Chapter II: The Gods of Egypt (1)

_THEIR NUMBER AND NATURE--THE FEUDAL GODS, LIVING AND DEAD--TRIADS---- THE TEMPLES AND PRIESTHOOD--THE COSMOGONIES OF THE DELTA----THE ENNEADS OF HELIOPOLIS AND HERMOPOLIS._

_Multiplicity of the Egyptian gods: the commonalty of the gods, its varieties, human, animal, and intermediate between man and beast; gods of foreign origin, indigenous gods, and the contradictory forms with which they were invested in accordance with various conceptions of their nature.

The Star-gods--The Sun-god as the Eye of the Shy; as a bird, as a calf, and as a man; its barks, voyages round the world, and encounters with the serpent Apopi--The Moon-god and its enemies--The Star-gods: the Haunch of the Ox, the Hippopotamus, the Lion, the five Horus-planets; Sothis Sirius, and Sahû Orion.

The feudal gods and their classes: the Nile-gods, the earth-gods, the sky-gods and the sun-god, the Horus-gods--The equality of feudal gods and goddesses; their persons, alliances, and marriages: their children--The triads and their various developments.

The nature of the gods: the double, the soul, the body, death of men and gods, and their fate after death--The necessity for preserving the body, mummification--Dead gods the gods of the dead--The living gods, their temples and images--The gods of the people, trees, serpents, family fetiches--The theory of prayer and sacrifice: the servants of the temples, the property of the gods, the sacerdotal colleges.

The cosmogonies of the Delta: Sibu and Naît, Osiris and Isis, SU and Nephthys--Heliopolis and its theological schools: Ra, his identification with Horus, his dual nature, and the conception of Atûmû--The Heliopolitan Enneads: formation of the Great Ennead--Thot and the Hermopolitan Ennead: creation by articulate words and by voice alone--Diffusion of the Enneads: their connection with the local triads, the god One and the god Eight--The one and only gods._

THE GODS OF EGYPT

The incredible number of religious scenes to be found among the representations on the ancient monuments of Egypt is at first glance very striking. Nearly every illustration in the works of Egyptologists brings before us the figure of some deity receiving with an impassive countenance the prayers and offerings of a worshipper. One would think that the country had been inhabited for the most part by gods, and contained just sufficient men and animals to satisfy the requirements of their worship.

1 The goddess Naprît, Napît; bas-relief from the first
chamber of Osiris, on the east side of the great temple of
Denderah. Drawn by Faucher-Gudin.

On penetrating into this mysterious world, we are confronted by an actual rabble of gods, each one of whom has always possessed but a limited and almost unconscious existence. They severally represented a function, a moment in the life of man or of the universe; thus Naprît was identified with the ripe ear, or the grain of wheat;[**]

** The word _naprît_ means _grain_, the grain of wheat. The
grain-god is represented in the tomb of Seti I. as a man
wearing two full ears of wheat or barley upon his head. He
is mentioned in the _Hymn to the Nile_ about the same date,
and in two or three other texts of different periods. The
goddess _Naprît_, or _Napît_, to whom reference is here
made, was his duplicate; her head-dress is a sheaf of corn,
as in the illustration.

*** This goddess, whose name expresses and whose form
personifies the brick or stone couch, the child-bed or
-chair, upon which women in labour bowed themselves, is
sometimes subdivided into two or four secondary divinities.
She is mentioned along with Shaît, _destiny_, and Raninît,
_suckling_. Her part of fairy godmother at the cradle of the
new-born child is indicated in the passage of the Westcar
Papyrus giving a detailed account of the births of three
kings of the fifth dynasty. She is represented in human
form, and often wears upon her head two long palm-shoots,
curling over at their ends.

Maskhonît appeared by the child's cradle at the very moment of its birth;[*] and Raninît presided over the naming and the nurture of the newly born.[*] Neither Raninît, the fairy godmother, nor Maskhonît exercised over nature as a whole that sovereign authority which we are accustomed to consider the primary attribute of deity. Every day of every year was passed by the one in easing the pangs of women in travail; by the other, in choosing for each baby a name of an auspicious sound, and one which would afterwards serve to exorcise the influences of evil fortune. No sooner were their tasks accomplished in one place than they hastened to another, where approaching birth demanded their presence and their care. From child-bed to child-bed they passed, and if they fulfilled the single offices in which they were accounted adepts, the pious asked nothing more of them. Bands of mysterious cynocephali haunting the Eastern and the Western mountains concentrated the whole of their activity on one passing moment of the day. They danced and chattered in the East for half an hour, to salute the sun at his rising, even as others in the West hailed him on his entrance into night.[**]

* Raninît presides over the child's suckling, but she also
gives him his name, and hence, his fortune. She is on the
whole the nursing goddess. Sometimes she is represented as a
human-headed woman, or as lioness-headed, most frequently
with the head of a serpent; she is also the urseus, clothed,
and wearing two long plumes on her head, and a simple urous,
as represented in the illustration on p. 169.

** This is the subject of a vignette in the _Book of the
Dead_, ch. xvi., where the cynocephali are placed in echelon
upon the slopes of the hill on the horizon, right and left
of the radiant solar disk, to which they offer worship by
gesticulations.

It was the duty of certain genii to open gates in Hades, or to keep the paths daily traversed by the sun.[*] These genii were always at their posts, never free to leave them, and possessed no other faculty than that of punctually fulfilling their appointed offices. Their existence, generally unperceived, was suddenly revealed at the very moment when the specific acts of their lives were on the point of accomplishment. These being completed, the divinities fell back into their state of inertia, and were, so to speak, reabsorbed by their functions until the next occasion.[***]

* Maspero, _Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie
Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. pp. 34, 35.

