis was a woman, more knowing in her malice than millions of men, clever among millions of the G.o.ds, equal to millions of spirits, to whom as unto Ra nothing was unknown either in heaven or upon earth.

"The G.o.d Ra came each day to sit upon his throne; he had grown old, his mouth trembled, his slaver trickled down to the earth, and his saliva dropped upon the ground. Isis kneaded it with her hand along with the dust that had adhered to it; she moulded therefrom a sacred serpent, to which she gave the form of a spear-shaft. She wound it not about her face, but flung it on the road along which the great G.o.d walked, as often as he wished, in his twofold kingdom.

"The venerable G.o.d went forth, the (other) G.o.ds accompanied him, he walked along as on other days. Then the sacred serpent bit him. The divine G.o.d opened his mouth, and his cry rang to heaven. His Ennead of G.o.ds called: 'What is it?' and the G.o.ds cried, 'Look there!' He could make no answer, his jaws chattered, his limbs shook, the venom took hold of his flesh as the Nile covers its banks (with water).

"When the heart of the great G.o.d was quieted, he called to his followers: 'Come to me, ye children of my limbs, ye G.o.ds who have emanated from me!

Something painful hath hurt me; my heart perceiveth it, yet my eyes see it not; my hand hath not wrought it, nothing that I have made knoweth what it is, yet have I never tasted suffering like unto it, and there is no pain which is worse.... I went forth to see what I had created, I was walking in the two lands which I have made, when something stung me which I knew not. Was it fire, was it water? My heart is in flames, my limbs tremble, all my members s.h.i.+ver. Let there be brought unto me the children of the G.o.ds of beneficent words, who have understanding mouths, and whose power reaches unto heaven.'

"The children of the G.o.ds came, full of woe; Isis came with her magic; with her mouth full of the breath of life, whose recipes destroy pain, whose word gives life to the dead. She said: 'What is it, what is it, O father of the G.o.ds? A serpent hath wrought this suffering in thee, one of thy creatures hath lifted up his head against thee. Surely he shall be overthrown by beneficent incantations; I will make him retreat at the sight of thy rays.'

"The holy G.o.d opened his mouth: 'I walked along the road, travelling through the two lands of the earth, after the desire of my heart, that I might see what I had created; then was I bitten by a serpent that I saw not. Is it fire, is it water? I am colder than water, I am hotter than fire, all my limbs sweat, I tremble, my eye is unsteady, I see not the sky, drops roll from my face as in the season of summer.'

"Isis replied to Ra: 'O tell me thy name, father of the G.o.ds, then shall he live who is released (from pain) by thy name.' But Ra answers: 'I have created heaven and earth, I have set the hills in order, and made all beings that are thereon. I am he who created the water, and caused the primeval ocean to issue forth. I created the spouse of his (divine) mother. I created the heavens and the secrets of the two horizons, and have ordered the souls of the G.o.ds. I am he who illuminates all things at the opening of his eyes; if he closes his eyes, all is dark. The water of the Nile rises when he bids it; the G.o.ds know not his name. I make the hours and create the days, I send the year and create the inundation, I make the fire that lives, I purify the house. I am Khepera in the morning, Ra at noon, and Tum at evening.'

"The venom departed not, it advanced further, the great G.o.d became no better. Then Isis said to Ra: 'Thy name was not p.r.o.nounced in the words thou hast repeated. Tell it to me and the poison will depart; then shall he live whose name is (thus) named.'

"The poison glowed like fire; it was hotter than the flame of fire. The majesty of Ra said: 'I grant thee leave that thou shouldest search within me, O mother Isis! and that my name pa.s.s from my bosom into thine.'

"So the G.o.d hid himself from the (other) G.o.ds; his everlasting bark was empty. When the moment arrived for extracting the heart (whereon the name was written), Isis said to her son Horus: 'He must yield up unto thee his two eyes (the sun and moon).'

