and how are we to account for it? The Egyptians themselves, and the ancient writers who turned their attention to Egypt, accounted for it by a variety of theories; and various theories are still held on the subject. We can only enumerate the princ.i.p.al ones. (1) The beasts were worshipped for their qualities, as is said to have been the case in Peru before the Incas (chapter vi.); each was reverenced for that divine excellence or virtue which appeared to be manifestly resident in it. Thus the dog was worshipped for his watchfulness and faithfulness; the hawk for its darting flight through the upper air, like the flashing of the sunlight or of the sun-G.o.d himself; the cow as a great kind mother; the beetle for that wonderful procedure in the reproduction of his kind, in which he so strikingly brings life out of decay. (2) The beasts are not worshipped themselves; they are only the emblems of the deities with whom they are connected, and it is the deity who is worshipped, not the animal. This may be quite true of later practice, but is by no means a satisfactory explanation of its origin; for how was it arranged, and who was it that ordained at first, that the jackal should be the emblem of Anubis, the cat of Bast, the crocodile of Sebak, and so on? (3) Various mythological and quasi-historical accounts of the origin of the practice are given, such as that men long ago chose different animals for their standards in war, or that some early king, wishing to keep his subjects disunited, ordered that each nome should serve a different animal. It is also told as a story of early times that the G.o.ds when they walked on earth a.s.sumed the forms of various animals; thus the G.o.ds are still in the animals. The G.o.ds hid in the beasts in order to be near men and see how they did. But men found them out and worshipped them in the disguise they had a.s.sumed. (4) The G.o.ds cannot be present in the world and cannot be satisfactorily worshipped unless they have bodies to dwell in--that is involved in Egyptian psychology; and as the G.o.ds would be too much alike if they all occupied human bodies, they chose the bodies of different animals.
These theories of animal worship are evidently later inventions, to account for a state of matters the real origin of which was not known. Philosophical priests could not accommodate themselves to the animal worship of the temples without a doctrine to justify it to their minds. But those who resorted to such theories about animal worship could have nothing to do with calling the system into existence. We may be sure that a refined and cultivated people did not take up animal worship and cling to it, in spite of its repulsive features, with such tenacity as the Egyptians did, because of a speculative idea of the likeness of certain beasts to certain G.o.ds, or to express pantheistic views of the emanations of deity in animal forms. The system, in fact, cannot have sprung up after the Egyptians became civilised, and could not continue to exist among a civilised people, if it was not hallowed by an immemorial antiquity. Only as a mystery, a thing of which the origin was not known, could such a worship continue among such a people.
A new explanation of Egyptian animal worship has been put forward in recent times by the Anthropological school of students of religion,[3] and is rapidly gaining ground. The religious circ.u.mstances of Egypt as narrated by Juvenal and Diodorus have the strongest resemblance to the totemistic state of society described above (chapter iv.). Here, as in Peru before the Incas, or among the North American Indians of to-day, we have a number of communities each with its special sacred animal, which it does not eat, but reverences and defends. Other traces of totemistic arrangements may be suspected here and there in Egyptian observances, but even did the a.n.a.logy extend no further than to the facts just mentioned, there would be a case for considering whether the nomes were not first peopled by a set of totemistic clans, who, even after they were united in one people, preserved their early separate traditions. The sacred animals of the nomes would then be "the totems of the clans which first settled in these localities." Later developments of religion never displaced these venerable emblems, if this be so, of tribal life.[4]
[Footnote 3: See A. Lang, _Myth, Ritual, and Religion_, Second Edition. Frazer"s _Totemism_. Most of the modern Egyptologists incline to the theory that animal worship, though not the only, was one of the chief sources of Egyptian religion. Pietschmann first took up this ground.]
[Footnote 4: Compare the worship of animals in Babylonia, chapter vii.]