*** The Egyptians employed a still more forcible expression
than our word "absorption" to express this idea. It was said
of objects wherein these genii concealed themselves, and
whence they issued in order to re-enter them immediately,
that these forms _ate_ them, or that they _ate_ their own
forms.

2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from Champollion's copies, made
from the tombs of Beni-Hassan. To the right is the _sha_,
one of the animals of Sit, and an exact image of the god
with his stiff and arrow-like tail. Next comes the _safir_,
the griffin; and, lastly, we have the serpent-headed _saza_.

Scarcely visible even by glimpses, they were not easily depicted; their real forms being often unknown, these were approximately conjectured from their occupations. The character and costume of an archer, or of a spear-man, were ascribed to such as roamed through Hades, to pierce the dead with arrows or with javelins. Those who prowled around souls to cut their throats and hack them to pieces were represented as women armed with knives, carvers--_donît_--or else as lacerators--_nokit_. Some appeared in human form; others as animals--bulls or lions, rams or monkeys, serpents, fish, ibises, hawks; others dwelt in inanimate things, such as trees,[*] sistrums, stakes stuck in the ground;[**] and lastly, many betrayed a mixed origin in their combinations of human and animal forms. These latter would be regarded by us as monsters; to the Egyptians, they were beings, rarer perhaps than the rest, but not the less real, and their like might be encountered in the neighbourhood of Egypt.[***]

* Thus, the sycamores planted on the edge of the desert
were supposed to be inhabited by Hâthor, Nûît, Selkît, Nît,
or some other goddess. In vignettes representing the
deceased as stopping before one of these trees and receiving
water and loaves of bread, the bust of the goddess generally
appears from amid her sheltering foliage. But occasionally,
as on the sarcophagus of Petosiris, the transformation is
complete, and the trunk from which the branches spread is
the actual body of the god or goddess. Finally, the whole
body is often hidden, and only the arm of the goddess to be
seen emerging from the midst of the tree, with an
overflowing libation vase in her hand.

** The trunk of a tree, disbranched, and then set up in the
ground, seems to me the origin of the Osirian emblem called
_tat_ or _didu_. The symbol was afterwards so
conventionalized as to represent four columns seen in
perspective, one capital overtopping another; it thus became
the image of the four pillars which uphold the world.

*** The belief in the real existence of fantastic animals
was first noted by Maspero, _Études de Mythologie et
d'Archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. i. pp. 117, 118, 132, and
vol. ii. p. 213. Until then, scholars only
recognized the sphinx, and other Egyptian monsters, as
allegorical combinations by which the priesthood claimed to
give visible expression in one and the same being to
physical or moral qualities belonging to several different
beings. The later theory has now been adopted by Wiedemann,
and by most contemporary Egyptologists.

How could men who believed themselves surrounded by sphinxes and griffins of flesh and blood doubt that there were bull-headed and hawk-headed divinities with human busts? The existence of such paradoxical creatures was proved by much authentic testimony; more than one hunter had distinctly seen them as they ran along the furthest planes of the horizon, beyond the herds of gazelles of which he was in chase; and shepherds dreaded them for their flocks as truly as they dreaded the lions, or the great felidse of the desert.[*]

* At Beni-Hassan and in Thebes many of the fantastic animals
mentioned in the text, griffins, hierosphinxes, serpent-
headed lions, are placed along with animals which might be
encountered by local princes hunting in the desert.

This nation of gods, like nations of men, contained foreign elements, the origin of which was known to the Egyptians themselves. They knew that Hâthor, the milch cow, had taken up her abode in their land from very ancient times, and they called her the Lady of Pûanît, after the name of her native country. Bîsû had followed her in course of time, and claimed his share of honours and worship along with her. He first appeared as a leopard; then he became a man clothed in a leopard's skin, but of strange countenance and alarming character, a big-headed dwarf with high cheek-bones, and a wide and open mouth, whence hung an enormous tongue; he was at once jovial and martial, the friend of the dance and of battle.[*]

* The hawk-headed monster with flower-tipped tail was
called the saga.

In historic times all nations subjugated by the Pharaohs transferred some of their principal divinities to their conquerors, and the Libyan Shehadidi was enthroned in the valley of the Nile, in the same way as the Semitic Baâlû and his retinue of Astartes, Anitis, Eeshephs, and Kadshûs. These divine colonists fared like all foreigners who have sought to settle on the banks of the Nile: they were promptly assimilated, wrought, moulded, and made into Egyptian deities scarcely distinguishable from those of the old race. This mixed pantheon had its grades of nobles, princes, kings, and each of its members was representative of one of the elements constituting the world, or of one of the forces which regulated its government.

1 Bîsû, pp. 111-184. The tail-piece to the summary of this
chapter is a figure of Bîsû, drawn by Faucher-Gudin from an
amulet in blue enamelled pottery.

The sky, the earth, the stars, the sun, the Nile, were so many breathing and thinking beings whose lives were daily manifest in the life of the universe.

They were worshipped from one end of the valley to the other, and the whole nation agreed in proclaiming their sovereign power. But when the people began to name them, to define their powers and attributes, to particularize their forms, or the relationships that subsisted among them, this unanimity was at an end. Each principality, each nome, each city, almost every village, conceived and represented them differently. Some said that the sky was the Great Horus, Haroêris, the sparrow-hawk of mottled plumage which hovers in highest air, and whose gaze embraces the whole field of creation. Owing to a punning assonance between his name and the word _horû_, which designates the human countenance, the two senses were combined, and to the idea of the sparrow-hawk there was added that of a divine face, whose two eyes opened in turn, the right eye being the sun, to give light by day, and the left eye the moon, to illumine the night. The face shone also with a light of its own, the zodiacal light, which appeared unexpectedly, morning or evening, a little before sunrise, and a little after sunset. These luminous beams, radiating from a common centre, hidden in the heights of the firmament, spread into a wide pyramidal sheet of liquid blue, whose base rested upon the earth, but whose apex was slightly inclined towards the zenith. The divine face was symmetrically framed, and attached to earth by four thick locks of hair; these were the pillars which upbore the firmament and prevented its falling into ruin. A no less ancient tradition disregarded as fabulous all tales told of the sparrow-hawk, or of the face, and taught that heaven and earth are wedded gods, Sibû, and Nûît, from whose marriage came forth all that has been, all that is, and all that shall be.

