98.] also has an important reference to the head of Osiris. It is ent.i.tled "The Chapter of not letting the head of a man be cut off from him in the underworld," and must be of considerable antiquity. In it the deceased says: "I am the Great One, the son of the Great One; I am Fire, and the son of the Fire, to whom was given his head after it had been cut off. The head of Osiris was not taken away from him, let not the head of the deceased be taken away from him. I have knit myself together (_or_ reconst.i.tuted myself); I have made myself whole and complete; I have renewed my youth; I am Osiris, the lord of eternity."
From the above it would seem that, according to one version of the Osiris story, the head of Osiris was not only cut off, but that it was pa.s.sed through the fire also; and if this version be very ancient, as it well may be and probably is, it takes us back to prehistoric times in Egypt when the bodies of the dead were mutilated and burned. Prof.
Wiedemann thinks [Footnote: See J. de Morgan, _Ethnographie Prehistorique_, p. 210.] that the mutilation and breaking of the bodies of the dead were the results of the belief that in order to make the KA, or "double," leave this earth, the body to which it belonged must be broken, and he instances the fact that objects of every kind were broken at the time when they were placed in the tombs. He traces also a transient custom in the prehistoric graves of Egypt where the methods of burying the body whole and broken into pieces seem to be mingled, for though in some of them the body has been broken into pieces, it is evident that successful attempts have been made to reconst.i.tute it by laying the pieces as far as possible in their proper places. And it may be this custom which is referred to in various places in the Book of the Dead, when the deceased declares that he has collected his limbs "and made his body whole again," and already in the Vth dynasty King Teta is thus addressed--"Rise up, O thou Teta! Thou hast received thy head, thou hast knitted together thy bones, [Footnote: _Recueil de Travaux_, tom.
v. p. 40 (I. 287).] thou hast collected thy members."
The history of Osiris, the G.o.d of the resurrection, has now been traced from the earliest times to the end of the period of the rule of the priests of Amen (about B.C. 900), by which time Amen-R[=a] had been thrust in among the G.o.ds of the underworld, and prayers were made, in some cases, to him instead of to Osiris. From this time onwards Amen maintained this exalted position, and in the Ptolemaic period, in an address to the deceased Ker[=a]sher we read. "Thy face shineth before R[=a], thy soul liveth before Amen, and thy body is renewed before Osiris." And again it is said, "Amen is nigh unto thee to make thee to live again.... Amen cometh to thee having the breath of life, and he causeth thee to draw thy breath within thy funeral house." But in spite of this, Osiris kept and held the highest place in the minds of the Egyptians, from first to last, as the G.o.d-man, the being who was both divine and human; and no foreign invasion, and no religious or political disturbances, and no influence which any outside peoples could bring to bear upon them, succeeded in making them regard the G.o.d as anything less than the cause and symbol and type of the resurrection, and of the life everlasting. For about five thousand years men were mummified in imitation of the mummied form of Osiris; and they went to their graves believing that their bodies would vanquish the powers of death, and the grave, and decay, because Osiris had vanquished them; and they had certain hope of the resurrection in an immortal, eternal, and spiritual body, because Osiris had risen in a transformed spiritual body, and had ascended into heaven, where he had become the king and the judge of the dead, and had attained unto everlasting life therein.
The chief reason for the persistence of the worship of Osiris in Egypt was, probably, the fact that it promised both resurrection and eternal life to its followers. Even after the Egyptians had embraced Christianity they continued to mummify their dead, and for long after they continued to mingle the attributes of their G.o.d and the "G.o.ds" with those of G.o.d Almighty and Christ. The Egyptians of their own will never got away from the belief that the body must be mummified if eternal life was to be a.s.sured to the dead, but the Christians, though preaching the same doctrine of the resurrection as the Egyptians, went a step further, and insisted that there was no need to mummify the dead at all. St.
