Chapter II: The Gods of Egypt (4)

The four couples who had helped Atûmû were identified with the four auxiliary gods of Thot, and changed the council of Five into a Great Hermopolitan Ennead, but at the cost of strange metamorphoses. However artificially they had been grouped about Atûmû, they had all preserved such distinctive characteristics as prevented their being confounded one with another. When the universe which they had helped to build up was finally seen to be the result of various operations demanding a considerable manifestation of physical energy, each god was required to preserve the individuality necessary for the production of such effects as were expected of him. They could not have existed and carried on their work without conforming to the ordinary conditions of humanity; being born one of another, they were bound to have paired with living goddesses as capable of bringing forth their children as they were of begetting them. On the other hand, the four auxiliary gods of Hermopolis exercised but one means of action--the voice. Having themselves come forth from the master's mouth, it was by voice that they created and perpetuated the world. Apparently they could have done without goddesses had marriage not been imposed upon them by their identification with the corresponding gods of the Heliopolitan Ennead; at any rate, their wives had but a show of life, almost destitute of reality. As these four gods worked after the manner of their master, Thot, so they also bore his form and reigned along with him as so many baboons. When associated with the lord of Hermopolis, the eight divinities of Heliopolis assumed the character and the appearance of the four Hermopolitan gods in whom they were merged. They were often represented as eight baboons surrounding the supreme baboon, or as four pairs of gods and goddesses without either characteristic attributes or features; or, finally, as four pairs of gods and goddesses, the gods being, as far as we are able to judge, the couple Nû-Nûît answers to Shû-Tafnûît; Hahû-Hehît to Sibû and Nûîfc; Kakû-Kakît to Osiris and Isis; Ninû-Ninît to Sit and Nephthys. There was seldom any occasion to invoke them separately; they were addressed collectively as the Eight--_Khmûnû_--and it was on their account that Hermopolis was named _Khmûnû_, the City of the Eight. Ultimately they were deprived of the little individual life still left to them, and were fused into a single being to whom the texts refer as Khomninû, the god Eight.

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from a photograph by Béato. Cf.
Lepsius, Denkm., iv. pl. 66 c. In this illustration I have
combined! the two extremities of a great scene at Philæ, in
which the _Eight_, divided into two groups of four, frog-
headed men, and the goddesses serpent-headed women. Morning
and evening do they sing; and the mysterious hymns
wherewith they salute the rising and the setting sun ensure
the continuity of his course. Their names did not survive
their metamorphoses; each pair had no longer more than a
single name, the termination of each name varying according
as a god or a goddess was intended:--Nu and Nûît, Hehû and
Hehît, Kakû and Kakît, Ninû and Ninît, the god One and the
god Eight, the Monad and the Ogdoad. The latter had scarcely
more than a theoretical existence, and was generally
absorbed into the person of the former. Thus the theologians
of Hermopolis gradually disengaged the unity of their feudal
god from the multiplicity of the cosmogonie deities.

1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from a bronze statuette found at
Thebes, and now in my possession.

By degrees the Ennead of Thot was thus reduced to two terms: take part in the adoration of the king. According to a custom common towards the Græco-Roman period, the sculptor has made the feet of his gods like jackals' heads; it is a way of realizing the well-known metaphor which compares a rapid runner to the jackal roaming around Egypt.

As the sacerdotal colleges had adopted the Heliopolitan doctrine, so they now generally adopted that of Hermopolis: Amon, for instance, being made to preside indifferently over the eight baboons and over the four independent couples of the primitive Ennead. In both cases the process of adaptation was absolutely identical, and would have been attended by no difficulty whatever, had the divinities to whom it was applied only been without family; in that case, the one needful change for each city would have been that of a single name in the Heliopolitan list, thus leaving the number of the Ennead unaltered. But since these deities had been turned into triads they could no longer be primarily regarded as simple units, to be combined with the elements of some one or other of the Enneads without preliminary arrangement. The two companions whom each had chosen had to be adopted also, and the single Thot, or single Atûmû, replaced by the three patrons of the nome, thus changing the traditional nine into eleven. Happily, the constitution of the triad lent itself to all these adaptations. We have seen that the father and the son became one and the same personage, whenever it was thought desirable. We also know that one of the two parents always so far predominated as almost to efface the other. Sometimes it was the goddess who disappeared behind her husband; sometimes it was the god whose existence merely served to account for the offspring of the goddess, and whose only title to his position consisted in the fact that he was her husband. Two personages thus closely connected were not long in blending into one, and were soon defined as being two faces, the masculine and feminine aspects of a single being. On the one hand, the father was one with the son, and on the other he was one with the mother. Hence the mother was one with the son as with the father, and the three gods of the triad were resolved into one god in three persons.

