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THE
RELIGION OF ANCIENT EGYPT.

THE

ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF RELIGION

AS ILLUSTRATED BY THE

Religion of Ancient Egypt

BY
P. LE PAGE F^ENOUF

[THE HIBBERT LECTURES FOR 1879]

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
743 & 745 Broadway
i88o

GRANT, FAIEKS t RODGERS,
Blkotrotvpers and Pkintebs,
Philadelphia, Pa. ^

Mix m^ Hnr W^^t,

IN GRATEFUL AND AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE

OF OUR JOURNEY THROUGH THE LAND

WHOSE ANCIENT RELIGION

IS HERE VERY IMPERFECTLY DESCRIBED.

CONTENTS.

LECTURE I.

THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION RESPECTING THE ANCIENT
EGYPTIAN RELIGION.

Early Christians on the Egyptian worship
Heathen writers on the same subject
How far can such evidence be relied upon
Modem attempts at investigation
Decipherment of hieroglyphic writing
Dr. Young ....
ChampoUion ....
His successors ....
Recovery of the- ancient language .
Publication of Egyptian texts
Most of the texts are of a religious nature

3s 9
rr1314 19
202327

LECTURE II.
ANTIQUITY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF EGYPTIAN
CIVILIZATION.

Egyptian chronology depends upon monuments recording con
temporary facts ... ... 33
Monuments mentioning the year of a reign ... 34
Monvmients furnishing evidence of a succession of reigns . . 35
Royal lists and their verification by the monuments . . 38
Royal list of Abydos ...... 39
Evidence of the reality of sovereigns named ... 40
Omissions of this list ....... 42
vii

VIU

CONTENTS.

Genealogies ....
Manetho .....
Absolute dates ....
Egyptian monarchy anterior to 3000 B. C. .
Pre-historic antiquity of human race in Egypt
Egyptian ethnology ....
Language ....
Art 
Moral Code ....
Castes .....
Monogamy . . - .

PAGE 48
4849 51
52 54S6
62
73 80
81

LECTURE III.

THE GODS OF EGYPT.

Identity of the religious institutions from first to last

. 83

Temples ......

84

Triads and enneads .....

86

Local character of Egyptian worship

87

The deities innumerable

. 89

Mean notions concerning these deities .

39

Simplification of the list ....

90

Is ihe religion really monotheistic?

92

Evidences as to the meaning ofthe word Nutar

. 95

The Power .....

. . 104

The Powers ......

. T07

Myth and legend .....

108

Ra and his family .....

• 113

Osiris and his family ....

ri4

Horus ......

. 117

Set 

119

Thoth ......

120

The reign of Law ....

123

LECTURE IV.
COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD.

Sepulchral rites .
The tombs and their inscriptions
The ka or genius

r29132153

CONTENTS.

IX

Souk, shadows, apparitions
Possession
Dreams .
Oaths .
Angels . ,
Destiny . ,
The king's divinity

PAGE 159l6o
l6i163
16S165167

LECTURE V.

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT.

The Book of the Dead

...

179

Beatification ofthe dead

. • . .

187

The renewed existence "

36 upon earth '' .

. 187

Transformation .

*

189

Identification with Osiris

and other gods .

. r9T

Amulets .

. .

199

Words of power

•

200

Moral doctrine .

. . . .

201

Other sacred books .

....

208

LECTURE VI.
RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS : HENOTHEISM, PANTHEISM
AND MATERIALISM.

Lamentations of Isis and Nephthys
Book of glorifying Osiris
Book of the Breaths of Life
Rhind papyri
Magical literature
True notion of God
Henotheism .
Pantheism . .
Materialism .
Influence of Egyptian upon foreign thought
Conclusion .

211213215
218219223226240
249253259

LECTURE I.

THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION RESPECTING
THE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION.

The rehgion of ancient Egypt is knov/n to us
through authentic records of various kinds, extending
through a period of not less than three thousand
years. It may have been in existence for many
centuries anterior to the earliest of the monuments
which have been preserved. Its origin is a matter,
not of history, but of speculation. Its last centuries
coincide with the first centuries of the Christian reli
gion which gradually supplanted it. During this
period the zoolatry, or worship ofthe sacred animals,
was the feature which chiefly attracted the notice of
the Christian apologists who have made any observa
tions upon the subject.
Clement of Alexandria, one of the Eariy Christians
most learned and philosophical of the ^^*^. ^^yp^i^"
Greek Fathers, introduces his account
of the Egyptian worship in a chapter against the

