The Religion of Ancient Egypt Part 4

Probably such a ritual was a gradual growth of successive ages. Where a living animal was maintained as sacred, the feeding of it was a considerable service. A court was built at Memphis for the sacred Apis bull to take his exercise, and special bundles of fodder were provided.

A large tank was made for the sacred crocodile in the Fayum, and the priests used to follow the reptile around the tank with the offerings brought by devotees. Similarly at Epidauros is a deep circular trench cut in the rock, with a central niche; in this a sacred serpent could be visited and fed without its being able to escape.

The priesthood was elaborated in many different kinds, and varied grades in each. There were the 'servants of the G.o.d,' who had charge of the wors.h.i.+p and ritual; the 'pure men,' who were {73} occupied with the acts of offerings and service; the 'divine fathers,' who had charge of the property of a G.o.d and the providing for the services; the 'reciters'; the 'female singers'; and others; and there were four grades of most of the cla.s.ses.

A special divine gift was the _sa_, an essence which was imparted to the king when he knelt with his back to the G.o.d and the divine hand was placed on him. This was also imparted to a cla.s.s of priests or initiated who were described as 'impregnated with the sa' of four different grades. This seems to have been a kind of ordination imparting special powers.

A fundamental idea was that the king was the priest of the land, and that all offerings (especially those for the dead) were made by him.

Even though the king could not physically perform all the offerings, yet when others did so they were only acting on behalf of the priestly king of the nation. So strongly was this held that the regular formula for all offerings for the dead was 'A royal giving of offerings of such and such things for the _ka_ of such an one,' or it may be rendered 'May the king give an offering.' The act itself is shown on some funeral tablets, where the king appears as making the offering, {74} while the person for whom he acts stands behind him.

Much light on the sources of the rise of the priesthood is given by the t.i.tles borne by the priests of the various capitals of the provinces or nomes. Many of these refer to what were purely secular occupations in later times, and we thus learn that the priestly character was attached to the princ.i.p.al person, be he king, or leader in other ways. In one city it was the King and His Loved Son who were the priests, in another it was the General, in another the Warrior who became the priest; elsewhere it was the Great Constructor, in another city the Great Commander of Workmen; one city raised the Manager of the Inundation to the priesthood, and very naturally the Great Physician or medicine man became priest in another place. The Eldest Son was the t.i.tle of another priesthood, much as the later kings made their eldest son high priest. A very curious view of the priestess preceding the establishment of a priest is given by some cities; one where she was called the Nurse, and the priest was the Youth, and another city names the priestess the 'Appeaser of the Spirit' and the priest the 'Favourite Child.'

Purely religious functions are only a minority {75} of the priestly t.i.tles in the Delta, such as the Seer, the Great Seer, the Chief of the Feast, and the Opener of the Mouth, referring to enabling the statue of the G.o.d to speak, or opening the mouth of the mummy to enable it to live. A full a.n.a.lysis of the priestly t.i.tles would give a picture of the society in which priesthood arose, but it is a subject which has not been systematically studied.

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CHAPTER XII

THE SACRED BOOKS

In the latest age of ancient Egypt the religious writings were largely translated into Greek, at a time when they were studied and collected as embodying the ideas of a world which was already fading away. This venerated past kept its hold on the imagination as containing mystic powers of compelling the unseen, and strange travesties of ancient formulae, the efficacy of which could not be rivalled by any later writings which were baldly intelligible. There were four main cla.s.ses of writings, on theology, ritual, science, and medicine. Though the late compilations have almost entirely perished, yet we can gather their nature from the portions of the original doc.u.ments which are preserved from earlier times.

The most popular work in the later dynasties was that which has been called the _Book of the Dead_ by modern writers. We must not conceive {77} of it as a bound up whole, like our Bible; but rather as an incongruous acc.u.mulation of charms and formulae, parts of which were taken at discretion by various scribes according to local or individual tastes. No single papyrus contains even the greater part of it, and the choice made among the heterogeneous material is infinitely varied.