"So the name of the great G.o.d was taken from him, and Isis, the great enchantress, said: 'Depart, O poison, leave Ra: let the eye of Horus go forth from the G.o.d and s.h.i.+ne out of his mouth. I, I have done it; I throw on the earth the victorious poison, for the name of the great G.o.d is extracted from him. Let Ra live and the poison die!' So spake Isis, the great one, the regent of the G.o.ds, who knows Ra and his true name."

The writer of the papyrus adds that the recital of this legend is an excellent charm against the poison of a snake, especially if it is written and dissolved in water, which is then drunk by the patient; or if it is inscribed on a piece of linen, and hung around his neck.(176)

The contrast is striking between the introduction to the legend and the euhemeristic spirit that elsewhere prevails in it, and can be explained, even in the case of such disregarders of consistency as the Egyptians, only on the supposition that the Ra of folk-lore and the Ra of theology were held to be the same merely in name. Not even a pretence is made of regarding Isis as a G.o.ddess; she is simply a common witch, who resorts to magic in order to force Ra to hand over his name and therewith his powers to her son Horus. The virtue of the name, and the power conferred by a knowledge of it, are features common to the folk-lore of most countries.

They take us back to that primitive phase of thought which not only identifies the name with the person or thing it represents, but makes it a separate ent.i.ty with an existence of its own.

The legend of the sun-G.o.d of Edfu is equally instructive, though in its present form it is not earlier than the Ptolemaic age. This begins as follows: "In the three hundred and sixty-third year of the reign of Ra-Harmakhis, the ever-living, Ra was in Nubia with his soldiers. Enemies, however, conspired (_uu_) against him; hence the country has ever since borne the name of the land of Conspirators (_Uaua_). Then the G.o.d Ra went his way in his bark along with his followers, and landed in the nome of Edfu. Here the G.o.d Hor-Be?udet (the winged disc) entered the bark of Ra and said to his father: 'O Harmakhis, I see how the enemy have conspired against their lord.' Then said the Majesty of Ra-Harmakhis to the person of Hor-Be?udet: 'O son of Ra, exalted one, who hast emanated from me, smite the enemy before thee forthwith.' Hor-Be?udet flew up to the sun in the form of a great winged disc; on that account he is ever since called the great G.o.d, the lord of heaven. He espied the enemy from the sky, he followed them in the form of a great winged disc. Through the attack which he made upon them in front, their eyes saw no longer, their ears heard no longer, each slew his neighbour forthwith, there remained not one alive.

Then Hor-Be?udet came in a many-coloured form as a great winged disc into the bark of Ra-Harmakhis. And Thoth said to Ra: 'Lord of the G.o.ds, the G.o.d of Be?udet (Edfu) has come in the form of a great winged disc: from this day forth he shall be called Hor-Be?udet (Horus of Edfu).' And he said (again): 'From this day forth the city of Edfu shall be called the city of Hor-Be?udet.' Then Ra embraced the form of Hor, and said to Hor-Be?udet: 'Thou makest the water of Edfu (red with blood like) grapes, and thy heart is rejoiced thereat.' Hence this water of Edfu is called (the water of grapes).

"And Hor-Be?udet said: 'March on, O Ra, and behold thine enemies under thy feet in this land.' When the Majesty of Ra had turned back, and the G.o.ddess Astarte with him, he saw the enemy lying on the ground, each extended like a prisoner. Then said Ra to Hor-Be?udet: 'That is a suitable life.' Hence the seat of Hor-Be?udet has ever since been called the place of the Suitable Life. And Thoth said: 'It was a piercing (_deb_) of my enemies.' So the nome of Edfu (_Deb_) has been called ever since by that name. And Thoth said to Hor-Be?udet: 'Thou art a great protection' (_mak aa_). Great in Protection (_aa mak_) accordingly has the sacred bark of Horus been ever since called.

"Then Ra spake to the G.o.ds who were with him: 'Let us voyage (_khen_) in our bark on the Nile; we are rejoiced, for our enemies lie on the ground.'

The (ca.n.a.l) in which the great G.o.d was has ever since been called the Water of Voyaging (_Pe-khen_).