2 LECTURE I.
use or abuse of finery by Christian ladies.^ He
compares those ladies who elaborately decorate their
outside and neglect the soul, in which the image of
God should be enshrined, to the Egyptians, who
have magnificent temples, gleaming with gold, silver
and electrum, and glittering with Indian and Ethi
opian gems. "Their shrines," he continues, "are
veiled with gold-embroidered hangings. But if you
enter the penetralia of the enclosure, and, in haste
to behold something better, seek the image that is
the inhabitant of the temple, and if any priest of
those that offer sacrifice there, looking grave and
singing a paean in the Egyptian tongue, remove a
little of the veil to show the god, he will furnish you
with a hearty laugh at the object of worship. For
the deity that is sought, to whom you have rushed,
will not be found within, but a cat, or a crocodile, or
a serpent, or some such beast, unworthy of the tem
ple, but quite worthy of a den, a hole or the dirt.
The god of the Egyptians is revealed ; a beast rolling
on a purple couch." The language of Origen is very simi-
Heathen wri-
tors on the same lar to that of Clement. That Christian
subject. ^j^j Jewish controversialists should
have felt the utmost disdain for the Egyptian worship
is natural enough, but this disdain was fully shared
1 Paedagog. iii. c. -x.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 3
by many of the heathen contemporaries. " You are
never done," says Clement to the latter, " laughing
every day of your lives at the Egyptians." He then
quotes a Greek philosopher, Xenophanes of Colo
phon, who tells the Egyptians, " If you believe these
brutes to be gods, do not mourn or bewail them ; if
you mourn or bewail them, do not any more regard
them as gods." The comic writers of Greece had
already made themselves merry upon the subject.
Antiphanes, one of the most fertile and celebrated
Athenian poets of the Middle Comedy, jests at the
cleverness of the Egyptians who consider the eel as
equal to the gods. Anaxandrides, another famous
Athenian comic writer, tells the Egyptians : " I never
could be your ally, for neither our customs nor our
laws agree. They differ widely. You worship an ox,
but I sacrifice him to the gods. You consider the eel
a mighty demon ; we think him by far the best of
fish. You do not eat swine flesh, and I am partic
ularly fond of doing so. You worship a dog, but I
thrash him whenever I catch him stealing meat.
Here the law is, that integrity of all their members is
required of priests ; with you, it appears, they must be
circumcised. You weep if you see a cat ailing, but I
like to kill and skin him. A shrew-mouse is an ob
ject of great consideration with you, not of the least
with me." Timokles, in a play called " The Egyp-

4 LECTURE I.
tians," asks, " How is it possible for an ibis or a dog
to save you ? For when men have sinned against the
gods whom all acknowledge, whom will the altar of a
cat repel by its terrors ? " '
Classical scholars are familiar with the Satire com
monly attributed to Juvenal : " Who does not know
what kinds of monsters demented Egypt worships?
One part adores the crocodile, another quakes before
the ibis gorged with serpents. The golden image of
a sacred long-tailed ape glitters where the magic
chords resound from mutilated Memnon, and ancient
Thebes lies in ruin, with her hundred gates. There
whole towns venerate cats, here a river fish, there a
dog, but no one Diana. It is impiety to violate and
break with the teeth the leek and onion. O holy
races, to whom such deities as these are born in their
gardens ! "^
It is not wonderful that, with such evidence before
them, many writers should at the present day speak
of the Egyptian religion as one of the lowest and
grossest forms of nature-worship, as consisting in
what is commonly called African fetishism, or at
least as being based upon it..
Yet the external aspect of a religion as presented
to strangers is not often one that is to be trusted.
* These comedians are quoted in Athen. : Deipnos. vii. p. 299.
' Juvenal, Sat. xv. i. Mr. Lewis's translation.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 5
We have but to remember the accounts
ofthe Jewish religion and of its history ^^^j^ evidence'be
which have been left us by heathen relied upon?
writers, and the judgments which the most enlight
ened of these writers passed upon Christianity in the
earliest and purest days of its existence. Christi
anity was not only considered as an exitiabilis super-
stitio, but was popularly supposed to involve the
worship of a brute animal.^ Do you think the pre
judices of men holding such opinions would have
been weakened had they accidentally heard of " the
Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the
world," or read in the Apocalypse of the Lamb with
seven horns and seven eyes who is the Lord of lords
and King of kings, and represented as receiving the
worship of the four beasts, the four-and-twenty
elders, and innumerable angels ?
A Roman soldier, according to the historian Dio-
doros, incurred the furious wrath of an Egyptian
village by the slaughter of a cat. But the fury of a
1 The Christians were popularly supposed to worship the ass, but this
worship was naturally imagined to have been derived from the Jews,
who worshipped not only the ass, but the swine. " Judaeus licet et
porcinum numen adoret;'- Petronius Arbiter, p. 224: Berlin, 1842. See
Gill's Notices of the Jews and their Country by the Classic Writers of
Antiquity, and an essay of Geiger (yuden u. yudenthum nach d.
Auffassung d. Schriftsieller d. Alterthums) in the Illustrirte Monatshefte
fur die gesammten Interessen des Judenthums of Oct. 1865.