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a painted coffin of the XXIth
dynasty in Leyden.

Most people invested them with human form, and represented the earth-god Sibû as extended beneath Nûît the Starry One; the goddess stretched out her arms, stretched out her slender legs, stretched out her body above the clouds, and her dishevelled head drooped westward. But there were also many who believed that Sibû was concealed under the form of a colossal gander, whose mate once laid the Sun Egg, and perhaps still laid it daily. From the piercing cries wherewith he congratulated her, and announced the good news to all who cared to hear it--after the manner of his kind--he had received the flattering epithet of _Ngagu oîrû_, the Great Cack-ler. Other versions repudiated the goose in favour of a vigorous bull, the father of gods and men, whose companion was a cow, a large-eyed Hâthor, of beautiful countenance. The head of the good beast rises into the heavens, the mysterious waters which cover the world flow along her spine; the star-covered underside of her body, which we call the firmament, is visible to the inhabitants of earth, and her four legs are the four pillars standing at the four cardinal points of the world.

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a stella in the museum of
Gîzeh. This is not the goose of Sibû, but the goose of Amon,
which was nurtured in the temple of Karnak, and was called
Smonû. Pacing it is the cat of Maût, the wife of Amon. Amon,
originally an earth-god, was, as we see, confounded with
Sibû, and thus naturally appropriated that deity's form of a
goose.

The planets, and especially the sun, varied in form and nature according to the prevailing conception of the heavens. The fiery disk _Atonû_, by which the sun revealed himself to men, was a living god, called Râ, as was also the planet itself.[*] Where the sky was regarded as Horus, Râ formed the right eye of the divine face: when Horus opened his eyelids in the morning, he made the dawn and day; when he closed them in the evening, the dusk and night were at hand.

* The name of Râ has been variously explained. The
commonest etymology is that deriving the name from a verb
râ, _to give, to make to be_ a person or a thing, so that Râ
would thus be the great organizer, the author of all things.
Lauth goes so far as to say that "notwithstanding its
brevity, Râ is a composite word (r-a, _maker--to be_)" As a
matter of fact, the word is simply the name of the
planet applied to the god. It means the _sun_, and nothing
more.

3 Drawn by Boudier, from a XXXth dynasty statue of green
basalt in the Gîzeh Museum (Maspero, _Guide du Visiteur_, p.
345, No. 5243). The statue was also published by Mariette,
_Monuments divers_, pl. 96 A-B, and in the _Album
photographique du Musée de Boulaq_, pl. x.

Where the sky was looked upon as the incarnation of a goddess, Râ was considered as her son,[**] his father being the earth-god, and he was born again with every new dawn, wearing a sidelock, and with his finger to his lips as human children were conventionally represented.

** Several passages from the Pyramid texts prove that the
_two eyes_ were very anciently considered as belonging to
the face of Nûît, and this conception persisted to the last
days of Egyptian paganism. Hence, we must not be surprised
if the inscriptions generally represent the god Râ as coming
forth from Nûît under the form of a disc, or a scarabaeus,
and born of her even as human children are born.

He was also that luminous egg, laid and hatched in the East by the celestial goose, from which the sun breaks forth to fill the world with its rays.[**]

** These are the very expressions used in the seventeenth
chapter of the _Book of the Dead_ (Naville's edition, vol.
i. pl. xxv. lines 58-61; Lepsius, _Todtenbuch_, pl. ix. 11.
50, 51).

1 The twelve forms of the sun during the twelve hours of
the day, from the ceiling of the Hall of the New Year at
Edfu. Drawing by Faucher-Gudin.

Nevertheless, by an anomaly not uncommon in religions, the egg did not always contain the same kind of bird; a lapwing, or a heron, might come out of it,[*] or perhaps, in memory of Horus, one of the beautiful golden sparrow-hawks of Southern Egypt. A Sun-Hawk, hovering in high heaven on outspread wings, at least presented a bold and poetic image; but what can be said for a Sun-Calf? Yet it is under the innocent aspect of a spotted calf, a "sucking calf of pure mouth,"[**] that the Egyptians were pleased to describe the Sun-God when Sibu, the father, was a bull, and Hâthor a heifer.

* The lapwing or the heron, the Egyptian _bonû_, is
generally the Osirian bird. The persistence with which it is
associated with Heliopolis and the gods of that city shows
that in this also we have a secondary form of Râ.

** The calf is represented in ch. cix. of the _Book of the
Dead_ (Naville's edition, pl. cxx.), where the text says
(lines 10, 11), "I know that this calf is Harmakhis the Sun,
and that it is no other than the Morning Star, daily
saluting Râ." The expression "_sucking calf of pure
mouth_" is taken word for word from a formula preserved in
the Pyramid texts (Ûnas, 1. 20).

But the prevalent conception was that in which the life of the sun was likened to the life of man. The two deities presiding over the East received the orb upon their hands at its birth, just as midwives receive a new-born child, and cared for it during the first hour of the day and of its life. It soon left them, and proceeded "under the belly of Nûît," growing and strengthening from minute to minute, until at noon it had become a triumphant hero whose splendour is shed abroad over all. But as night comes on his strength forsakes him and his glory is obscured; he is bent and broken down, and heavily drags himself along like an old man leaning upon his stick. At length he passes away beyond the horizon, plunging westward into the mouth of Nûît, and traversing her body by night to be born anew the next morning, again to follow the paths along which he had travelled on the preceding day.