Anthony the Great besought his followers not to embalm his body and keep it in a house, but to bury it and to tell no man where it had been buried, lest those who loved him should come and draw it forth, and mummify it as they were wont to do to the bodies of those whom they regarded as saints. "For long past," he said, "I have entreated the bishops and preachers to exhort the people not to continue to observe this useless custom"; and concerning his own body, he said, "At the resurrection of the dead I shall receive it from the Saviour incorruptible." [Footnote: See Rosweyde, _Vitae Patrum_, p. 59; _Life of St. Anthony_, by Atha.n.u.sius (Migne), _Patrologiae_, Scr. Graec, tom. 26, col. 972.] The spread of this idea gave the art of mummifying its death-blow, and though from innate conservatism, and the love of having the actual bodies of their beloved dead near them, the Egyptians continued for a time to preserve their dead as before, yet little by little the reasons for mummifying were forgotten, the knowledge of the art died out, the funeral ceremonies were curtailed, the prayers became a dead letter, and the custom of making mummies became obsolete. With the death of the art died also the belief in and the worship of Osiris, who from being the G.o.d of the dead became a dead G.o.d, and to the Christians of Egypt, at least, his place was filled by Christ, "the firstfruits of them that slept," Whose resurrection and power to grant eternal life were at that time being preached throughout most of the known world. In Osiris the Christian Egyptians found the prototype of Christ, and in the pictures and statues of Isis suckling her son Horus, they perceived the prototypes of the Virgin Mary and her Child. Never did Christianity find elsewhere in the world a people whose minds were so thoroughly well prepared to receive its doctrines as the Egyptians.
This chapter may be fittingly ended by a few extracts from, the _Songs of Isis and Nephthys_, which were sung in the Temple of Amen-R[=a] at Thebes by two priestesses who personified the two G.o.ddesses. [Footnote 1: See my _Hieratic Papyrus of Nesi-Amsu (Archaeologia, vol. III_)]
"Hail, thou lord of the underworld, thou Bull of those who are therein, thou Image of R[=a]-Harmachis, thou Babe of beautiful appearance, come thou to us in peace. Thou didst repel thy disasters, thou didst drive away evil hap; Lord, come to us in peace. O Un-nefer, lord of food, thou chief, thou who art of terrible majesty, thou G.o.d, president of the G.o.ds, when thou dost inundate the land [all] things are engendered. Thou art gentler than the G.o.ds. The emanations of thy body make the dead and the living to live, O thou lord of food, thou prince of green herbs, thou mighty lord, thou staff of life, thou giver of offerings to the G.o.ds, and of sepulchral meals to the blessed dead. Thy soul flieth after R[=a], thou shinest at dawn, thou settest at twilight, thou risest every day; thou shalt rise on the left hand of Atmu for ever and ever. Thou art the glorious one, the vicar of R[=a]; the company of the G.o.ds cometh to thee invoking thy face, the flame whereof reacheth unto thine enemies. We rejoice when thou gatherest together thy bones, and when thou hast made whole thy body daily. Anubis cometh to thee, and the two sisters (_i.e._, Isis and Nephthys) come to thee. They have obtained beautiful things for thee, and they gather together thy limbs for thee, and they seek to put together the mutilated members of thy body. Wipe thou the impurities which are on them upon our hair and come thou to us having no recollection, of that which hath caused thee sorrow. Come thou in thy attribute of "Prince of the earth," lay aside thy trepidation and be at peace with us, O Lord. Thou shalt be proclaimed heir of the world, and the One G.o.d, and, the fulfiller of the designs of the G.o.ds. All the G.o.ds invoke thee, come therefore to thy temple and be not afraid.
O R[=a] (_i.e._, Osiris), thou art beloved of Isis and Nephthys; rest thou in thy habitation forever."
CHAPTER III.
THE "G.o.dS" OF THE EGYPTIANS.
Throughout this book we have had to refer frequently to the "G.o.ds" of Egypt; it is now time to explain who and what they were. We have already shown how much the monotheistic side of the Egyptian religion resembles that of modern Christian nations, and it will have come as a surprise to some that a people, possessing such exalted ideas of G.o.d as the Egyptians, could ever have become the byword they did through their alleged worship of a mult.i.tude of "G.o.ds" in various forms. It is quite true that the Egyptians paid honour to a number of G.o.ds, a number so large that the list of their mere names would fill a volume, but it is equally true that the educated cla.s.ses in Egypt at all times never placed the "G.o.ds" on the same high level as G.o.d, and they never imagined that their views on this point could be mistaken. In prehistoric times every little village or town, every district and province, and every great city, had its own particular G.o.d; we may go a step farther, and say that every family of any wealth and position had its own G.o.d. The wealthy family selected some one to attend to its G.o.d, and to minister unto his wants, and the poor family contributed, according to its means, towards a common fund for providing a dwelling-house for the G.o.d, and for vestments, etc. But the G.o.d was an integral part of the family, whether rich or poor, and its destiny was practically locked up with that of the family. The overthrow of the family included the overthrow of the G.o.d, and seasons of prosperity resulted in abundant offerings, new vestments; perhaps a new shrine, and the like. The G.o.d of the village, although he was a more important being, might be led into captivity along with the people of the village, but the victory of his followers in a raid or fight caused the honours paid to him to be magnified and enhanced his renown.
