ms, where the regularity of external life is brought more prominently before the view than in other countries, the Egyptians at an early per

r removed from primitive forms of worship. They indicate a system already developed in the circle of the priests. We can only attempt from the fragments of that system

ns, and the formation of their religious ideas. So far as we can tell, these developed independently at the same time in the upper and lower country. In both districts

the god of Memphis was known as Heph?stus: they tell us he was represented in the temple by a dwarf-like image; and that similar images of the children of Ptah stood in a part of the temple only entered by the priests.[34] The name Heph?stus, and the f

in its true form, he is the spirit of truth; as the spirit of the light in the sky, he is the lord of heaven. The inscriptions also say that Ptah "moves the egg of the sun and the moon;" he is called "the weaver of the beginnings," the "god who rolls his egg in the sky." C

and on monuments and records we find the god Ptah with a beetle on his shoulders, in the place of a human head. As the god of the beginning he appears on monuments in the shape of a child or dwarf; and again, as the unchangeable god, he is wrapped in the casings of a mummy, with the symbols of dominion, the wh

teenth dynasty, he is called "the only unbegotten begetter in the heaven and on the earth," "the god who made himself to be god, who exists by himself, the double being, the bege

nd when he tells us that according to Egyptian story, Apopis made war against the god of the sky,[38] his statements are confirmed by the monuments. According to the inscriptions Ra is "revealed in the abyss of the sky," he is throned "in the orb of the sun," "he moves his egg." "A Supplication to Ra"-such are the words of a prayer-"who each day by himself brings himself to a new birth. Ra has created all that is in the abysses of the sky."[39] In the tombs of the Ramesids, at Thebes, the course of the sun is represented by the hour of the day and night. On the form of the blue outstretched goddess of the sky appears the boat of the sun, for the Egyptians conceived the sun as navigating the air in a skiff, as they navigated the Nile; and in the boat is Ra, a child with finger in mouth at the first hour of the morning. As the day goes on the child increases in size, and at every hour the spirits who lead the

found on the monuments with the head of a hawk in the place of the human head, or as a hawk carrying the sun's orb. All the entrances of the temple and the pylons display the symbolical form of the deity,

y the deity of beginning, the first originator of creation. Ra again was

worship Hermopolis was known to the Egyptians as Pe-sesennu, i. e. "the city of reverence." These children of Ptah seem to have been spirits of the elements. In an inscription at Edfu we find, "The eight gods, the very great, who are from the beginning, created before the gods, the children of Ptah, arising th

out all Egypt.[42] Jamblichus and Proclus tell us that the goddess of Sais, the Neith of the Egyptians, was the mother of the sun-god; the inscriptions call Neith "the cow which bore the sun," "ancient mother of the sun," "mother of the gods." Hence we may assume that Neith was associated with Ptah, whose green colour she shares on the monuments; and that the creative power of nature was personified in her

planted with trees. The portico is ten fathoms high, and adorned with statues six cubits in height, and well worth description. On the external walls pictures are everywhere engraved, and the temple in which the statue of the goddess stands is also surrounded by very lofty trees. At the festival of the goddess the Egyptians from all the land go down in boats to Bubastis: in every boat is a number of men and women; some of the men blow the flute; some of the women have castanets, and strike them; the rest sing

ughter of Ra. Ra was invoked to come to the help of his daughter, the holy she-cat, who was panic-stricken by the snake which approached heaven in order to tread upon the path of the sun-god, and to defile the limbs of the holy she-cat.[47] In the sketches in the "Book of the Dead" we find a she-cat, with the right forefoot upon the head of a serpent, and in the left a broad knife, with which she is cutting o

ng or sitting on a throne; on his royal head-dress are two upright feathers, which to the Egyptians were the symbol of dominion over the upper and under world, and in his hand are the sceptre and the symbol of life. His colour is blue. By his side stands the goddess Mut; the "mother," the "lady of darkness," as the inscriptions[51] style her. She wears on her head the vulture, or the crown of Upper Egypt. She is also found on inscription

ers of Ammon, or in the place of them the two royal serpents round his head-dress; he also is lord of both kingdoms. Like Ptah, he is "the father of beginnings, who begot himself," "the father of the gods;" like him also he is formed with the beetle in the place of the human head; as the creative god he is the creator of his name, i. e. of his properties; he is the prim?val night, the darkness of the beginning, before light existed. To him also be