II. THE GREAT G.o.dS
A very different set of G.o.ds are those made known to us by the monuments and books. It is the princ.i.p.al problem of this religion to explain how, along with the sacred animal, the cat or ibis or crocodile, there was worshipped in the Egyptian temple the celestial being, the G.o.d of heaven or of the sun, whose nature is light, who is righteous and good, and who more and more fills the mind of the worshipper with n.o.ble adoration, and leads him towards the high truths of theism. These high G.o.ds of Egypt were represented, as we have seen, from the earliest times of which we have any knowledge, under animal forms. As far back as we can see, Hathor is a cow, and Horus a hawk, and Anubis a jackal. Did beast worship spring by a process of degradation from the worship of the high G.o.ds? We have seen how difficult it is to maintain such a view. Did the higher worship then spring by a process of development out of the lower?
That also would be hard to prove, for the high G.o.ds of Egypt are not beasts, however magnified and spiritualised, but beings of a different order; they are the sky, the sun, the moon, the dawn. And as in our opening chapters we saw reason to believe that the worship of the great powers of nature is an original thing with early man, and explains itself without being derived from lower forms of religion, so we must judge with regard to Egypt too. Even if some of the great G.o.ds came from Mesopotamia, that helps us but little to understand their history after they arrived in Egypt. In this field also we are driven to recognise two religions, different in nature and of independent origin, existing side by side, and seeking to come to terms with each other; and the combination of the two is a process in Egyptian religion which took place before the period of which we have knowledge. It is prehistoric.
It was formerly considered that the nature-G.o.ds of Egypt had very little mythology connected with them; only one considerable story of their doings was known; most of them had no history beyond the few phrases applied by primitive thought to the great natural phenomena to qualify them to be regarded as living and active beings. But as more inscriptions are read, more divine myths are coming to light, and further discoveries of the same kind may be still in store for us. These different myths, however, are formed after the same pattern. The great G.o.ds of Egypt are simple beings and easy to understand, and they were never formed into an organised system like the G.o.ds of Greece, but remain in separate dynasties or families, and are very like each other. Many of them are sun-G.o.ds, or G.o.ds of the morning and evening, and their stories cannot differ very widely from each other, but they belong to different districts of the country; that is what const.i.tutes their difference from each other, and keeps them separate.
The Great G.o.ds also are Local.--The nature-G.o.d as well as the animal-G.o.d was worshipped in his own nome, where he dwelt in the midst of his own community of worshippers; he was not recognised in other nomes unless there were special reasons for it. But at the earliest period of our knowledge of Egypt this simple early arrangement has already undergone many modifications. Each nome has its own special deity. Set is the G.o.d of Oxyrhynchus, Neith of Sais, but more G.o.ds than one are worshipped in each nome. Generally there are three; in many places there is an ennead, a nine of G.o.ds, but the nine is a round number; there might be one or two less or more. The G.o.d of a nome which had risen to a commanding position extended his influence beyond his own nome, and came to share the temples of other G.o.ds, so that he was at home in a number of places. Ra is said to have fourteen persons--that is, fourteen views of his person have been developed in so many different districts. But if one G.o.d could thus be divided into several, the converse also took place; two or more G.o.ds were combined, by the simple addition of their names together, to form a new G.o.d. We have Ra-harmachis, Amon-ra, Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, and some even more elaborately compounded deities.
Thus there was a constant tendency to the production of new deities; even the attempts to combine existing deities only add to the number.
No attempt in the direction of a system of G.o.ds had any success; local deities could not be suppressed; the nomes retained their separate deities and religious establishments to the end. There never was a religious organisation of Egypt generally; a priest could in some cases pa.s.s from the religion of one nome to that of another, but there was never a high priest of Egypt as a whole, however much a king might wish to organise all the worships of the country in one system. This local character of the Egyptian high G.o.ds was a source of weakness in these great beings, and never ceased to check their upward movement.