The different sections have been numbered by modern editors, starting with the order found in some of the best examples, and more than two hundred such chapters are recognised. Every variety of belief finds place in this large collection; every charm or direction which could benefit the dead found a footing here if it attained popularity. From prehistoric days downward it formed a religious repertory without limits or regulation. Portions known in the close of the old kingdom entirely vanish in later copies, while others appear which are obviously late in origin. The incessant adding of notes, incorporation of glosses, and piling of explanations one on the other, has increased the confusion. And to add to our bewilderment, the scribes were usually quite callous about errors in a writing which was never to be seen or used by living eyes; and the corruptions, which have been in turn made worse, have left hardly any sense in many parts. At {78} best it is difficult to follow the illusions of a lost faith, but amid all the varieties of idea and bad readings superposed, the task of critical understanding is almost hopeless. The full study of such a work will need many new discoveries and occupy generations of critical ingenuity. We can distinguish certain groups of chapters, an Osirian section on the kingdom of Osiris and the service of it, a theological section, a set of incantations, formulae for the restoration of the heart, for the protection of the soul from spirits and serpents in the hours of night, charms to escape from perils ordained by the G.o.ds, an account of the paradise of Osiris, a different version of the kingdom and judgment of Osiris, a Heliopolitan doctrine about the _ba_, and its powers of transformation entirely apart from all that is stated elsewhere, the account of the reunion of soul and body, magic formulae for entering the Osirian kingdom, another account of the judgment of Osiris, charms for the preservation of the mummy and for making efficacious amulets, together with various portions of popular beliefs.

In contrast to the mainly Osirian character above described, we see the solar religion dominant in the Book of Am Duat, or that which {79} is in the underworld. This describes the successive hours of the night, each hour fenced off with gates which are guarded by monsters. At each gate the right spells must be uttered to subdue the evil powers, and so pa.s.s through with the sun. The older beliefs in Seker, the G.o.d of the silent land, and Osiris, the king of the blessed world, are fitted in to the newer system by allotting some hours to these other realms as a part of the solar journey. A variant of this work is the _Book of Gates_, describing the gates of the hours, but omitting Seker and making Osiris more important. These books represent the fas.h.i.+onable doctrines of the kings in the Ramesside times, and are mainly known from the royal tombs on which they are inscribed.

Another branch of the sacred books survives in the formal theology of the schools which grouped G.o.ds together in trinities or enneads. These were certainly very ancient, having been formed under the Heliopolitan supremacy before the rise of the first dynasty. And if the artificial co-ordinating of the G.o.ds of varied sources is thus ancient, we have a glimpse of the much greater age of the Osiride G.o.ds, and still further of the primitive G.o.ds Seb and Nut, and the earliest wors.h.i.+p of animals.

{80} The great ennead of Heliopolis consisted of Shu, Tefnut, Seb, Nut, Osiris, Isis, Set, Nebhat, and Horus; there were also secondary and tertiary enneads of lesser G.o.ds. When the sun-G.o.d Atmu became prominent, Horus was omitted and the eight other G.o.ds were called children of Atmu, who headed the group, as in the Pyramid texts. The nine are not composed of three triads, but of four pairs and a leader.

This is on the same type as the four pairs of elemental G.o.ds at Hermopolis under the chief G.o.d Tahuti. The triads were usual at most cities, but were in many cases clearly of artificial arrangement, in order to follow a type, the deities being of very unequal importance.

At Thebes, Amon, Mut, and Khonsu; at Memphis, Ptah, Sekhet, and the deified man Imhotep; and in general Osiris, Isis, and Horus, were the princ.i.p.al triads.