A first bark, the _saktit_, awaited him at his birth, and carried him from the Eastern to the Southern extremity of the world. _Mâzît_, the second bark, received him at noon, and bore him into the land of Manu, which is at the entrance into Hades; other barks, with which we are less familiar, conveyed him by night, from his setting until his rising at morn.[*] Sometimes he was supposed to enter the barks alone, and then they were magic and self-directed, having neither oars, nor sails, nor helm.[**]

* In the formulæ of the _Book of Knowing that which is in
Hades_, the dead sun remains in the bark Saktit during part
of the night, and it is only to traverse the fourth and
fifth hours that he changes into another.

** Such is the bark of the sun in the other world. Although
carrying a complete crew of gods, yet for the most part it
progresses at its own will, and without their help. The bark
containing the sun alone is represented in many vignettes of
the _Book of the Dead_, and at the head of many stelæ.

Sometimes they were equipped with a full crew, like that of an Egyptian boat--a pilot at the prow to take soundings in the channel and forecast the wind, a pilot astern to steer, a quartermaster in the midst to transmit the orders of the pilot at the prow to the pilot at the stern, and half a dozen sailors to handle poles or oars. Peacefully the bark glided along the celestial river amid the acclamations of the gods who dwelt upon its shores. But, occasionally, Apôpi, a gigantic serpent, like that which hides within the earthly Nile and devours its banks, came forth from the depth of the waters and arose in the path of the god.[*] As soon as they caught sight of it in the distance, the crew flew to arms, and entered upon the struggle against him with prayers and spear-thrusts. Men in their cities saw the sun faint and fail, and sought to succour him in his distress; they cried aloud, they were beside themselves with excitement, beating their breasts, sounding their instruments of music, and striking with all their strength upon every metal vase or utensil in their possession, that their clamour might rise to heaven and terrify the monster. After a time of anguish, Râ emerged from the darkness and again went on his way, while Apôpi sank back into the abyss,[**] paralysed by the magic of the gods, and pierced with many a wound.

* In Upper Egypt there is a widespread belief in the
existence of a monstrous serpent, who dwells at the bottom
of the river, and is the genius of the Nile. It is he who
brings about those falls of earth (_batabît_) at the decline
of the inundation which often destroy the banks and eat
whole fields. At such times, offerings of durrah, fowls, and
dates are made to him, that his hunger may be appeased, and
it is not only the natives who give themselves up to these
superstitious practices. Part of the grounds belonging to
the Karnak hotel at Luxor having been carried away during
the autumn of 1884, the manager, a Greek, made the customary
offerings to the serpent of the Nile.

** The character of Apôpi and of his struggle with the sun
was, from the first, excellently defined by Champollion as
representing the conflict of darkness with light.
Occasionally, but very rarely, Apôpi seems to win, and his
triumph over Râ furnishes one explanation of a solar
eclipse. A similar explanation is common to many races. In
one very ancient form of the Egyptian legend, the sun is
represented by a wild ass running round the world along the
sides of the mountains that uphold the sky, and the serpent
which attacks it is called _Haiû_.

Apart from these temporary eclipses, which no one could foretell, the Sun-King steadily followed his course round the world, according to laws which even his will could not change. Day after day he made his oblique ascent from east to south, thence to descend obliquely towards the west. During the summer months the obliquity of his course diminished, and he came closer to Egypt; during the winter it increased, and he went farther away. This double movement recurred with such regularity from equinox to solstice, and from solstice to equinox, that the day of the god's departure and the day of his return could be confidently predicted. The Egyptians explained this phenomenon according to their conceptions of the nature of the world. The solar bark always kept close to that bank of the celestial river which was nearest to men; and when the river overflowed at the annual inundation, the sun was carried along with it outside the regular bed of the stream, and brought yet closer to Egypt. As the inundation abated, the bark descended and receded, its greatest distance from earth corresponding with the lowest level of the waters. It was again brought back to us by the rising strength of the next flood; and, as this phenomenon was yearly repeated, the periodicity of the sun's oblique movements was regarded as the necessary consequence of the periodic movements of the celestial Nile.

The same stream also carried a whole crowd of gods, whose existence was revealed at night only to the inhabitants of earth. At an interval of twelve hours, and in its own bark, the pale disk of the moon--_Yâûhû Aûhû_--followed the disk of the sun along the ramparts of the world. The moon, also, appeared in many various forms--here, as a man born of Nûît;[*] there, as a cynocephalus or an ibis;[**] elsewhere, it was the left eye of Horus,[***] guarded by the ibis or cynocephalus. Like Râ, it had its enemies incessantly upon the watch for it: the crocodile, the hippopotamus, and the sow. But it was when at the full, about the 15th of each month, that the lunar eye was in greatest peril.

* He may be seen as a child, or man, bearing the lunar disk
upon his head, and pressing the lunar eye to his breast.
Passages from the Pyramid text of Unas indicate the
relationship subsisting between Thot, Sibû, and Nûît, making
Thot the brother of Isis, Sit, and Nephthys. In later times
he was considered a son of Râ.

** Even as late as the Græco-Roman period, the temple of
Thot at Khmûnû contained a sacred ibis, which was the
incarnation of the god, and said to be immortal by the local
priesthood. The temple sacristans showed it to Apion the
grammarian, who reports the fact, but is very sceptical in
the matter.

*** The texts quoted by Chabas and Lepsius to show that the
sun is the right eye of Horus also prove that his left eye
is the moon.

4 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the ceiling of the
Ramesseum. On the right, the _female hippopotamus_ bearing
the _crocodile_, and leaning on the _Monâît_; in the middle,
the _Haunch_, here represented by the whole bull; to the
left, _Selkit_ and the _Sparrow-hawk_, with the _Lion_, and
the _Giant fighting the Crocodile_.