The temple of a nome had, as a rule, three G.o.ds, and these formed a family, the chief G.o.d having his consort and the third being their son. Of these triads we may mention some:--
Amen-Mut-Chonsu are the triad of Thebes.
Ptah-Sechet-Imhotep " Memphis.
Osiris-Isis-Horus " Abydos (Philae).
Sebak-Hathor-Chonsu " Ombos.
Har-hat-Hathor-Har-sem-ta " Edfu.
The son is the successor of his father, and it is his destiny in turn to marry his mother and so to reproduce himself, that is his own successor; and so though constantly dying he is ever renewed. The mother, not being a sun-G.o.d, does not die. If we remember that the G.o.ds have to do with the sun these things need not shock us, nor need we wonder at the statement which is very frequently met with, that a G.o.d is self-begotten, or that he produces his own members.
Mythology.--A few words may be said about Egyptian mythology in general before we speak of some of the princ.i.p.al G.o.ds. The usual stories of the beginning of things are not wanting, as when the princ.i.p.al G.o.d is said to have been born from a primeval egg, or a whole family of G.o.ds to be the children of Seb and Nut; Seb, the earth, being in Egypt the male, and Nut, heaven, the female, of these earliest parents of all things. More than one G.o.d, moreover, is held to have been an earthly king, and to be the founder of the royal house which now pays him homage. "The days of Ra," for example, are spoken of as a golden age in which perfect justice and happiness prevailed. Many stories too may be found which profess to furnish an explanation of some feature of nature or some inst.i.tution of society, to account for the names of places or of animals, or for the presence of the five days which were added to the twelve lunar months in Egypt to produce a satisfactory solar year. Many old stories of the G.o.ds have magical efficacy when told in certain situations; one is good against poison, but must be told in a certain way to produce the effect. After these stories of the G.o.ds" early reign of peace, come those relating to less happy periods, when the old G.o.d grew weak and began to have enemies, when G.o.ds and men became disobedient to him, when a war broke out among the G.o.ds, which is not yet brought to an end but breaks out ever afresh; or when the old G.o.d succ.u.mbed to his enemies, and his successor had to set out to avenge him. In some of these stories very primitive and savage traits appear, which show that they originated in a rude state of society. But they are about men, not about beasts, as we might have expected of Egyptian mythology, and the men are undoubtedly solar heroes; it is the fortunes of the daily (not the yearly) sun, his splendid and beneficent reign, his decline, his conflict with the powers of darkness, his decease and his resurrection, or the vengeance exacted on his behalf by his successor, that are spoken of, in connection now with one G.o.d and now with another.
Dynasties of G.o.ds.--In the history of Egyptian religion one set of such G.o.ds succeeds another as the prevailing dynasty, according as the seat of empire in the country shifts to a new nome. These religious changes could take place without great convulsions. It was only the attempt to extinguish old established worships that was fiercely resisted, not the addition of a new G.o.d, even as superior to those already seated in the temple. In the earliest times known to us Ra of Heliopolis is the chief G.o.d of Egypt; Osiris of Thinis (Abydos) is also a great G.o.d, but the most characteristic development of Osiris-worship belongs to a later period. Ptah of Memphis comes to the front in the earliest dynasties. Much later is the rise of Amon to the first place, which he held when the Greeks and Romans had to do with Egypt. A very short account only can be given of the sets of G.o.ds of which these are the heads.
Ra.--Ra means "sun"; his seat is Heliopolis or "On," where Joseph"s master Potiphera, or "Priest of Ra," lived. Heliopolis is the "house of the obelisk," the obelisk being a representation of the sun. First a kindly old king, he is later a warrior; he has to contend with the serpent Apep, the dragon of darkness who appears pierced by the shafts of Ra. But as Ra sinks in the conflict he is comforted by Hathor, the G.o.ddess of the western sky, and avenged by Horus, the ever young and ever victorious winged sun.[5] But Ra is a G.o.d of the under as well as the upper world. King Pi"anchi, of the twenty-second dynasty, entered into the great temple of Ra at Heliopolis and penetrated to the inmost chamber of it, afterwards sealing it up again. We are told what he saw there.[6] He looked upon "his father Ra," and saw the two boats intended for the daily journey of the G.o.d.