The G.o.ds of provinces or of great cities were, of course, greater than those of villages and private families, and in the large houses dedicated to them, _i.e._, temples, a considerable number of them, represented by statues, would be found. Sometimes the attributes of one G.o.d would be ascribed to another, sometimes two or more G.o.ds would be "fused" or united and form one, sometimes G.o.ds were imported from remote villages and towns and even from foreign countries, and occasionally a community or town would repudiate its G.o.d or G.o.ds, and adopt a brand new set from some neighbouring district Thus the number of the G.o.ds was always changing, and the relative position of individual G.o.ds was always changing; an obscure and almost unknown, local G.o.d to-day might through a victory in war become the chief G.o.d of a city, and on the other hand, a G.o.d worshipped with abundant offerings and great ceremony one month might sink into insignificance and become to all intents and purposes a dead G.o.d the next. But besides family and village G.o.ds there were national G.o.ds, and G.o.ds of rivers and mountains, and G.o.ds of earth and sky, all of which taken together made a formidable number of "divine"
beings whose good-will had to be secured, and whose ill-will must be appeased. Besides these, a number of animals as being sacred to the G.o.ds were also considered to be "divine," and fear as well as love made the Egyptians add to their numerous cla.s.ses of G.o.ds.
The G.o.ds of Egypt whose names are known to us do not represent all those that have been conceived by the Egyptian imagination, for with them as with much else, the law of the survival of the fittest holds good. Of the G.o.ds of the prehistoric man we know nothing, but it is more than probable that some of the G.o.ds who were worshipped in dynastic times represent, in a modified form, the deities of the savage, or semi-savage, Egyptian that held their influence on his mind the longest.
A typical example of such a G.o.d will suffice, namely Thoth, whose original emblem was the dog-headed ape. In very early times great respect was paid to this animal on account of his sagacity, intelligence, and cunning; and the simple-minded Egyptian, when he heard him chattering just before the sunrise and sunset, a.s.sumed that he was in some way holding converse or was intimately connected with the sun.
This idea clung to his mind, and we find in dynastic times, in the vignette representing the rising sun, that the apes, who are said to be the transformed openers of the portals of heaven, form a veritable company of the G.o.ds, and at the same time one of the most striking features of the scene. Thus an idea which came into being in the most remote times pa.s.sed on from generation to generation until it became crystallized in the best copies of the Book of the Dead, at a period when Egypt was at its zenith of power and glory. The peculiar species of the dog-headed ape which is represented in statues and on papyri is famous for its cunning, and it was the words which it supplied to Thoth, who in turn transmitted them to Osiris, that enabled Osiris to be "true of voice," or triumphant, over his enemies. It is probably in this capacity, _i.e._, as the friend of the dead, that the dog-headed ape appears seated upon the top of the standard of the Balance in which the heart of the deceased is being weighed against the feather symbolic of Ma[=a]t; for the commonest t.i.tles of the G.o.d are "lord of divine books,"
"lord of divine words," _i.e._, the formulae which make the deceased to be obeyed by friend and foe alike in the next world. In later times, when Thoth came to be represented by the ibis bird, his attributes were multiplied, and he became the G.o.d of letters, science, mathematics, etc.; at the creation he seems to have played a part not unlike that of "wisdom" which is so beautifully described by the writer of Proverbs (see Chap. VIII. vv. 23-31).
