History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 1 — 11 - Vol. 01, Ch. 02: The Gods of Egypt, pt. 3

[Illustration: 139. jpg TWO IMAGES] 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When instinctive terror had been superseded by reflection, and some explanation was offered of the origin of the various cults, the very nature of the animal seemed to justify the veneration with which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.

[Illustration: 141. jpg NIT OF SAÏS. ] 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_.

[Illustration: 142. jpg IMHOTPÛ.

2] 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.

*** This somewhat rare triad, noted by Wilkinson, is sculptured on the wall of a chamber in the Tûrah quarries.

[Illustration: 143. jpg NOFIRTÛMÛ.

3] 3 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze statuette incrusted with gold, in the Gîzeh Museum.

The persons united with the old feudal divinities in order to form triads were not all of the same class.

Goddesses, especially, were made to order, and might often be described as grammatical, so obvious is the linguistic device to which they owe their being.

From Râ, Amon, Horus, Sobkû, female Ras, Anions, Horuses, and Sobkûs were derived, by the addition of the regular feminine affix to the primitive masculine names--Râît, Amonît, Horît, Sobkît. [*] In the same way, detached cognomens of divine fathers were embodied in divine sons.

Imhotpû, "he who comes in peace," was merely one of the epithets of Phtah before he became incarnate as the third member of the Memphite triad.

[**] In other cases, alliances were contracted between divinities of ancient stock, but natives of different nomes, as in the case of Isis of Bûto and the Mendesian Osiris; of Haroêris of Edfu and Hâthor of Denderah.

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

pp. 7, 8, 256. ** Imhotpû, the Imouthes of the Greeks, and by them identified with Æsculapius, was discovered by Salt, and his name was first translated as _he who comes with offering_.

The translation, _he who comes in peace_, proposed by E. de Rougé, is now universally adopted.

Imhotpû did not take form until the time of the New Empire; his great popularity at Memphis and throughout Egypt dates from the Saïte and Greek periods.

In the same manner Sokhît of Letopolis and Bastît of Bubastis were appropriated as wives to Phtah of Memphis, Nofirtûmû being represented as his son by both unions.

[*] These improvised connections were generally determined by considerations of vicinity; the gods of conterminous principalities were married as the children of kings of two adjoining kingdoms are married, to form or to consolidate relations, and to establish bonds of kinship between rival powers whose unremitting hostility would mean the swift ruin of entire peoples.

The system of triads, begun in primitive times and con-, tinned unbrokenly up to the last days of Egyptian polytheism, far from in any way lowering the prestige of the feudal gods, was rather the means of enhancing it in the eyes of the multitude.

Powerful lords as the new-comers might be at home, it was only in the strength of an auxiliary title that they could enter a strange city, and then only on condition of submitting to its religious law.

Hâthor, supreme at Denderah, shrank into insignificance before Haroêris at Edfû, and there retained only the somewhat subordinate part of a wife in the house of her husband.

[**] * Originally, Nofirtûmû appears to have been the son of cat or lioness-headed goddesses, Bastît and Sokhît, and from them he may have inherited the lion's head with which he is often represented.

His name shows him to have been in the first place an incarnation of Atûmû, but he was affiliated to the god Phtah of Memphis when that god became the husband of his mothers, and preceded Imhotpû as the third personage in the oldest Memphite triad.

** Each year, and at a certain time, the goddess came in high state to spend a few days in the great temple of Edfû, with her husband Haroêris.

On the other hand, Haroêris when at Denderah descended from the supreme rank, and was nothing more than the almost useless consort of the lady Hâthor.

His name came first in invocations of the triad because of his position therein as husband and father; but this was simply a concession to the propriety of etiquette, and even though named in second place, Hâthor was none the less the real chief of Denderah and of its divine family.

[*] Thus, the principal personage in any triad was always the one who had been patron of the nome previous to the introduction of the triad: in some places the father-god, and in others the mother-goddess.