Ra travels in his boat through the sky, but also at night through the under-world, of which also he is lord. The progress of the G.o.d of light through the world of darkness is a theme which was worked out later in much detail in connection with Osiris; but it forms part of the earliest known religious conceptions of the Egyptians, and Ra"s voyage through the "Am Duat" or under-world, is described in considerable detail. Many figures accompany him in this voyage, and many are the obstacles to be overcome during the successive hours of night before he reaches again the gates of day. The souls of men who have died are also led by him through those nether s.p.a.ces; by a hidden knowledge, if they have been at pains to possess themselves of it, they are able to keep close to Ra on the perilous journey. He gives them fields to cultivate in the plains beneath, and they are made glad by his appearance at the appointed hour in the nights that follow.
[Footnote 5: There are in Egyptian religion several G.o.ds called Horus; this, the oldest one, is fused with Ra, the first sun-G.o.d, in the double name Ra-Harmachis, a being to whom the highest attributes are given. The symbol of this G.o.d is a rec.u.mbent lion with a man"s head, the figure in which also the kings of Egypt are represented.]
[Footnote 6: See the inscription in _Records of the Past_, ii. 98.]
Osiris, the sun-G.o.d of Abydos, is also reported to have been a human being who was exalted to divine honours. (The G.o.d of the under-world and judge of the dead, who bears the same name, is a different figure; of him we shall speak afterwards.) He is the most interesting and the best known of the G.o.ds of Egypt; his myth is found at length in Plutarch, with the mystical interpretations proposed for it in ancient times; he is also the G.o.d in whom the affinity of Egyptian with Babylonian religion appears most clearly: cf. chapter vii. Born, according to the myth we mentioned above, at one birth with four other G.o.ds, of the venerable parents Seb and Nut (see above), he from the first has Isis for his wife and sister, and his brother Set is also born along with him, with whom he lives in perpetual hostility.
Neither can quite overcome the other, and many are the incidents of their warfare. As a rule the G.o.ds of Egypt are serene and good beings; here only dualism shows itself. Osiris is the good power both morally and in the sphere of outward nature, while Set is the embodiment of all that the Egyptian regards as evil,--darkness, the desert, the hot south wind, sickness, and red hair. It is not the case that Set was an imported G.o.d and belonged to Semitic invaders, but these invaders found him more suited to their notions of deity than any other G.o.d of Egypt, and sought to make him supreme, in which, however, they could not succeed. The story of the dismemberment of Osiris and of the search of Isis for his loved remains, which she buried in fourteen different places where she found them, is one which is found connected with other names in other lands. Horus is the avenger of his father. Here we have this deity in three stages--Horus the child in his mother"s arms, Horus the avenger, and Horus the successor of his father, the complete sun-G.o.d.
This family of G.o.ds is more human and living to us than that of Ra or than any other set of Egyptian deities. It was also more taken up in other lands, when the G.o.ds of older peoples began to find acceptance in the West. We see with special clearness in this case the operation of the principle according to which the contrast of light and darkness when represented in the G.o.ds pa.s.ses into that of moral good and evil, so that the G.o.d of light becomes the great upholder of righteousness and dispenser of beneficence. The good G.o.d of Egyptian religion, moreover, is accompanied by a G.o.ddess who is somewhat more than the pale reflection of the male G.o.d, as most Egyptian G.o.ddesses are. The incidents of the legend also lend to the divine characters a tragic depth in which the prosperous and happy G.o.ds of Egypt do not generally share.