Whenever and wherever the Egyptians attempted to set up a system of G.o.ds they always found that the old local G.o.ds had to be taken into consideration, and a place had to be found for them in the system. This might be done by making them members of triads, or of groups of nine G.o.ds, now commonly called "enneads"; but in one form or other they had to appear. The researches made during the last few years have shown that there must have been several large schools of theological thought in Egypt, and of each of these the priests did their utmost to proclaim the superiority of their G.o.ds. In dynastic times there must have been great colleges at Heliopolis, Memphis, Abydos, and one or more places in the Delta, not to mention the smaller schools of priests which, probably existed at places on both sides of the Nile from Memphis to the south.
Of the theories and doctrines of all such schools and colleges, those of Heliopolis have survived in the completest form, and by careful examination of the funeral texts which were inscribed on the monuments of the kings of Egypt of the Vth and VIth dynasties we can say what views they held about many of the G.o.ds. At the outset we see that the great G.o.d of Heliopolis was Temu or Atmu, the setting sun, and to him the priests of that place ascribed the attributes which rightly belong to R[=a], the Sun-G.o.d of the day-time. For some reason or other they formulated the idea of a company of the G.o.ds, nine in number, which was called the "great company _(paut)_ of the G.o.ds," and at the head of this company they placed the G.o.d Temu. In Chapter XVII of the Book of the Dead [Footnote: See _Chapters of Coming Forth by Day_, p. 49.] we find the following pa.s.sage:--
"I am the G.o.d Temu in his rising; I am the only One. I came into being in Nu. I am R[=a] who rose in the beginning."
Next comes the question, "But who is this?" And the answer is: "It is R[=a] when at the beginning he rose in the city of Suten-henen (Heracleopolis Magna) crowned like a king in rising. The pillars of the G.o.d Shu were not as yet created when he was upon the staircase of him that dwelleth in Khemennu (Hermopolis Magna)." From these statements we learn that Temu and R[=a] were one and the same G.o.d, and that he was the first offspring of the G.o.d Nu, the primeval watery ma.s.s out of which all the G.o.ds came into being. The text continues: "I am the great G.o.d Nu who gave birth to himself, and who made his names to come into being and to form the company of the G.o.ds. But who is this? It is R[=a], the creator of the names of his members which came into being in the form of the G.o.ds who are in the train of R[=a]." And again: "I am he who is not driven back among the G.o.ds. But who is this? It is Tem, the dweller in his disk, or as others say, it is R[=a] in his rising in the eastern horizon of heaven." Thus we learn further that Nu was self-produced, and that the G.o.ds are simply the names of his limbs; but then R[=a] is Nu, and the G.o.ds who are in his train or following are merely personifications of the names of his own members. He who cannot be driven back among the G.o.ds is either Temu or R[=a], and so we find that Nu, Temu, and R[=a] are one and the same G.o.d. The priests of Heliopolis in setting Temu at the head of their company of the G.o.ds thus gave R[=a], and Nu also, a place of high honour; they cleverly succeeded in making their own local G.o.d chief of the company, but at the same time they provided the older G.o.ds with positions of importance. In this way worshippers of R[=a], who had regarded their G.o.d as the oldest of the G.o.ds, would have little cause to complain of the introduction of Temu into the company of the G.o.ds, and the local vanity of Heliopolis would be gratified.
But besides the nine G.o.ds who were supposed to form the "great company"
of G.o.ds of the city of Heliopolis, there was a second group of nine G.o.ds called the "little company" of the G.o.ds, and yet a third group of nine G.o.ds, which formed the least company. Now although the _paut_ or company of nine G.o.ds might be expected to contain nine always, this was not the case, and the number nine thus applied is sometimes misleading. There are several pa.s.sages extant in texts in which the G.o.ds of a _paut_ are enumerated, but the total number is sometimes ten and sometimes eleven.
This fact is easily explained when we remember that the Egyptians deified the various forms or aspects of a G.o.d, or the various phases in his life. Thus the setting sun, called Temu or Atmu, and the rising sun, called Khepera, and the mid-day sun, called R[=a], were three forms of the same G.o.d; and if any one of these three forms was included in a _paut_ or company of nine G.o.ds, the other two forms were also included by implication, even though the _paut_ then contained eleven, instead of nine G.o.ds. Similarly, the various forms of each G.o.d or G.o.ddess of the _paut_ were understood to be included in it, however large the total number of G.o.ds might become. We are not, therefore, to imagine that the three companies of the G.o.ds were limited in number to 9 x 3, or twenty-seven, even though the symbol for G.o.d be given twenty-seven times in the texts.