n. In the eyes of the inhabitants of Upper Egypt Chnum was, according to the account of Plutarch, an uncreated eternal spirit.[55] We must therefore regard him as a peculiar form of the life-giving god. Chnum was often united with Ammon, inasmuch as the latter assumes the attributes of Chnum, the ram's horns or even head.[56] As the worship of Ammon passed beyond Egypt up the

e may conclude that she was the Egyptian goddess of love, of the enchaining passion; but though we find in her form hints of a more individual and lively fancy, the natural power of maternity in general is by far the most prominent conception. She is represented with the horns of a cow-her sacred animal-on her head, and between them the moon's disk; or entirely as a cow. In t

ot months, the sun blazed with a devouring and scorching heat, the flowers withered; and the powers of nature failed in the winter. Thus in the life of nature there was a strife between malignant and beneficent powers, a strife in which nevertheless the beneficent powers always gained the upper hand. Out of night arose a new day; out of the death of nature in winter blossomed forth new increase, fruitfulness, and life. Through this conception of a strife raging between the healing an

y over Egypt; but Typhon conspired against him with seventy-two associates; they inclosed Osiris in a chest and threw it into the Nile, and the stream carried it down to the sea. When Isis heard of it, she put on mourning, and sought with lamentation the body of Osiris. At last she found the chest in the neighbourhood of Byblus, where t

us. These then are the younger gods; the evidence of the monuments shows that they were connected by race with each other, but not akin to the three gods who ruled before them. And as we also find that the five supplementary days added in the Egyptian year to the original number of 360 (p. 29) were dedicated to these

"the king of life," "the regulator of eternity." The inscription on the lid of a coffin runs thus-"Ra gave thee the richly streaming light which gleams in thy eyes. Shu gave thee the pleasant air which in thy lifetime was inhaled in thy nostrils. Seb gave thee all fruits whereon thou livest. Osiris gave t

ought an offering to the greatest goddess (Isis). Amid prayers the bull was flayed, the thighs and other parts cut out, and a part of the belly filled with bread, honey, and incense; these were drenched plentifully with oil, and set on fire, and so long as the sacrifice burned the people lamented. When the lamentation ended, the remainder of the sacrifice was eaten.[72] Plutarch says that with Osiris the Egyptians lamented the receding of the Nile, the ceasing of the cool north wind, the death of vegetation, and decrease in the length of the day. On the 17th Athyr, the day on which Typhon slew Osiris (on this day the sun passes through the Scorpion), the priests instituted rites of lamentation, and, among other things, as a sign of the sorrow of Isis, they exhibited for four days a gilded cow, covered with a black veil of byssus-for the cow was the Egyptian symbol of this goddess. On the 19th Athyr, in the night, they went down to the sea, and the priests brought out the chest, and the congregation cried, "Osiris is found!"[73] Moreover, according to Plutarch, the holy rites represented the burial of Osiris: in these the wood was cut for the chest, the linen torn for cerements, an

mal his symbol on the monuments. In poisonous serpents also the Egyptians saw this destructive deity, and they brought the crocodile and hippopotamus into association with him. The third of the five additional days of the year (p. 29), which belonged to Set, was to the Egyptians an unlucky day.[79] On a papyrus he is called "the almighty destro

the "pillar of the world." In the temple at Phil? we see him pouring libations before the bier of Osiris; on other monuments he guides the sun's bark through the hours of the day.[83] At Hermopolis, as Plutarch tells us, a hippopotamus was to be seen, on which a hawk-the sacred bird of Horus, in which form the god is often represented-fought with a serpent; and, according to the belief of the Egyptians, Typhon escaped from Horus in the shape of a crocodile.[84] The monuments represent Horus on the sun-boat in the act of stabbing a serpent with a human head,[85] i. e., Apopis, the serpent Apep; or standing on crocodiles with serpents in his hands; or as a winged sun's disk contending with a hippopotamus. In an invocation of Horus, belonging to the fourth century B.C., we find the following: "Come to me quickly on this day to guide the holy bar

omes and consumes moisture; Osiris was health, Typhon disease; Osiris was the orderly, unchanging; Typhon the passionate, irrational, and giant-like; disturbances, blight, and tempest.[87] It is incorrect, Plutarch observes, in conclusion, to call water, the sun, or the earth and sky Osiris and Isis; and not less so to cal