Ptah is the G.o.d of Memphis, and adjoining his temple is the chapel of the bull Apis, who is called the "second life of Ptah." If these two resided side by side, some theory of their relationship was needed, and the bull became the earthly representative of the unseen deity.
Each had a worship of prehistoric antiquity, and it is vain to theorise on their original relation to each other. As for Ptah, his name means "he who forms," and the Greeks called him by the name of their own Hephaistos, the artificer. In later times he came to be identified with the sun, and was called the "honourable," "golden,"
"beautiful," and "of comely face"; but earlier he seems rather to have to do with the hidden source of the world"s heat, the elemental warmth which is at the beginning of all life. He also is, like Ra and Osiris, a G.o.d of the under-world to which men go after death. He is said to open the mouth of the dead--that is to say, that he hears them and judges them. But in the upper-world too he has to do with justice; he is called the "Lord of the Ell," a t.i.tle connecting him with measurements and boundaries, matters of the greatest importance in Egypt. His son is Imhotep, he who comes in peace; the Greeks regarded this G.o.d as a physician, and called him Asclepios. The G.o.ddess of the triad is Sechet, who was also worshipped at Bubastis under the name of Bast, and whose symbol is a cat. Ptah, it will be seen, is a less distinct figure than either Osiris or Ra, and he very readily pa.s.ses into combinations with other G.o.ds. Ptah-Sokari and Ptah-Sokar-Osiris are found much more frequently than Ptah alone.
These are the chief G.o.ds of the old kingdom--that is to say, of the first six dynasties. When we come to the great twelfth dynasty, after the gap in the monuments which extends from 2500-2000 B.C., we find that these G.o.ds have become faint and new G.o.ds have become supreme, namely, the local G.o.ds of Thebes, and of the adjoining nomes. Of these, Amon, G.o.d of Thebes, has the most distinguished history, though Chem, the agricultural G.o.d of Coptos, and Munt of Hermonthis were originally as important. Amon, the hidden, _i.e._ the hidden force of nature, like Ptah, is seldom found alone; he is generally combined with some other G.o.d, especially with Ra. The G.o.ds of agriculture bow their heads by degrees before the sun-G.o.ds who tend to draw to themselves all Egyptian worship; rude country representations connected with the idea of fertility being discredited before the religion of the royal temples which was directed mainly to the G.o.d of light.
Was the Earliest Religion Monotheistic?--We have mentioned only some of the chief G.o.ds of Egypt, out of a countless number. These are the G.o.ds favoured by kings and city priesthoods, who, we cannot doubt, desired the religious elevation of the people. The G.o.ds they praised were of a nature to promote that end. It will be granted that the worship of the light-G.o.ds of Egyptian religion was fitted to lead the minds of the Egyptians to theism. In ill.u.s.tration of this statement extracts may be here given from hymns, which date as we have them from the eighteenth dynasty 1590 B.C., but which are probably much older.
TO HORUS
The G.o.ds recognise the universal lord.... He judges the world according to his will; heaven and earth are in subjection to him. He giveth his commands to men, to the generations present, past, and future; to Egyptians and to strangers. The circuit of the solar orb is under his direction; the winds, the waters, the wood of the plants, and all vegetables. A G.o.d of seeds, he giveth all herbs and the abundance of the soil. He affordeth plentifulness, and giveth it to all the earth. All men are in ecstasy, all hearts in sweetness, all bosoms in joy, every one in adoration. Every one glorifieth his goodness, his tenderness encircles our hearts, great is his love in all bosoms.
TO TEHUTI OR PTAH
To him is due the work of the hands, the walking of the feet, the sight of the eyes, the hearing of the ears, the breathing of the nostrils, the courage of the heart, the vigour of the hand, activity in body and in mouth of all the G.o.ds and men, and of all living animals; intelligence and speech, whatever is in the heart and whatever is on the tongue.