We have already alluded to the great number of G.o.ds who were known to the Egyptians, but it will be readily imagined that it was only those who were thought to deal with man"s destiny, here and hereafter, who obtained the worship and reverence of the people of Egypt. These were, comparatively, limited in number, and in fact may be said to consist of the members of the great company of the G.o.ds of Heliopolis, that is to say, of the G.o.ds who belonged to the cycle of Osiris. These may be briefly described as follows:--
1. TEMU or ATMU, _i.e._, the "closer" of the day, just as Ptah was the "opener" of the day. In the story of the creation he declares that he evolved himself under the form of the G.o.d Khepera, and in hymns he is said to be the "maker of the G.o.ds", "the creator of men", etc., and he usurped the position of R[=a] among the G.o.ds of Egypt. His worship must have been already very ancient at the time of the kings of the Vth dynasty, for his traditional form is that of a man at that time.
2. SHU was the firstborn son of Temu. According to one legend he sprang direct from the G.o.d, and according to another the G.o.ddess Hathor was his mother; yet a third legend makes him the son of Temu by the G.o.ddess Ius[=a]set. He it was who made his way between the G.o.ds Seb and Nut and raised up the latter to form the sky, and this belief is commemorated by the figures of this G.o.d in which he is represented as a G.o.d raising himself up from the earth with the sun"s disk on his shoulders. As a power of nature he typified the light, and, standing on the top of a staircase at Hermopolis Magua, [Footnote: See above, pp. 69 and 89.] he raised up the sky and held it up during each day.
To a.s.sist him in this work he placed a pillar at each of the cardinal points, and the "supports of Shu" are thus the props of the sky.
3. TEFNUT was the twin-sister of Shu; as a power of nature she typified moisture or some aspect of the sun"s heat, but as a G.o.d of the dead she seems to have been, in some way, connected with the supply of drink to the deceased. Her brother Shu was the right eye of Temu, and she was the left, _i.e._, Shu represented an aspect of the Sun, and Tefnut of the Moon. The G.o.ds Temu, Shu, and Tefnut thus formed a trinity, and in the story of the creation the G.o.d Temu says, after describing how Shu and Tefnut proceeded from himself, "thus from being one G.o.d I became three."
4. SEB was the son of the G.o.d Shu. He is called the "Erp[=a]," _i.e._, the "hereditary chief" of the G.o.ds, and the "father of the G.o.ds,"
these being, of course, Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. He was originally the G.o.d of the earth, but later he became a G.o.d of the dead as representing the earth wherein the deceased was laid. One legend identifies him with the goose, the bird which, in later times was sacred to him, and he is often called the "Great Cackler," in allusion to the idea that he made the primeval egg from which the world came into being.
5. NUT was the wife of Seb and the mother of Osiris, Isis, Set, and Nephthys. Originally she was the personification of the sky, and represented the feminine principle which was active at the creation of the universe. According to an old view, Seb and Nut existed in the primeval watery abyss side by side with Shu and Tefnut; and later Seb became the earth and Nut the sky. These deities were supposed to unite every evening, and to remain embraced until the morning, when the G.o.d Shu separated them, and set the G.o.ddess of the sky upon his four pillars until the evening. Nut was, naturally, regarded as the mother of the G.o.ds and of all things living, and she and her husband Seb were considered to be the givers of food, not only to the living but also to the dead. Though different views were current in Egypt as to the exact location of the heaven of the beatified dead, yet all schools of thought in all periods a.s.signed it to some region in the sky, and the abundant allusions in the texts to the heavenly bodies--that is, the sun, moon, and stars--which the deceased dwells with, prove that the final abode of the souls of the righteous was not upon earth. The G.o.ddess Nut is sometimes represented as a female along whose body the sun travels, and sometimes as a cow; the tree sacred to her was the sycamore.