* The part played by Haroêris at Denderah was so inconsiderable that the triad containing him is not to be found in the temple.

"In all our four volumes of plates, the triad is not once represented, and this is the more remarkable since at Thebes, at Memphis, at Philse, at the cataracts, at Elephantine, at Edfû, among all the data which one looks to find in temples, the triad is most readily distinguished by the visitor.

But we must not therefore conclude that there was no triad in this case.

The triad of Edfû consists of Hor-Hut, Hâthor, and Hor-Sam-ta-ui.

The triad of Denderah contains Hâthor, Hor-Hut, and Hor-Sam-ta- ui.

The difference is obvious.

At Edfû, the male principle, as represented by Hor-Hut, takes the first place, whereas the first person at Denderah is Hâthor, who represents the female principle" (Mariette, _Dendérah_, Texte, pp. 80, 81).

[Illustration: 145. jpg HORUS] 2 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin from a statuette in the Gîzeh Museum (Mariette, _Album du Musée de Boulaq_, pl.

4).

The son in a divine triad had of himself but limited authority.

When Isis and Osiris were his parents, he was generally an infant Horus, naked, or simply adorned with necklaces and bracelets; a thick lock of hair depended from his temple, and his mother squatting on her heels, or else sitting, nursed him upon her knees, offering him her breast.

[*] Even in triads where the son was supposed to have attained to man's estate, he held the lowest place, and there was enjoined upon him the same respectful attitude towards his parents as is observed by children of human race in the presence of theirs.

He took the lowest place at all solemn receptions, spoke only with his parents' permission, acted only by their command and as the agent of their will.

Occasionally he was vouchsafed a character of his own, and filled a definite position, as at Memphis, where Imhotpû was the patron of science.

[**] * For representations of Harpocrates, the child Horus, see Lanzone, _Dizionario di Mitologia Egizia_, pis.

ccxxvii.

, ccxxviii.

, and particularly pl.

cccx.

2, where there is a scene in which the young god, represented as a sparrow-hawk, is nevertheless sucking the breast of his mother Isis with his beak.

** Hence he is generally represented as seated, or squatting, and attentively reading a papyrus roll, which lies open upon his knees; cf.

the illustration on p. 142. But, generally, he was not considered as having either office or marked individuality; his being was but a feeble reflection of his father's, and possessed neither life nor power except as derived from him.

Two such contiguous personalities must needs have been confused, and, as a matter of fact, were so confused as to become at length nothing more than two aspects of the same god, who united in his own person degrees of relationship mutually exclusive of each other in a human family.

Father, inasmuch as he was the first member of the triad; son, by virtue of being its third member; identical with himself in both capacities, he was at once his own father, his own son, and the husband of his mother.

Gods, like men, might be resolved into at least two elements, soul and body;[*] but in Egypt, the conception of the soul varied in different times and in different schools.

It might be an insect--butterfly, bee, or praying mantis;[**] or a bird--the ordinary sparrow-hawk, the human-headed sparrow-hawk, a heron or a crane--bi, haï--whose wings enabled it to pass rapidly through space;[***] or the black shadow--khaîbît--that is attached to every body, but which death sets free, and which thenceforward leads an independent existence, so that it can move about at will, and go out into the open sunlight.

* In one of the Pyramid texts, Sâhû-Orion, the wild hunter, captures the gods, slaughters and disembowels them, cooks their joints, their haunches, their legs, in his burning cauldrons, and feeds on their souls as well as on their bodies.

A god was not limited to a single body and a single soul; we know from several texts that Râ had _seven souls and fourteen doubles_.

** Mr. Lepage-Renouf supposes that the soul may have been considered as being a butterfly at times, as in Greece.

M.

Lefébure thinks that it must sometimes have been incarnate as a wasp--I should rather say a bee or a praying mantis.

*** The simple sparrow-hawk is chiefly used to denote the soul of a god; the human-headed sparrow-hawk, the heron, or the crane is used indifferently for human or divine souls.