The sow fell upon it, tore it out of the face of heaven, and cast it, streaming with blood and tears, into the celestial Nile, where it was gradually extinguished, and lost for days; but its twin, the sun, or its guardian, the cyno-cephalus, immediately set forth to find it and to restore it to Horus. No sooner was it replaced, than it slowly recovered, and renewed its radiance; when it was well--_ûzaît_--the sow again attacked and mutilated it, and the gods rescued and again revived it.

Each month there was a fortnight of youth and of growing splendour, followed by a fortnight's agony and ever-increasing pallor. It was born to die, and died to be born again twelve times in the year, and each of these cycles measured a month for the inhabitants of the world. One invariable accident from time to time disturbed the routine of its existence. Profiting by some distraction of the guardians, the sow greedily swallowed it, and then its light went out suddenly, instead of fading gradually. These eclipses, which alarmed mankind at least as much as did those of the sun, were scarcely more than momentary, the gods compelling the monster to cast up the eye before it had been destroyed.

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the rectangular zodiac
carved upon the ceiling of the great temple of Denderah
(Dùmichen, _Resultate_, vol. ii. pl. xxxix.).

Every evening the lunar bark issued out of Hades by the door which Râ had passed through in the morning, and as it rose on the horizon, the star-lamps scattered over the firmament appeared one by one, giving light here and there like the camp-fires of a distant army. However many of them there might be, there were as many Indestructibles--_Akhîmû Sokû_--or Unchanging Ones--_Akhîmû Ûrdû_--whose charge it was to attend upon them and watch over their maintenance.[**]

** The _Akhîmû Sokû_ and the _Akhîmû Ûrdû_ have been very
variously defined by different Egyptologists who have
studied them. Chabas considered them to be gods or genii of
the constellations of the ecliptic, which mark the apparent
course of the sun through the sky. Following the indications
given by Dévéria, he also thought them to be the sailors of
the solar bark, and perhaps the gods of the twelve hours,
divided into two classes: the _Akhîmû Sokû_ being those who
are rowing, and the _Akhîmû Ûrdû_ those who are resting. But
texts found and cited by Brugsch show that the _Akhîmû Sokû_
are the planets accompanying Râ in the northern sky, while
the _Akhîmû Ûrdû_ are his escort in the south. The
nomenclature of the stars included in these two classes is
furnished by monuments of widely different epochs. The two
names should be translated according to the meaning of their
component words: _Akhîmû Sokû_, those who know not
destruction, the Indestructibles; and _Akhîmû Ûrdû_ (
_Urzii_), those who know not the immobility of death, the
_Imperishables_.

They were not scattered at random by the hand which had suspended them, but their distribution had been ordered in accordance with a certain plan, and they were arranged in fixed groups like so many star republics, each being independent of its neighbours. They represented the outlines of bodies of men and animals dimly traced out upon the depths of night, but shining with greater brilliancy in certain important places. The seven stars which we liken to a chariot (Charles's Wain) suggested to the Egyptians the haunch of an ox placed on the northern edge of the horizon.[*]

* The forms of the constellations, and the number of stars
composing them in the astronomy of different periods, are
known from the astronomical scenes of tombs and temples. The
identity of the _Haunch_ with the _Chariot_, or _Great Bear_
of modern astronomy, was discovered by Lepsius and confirmed
by Biot. Mariette pointed out that the Pyramid Arabs applied
the name of the _Haunch (er-Rigl)_ to the same group of
stars as that thus designated by the ancient Egyptians.
Champollion had noted the position of the _Haunch_ in the
northern sky, but had not suggested any identification. The
_Haunch_ appertained to Sît-Typhon.

Two lesser stars connected the haunch--_Maskhaît_--with thirteen others, which recalled the silhouette of a female hippopotamus--_Rirît_--erect upon her hind legs,[*] and jauntily carrying upon her shoulders a monstrous crocodile whose jaws opened threateningly above her head. Eighteen luminaries of varying size and splendour, forming a group hard by the hippopotamus, indicated the outline of a gigantic lion couchant, with stiffened tail, its head turned to the right, and facing the Haunch.[***]

* The connection of _Birît_, the female hippopotamus, with
the Haunch is made quite clear in scenes from Philae and
Edfû, representing Isis holding back Typhon by a chain, that
he might do no hurt to Sâhii-Osiris. Jollois and Devilliers
thought that the hippopotamus was the _Great Bear_. Biot
contested their conclusions, and while holding that the
hippopotamus might at least in part present our
constellation of the Dragon, thought that it was probably
included in the scene only as an ornament, or as an emblem.
The present tendency is to identify the hippopotamus with
the Dragon and with certain stars not included in the
constellations surrounding it.

*** The Lion, with its eighteen stars, is represented on
the tomb of Seti I.; on the ceiling of the Ramesseum; and on
the sarcophagus of Htari.

2 From the astronomic ceiling in the tomb of Seti I.
(Lefébure, 4th part, pl. xxxvi.).

The Lion is sometimes shown as having a crocodile's tail. According to Biot the Egyptian Lion has nothing in common with the Greek constellation of that name, nor yet with our own, but was composed of smaller stars, belonging to the Greek constellation of the Cup or to the continuation of the Hydra, so that its head, its body, and its tail would follow the [ ] of the Hydra, between the [ ] and [ ] of that constellation, or the [ ] of the Virgin.

Most of the constellations never left the sky: night after night they were to be found almost in the same places, and always shining with the same even light.

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a small bronze in the Gîzeh
Museum, published by Mariette, in the _Album photographique
du Musée de Boulaq_, pl. 9. The legs are a modern
restoration.