"Then the enemies of Ra entered the water: they changed themselves into crocodiles and hippopotamuses. But Harmakhis voyaged on the water in his bark. When the crocodiles and hippopotamuses came up to him, they opened their jaws in order to destroy the Majesty of Harmakhis. Then came Hor-Be?udet with his followers the blacksmiths (_mesniu_); each held an iron lance and chain in his hand, wherewith he smote the crocodiles and the hippopotamuses. Then three hundred and eighty-one of the enemy were brought to the spot, who had been killed in sight of the city of Edfu.

"And Harmakhis said to Hor-Be?udet: 'Let my image be in Southern Egypt, since there it is that the victory was gained' (_nekht a?_). So the dwelling-place of Hor-Be?udet (at Edfu) has ever since been called the Victorious (_Nekht-a?_). And Thoth said, when he had seen the enemy lying on the ground: 'Glad are your hearts, O G.o.ds of heaven; glad are your hearts, O G.o.ds of earth! Horus the younger is come in peace; he has wrought wonders in his journey which he undertook in accordance with the Book of the Slaying of the Hippopotamus.' Ever since was there (at Edfu) a forge (_mesen_) of Horus.(177)

"Hor-Be?udet changed his form into that of a winged solar disc, which remained there above the prow of the bark of Ea. He took with him Nekheb, the G.o.ddess of the south, and Uazit, the G.o.ddess of the north, in the form of two serpents, in order to annihilate the enemy in their crocodile and hippopotamus bodies in every place to which he came, both in Southern and in Northern Egypt.

"Then the enemy fled before him, they turned their faces towards the south, their hearts sank within them from fear. But Hor-Be?udet was behind them in the bark of Ra, with an iron lance and chain in his hand. With him were his followers, armed with weapons and chains. Then beheld he the enemy towards the south-east of Thebes in a plain two schni in size."

Here follows an account of the several battles which drove the enemies of Horus from place to place until eventually all Egypt pa.s.sed under his sway. The first battle, that which took place south-east of Thebes, was at Aa-Zadmi, so called from the "wounds" inflicted on the foe, which henceforth bore the sacred name of Hat-Ra, "the House of Ra." The second was at Neter-khadu, "the divine carnage," to the north-east of Dendera; the third at Hebnu, near Minia, in the nome of the Gazelle; and others followed at Oxyrrhynchus or Be?nesa, and Herakleopolis or A?nas, where a twofold Mesen or "Forge" was established. Then the foe were driven through the Delta and defeated at Zaru on its eastern frontier, whence they fled in s.h.i.+ps down the Red Sea, but were finally overthrown at Shas-?er, near the later Berenike, at the end of the road that led across the desert from the Nile.

Meanwhile, on the 7th of Tybi, their leader "Set had come forward and cried horribly, uttering curses upon the deed of Hor-Be?udet in slaying the enemy. And Ra said to Thoth: 'The horrible one cries loudly on account of what Hor-Be?udet has done against him.' Thoth replied to Ra: 'Let the cries be called horrible from this day forward.' Hor-Be?udet fought long with Set; he flung his iron at him, he smote him to the ground in the city which henceforward was called Pa-Re?e?ui (the House of the Twins).(178) When Hor-Be?udet returned, he brought Set with him; his spear stuck in his neck, his chain was on his hand; the mace of Horus had smitten him, and closed his mouth. He brought him before his father Ra.

"Then Ra said to Thoth: 'Let the companions of Set be given to Isis and Horus her son, that they may deal with them as they will.'... So Horus the son of Isis cut off the head of Set and his confederates before his father Ra and all the great Ennead. He carried him under his feet through the land, with the axe on his head and in his back."