1 This Ennead consists of fourteen members--Montû,
duplicating Atûmû; the four usual couples; then Horus, the
son of Isis and Osiris, together with his associate deities,
Hâthor, Tanu, and Anît.

Thanks to this subterfuge, to put a triad at the head of an Ennead was nothing more than a roundabout way of placing a single god there: the three persons only counted as one, and the eleven names only amounted to the nine canonical divinities. Thus, the Theban Ennead of Amon-Maut-Khonsû, Shû, Tafnûît, Sibû, Nûît, Osiris, Isis, Sît, and Nephthys, is, in spite of its apparent irregularity, as correct as the typical Ennead itself. In such Enneads Isis is duplicated by goddesses of like nature, such as Hâthor, Selkît, Taninît, and yet remains but one, while Osiris brings in his son Horus, who gathers about himself all such gods as play the part of divine son in other triads. The theologians had various methods of procedure for keeping the number of persons in an Ennead at nine, no matter how many they might choose to embrace in it. Supernumeraries were thrown in like the "shadows" at Roman suppers, whom guests would bring without warning to their host, and whose presence made not the slightest difference either in the provision for the feast, or in the arrangements for those who had been formally invited.

Thus remodelled at all points, the Ennead of Heliopolis was readily adjustable to sacerdotal caprices, and even profited by the facilities which, the triad afforded for its natural expansion. In time the Heliopolitan version of the origin of Shû-Tafnûît must have appeared too primitively barbarous. Allowing for the licence of the Egyptians during Pharaonic times, the concept of the spontaneous emission whereby Atûrnû had produced his twin children was characterized by a superfluity of coarseness which it was at least unnecessary to employ, since by placing the god in a triad, this double birth could be duly explained in conformity with the ordinary laws of life. The solitary Atûrnû of the more ancient dogma gave place to Atûrnû the husband and father. He had, indeed, two wives, Iûsâsît and Nebthotpît, but their individualities were so feebly marked that no one took the trouble to choose between them; each passed as the mother of Shû and Tafnûîfc. This system of combination, so puerile in its ingenuity, was fraught with the gravest consequences to the history of Egyptian religions. Shu having been transformed into the divine son of the Heliopolitan triad, could henceforth be assimilated with the divine sons of all those triads which took the place of Tûmû at the heads of provincial Enneads. Thus we find that Horus the son of Isis at Bûto, Arihosnofir the son of Nit at Sais, Khnûmû the son of Hâthor at Esneh, were each in turn identified with Shû the son of Atûrnû, and lost their individualities in his. Sooner or later this was bound to result in bringing all the triads closer together, and in their absorption into one another. Through constant reiteration of the statement that the divine sons of the triads were identical with Shû, as being in the second rank of the Ennead, the idea arose that this was also the case in triads unconnected with Enneads; in other terms, that the third person in any family of gods was everywhere and always Shû under a different name. It having been finally admitted in the sacerdotal colleges that Tûmû and Shû, father and son, were one, all the divine sons were, therefore, identical with Tûmû, the father of Shû, and as each divine son was one with his parents, it inevitably followed that these parents themselves were identical with Tûmû. Reasoning in this way, the Egyptians naturally tended towards that conception of the divine oneness to which the theory of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad was already leading them. In fact, they reached it, and the monuments show us that in comparatively early times the theologians were busy uniting in a single person the prerogatives which their ancestors had ascribed to many different beings. But this conception of deity towards which their ideas were converging has nothing in common with the conception of the God of our modern religions and philosophies. No god of the Egyptians was ever spoken of simply as God. Tûmû was the "one and only god"--_nûtir ûâû ûâîti_--at Heliopolis; Anhûri-Shû was also the "one and only god" at Sebennytos and at Thinis. The unity of Atûmû did not interfere with that of Anhûri-Shû, but each of these gods, although the "sole" deity in his own domain, ceased to be so in the domain of the other. The feudal spirit, always alert and jealous, prevented the higher dogma which was dimly apprehended in the temples from triumphing over local religions and extending over the whole land. Egypt had as many "sole" deities as she had large cities, or even important temples; she never accepted the idea of the sole God, "beside whom there is none other."