TO PTAH-TANEN
O let us give glory to the G.o.d who hath raised up the sky and who causeth his disk to float over the bosom of Nut, who hath made the G.o.ds and men and all their generations, who hath made all lands and countries and the great sea, in his name of "Let-the-earth-be."
TO AMON-RA
Hail to thee, maker of all beings, lord of law, father of the G.o.ds; maker of men, creator of beasts; lord of grains, making food for the beast of the field.... The one without a second.... King alone, single among the G.o.ds; of many names, unknown is their number.
There is a beautiful hymn addressed to the Nile, who is also conceived as the chief deity and the ruler, nourisher, and comforter of all creatures. From these hymns and others like them, important conclusions have been drawn as to the nature of the earliest Egyptian religion; namely, that those who wrote such pieces must have been acquainted with the one true G.o.d and addressed him under these various names, so that the true origin of Egyptian religion would be a primitive monotheism.
There are some texts indeed which seem to point even more strongly than those cited to the conclusion that Egyptian religion started from the belief in one supreme deity. Mr. Le Page Renouf quotes along with the pa.s.sages above, one from a Turin papyrus, in which words are put into the mouth of the Almighty G.o.d, the self-existent, who made heaven and earth, the waters, the breaths of life, fire, the G.o.ds, men, animals, cattle, reptiles, birds, etc. This being speaks as follows:--
I am the maker of the heaven and the earth.... It is I who have given to all the G.o.ds the soul which is within them. When I open my eyes there is light, when I close them there is darkness. I am Chepera in the morning, Ra at noon, Tum in the evening.
M. de la Rouge maintains that Egyptian religion, monotheistic at first, with a n.o.ble belief in the unity of the Supreme G.o.d and in His attributes as the Creator and Law-giver of man, fell away from that position and grew more and more polytheistic. "It is more than 5000 years since in the valley of the Nile the hymn began to the unity of G.o.d and the immortality of the soul, and we find Egypt arrived in the last ages at the most unbridled Polytheism."
The sublimer part of Egyptian religion is demonstrably ancient, as Mr. Le Page Renouf says; yet we are not shut up to the conclusion that Egyptian religion as a whole is nothing but a backsliding and a failure. If we were obliged to regard that monotheism which Egypt had at first but failed to maintain, as a gift conferred from above, which human powers proved unequal to conserve, then the opening of the history of this religion would be indeed most melancholy. But though monotheism appeared in Egypt so early, there is no necessity to think that it was not attained by human powers. For all we know, it was not an early but a mature product of thought, and was reached after a long development. It is not impossible for the human mind, starting from the works of G.o.d, to rise by its own efforts to the belief in His invisible power and G.o.dhead. The beginnings of this rise of thought may be witnessed among savages, and the Egyptians in their secluded valley had an opportunity such as no other nation had, to work out, as their civilisation grew up from rude beginnings to its unequalled splendour, a n.o.ble view of the Deity whose works they adored. The G.o.d ruling from his heaven of light over the great empire of a monarch who knew no equal in the world, possessing for his earthly abode a temple of unsurpa.s.sed magnificence, uniting perhaps under his sway districts long at war and extending his influence over remote continents as the armies of Egypt prospered, such a being drew to himself from his worshipping retinue of priests and n.o.bles, the highest praise and adoration, was exalted far above all other powers in heaven and earth, and extolled even as the Creator and Ruler of all.
Monotheism is thus approached in thought, but only in a prophetic and antic.i.p.atory way; the circ.u.mstances of the country forbade its realisation as a general belief or as a working system. Even in the highest flights of those early thinkers, when they seem to be speaking of a G.o.d quite universal and supreme, it is a local deity that lies at the basis of their speculations, a being who has his temple in a certain place, who is symbolised in a certain animal, who has a local legend and a limited popular worship. These are the facts that clog the wings of Egyptian monotheistic speculation and bring it to the earth again. Pure monotheism accordingly, the belief in a G.o.d beside whom no other G.o.d exists, it might be hard to find in Egypt at all. The last extract given above comes nearest to it; but the last line of that extract cannot be called monotheistic.