Set, however, was not slain. He transformed himself into a serpent, and the battles succeeded which ended with the victory at Shas-?er in the land of Uaua. After this "Harmakhis came in his bark and landed at Thes-Hor (the Throne of Horus or Edfu). And Thoth said: 'The dispenser of rays who cometh forth from Ra has conquered the enemy in his form (of a winged disc); let him be named henceforward the dispenser of rays who cometh forth from the horizon.' And Ra said to Thoth: 'Bring this sun (the winged disk) to every place where I am, to the seats of the G.o.ds in Southern Egypt, to the seats of the G.o.ds in Northern Egypt, (to the seats of the G.o.ds) in the other world, that it may drive all evil from its neighbourhood.' Thoth brought it accordingly to all places, as many as exist where there are G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses. It is the winged solar disc which is placed over the sanctuaries of all G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses in Egypt, since these sanctuaries are also that of Hor-Be?udet."(179)

The legend is a curious combination of the traditions relative to the conquest of the neolithic population by the Pharaonic Egyptians, of the myth of Osiris, of etymological speculations about the meaning of certain proper names, and of an attempt to explain the origin of the winged solar disc. We may gather from it that the disc was first used as an ornament at Edfu, and that it was believed, like the winged bulls of a.s.syria, to have the power of preventing the demons of evil from pa.s.sing the door over which it was placed. Whether, however, this was one of the superst.i.tions of the older people, or whether it was brought by the conquerors from their Babylonian home, is doubtful; perhaps the fact that the disc was a symbolic and architectural ornament, and was confined, so far as we know, to the temples of the official G.o.ds, points in the latter direction. It is otherwise with the temple relics mentioned in a legend which has been preserved on a granite shrine of the Ptolemaic epoch, that long served as a water-trough by the side of the well at El-Arish. The temple from which it originally came was that of At-Nebes, the sacred name of the city of Qesem or Goshen, now Saft el-Henna. The legend begins by describing the reign of Shu, who fortified At-Nebes against "the children of Apophis,"

the Semites of "the red desert," who came from the East "at nightfall upon the road of At-Nebes" to invade Egypt. Here he dwelt in his palace, and from hence he "ascended into heaven," when he had grown old and the time had come for him to die. He was succeeded by his son Seb, who "discussed the history of the city with the G.o.ds who attended him, (and they told him) all that happened when the Majesty of Ra was in At-Nebes, the conflicts of the king Tum in this locality, the valour of the Majesty of Shu in this city ... (and the wonders that) the serpent-G.o.ddess Ankhet had done for Ra when he was with her; the victories of the Majesty of Shu, smiting the evil ones, when he placed her upon his brow. Then said the Majesty of Seb: 'I also (will place) her upon my head, even as my father Shu did.' Seb entered the temple of Aart (Lock of Hair) together with the G.o.ds that were with him; then he stretched forth his hand to take the casket in which (Ankhet) was; the serpent came forth and breathed its vapour on the Majesty of Seb, confounding him greatly; those who followed him fell dead, and his Majesty himself was burned in that day. When his Majesty had fled to the north of At-Nebes, with the fire of the cobra upon him, behold, when he came to the fields of henna, the pain of his burn was not yet a.s.suaged, and the G.o.ds who followed him said unto him: 'Come, let them take the lock (_aart_) of Ra which is there, when thy Majesty shall go to see it and its mystery, and his Majesty shall be healed (as soon as it is placed) upon thee.' So the Majesty of Seb caused the magic lock of hair to be brought to Pa-Aart (the House of the Lock), for which was made that reliquary of hard stone which is hidden in the secret place of Pa-Aart, in the district of the divine lock of the G.o.d Ra; and behold the fire departed from the limbs of the Majesty of Seb. And many years afterwards, when this lock of hair was brought back to Pa-Aart in At-Nebes, and cast into the great lake of Pa-Aart, whose name is the Dwelling of Waves, in order that it might be purified, behold the lock became a crocodile; it flew to the water and became Sebek, the divine crocodile of At-Nebes."(180)