6. Osiris was the son of Seb and Nut, the husband of Isis and the father of Horus. The history of this G.o.d is given elsewhere in this book so fully that it is only necessary to refer briefly to him. He was held to be a man although of divine origin; he lived and reigned as a king on this earth; he was treacherously murdered by his brother Set, and his body was cut up into fourteen pieces, which were scattered about Egypt; after his death, Isis, by the use of magical formulae supplied to her by Thoth, succeeded in raising him to life, and he begot a son called Horus; when Horus was grown up, he engaged in combat with Set, and overcame him, and thus "avenged his father"; by means of magical formulae, supplied to him by Thoth, Osiris reconst.i.tuted and revivified his body, and became the type of the resurrection and the symbol of immortality; he was also the hope, the judge, and the G.o.d of the dead, probably even in pre-dynastic times.
Osiris was in one aspect a solar deity, and originally he seems to have represented the sun after it had set; but he is also identified with the moon. In the XVIIIth dynasty, however, he is already the equal of R[=a], and later the attributes of G.o.d and of all the "G.o.ds"
were ascribed to him.
7. Isis was the wife of Osiris and mother of Horus; as a nature G.o.ddess she had a place in the boat of the sun at the creation, when she probably typified the dawn. By reason of her success in revivifying her husband"s body by means of the utterance of magical formulae, she is called the "lady of enchantments." Her wanderings in search of her husband"s body, and the sorrow which she endured in bringing forth and rearing her child in the papyrus swamps of the Delta, and the persecution which she suffered at the hands of her husband"s enemies, form the subject of many allusions in texts of all periods. She has various aspects, but the one which appealed most to the imagination of the Egyptians, was that of "divine mother"; in this character thousands of statues represent her seated and suckling her child Horus whom she holds upon her knees.
8. Set was the son of Seb and Nut, and the husband of Nephthys. At a very early period he was regarded as the brother and friend of "Horus the Elder," the Aroueris of the Greeks, and Set represented the night whilst Horus represented the day. Each of these G.o.ds performed many offices of a friendly nature for the dead, and among others they set up and held the ladder by which the deceased made his way from this earth to heaven, and helped him to ascend it. But, at a later period, the views of the Egyptians concerning Set changed, and soon after the reign of the kings called "Seti," _i.e._, those whose names were based upon that of the G.o.d, he became the personification of all evil, and of all that is horrible and terrible in nature, such as the desert in its most desolate form, the storm and the tempest, etc. Set, as a power of nature, was always waging war with Horus the Elder, _i.e._, the night did battle with the day for supremacy; both G.o.ds, however, sprang from the same source, for the heads of both are, in one scene, made to belong to one body. When Horus, the son of Isis, had grown up, he did battle with Set, who had murdered Horus"s father Osiris, and vanquished him; in many texts these two originally distinct fights are confused, and the two Horus G.o.ds also. The conquest of Set by Horus in the first conflict typified only the defeat of the night by the day, but the defeat of Set in the second seems to have been understood as the victory of life over death, and of good over evil. The symbol of Set was an animal with a head something like that of a camel, but it has not yet been satisfactorily identified; figures of the G.o.d are uncommon, for most of them were destroyed by the Egyptians when they changed their views about him.
9. NEPHTHYS was the sister of Isis and her companion in all her wanderings and troubles; like her she had a place in the boat of the Sun at creation, when she probably typified the twilight or very early night. She was, according to one legend, the mother of Anubis by Osiris, but in the texts his father is declared to be R[=a]. In funeral papyri, stelae, etc., she always accompanies Isis in her ministrations to the dead, and as she a.s.sisted Osiris and Isis to defeat the wickedness of her own husband (Set), so she helped the deceased to overcome the powers of death and the grave.
Here then we have the nine G.o.ds of the divine company of Heliopolis, but no mention is made of Horus, the son of Isis, who played such an important part in the history of his father Osiris, and nothing is said about Thoth; both G.o.ds are, however, included in the company in various pa.s.sages of the text, and it may be that their omission from it is the result of an error of the scribe. We have already given the chief details of the history of the G.o.ds Horus and Thoth, and the princ.i.p.al G.o.ds of the other companies may now be briefly named.
NU was the "father of the G.o.ds," and progenitor of the "great company of the G.o.ds"; he was the primeval watery ma.s.s out of which all things came.