Others borne by a slow movement passed annually beyond the limits of sight for months at a time. Five at least of our planets were known from all antiquity, and their characteristic colours and appearances carefully noted. Sometimes each was thought to be a hawk-headed Horus. Ùapshetatûi, our Jupiter, Kahiri-(Saturn), Sobkû-(Mercury), steered their barks straight ahead like Iâûhû and Râ; but Mars-Doshiri, the red, sailed backwards. As a star Bonu, the bird (Yenus) had a dual personality; in the evening it was Uati, the lonely star which is the first to rise, often before nightfall; in the morning it became Tiûnûtiri, the god who hails the sun before his rising and proclaims the dawn of day.

Sahû and Sopdît, Orion and Sirius, were the rulers of this mysterious world. Sahû consisted of fifteen stars, seven large and eight small, so arranged as to represent a runner darting through space, while the fairest of them shone above his head, and marked him out from afar to the admiration of mortals.

1 Scene from the rectangular zodiac of Denderah, drawn by
Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph taken with magnesium light
by Dûmichen.

With his right hand he flourished the _crux ansata_, and turning his head towards Sothis as he beckoned her on with his left, seemed as though inviting her to follow him. The goddess, standing sceptre in hand, and crowned with a diadem of tall feathers surmounted by her most radiant star, answered the call of Sahû with a gesture, and quietly embarked in pursuit as though in no anxiety to overtake him. Sometimes she is represented as a cow lying down in her bark, with tree stars along her back, and Sirius flaming from between her horns.[*]

* The identity of the cow with Sothis was discovered by
Jollois and Devilliers. It is under this animal form that
Sothis is represented in most of the Græco-Roman temples,
at Denderah, Edfû, Esneh, Dêr el-Medîneh.

Not content to shine by night only, her bluish rays, suddenly darted forth in full daylight and without any warning, often described upon the sky the mystic lines of the triangle which stood for her name. It was then that she produced those curious phenomena of the zodiacal light which other legends attributed to Horus himself. One, and perhaps the most ancient of the innumerable accounts of this god and goddess, represented Sahû as a wild hunter. A world as vast as ours rested upon the other side of the iron firmament; like ours, it was distributed into seas, and continents divided by rivers and canals, but peopled by races unknown to men. Sahû traversed it during the day, surrounded by genii who presided over the lamps forming his constellation. At his appearing "the stars prepared themselves for battle, the heavenly archers rushed forward, the bones of the gods upon the horizon trembled at the sight of him," for it was no common game that he hunted, but the very gods themselves. One attendant secured the prey with a lasso, as bulls are caught in the pastures, while another examined each capture to decide if it were pure and good for food. This being determined, others bound the divine victim, cut its throat, disembowelled it, cut up its carcass, cast the joints into a pot, and superintended their cooking. Sahû did not devour indifferently all that the fortune of the chase might bring him, but classified his game in accordance with his wants. He ate the great gods at his breakfast in the morning, the lesser gods at his dinner towards noon, and the small ones at his supper; the old were rendered more tender by roasting.

1 Scene on the north wall of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak;
drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Insinger, taken in
1882. The king, Seti I., is presenting bouquets of leaves to
Amon-Mînû. Behind the god stands Isis (of Coptos), sceptre
and _crux ansata_ in hand.

As each god was assimilated by him, its most precious virtues were transfused into himself; by the wisdom of the old was his wisdom strengthened, the youth of the young repaired the daily waste of his own youth, and all their fires, as they penetrated his being, served to maintain the perpetual splendour of his light.

The nome gods who presided over the destinies of Egyptian cities, and formed a true feudal system of divinities, belonged to one or other of these natural categories. In vain do they present themselves under the most shifting aspects and the most deceptive attributes; in vain disguise themselves with the utmost care; a closer examination generally discloses the principal features of their original physiognomies. Osiris of the Delta, Khuûmû of the Cataract, Harshâfitû of Heracleopolis, were each of them, incarnations of the fertilizing and life-sustaining Nile. Wherever there is some important change in the river, there they are more especially installed and worshipped: Khnûmû at the place of its entering into Egypt, and again at the town of Hâûrît, near the point where a great arm branches off from the Eastern stream to flow towards the Libyan hills and form the Bahr-Yûsuf: Harshâfitû at the gorges of the Fayûm, where the Bahr-Yûsuf leaves the valley; and, finally, Osiris at Mendes and at Busiris, towards the mouth of the middle branch, which was held to be the true Nile by the people of the land. Isis of Bûto denoted the black vegetable mould of the valley, the distinctive soil of Egypt annually covered and fertilized by the inundation.[*]

* In the case of Isis, as in that of Osiris, we must mark
the original character; and note her characteristics as
goddess of the Delta before she had become a multiple and
contradictory personality through being confounded with
other divinities.

But the earth in general, as distinguished from the sky--the earth with its continents, its seas, its alternation of barren deserts and fertile lands--was represented as a man: Phtah at Memphis, Amon at Thebes, Mînû at Coptos and at Panopolis. Amon seems rather to have symbolized the productive soil, while Mînû reigned over the desert. But these were fine distinctions, not invariably insisted upon, and his worshippers often invested Amon with the most significant attributes of Mînû.

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze of the Saïte period,
in my own possession.