ried Osiris: but the sacred rites were an imitation of the sufferings of Isis, and the incidents which occurred when the body was deposited in the tomb. The progressive decay of productive power towards the north during the hot days, and the winter, which was indicated in the myth by the carrying of the corpse of Osiris to the sea, and the custom of carrying the chest to the coast (p. 57), is part of the Egyptian conception; that Isis discovers the body at Byblus on the Phenician coast is probably an invention of the Gre

scriptions,) though they are also retained as separate deities. Thus also Isis is identified with Neith of Sais, with Mut of Thebes, with Hathor, with Bast,[89] the goddess of Bubastis. Horus, again, is identified with Chem and Ra, though at the same time his personality as the youthful, vigorous spirit of light is strongly marked. Plutarch is certainly right in his remark that the Egyptians

ade more visible in the shape of the beast than in the shape of man. We must assume that the predominance of a distinct mark or characteristic property in the races of animals, that their simple, uniformly instinctive life created this conception in the mind of the Egyptians, to whom a fixed and unalterable course of action, an unchanging and typical nature, was the ideal. The force of nature, the regular recurrence of certain phenomena, coalesc

eed the hawks they cut up pieces of flesh, and call loudly to the birds till they come and take their food. The cats they coax by giving them bread and milk, or chopped fish from the Nile, and thus provide them with suitable food. These duties they do not scruple to perform before the whole people; on the contrary, they are proud of them as of the highest offices which they can attain to in the service of the gods. With special symbols to distinguish them, they proceed through town and country, and as it is known from the symbols what animal it is whose servants are approaching, all who meet them bow the knee and pay homage. If one of the animals dies, it is wrapped in a costly covering, and, amid loud lamentations and beating of the breast, it is carried away to embalment. Steeped in oil of cedar, or any other kind remarkable for its scent and powers of preservation, the corpse is then buried in the holy sepulchres. Anyone who intentionally kills a sacred animal is punish

iests recognized Apis in a black bull, which had a triangular white spot on the forehead, a fleshy growth under the tongue in the form of the sacred beetle of Ptah, white spots on his back in the shape of an eagle, and bi-coloured hairs in the tail.[96] When an Apis was found, he was, says Diodorus, in the first place brought for forty successive days to the meadow of the "city of the Nile" (Nilopolis), where women were shown to him, who were afterwards excluded from the sight of the Apis. Then he was conveyed on a boat in a golden shrine like a god to the temple of Ptah, at Memphis. There he was bathed in the holy place, and anointed, and the most precious frankincense was constantly

following this path of sphinxes that the discoverers were recently enabled to find the ruins of the temple of Serapis, i. e. the temple of the grave of Osiris-Apis, and the sepulchral chambers of the Apis-bulls hewn in the rocks around it. The oldest of the tombs hitherto opened belongs, according to the inscriptions, to an Apis buried in the time of Amenophis III. (1524-1488 B.C.). Above ground rises a massive structure, truncated at the top, and decorated with reliefs. This is the mortuary chapel. A sloping passage, the entrance to which lies before this structure, leads beneath the earth to a sepulchral chamber, where stands a sarcophagus with the mummy of the Apis. The relief on the structure above exhibits the king bringing a drink-offering to the Apis. Beside the picture of the bull we read, "The living Osiris, the lord of the sky: he is Tum (p. 51): his feathers are upon him: he gives life for evermore." On the sarcophagus of an Apis buried in a similar tomb in the reign of Horus (1455-1443 B.C.), we read:-"Apis-Osiris, the great deity who dwells in Amenti, the ever-living lord." King Ramses II. (1388-1322 B.C.), in the second half of his reign, caused a broad gallery to be excavated under the rock, on both sides of which chambers of about twenty feet high were subsequently cut out as occasion required; in these were placed the remains of the dead Apis-bulls in sarcophagi of basalt or granite. When the gallery of Ramses was no lon

the Egyptians a guarantee for the continuance of his grace, and the perpetuation of their life in this worl

is connected the story of the ph?nix. Herodotus tells us that he was informed by the inhabitants of Heliopolis that a bird, which, if it resembled the pictures, was gold-coloured and red, and like an eagle in shape and size, came from Arabia to their city once in every 500 years, and buried the corpse of his father in myrrh in the sanctuary of the sun-god.[104] From later accounts we learn that the ph?nix, on reaching the age of 500 years, prepared a funeral pile of spices, and burned himself upon it; then he recreated himself, and carried the remains of his old body to Heliopolis.[105] Tacitus says: "In the consulship of Paulus Fabius and Lucius Vitellius (i. e. in the year 34 A.D.) after a lapse of centuries, the ph?nix appeared in Egypt. This bird, which was sacred to the sun, returned after an interval of 500 years, according to the most common accounts; according to others after an interval of 1461 years. The first ph?nix appeared in the reign of Sesostris; the second under Amasis; the third in the time of the third Ptolemy; and as there was only a lapse of 2