It is from Horapollo that we learn this symbolic significance of the sparrow-hawk and the pronunciation of the name of the soul as _bai_.

[Illustration: 147. jp THE BLACK SHADOW COMING OUT INTO THE SUNLIGHT.

4] 4 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Naville's _Das Thebanische Todtenbuch, vol. i.

pl.

civ.

_ Finally, it might be a kind of light shadow, like a reflection from the surface of calm water, or from a polished mirror, the living and coloured projection of the human figure, a double--_ka_--reproducing in minutest detail the complete image of the object or the person to whom it belonged.

[*] * The nature of the double has long been misapprehended by Egyptologists, who had even made its name into a kind of pronominal form.

That nature was publicly and almost simultaneously announced in 1878, first by Maspero, and directly afterwards by Lepage-Renouf.

[Illustration: 148. jpg THE AUGUST SOULS OF OSIRIS AnD HORUS IN ADORATION BEFORE THE SOLAR DISK.

1] 1 Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Dûmichen, of a scene on the cornice of the front room of Osiris on the terrace of the great temple of Denderah.

The soul on the left belongs to Horus, that on the right to Osiris, lord of Amentît. Each bears upon its head the group of tall feathers which is characteristic of figures of Anhûri (cf.

p. 103).

The soul, the shadow, the double of a god, was in no way essentially different from the soul, shadow, or double of a man; his body, indeed, was moulded out of a more rarefied substance, and generally invisible, but endowed with the same qualities, and subject to the same imperfections as ours.

The gods, therefore, on the whole, were more ethereal, stronger, more powerful, better fitted to command, to enjoy, and to suffer than ordinary men, but they were still men.

They had bones,[**] muscles, flesh, blood; they were hungry and ate, they were thirsty and drank; our passions, griefs, joys, infirmities, were also theirs.

The _sa_, a mysterious fluid, circulated throughout their members, and carried with it health, vigour, and life.

** For example, the text of the _Destruction of Men_, and other documents, teach us that the flesh of the aged sun had become gold, and his bones silver.

The blood of Râ is mentioned in the _Book of the Dead_, as well as the blood of Isis and of other divinities.

They were not all equally charged with it; some had more, others less, their energy being in proportion to the amount which they contained.

The better supplied willingly gave of their superfluity to those who lacked it, and all could readily transmit it to mankind, this transfusion being easily accomplished in the temples.

The king, or any ordinary man who wished to be thus impregnated, presented himself before the statue of the god, and squatted at its feet with his back towards it.

The statue then placed its right hand upon the nape of his neck, and by making passes, caused the fluid to flow from it, and to accumulate in him as in a receiver.

This rite was of temporary efficacy only, and required frequent renewal in order that its benefit might be maintained.

[Illustration: 150. jpg THE KING AFTER HIS CORONATION RECEIVING THE IMPOSITION OF THE SA.

1] 1 Drawn by Boudier from a photograph by M. Gay et, taken in 1889, of a scene in the hypostyle hall at Lûxor.

This illustration shows the relative positions of prince and god.

Anion, after having placed the pschent upon the head of the Pharaoh Amenôthes III.

, who kneels before him, proceeds to _impose the sa_.

By using or transmitting it the gods themselves exhausted their _sa_ of life; and the less vigorous replenished themselves from the stronger, while the latter went to draw fresh fulness from a mysterious pond in the northern sky, called the "pond of the Sa."

[*] Divine bodies, continually recruited by the influx of this magic fluid, preserved their vigour far beyond the term allotted to the bodies of men and beasts.

Age, instead of quickly destroying them, hardened and transformed them into precious metals.

Their bones were changed to silver, their flesh to gold; their hair, piled up and painted blue, after the manner of great chiefs, was turned into lapis-lazuli.