Inside the shrine is a picture of the two relics, the cobra which adorned the head-dress of the Pharaoh, and the _aart_ or lock of hair which was supposed to give its name to the temple. They were doubtless preserved at At-Nebes, and shown to the faithful as the veritable objects which had proved the bane and the antidote of the G.o.d Seb. They introduce us to a side of Egyptian religion which, though essentially characteristic of the popular faith, had also received the sanction of the official creed. The belief in amulets and charms was too deeply engrained in the popular mind to be ignored; they were consequently taken under the patronage of the G.o.ds, and a theory was invented to explain their efficacy. Already the later chapters of the Book of the Dead are concerned with the various amulets which were necessary to the preservation or resuscitation of the body; and even if the latter were regarded as symbolic, they were concrete symbols-symbols, that is to say, which actually possessed the virtues ascribed to them. Just as the name was a concrete ent.i.ty, expressive of the very essence of the thing to which it was applied, so too the symbol was an ent.i.ty with a concrete existence of its own. The materialistic tendency of Egyptian thought, added to the fetis.h.i.+sm of the earlier stratum of native religion, produced this result. The doctrine of the Ka furnished a theory by which the educated cla.s.ses could explain the efficacy of the amulet and the active virtues of the symbol. It was the Ka, the spiritual and yet materialised double, of the amulet that worked the charm-that made the scarab, for instance, a subst.i.tute for the living heart, or the _dad_-the symbol of stability-a pa.s.sport to the other world.(181)

The amulets buried with the dead, the relics preserved in the temples, had originally been the fetishes of the earlier population of Egypt. They hardly changed their character when they became symbols endowed with mysterious properties, or relics of the State G.o.ds which still possessed miraculous powers. The peasant might be told in the ritual of Amon: in "the sanctuary of the G.o.d clamour is an abomination to him: pray for thyself with a loving heart, in which the words remain hidden; that he may supply thy need, hear thy words and accept thine offering";(182) but it was a teaching that was far above him. When he entered the sanctuary it was to see the processions of the priests and the relics preserved in it, and it was in these relics that he still put his trust. It was not only in Ethiopia that there were moving and speaking statues which elected the king by taking him by the hand; in Thebes itself, under the priestly kings of the Twentieth Dynasty, we find wonder-working statues whose reality was guaranteed by the priesthood. One of them, it was said, was sent to Asia, where it delivered a king's daughter from the demon that possessed her, and afterwards returned in a moment to Thebes of its own accord; while others answered the questions addressed to them by nodding the head, or even p.r.o.nounced prophecies regarding the future.(183) Indeed, as we have seen, the old theory of the ka implied that the statue of the dead man could be reanimated in a sense by his spirit; and a text at Dendera speaks of the soul of Hathor descending from heaven as a human-headed hawk of lapis-lazuli, and uniting itself with her image. The peasant, therefore, might be excused if he remained true to the superst.i.tions and traditions of his ancestors, and left the official religion, with its one ineffable G.o.d, to those who were cultured enough to understand it. Like the peasant of modern Italy, he was content with a divinity that he could see and handle, and about whose wonder-working powers he had no doubt. Materialism is the basis of primitive religion; the horizon of primitive man is limited, and he has not yet learnt to separate thought from the senses through which alone his narrow world is known to him. The simple faith of a child often wears a very materialistic form.

Lecture X. The Place Of Egyptian Religion In The History Of Theology.

In the preceding lectures I have endeavoured to bring before you the more salient points in the religion of the ancient Egyptians, in so far as they ill.u.s.trate their conception of the divine. But we must remember that all such descriptions of ancient belief must be approximate only. We cannot put ourselves in the position of those who held it; our inherited experiences, our racial tendencies, our education and religious ideas, all alike forbid it. If the Egyptians of the Theban period found it difficult to understand the ritual of their own earlier history, and misinterpreted the expressions and allusions in it, how much more difficult must it be for us to do so. The most ordinary religious terms do not bear for us the same meaning that they bore for the Egyptians. The name of G.o.d calls up other a.s.sociations and ideas; the very word "divine" has a different signification in the ancient and the modern world among Eastern and Western peoples. In fact, the more literal is our translation of an old religious text, the more likely we are to misunderstand it.