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CHAPTER XIII

PRIVATE WORs.h.i.+P

A people so deeply imbued with religious ideas as the Egyptians doubtless carried their habits of wors.h.i.+p beyond the temple gates. But unfortunately we have no graphic or connected view of their private devotions. At the present day a few natives will scrupulously follow the daily ritual of Islam; many keep up some convenient portion, such as the religious aspect of an evening bath after the day's work; but most of the peasantry have little or no religious observances. Perhaps the average of mankind does not differ very greatly, in various countries, in its extent of religious observance: and most likely the ancient Egyptian varied in usages much like the modern.

The funeral offerings for the deceased ancestors certainly filled a large place in observances; the drink offerings poured out upon the altar in the {82} chapel, and the cakes brought for the _ka_ to feed upon, were the main expression of family piety. How serious were such services is seen by their expansion into endowments for great tombs, extending to the great temples and priesthoods for the kings. The eldest son was the sacrificing priest for his progenitors, as in China and India at present; he was called the _an-mut-f_, or 'support of his mother,' and is figured as leading the wors.h.i.+p in the adoration of deceased kings. But all the sons took part in the sacrifices, and trapped the birds (_Medum_, x, xiii), or slaughtered the ox for the _ka_ of their father. Such family sacrifices were the occasions of social feasts and family reunions; of later times the remains of the feasts were found strewing the cemetery at Hawara in the tomb chapels; and to this day both Copts and Mohammedans hold family feasts and spend the night at the tombs of their ancestors.

All offerings were considered to be presented only by the king, as the great high-priest of all the land. Every formula of offering began 'May the king give an offering'; and the figure of the king making the offering, while the offerer stands behind him, is actually shown as late as the eighteenth dynasty.

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The primitive belief in the tree-G.o.ddess, the Hathor who dwelt in the thick sycomore tree, and showered sycomore figs abundantly on her devotees, was a popular wors.h.i.+p. It was by no means bound up with the tomb service, as in one case a red recess in a dwelling room had a panel picture at the top of it showing the tree G.o.ddess giving blessings to her wors.h.i.+pper (_Ramesseum_, xx).

The latter instance gives the meaning of a curious domestic feature in the well-to-do houses of the bureaucracy at Tell-el-Amarna. In the central hall of the house was a recess in the wall painted bright red.

It varied from twenty-three to fifty-one inches wide, and was at least five or six feet high. Sometimes there is an inner recess in the middle twenty-five to thirty-three inches wide. From the religious scene over such a recess it seems that these were the foci for family wors.h.i.+p.

The abundance of little statuettes of G.o.ds of glazed pottery, and often of bronze, silver, and even of gold, show how common was the custom of wearing such devotional objects. Children especially wore figures of Bes, and less commonly Taurt, the protecting genii of childhood.

Another feature of popular religion was the {84} harvest festival. The grain was heaped, the winnowing shovels and rakes stuck upright in it, and then holding up the boards (which were used to sc.r.a.pe up the grain) in each hand, adoration was paid to Rannut, the serpent-G.o.ddess of the harvest.

The observance of lucky and unlucky days was prevalent. The fragment of a calendar shows each day marked good or evil, or triply good or evil.

The household amulets in the prehistoric days were the great serpent stones with figures of the coiled serpent; much suggesting an earlier use of large ammonites. In later times the image of Horus subduing the powers of evil seems to have been the protective figure of the house.

When we reach Roman times we have a fuller view of the popular wors.h.i.+p in the terra-cotta figures. At Ehnasya, for instance, we find the following proportions--five of Serapis, five Isis, twenty-four Horus, four Bes, one G.o.ddess of palm trees. It was especially the wors.h.i.+p of Horus that was developed in this line. The kind of shrines used in the houses are also shown by the terra-cottas. These were wooden framed cupboards, with doors below, over them a recess between two pillars to hold the image, and a lamp burning {85} before it, and the whole crowned with a cornice of uraei. Smaller little lamp holders were also made to hang up, and very possibly to place with a lamp on a grave. At present mud hutches are made to place lamps in on holy sites in Egypt.