[**] * It is thus that in the _Tale of the Daughter of the Prince of Bakhtan_ we find that one of the statues of the Theban Konsû supplies itself with _sa_ from another statue representing one of the most powerful forms of the god.

The _pond of Sa_, whither the gods go to draw the magic fluid, is mentioned in the Pyramid texts.

** Cf.

the text of the _Destruction of Men_ (Il.

1, 2) referred to above, where age produces these transformations in the body of the sun.

This changing of the bodies of the gods into gold, silver, and precious stones, explains why the alchemists, who were disciples of the Egyptians, often compared the transmutation of metals to the metamorphosis of a genius or of a divinity: they thought by their art to hasten at will that which was the slow work of nature.

This transformation of each into an animated statue did not altogether do away with the ravages of time.

Decrepitude was no less irremediable with them than with men, although it came to them more slowly; when the sun had grown old "his mouth trembled, his drivelling ran down to earth, his spittle dropped upon the ground."

None of the feudal gods had escaped this destiny; for them as for mankind the day came when they must leave the city and go forth to the tomb.

[*] * The idea of the inevitable death of the gods is expressed in other places as well as in a passage of the eighth chapter of the Booh of the Dead (Naville's edition), which has not to my knowledge hitherto been noticed: "I am that Osiris in the West, and Osiris knoweth his day in which he shall be no more;" that is to say, the day of his death when he will cease to exist.

All the gods, Atûmû, Horus, Râ, Thot, Phtah, Khnûmû, are represented under the forms of mummies, and this implies that they are dead.

Moreover, their tombs were pointed out in several places in Egypt.

The ancients long refused to believe that death was natural and inevitable.

They thought that life, once began, might go on indefinitely: if no accident stopped it short, why should it cease of itself?

And so men did not die in Egypt; they were assassinated.

The murderer often belonged to this world, and was easily recognized as another man, an animal, some inanimate object such as a stone loosened from the hillside, a tree which fell upon the passer-by and crushed him.

But often too the murderer was of the unseen world, and so was hidden, his presence being betrayed in his malignant attacks only.

He was a god, an evil spirit, a disembodied soul who slily insinuated itself into the living man, or fell upon him with irresistible violence--illness being a struggle between the one possessed and the power which possessed him.

As soon as the former succumbed he was carried away from his own people, and his place knew him no more.

But had all ended for him with the moment in which he had ceased to breathe?

As to the body, no one was ignorant of its natural fate.

It quickly fell to decay, and a few years sufficed to reduce it to a skeleton.

And as for the skeleton, in the lapse of centuries that too was disintegrated and became a mere train of dust, to be blown away by the first breath of wind.

The soul might have a longer career and fuller fortunes, but these were believed to be dependent upon those of the body, and commensurate with them.

Every advance made in the process of decomposition robbed the soul of some part of itself; its consciousness gradually faded until nothing was left but a vague and hollow form that vanished altogether when the corpse had entirely disappeared.

Erom an early date the Egyptians had endeavoured to arrest this gradual destruction of the human organism, and their first effort to this end naturally was directed towards the preservation of the body, since without it the existence of the soul could not be ensured.

It was imperative that during that last sleep, which for them was fraught with such terrors, the flesh should neither become decomposed nor turn to dust, that it should be free from offensive odour and secure from predatory worms.

They set to work, therefore, to discover how to preserve it.

The oldest burials which have as yet been found prove that these early inhabitants were successful in securing the permanence of the body for a few decades only.

When one of them died, his son, or his nearest relative, carefully washed the corpse in water impregnated with an astringent or aromatic substance, such as natron or some solution of fragrant gums, and then fumigated it with burning herbs and perfumes which were destined to overpower, at least temporarily, the odour of death.

[*] * This is to be gathered from the various Pyramid texts relating to the purification by water and to fumigation: the pains taken to secure material cleanliness, described in these formulas, were primarily directed towards the preservation of the bodies subjected to these processes, and further to the perfecting of the souls to which these bodies had been united.