PTAH was one of the most active of the three great G.o.ds who carried out the commands of Thoth, who gave expression in words to the will of the primeval, creative Power; he was self-created, and was a form of the Sun-G.o.d R[=a] as the "Opener" of the day. From certain allusions in the Book of the Dead he is known to have "opened the mouth"
[Footnote: "May the G.o.d Ptah open my mouth"; "may the G.o.d Shu open my mouth with his implement of iron wherewith he opened the mouth of the G.o.ds" (Chap. XXIII.)] of the G.o.ds, and it is in this capacity that he became a G.o.d of the cycle of Osiris. His feminine counterpart was the G.o.ddess SEKHET, and the third member of the triad of which he was the chief was NEFER-TEMU.
PTAH-SEKER is the dual G.o.d formed by fusing Seker, the Egyptian name of the incarnation of the Apis Bull of Memphis, with Ptah.
PTAH-SEKER-AUSAR was a triune G.o.d who, in brief, symbolized life, death, and the resurrection.
KHNEMU was one of the old cosmic G.o.ds who a.s.sisted Ptah in carrying out the commands of Thoth, who gave expression in words to the will of the primeval, creative Power, he is described as "the maker of things which are, the creator of things which shall be, the source of created things, the father of fathers, and the mother of mothers." It was he who, according to one legend, fashioned man upon a potter"s wheel.
KHEPERA was an old primeval G.o.d, and the type of matter which contains within itself the germ of life which is about to spring into a new existence; thus he represented the dead body from which the spiritual body was about to rise. He is depicted in the form of a man having a beetle for a head, and this insect became his emblem because it was supposed to be self-begotten and self-produced. To the present day certain of the inhabitants of the Sudan, pound the dried scarabaeus or beetle and drink it in water, believing that it will insure them a numerous progeny. The name "Khepera" means "he who rolls," and when the insect"s habit of rolling along its ball filled with eggs is taken into consideration, the appropriateness of the name is apparent. As the ball of eggs rolls along the germs mature and burst into life; and as the sun rolls across the sky emitting light and heat and with them life, so earthly things are produced and have their being by virtue thereof.
R[=A] was probably the oldest of the G.o.ds worshipped in Egypt, and his name belongs to such a remote period that its meaning is unknown. He was in all periods the visible emblem of G.o.d, and was the G.o.d of this earth to whom offerings and sacrifices were made daily; time began when R[=a] appeared above the horizon at creation in the form of the Sun, and the life of a man was compared to his daily course at a very early date. R[=a] was supposed to sail over heaven in two boats, the [=A]TET or M[=A] TET boat in which he journeyed from sunrise until noon, and the SEKTET boat in which he journeyed from noon until sunset. At his rising he was attacked by [=A]pep, a mighty "dragon" or serpent, the type of evil and darkness, and with this monster he did battle until the fiery darts which he discharged into the body of =Apep scorched and burnt him up; the fiends that were in attendance upon this terrible foe were also destroyed by fire, and their bodies were hacked in pieces. A repet.i.tion of this story is given in the legend of the fight between Horus and Set, and in both forms it represented originally the fight which was supposed to go on daily between light and darkness. Later, however, when Osiris had usurped the position of R[=a], and Horus represented a divine power who was about to avenge the cruel murder of his father, and the wrong which had been done to him, the moral conceptions of right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood were applied to light and darkness, that is to say, to Horus and Set.
As R[=a] was the "father of the G.o.ds," it was natural that every G.o.d should represent some phase of him, and that he should represent every G.o.d. A good ill.u.s.tration of this fact is afforded by a Hymn to R[=a], a fine copy of which is found inscribed on the walls of the sloping corridor in the tomb of Seti I., about B.C. 1370, from which we quote the following:--
11. "Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, who dost enter into the habitations of Ament, behold [thy] body is Temu.
12. "Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, who dost enter into the hidden place of Anubis, behold, [thy] body is Khepera.
13. "Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, whose duration of life is greater than that of the hidden forms, behold [thy] body is Shu.
14. "Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, .... behold [thy] body is Tefnut.
15. "Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, who bringest forth, green things in their season, behold [thy] body is Seb.
16. "Praise be unto thee, O R[=a], thou exalted Power, thou mighty being who dost judge,... behold [thy] body is Nut.