ated upon Set the mischief he purposed against Osiris."[111] Selected crocodiles-and even the crocodile was worshipped, at least in some regions, as in the Thebais and around the lake of Moeris-were to be found at Thebes and Arsinoe. "For both these animals," says Herodotus "(and they are so tame that they allow themselves to be touched), the priests put ornaments of glass and gold in their ears, and bracelets on their fore-feet, and give them the best of food both of meal and from the sacrifices, and attend to them with the utmost care. When they die they are embalmed, and buried in the sacred tombs."[112] Strabo, who travelled through Egypt more than four hundred years later than Herodotus, narrates that a sacred crocodile was kept in the lake of Moeris, which was tame to the priests. He was fed with the bread, wine, and flesh brought to him by visitors. "Our host," St

rmopolis.[114] Mummies of cats have been discovered at Thebes and Sheikhassan; mummies of bulls, cows, jackals, dogs, and vulture

ecessity be regarded as a very rude superstition or degraded fetichism, hardly compatible with the general level of civilisation and culture in the country, had not the Egyptians united a deeper feeling with their worship of animals. In the living and yet typical forms of beasts as contrasted w

cle of personality even when life and soul have left it; it must be protected from decay and ruin and any external disturbance by nature or man. Beyond the reach of beasts of prey, safe from the enemy and the destroyer, the corpses must rest uncorrupted and uninjured in cool, secure, inaccessible, unpolluted, indestructible graves. No nation has devoted so much care and labour to the preservation of the corpses, whether of men or of sacred animals, as the Egyptians. It was almost the first duty of the living to attend to the dead. And with

d person, his possessions, his office, his occupation, and the most important results of his life exhibited in relief and pictures. It served as a chapel in which the offerings to the dead were made. In the lower or hinder chamber lay the corpse. The corpses of the poorer inhabitants found their resting-place in the comm

present his face, and adorned with inscriptions and pictures. On the breast was generally depicted the beetle of Ptah, or an open eye, the symbol of Osiris. This receptacle was then placed in two or more coffins, each inclosing the other, which

e priests; last of all followed the sarcophagus on a boat-for the soul of the dead passed like the sun-god on a boat to the under world. This boat was on rollers, and drawn by oxen. The procession was closed by the mourners of the family and the friends. When the bull had been sacrificed and frankincense burned to the gods, libations were poured in honour of the dead. He was praised, as Diodorus assures us, not because he was born of a noble race, but because he had been carefully educated and well instructed, because he had

stant home in order to be alone. Thus, by descending from earth and dying, he had received the sovereignty of the lower world, and left to the youthful Ra, his son Horus, the empire of this world. As the sun goes down every evening, and every morning awakes to new life, as the vegetation dies away in the heat of summer and in autumn, and again in the spring attains to new life, so to the minds of the Egyptians death, in all its shapes, was only death in appeara

he monuments in the shape of a mummy. His colour was in this case black, like his bull in Memphis; his clothing was white;[119] his symbol, a wide-open eye, signifying the

regarded by the Egyptians as eternal and indestructible, and, according to the doctrine of the priests, Osiris ruled over the dead, as Hades and Pluto among the Greeks. In reality, he was free and untouched by everything subject to change and death. When men are delivered from the body, and from pa

nts show that rubrics and prayers of the same purport, but differently drawn up, proceeding from different times, and with different commentaries, are collected together in order to provide the dead person with everything he can want in the next world. All the prayers and invocations for that world are also given, in order that the most effective may be at hand, just as at the end of thes

ith a jackal's head, the leader and keeper of the dead, and Horus, with a hawk's head, are busied with a balance; in one scale is the heart of the deceased, in the other an ostrich-feather, the symbol of truth and justice. The god with the head of an ibis, the scribe of truth, takes down the result of the weighing. As Osiris, according to the legend, was once justified by Horus and Thoth, so is every human soul justified by those deities. The deceased assures them that he has committed no sins; he enumerates forty-two errors into