The Sky-gods, like the Earth-gods, were separated into two groups, the one consisting of women: Hâthor of Denderah, or Nît of Sais; the other composed of men identical with Horus, or derived from him: Anhûri-Shû of Sebennytos and Thinis; Harmerati, Horus of the two eyes, at Pharbaethos; Har-Sapdi, Horus the source of the zodiacal light, in the Wâdy Tumilât; and finally Harhûdîti at Edfû. Râ, the solar disk, was enthroned at Heliopolis, and sun-gods were numerous among the nome deities, but they were sun-gods closely connected with gods representing the sky, and resembled Horus quite as much as Râ. Whether under the name of Horus or of Anhûri, the sky was early identified with its most brilliant luminary, its solar eye, and its divinity was as it were fused into that of the Sun. Horus the Sun, and Râ, the Sun-Cod of Heliopolis, had so permeated each other that none could say where the one began and the other ended. One by one all the functions of Râ had been usurped by Horus, and all the designations of Horus had been appropriated by Râ. The sun was styled Harmakhûîti, the Horus of the two mountains--that is, the Horus who comes forth from the mountain of the east in the morning, and retires at evening into the mountain of the west;[*] or Hartimâ, Horus the Pikeman, that Horus whose lance spears the hippopotamus or the serpent of the celestial river; or Harnûbi, the Golden Horus, the great golden sparrow-hawk with mottled plumage, who puts all other birds to flight; and these titles were indifferently applied to each of the feudal gods who represented the sun.

* From the time of Champollion, Harmakhûîti has been
identified with the Harmachis of the Greeks, the great
Sphinx.

2 A bronze of the Saïte period, from the Posno collection,
and now in the Louvre; drawn by Faucher-Gudin. The god is
represented as upholding a libation vase with both hands,
and pouring the life-giving water upon the king, standing,
or prostrate, before him. In performing this ceremony, he
was always assisted by another god, generally by Sit,
sometimes by Thot or Anubis.

The latter were numerous. Sometimes, as in the case of Harkhobi, Horus of Khobiû,[*] a geographical qualification was appended to the generic term of Horus, while specific names, almost invariably derived from the parts which they were supposed to play, were borne by others. The sky-god worshipped at Thinis in Upper Egypt, at Zarît and at Sebennytos in Lower Egypt, was called Anhuri. When he assumed the attributes of Râ, and took upon himself the solar nature, his name was interpreted as denoting the conqueror of the sky. He was essentially combative. Crowned with a group of upright plumes, his spear raised and ever ready to strike the foe, he advanced along the firmament and triumphantly traversed it day by day.[**] The sun-god who at Medamôfc Taûd and Erment had preceded Amon as ruler of the Theban plain, was also a warrior, and his name of Montû had reference to his method of fighting. He was depicted as brandishing a curved sword and cutting off the heads of his adversaries.[***]

* _Harkhobi, Harâmkhobiû_ is the Horus of the marshes
(_khobiû_) of the Delta, the lesser Horus the son of Isis,
who was also made into the son of Osiris.

** The right reading of the name was given as far back as
Lepsius. The part played by the god, and the nature of the
link connecting him with Shû, have been explained by
Maspero. The Greeks transcribed his name Onouris, and
identified him with Ares.

*** Montû preceded Amon as god of the land between Kûs and
Gebelên, and he recovered his old position in the Græco-
Roman period after the destruction of Thebes. Most
Egyptologists, and finally Brugsch, made him into a
secondary form of Amon, which is contrary to what we know of
the history of the province. Just as Onû of the south
(Erment) preceded Thebes as the most important town in that
district, so Montû had been its most honoured god. Heer
Wiedemann thinks the name related to that of Amon and
derived from it, with the addition of the final _tû_.

Each of the feudal gods naturally cherished pretensions to universal dominion, and proclaimed himself the suzerain, the father of all the gods, as the local prince was the suzerain, the father of all men; but the effective suzerainty of god or prince really ended where that of his peers ruling over the adjacent nomes began.

The goddesses shared in the exercise of supreme power, and had the same right of inheritance and possession as regards sovereignty that women had in human law.[*] Isis was entitled lady and mistress at Bûto, as Hâthor was at Denderah, and as Nit at Sais, "the firstborn, when as yet there had been no birth." They enjoyed in their cities the same honours as the male gods in theirs; as the latter were kings, so were they queens, and all bowed down before them. The animal gods, whether entirely in the form of beasts, or having human bodies attached to animal heads, shared omnipotence with those in human form. Horus of Hibonû swooped down upon the back of a gazelle like a hunting hawk, Hâthor of Denderah was a cow, Bastit of Bubastis was a cat or a tigress, while Nekhabit of El Kab was a great bald-headed vulture.[**] Hermopolis worshipped the ibis and cynocephalus of Thot; Oxyrrhynchus the _mor-myrus_ fish;[***] and Ombos and the Fayûm a crocodile, under the name of Sobkû,[****] sometimes with the epithet of Azaï, the brigand.[v]

* In attempts at reconstituting Egyptian religions, no
adequate weight has hitherto been given to the equality of
gods and goddesses, a fact to which attention was first
called by Maspeeo (_Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie
Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. p. 253, et seq.).

** Nekhabît, the goddess of the south, is the vulture, so
often represented in scenes of war or sacrifice, who hovers
over the head of the Pharaohs. She is also shown as a
vulture-headed woman.

*** We have this on the testimony of classic writers,
Steabo, book xvii. p. 812, _De Iside et Csiride_, § vii.,
1872, Paethey's edition, pp. 9, 30, 128. ^Elianus, Hist,
anim., book x. § 46.

**** Sobhû, Sovkû is the animal's name, and the exact
translation of Sovû would be crocodile-god. Its Greek
transcription is [ ]. On account of the assonance of the
names he was sometimes confounded with _Sivû, Sibû_ by the
Egyptians themselves, and thus obtained the titles of that
god. This was especially the case at the time when Sit
having been proscribed, Sovkû the crocodile, who was
connected with Sit, shared his evil reputation, and
endeavoured to disguise his name or true character as much
as possible.

v Azaï is generally considered to be the Osiris of the
Fayûm, but he was only transformed into Osiris, and that by
the most daring process of assimilation. His full name
defines him as _Osiri Azaï hi halt To-sit (Osiris the
Brigand, who is in the Fayûm)_, that is to say, as Sovkû
identified with Osiris.