And yet in one sense we are the religious heirs of the builders and founders of the Egyptian temples. Many of the theories of Egyptian religion, modified and transformed no doubt, have penetrated into the theology of Christian Europe, and form, as it were, part of the woof in the web of modern religious thought. Christian theology was largely organised and nurtured in the schools of Alexandria, and Alexandria was not only the meeting-place of East and West, it was also the place where the decrepit theology of Egypt was revivified by contact with the speculative philosophy of Greece. The Egyptian, the Greek, and the Jew met there on equal terms, and the result was a theological system in which each had his share. In Philo, we are told, we find Moses Platonising; but the atmosphere in which he did so was that of the old Egyptian faith. And what was true of the philosophy of Philo was still more true of the philosophy of Alexandrine Christianity.

You cannot but have been struck by the similarity of the ancient Egyptian theory of the spiritual part of man to that which underlies so much Christian speculation on the subject, and which still pervades the popular theology of to-day. There is the same distinction between soul and spirit, the same belief in the resurrection of a material body, and in a heaven which is but a glorified counterpart of our own earth. Perhaps, however, the indebtedness of Christian theological theory to ancient Egyptian dogma is nowhere more striking than in the doctrine of the Trinity. The very terms used of it by Christian theologians meet us again in the inscriptions and papyri of Egypt.

Professor Maspero has attempted to show that the Egyptian doctrine of the Trinity was posterior to that of the Ennead.(184) Whether this were so or not, it makes its appearance at an early date in Egyptian theology, and was already recognised in the Pyramid texts. Originally the trinity was a triad like those we find in Babylonian mythology. Here and there the primitive triads survived into historical times, like that of Khnum and the two G.o.ddesses of the Cataract. But more frequently the trinity was an artificial creation, the formation of which can still be traced. Thus at Thebes the female element in it was found in Mut, "the mother" G.o.ddess, a t.i.tle of the supreme G.o.ddess of Upper Egypt; while Khonsu, the moon-G.o.d, or Mentu, the old G.o.d of the nome, became the divine son, and so took a place subordinate to that of the local G.o.d Amon. Sometimes recourse was had to grammar, and the second person in the trinity was obtained by attaching the feminine suffix to the name of the chief G.o.d. In this way Amon-t was grammatically evolved from Amon, and even Ra-t from Ra.

Elsewhere an epithet of the G.o.d was transformed into his son; at Memphis, for example, Imhotep, "he who comes in peace," a t.i.tle of Pta?, became his son and the second person in the trinity. Other members of the trinity were fetched from neighbouring cities and nomes; Nit of Sais had Osiris as a husband, and Sekhet of Letopolis and Bast of Bubastis were successively regarded as the wives of Pta?.

The triad consisted of a divine father, wife, and son. It was thus a counterpart of the human family, and belonged to the same order of ideas as that which explained the creation of the world by a process of generation. This was the cosmology of Heliopolis, and it is probable that to Heliopolis also we must ascribe the doctrine of the Trinity. At any rate the doctrine seems to have been solar in its origin. As Tum, the G.o.d of sunset, was identical with Khepera, the sun of the morning, and Ra, the sun of the noonday,-all three being but one G.o.d under diverse forms,-so the divine father was believed to engender himself in the person of the divine son, and the divine mother to be one with the divine father and son. The divine essence remained necessarily the same, whatever might be the forms or names under which it displayed itself; and the name, it must be remembered, had for the Egyptian a separate and real existence. The father became the son and the son the father through all time, and of both alike the mother was but another form. It was eternal fatherhood, eternal motherhood, and eternal generation. The development of the doctrine was a.s.sisted by that identification of the Egyptian deities with the sun-G.o.d which ended in solar pantheism, as well as by the old theory of the ka, of a personality distinguishable from that to which it belonged, identical with that of which it was the double, and yet at the same time enjoying an independent existence of its own.

With the spread of the Osirian form of faith the doctrine of the Trinity became universal throughout Egypt. The organisation of the faith had included the reduction of the cycle of divinities connected with Osiris into a trinity. Thoth and Anubis, Nebhat and Set, were separated from him, and henceforth he was made the head of a triad, in which Isis was the second person, and Horus, the avenger of his father, was the third. How completely the father and son were merged together may be seen from a hymn to Horus which has been translated by Chabas(185)-