The terra-cottas have also preserved the forms of the wayside shrines.

These were certainly influenced in their architecture by Greek models, but the idea is probably much older. The shrines were sometimes a little chamber, with a domed top, like a modern _wely_ or saint's tomb, or sometimes a roof on four pillars with a dwarf wall or lattice work around three sides. Such were the places for wayside devotions and pa.s.sing prayers, as among the Egyptians of the present day.

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CHAPTER XIV

EGYPTIAN ETHICS

Fortunately we have preserved to us a considerable body of the maxims of conduct from the Pyramid times; and these show very practically what were the ideals and the motives of the early people. This is only a small side of the present subject, but it will be found fully stated in _Religion and Conscience in Ancient Egypt_.

The repudiation of sins before the judgment of Osiris is the earliest code of morals, and it is striking that in this there are no family duties. Such an exclusion points to the family being unimportant in early times, the matriarchate perhaps then excluding the responsibility of the man. In the earliest form the prominence of duties is in the order of those to equals, to inferiors, to G.o.ds, and to the man's own character. In later times the duties to inferiors have almost vanished, and the inner duties to character are {87} greatly extended, being felt to lie at the root of all else.

The ideal character was drawn in the maxims as being strong, steadfast, commanding, direct, self-respecting, avoiding inferior companions.h.i.+ps, active, and above all truthful and straightforward. Discretion, quietness, and reserve were enforced, and a dignified endurance without pride was to be attained.

In material things energy and self-reliance were held up, and a judicious respect for, and imitation of, successful men. Covetousness was specially reprobated, and luxury and self-indulgence were looked on as a course which ends in bitterness.

The aspect of marriage depended essentially on property. Where a woman had property of her own she was mistress of the house, and her husband was but a kind of permanent boarder. Though in early times, and among the priestesses later, the choice by a woman was scarcely regarded as permanent. Where, however, the household depended on the work of the man, he naturally took the leading part. But the code of abstract morality, and the dictates of common prudence, between men and women, were of as high a standard as in any ancient or modern peoples. No reasonable legislator would wish to {88} add more, although six thousand years and Christianity have intervened since the Egyptian framed his life. The family sense of duty in training and advancing a man's sons was strongly urged.

In the general interchange of social life perhaps the main feature was that of consideration for others. A higher standard of good feeling and kindliness existed than any that we know of among ancient peoples, or among most modern nations. The council-hall of the local ruler was the main theatre for ability; and the injunctions to be fearless, and at the same time gentle and cautious, would improve the character of any modern a.s.sembly. The greater number of precepts however relate to the judicious conduct toward inferiors. Justice and good discipline were the necessary basis, but they were to be always tempered by respect for the feelings and comfort of the servants.

The religious aspect of ethics was almost confined to the respect for the property and offerings of the G.o.ds. But the more spiritual side was touched in the precept, 'That which is detestable in the sanctuary of G.o.d are noisy feasts; if thou implore him with a loving heart, of which all the words are mysterious, he will do thy {89} matters, he hears thy words, he accepts thine offerings.'

The permanence of the Egyptian character will strike any one who knows the modern native. The essential mode of justification in the judgment was by the declaration of the deceased that he had not done various crimes; and to this day the Egyptian will rely on justifying himself by sheer a.s.sertion that he has not done wrong, in face of absolute proofs to the contrary. The main fault of character that was condemned was covetousness, and it is the feeling which wrecks the possibility of Egyptian independence at present. The intrusion of scheming underlings between the master and his men is noted as a failing; and exactly this trouble continually occurs now, when every servant tries to turn his position to an advantage over those who do business with his master.

The dominance of the scribe in managing affairs and making profits was familiar in ancient as in modern times. And recent events in Egypt have reminded us of the old fickleness shown in the saying, 'Thy entering into a village begins with acclamations; at thy going out thou art saved by thy hand.'

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