ever spirits and monsters might meet him in the way and attempt to hold him back; he must know the charm which will at last unlock for him the fields of Ra. He must know and recognise the gods to whom he returns; the nature from which he has sprung, a

upon him the water of life. His prayer opened for him the gates of the dwellings in the world to come; he was enabled to strike with his lance the evil spirits and monsters, the crocodiles, snakes, tortoises, the two vipers, and the serpent Apep, to keep a

ields on the plain of Aanro (Paradise), where corn and wheat will be given to him; he will live happily as he lived upon earth." On the day of justification, the dead has to say: "I am one of the initiated; thy name I know; I know the names of thy forty-two gods, who dwell with thee in the hall of twofold justice." Then comes the answer: "Enter! thou knowest us."[126] On a sarcophagus of the time of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen the deceased utters the following words, which are found detailed at greater length and commented upon in the seventeenth chapter of the Book of the Dead. "I am Tum (p. 51), a being, which I alone am. I am Ra in his first sovereignty. I am the great self-existing god, the creator of his name, the ruler of all gods, whom none of the gods restrains. I was yesterday; I know the morrow. When I spoke a battle-field was prepared for the gods. I know the n

t, and was conscious of its own true nature, was not only received, after the completion of the proper cycle, into the bosom of the godhead, and a

ption that the soul of the justified obtained the power to assume every shape. But a purification of the unclean and ignorant soul by passing through the bodies of all kinds of animals could never have been assumed by the Egyptians, since the sacred races were pre-eminent manifestations, and the selected animals continuous incarnations, of the gods. If a pilgrimage through the bodies of beasts w

TNO

erod.

"Revue archéolo

51, 52; "De Pyth.

rob. "Sa

e Isid.

Gesellschaft," after a sepulchral

ümichen, "Tempelinschriften." 1, 24. Lepsiu

Elemente;" Dümichen, in "Zeitsch.

erod.

. "De Isi

annot be brought into agreement in points of language. The inscription on the throne of Neith at Sais, given by Plutarch ("De Isid." c. 9), "I am all that has been, is, will be, and no mortal has lifted my robe," does not in the first part of it contradict certain applications of the oldest text of the

d. 2, 60,

rapoll.

r. d. d. morgenland. G

"Revue archéolo

sid." c. 63; cf. Ebe

. "De Isi

n, "?gypte

tschrift für ?g. Spr

Texte," s. 42, 48, 52;

. "De Isi

Ibid.

son, 4, 237

mie," 1863; Minutoli, "Reise zum Te

en," 1, 470; Lepsiu

Diod.

"De Isid.

2, 144; Diod

by Lepsius of the game at dice between Herm

meaning of Seb, I should be inclined to

in "Zeitschrift für ?g. S

n, "Ancient E

terkreis," s. 35;

Diod.

. "De Isi

b. 12-20; St

; Plut. loc. cit.

wn into a king Busiris who used to slay strangers, I cannot explain. Eratosthenes in Strabo, p. 802, says: "There never was a king Busiris; the story may have been invented owing to the inhospita

d. 2, 40,

"De Isid.

loc. cit.

seven days' lamentation for Osiris, beginning on the 24th Choiak, and give full di

rod. 2,

e Isid.

Diod.

rch, loc.

s, "G?tterk

loc. cit. c

. loc. ci

on Plut. "De

t. loc.

son, loc. c

itschr. d. d. m. Gesell

id." c. 33, 39, 4

. "De Isi

; Plut. "De Isid

. loc. ci

, "Aelteste

. "Gall."

erod.

od. 1,

. "De Isi

m." 1, 10) speaks of twenty-nine marks

od. 1,

lut. "De Iside." c.

l'Acad. des Inscrip

hén-Fran?ais," Oct. 1856, p. 75;

ea;" Lepsius, "Aelt

"Aelteste Texte

"Zeitschr. d. d.

Herod.

at." 10, 2; cf. 13,

Annal."

Nat. Ani

ist. Nat

bid. 1,

f.; Lepsius, "Aelteste Texte," s. 51; De Rougé,

"Zeitschr. d. d

Herod.

trabo,

erod. 2

, "Egypt," 5. 1

od. 1, 5

Wilkinson, "Egypt

Diod.

"De Iside,

2, 42; Diod.

Ibid.

ide," c. 54,

u Livre des Morts;" "Zeitsch. für ?g.

"Revue archéolog

s, "Aelteste

, "Aelteste T

us, loc. ci

, "Aelteste T

Herod.