4 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a green enamelled figure in
my possession (Saïte period).

We cannot always understand what led the inhabitants of each nome to affect one animal rather than another. Why, towards Græco-Roman times, should they have worshipped the jackal, or even the dog, at Siût?[**] How came Sit to be incarnate in a fennec, or in an imaginary quadruped?[***] Occasionally, however, we can follow the train of thought that determined their choice.

** Uapuaîtû, the _guide of the celestial ways_, who must not
be confounded with Anubis of the Cynopolite nome of Upper
Egypt, was originally the feudal god of Siût. He guided
human souls to the paradise of the Oasis, and the sun upon
its southern path by day, and its northern path by night.

*** Champollion, Rosellini, Lepsius, have held that the
Typhonian animal was a purely imaginary one, and Wilkinson
says that the Egyptians themselves admitted its unreality by
representing it along with other fantastic beasts. This
would rather tend to show that they believed in its actual
existence (cf. p. 112 of this History). Plbyte thinks that
it may be a degenerated form of the figure of the ass or
oryx.

The habit of certain monkeys in assembling as it were in full court, and chattering noisily a little before sunrise and sunset, would almost justify the as yet uncivilized Egyptians in entrusting cynocephali with the charge of hailing the god morning and evening as he appeared in the east, or passed away in the west.

If Râ was held to be a grasshopper under the Old Empire, it was because he flew far up in the sky like the clouds of locusts driven from Central Africa which suddenly fall upon the fields and ravage them. Most of the Nile-gods, Khnûmû, Osiris, Harshafitû, were incarnate in the form of a ram or of a buck. Does not the masculine vigour and procreative rage of these animals naturally point them out as fitting images of the life-giving Nile and the overflowing of its waters? It is easy to understand how the neighbourhood of a marsh or of a rock-encumbered rapid should have suggested the crocodile as supreme deity to the inhabitants of the Fayûm or of Ombos. The crocodiles there multiplied so rapidly as to constitute a serious danger; there they had the mastery, and could be appeased only by means of prayers and sacrifices. When instinctive terror had been superseded by reflection, and some explanation was offered of the origin of the various cults, the very nature of the animal seemed to justify the veneration with which it was regarded. The crocodile is amphibious; and Sobkû was supposed to be a crocodile, because before the creation the sovereign god plunged recklessly into the dark waters and came forth to form the world, as the crocodile emerges from the river to lay its eggs upon the bank.

Most of the feudal divinities began their lives in solitary grandeur, apart from, and often hostile to, their neighbours. Families were assigned to them later.[*]

* The existence of the Egyptian triads was discovered and
defined by Champollion. These triads have long served as the
basis upon which modern writers have sought to establish
their systems of the Egyptian religion. Brugsch was the
first who rightly attempted to replace the triad by the
Ennead, in his book Religion und Mythologie der alten
Ægypter. The process of forming local triads, as here set
forth, was first pointed out by Maspero (_Études de
Mythologie et d'Archéologie Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. p. 269,
et seq.).

Each appropriated two companions and formed a trinity, or as it is generally called, a triad. But there were several kinds of triads. In nomes subject to a god, the local deity was frequently content with one wife and one son; but often he was united to two goddesses, who were at once his sisters and his wives according to the national custom.

Thus, Thot of Hermopolis possessed himself of a harem consisting of Seshaît-Safk-hîtâbûi and Hahmâûît. Tûmû divided the homage of the inhabitants of Helio-polis with Nebthôtpît and with Iûsasît. Khnûmû seduced and married the two fairies of the neighbouring cataract--Anûkît the constrainer, who compresses the Nile between its rocks at Philse and at Syene, and Satît the archeress, who shoots forth the current straight and swift as an arrow.[*] Where a goddess reigned over a nome, the triad was completed by two male deities, a divine consort and a divine son. Nît of Sai's had taken for her husband Osiris of Mendes, and borne him a lion's whelp, Ari-hos-nofir.[**]

* Maspero, _Études de Mythologie et d'Archéologie
Égyptiennes_, vol. ii. p. 273, et seq.

** _Arihosnofir_ means _the lion whose gaze has a
beneficent fascination_. He also goes under the name of
_Tutu_, which seems as though it should be translated "_the
bounding_,"--a mere epithet characterizing one gait of the
lion-god's.

Hâthor of Denderah had completed her household with Haroêris and a younger Horus, with the epithet of Ahi--he who strikes the sistrum.[*]

* Brugsch explains the name of Ahi as meaning _he who
causes his waters to rise_, and recognizes this personage as
being, among other things, a form of the Nile. The
interpretation offered by myself is borne out by the many
scenes representing the child of Hâthor playing upon the
sistrum and the _monâît_. Moreover, _ahi, ahît_ is an
invariable title of the priests and priestesses whose office
it is, during religious ceremonies, to strike the sistrum,
and that other mystic musical instrument, the sounding whip
called _monâît_.

2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze statuette encrusted
with gold, in the Gîzeh Museum. The seat is alabaster,
and of modern manufacture.

A triad containing two goddesses produced no legitimate offspring, and was unsatisfactory to a people who regarded the lack of progeny as a curse from heaven; one in which the presence of a son promised to ensure the perpetuity of the race was more in keeping with the idea of a blessed and prosperous family, as that of gods should be. Triads of the former kind were therefore almost everywhere broken up into two new triads, each containing a divine father, a divine mother, and a divine son. Two fruitful households arose from the barren union of Thot with Safkhîtâbûi and Nahmâûît: one composed of Thot, Safkhîtâbûi, and Harnûbi, the golden sparrow-hawk;[***] into the other Nahmâûît and her nursling Nofirhorû entered.