An attempted religious reformation at the end of the eighteenth dynasty may be mentioned here, as it appears to have aimed at concentrating all the worship of Egypt on a single object. The object chosen, however, was a material one,--the sun"s disk, Aten,--and though all Egyptian G.o.ds tended to become sun-G.o.ds, some sun-G.o.ds, no doubt, were better than others, and Aten was not the finest of them.
King Chut-en-Aten, or Glory of the Sun-disk, the royal fanatic who made this attempt at unity, went great lengths to accomplish his object, but the attempt was a failure, and was abandoned after his death even by the members of his own family. What Chut-en-Aten tried to introduce perhaps came nearer true monotheism than anything that ever existed in Egypt. He made war on other G.o.ds and wished to establish one only G.o.d in the land, but this exclusiveness the Egyptians could not understand. The Egyptian believed in many G.o.ds, and while worshipping one G.o.d with fervour, by no means denied the existence or the power of others in other places. Even foreign deities were in his eyes real and potent beings, each in his own territory. It is henotheism, not monotheism, that we see in this most religious land; the worship of one G.o.d at a time while other G.o.ds are also believed to exist and act. The one G.o.d who is before the mind of the worshipper is exalted above the rest, and spoken of as if no other G.o.d required to be considered; but the worshipper does not dream as yet of questioning the existence of other G.o.ds, or feel himself debarred from worshipping them if he should visit their country.
Syncretism.--The hymns contain several other speculative positions about the G.o.ds (chapter iv.), and we may briefly mention these.
Syncretism, as we saw, is very largely represented in Egyptian thought, and enters, indeed, into its very bone and marrow. In the ennead of a city the great G.o.ds may be arranged together after the fashion of a court where one or two rule over the rest; but in numberless pa.s.sages we find the relations of G.o.ds adjusted in another way, by making them one. Ra "comes as" Tum, the G.o.d is known here under one name or aspect and there under another. The names of two deities being added together, a new deity is produced; and in later times these G.o.ds with double, treble, or multiple names are among the most important. Raharmachis and Amonra are national G.o.ds, and have left much evidence of themselves.
It is a little step from syncretism to pantheism. Let the G.o.ds once lose the individual character that keeps them separate from each other, and it is possible for one G.o.d, who grows strong and great enough, to swallow up all the rest, till they appear only as his forms. In the position which they occupied in Egypt the various G.o.ds could not disappear, their local connections kept them alive; but they were so like one another that one of them could be regarded as a form of another, and a mult.i.tude of them as forms of one. The G.o.d who did most in the way of swallowing up the rest was Ra, the great sun-G.o.d of Thebes. The Litany of Ra[7] represents that G.o.d as eternal and self-begotten, and sings in seventy-five successive verses seventy-five forms which he a.s.sumes; they are the forms of the G.o.ds and of all the great elements and parts of the world. The separate G.o.ds are reduced from the rank of independent potentates to shapes of Ra, and thus a kind of unity is set up in the populous Egyptian Pantheon. But Ra is not strong enough to get the better of these shapes, and to rule a sole monarch by his own right, in his own way.
He is the G.o.d, but he is not an independent G.o.d; it is pantheism, not theism, to which he owes his exaltation. The one in Egypt cannot govern the many; the pure exaltation of Ra as a supreme and absolute G.o.d does not prevent the worship of a different being in each different town. The one sole G.o.d is for the priests alone, not for the people; and this belief in him does not even lead to attempts to root out the worship of animals, or to concentrate the service of the temples on him alone. And in the absence of such attempts we read the sentence condemning a religion which produced most n.o.ble fruits of thought, to grow worse and not better as time went on, and to pa.s.s away without bringing any permanent contribution to the development of the religion of the world.
[Footnote 7: _Records of the Past_, viii. 105.]