6 LECTURE L
Mohammedan population may at this day be aroused
by an attack upon its wild dogs; and there are, or
till very lately were, numerous Christian populations
which resented the slaughter of doves or pigeons as
impious and sacrilegious. Yet neither Moslems nor
Christians have ever worshipped dogs or pigeons.'
It is in the nature of things that persons living
outside a religion, especially if they are not inclined
to it, cannot understand it or its symbols unless their
inquiries are conducted under conditions which are
generally considered superfluous or wrong. Men
are rarely conscious of the prejudices which really
incapacitate them from forming impartial and true
judgments on systems alien to their own habits of
thought. And philosophers who may pride them
selves on their freedom from prejudice may yet fail
to understand whole classes of psychological phe
nomena which are the result of religious practice,
and are familiar to those alone to whom such prac
tice is habitual.
1 Yet Mr. Herbert Spencer, Sociology, p. 354, after quoting a remark
of Mr. McLennan that the dove is almost as great a god among the
ancients as the serpent, says, " that the still exant symbolism of Christi
anity shows us the surviving effect of the belief in the ghostly character
of the dove." N'est ce pas chercher midi k quatorze heures? Even if
the schoolboy authorities on which Mr. McLellan relies were not ab
solutely worthless, surely the belief in the gospel narrative would be
sufficient to account for the symbolism of the dove among populations
who in their heathen condition had never heard of the dove as a divinity.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 'J
There is distinct evidence that the absurdity which
the Egyptian religion presented to strangers disap
peared on closer acquaintance with it. Philo, the
philosophical Jew of Alexandria, tells us that for
eigners coming for the first time into Egypt knew not
what to do for laughter at the divine beasts, but that
the universal superstition finished by overpowering
them also. Apollonios of Tyana, according to his
biographer Philostratos, decidedly condemned the
Egyptian system as absurd and ridiculous. But the
form which his objections assume is quite inconsis
tent with the notion of fetishism. He takes it for
granted that the beasts are not deities, but symbols of
deity. " If you place a hawk or an owl, or a wolf or
a dog in your temples to represent Hermes, Athene
or Apollon, the beasts and birds may derive dignity
from such representations, but the gods will lose
theirs." " I think," said Thespesion, "you slight our
mode of worship before you have given it a fair ex
amination. For surely what we are speaking of is
wise, if anything Egyptian is so ; the Egyptians do
not venture to give any form to their deities, they
only give them in symbols which have an occult
meaning that renders them more venerable." Apol
lonios, smiling at this, said, " O ye sages, great indeed
is the advantage you have derived from the wisdom
of Egyptians and Ethiopians, if you find anything

8 LECTURE L
worthy of your worship in a dog, an ibis or a goat;
or if you think such creatures fit to represent your
gods  If what the mind discovers couched under
such symbolical figures is entitled to greater venera
tion, surely the condition of the gods in Egypt would
be more highly respected if no statues whatever were
erected to them, and if theology was treated in a
different manner, with a little more wisdom and mys
tery  The mind forms to itself a something
which it delineates better than what any art can do ;
but in the present instance you have taken from the
gods the very power of appearing beautiful either to
the eye or to the understanding."'
I do not quote this conversation as in any way
deserving to be considered authentic, but only as
evidence that the Egyptian worship of animals was
considered even by grave opponents as symbolical,
and not as pure fetishism. Celsus is quoted by Ori
gen as distinctly denying the worship by the Egyp ¦
tians of brute creatures of a day {C,mmv ttpqiitpiuiv).
And some Christian Fathers even admit that the
symbolical worship of animals denotes a higher stage
of culture than the worship of inanimate images,
stocks and stones, or of deities whose actions are
inconsistent with the most elementary notions of
morality. Porphyry^ explains the animal worship
' Vit. ApoUonii, vi. 19. 2 p^ Abstinentia, iv. c. 9.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 9
from a Pantheistic point of view. All living creatures
in their degree partake of the Divine essence, and
" under the semblances of animals the Egyptians
worship the universal power which the gods have
revealed in the various forms of living nature."
After all, the religion ofthe Egyptians Modem At-
was not confined to the worship of the tempts at investi-
sacred animals. Herodotos, Plato and sation.
other classical writers, mention Amon, Osiris, Isis,
Thoth, Neith and other divinities; and the belief in
the soul's immortality is not only decidedly ascribed
to the Egyptians, but is said to have been first taught
by them. What relations did the various parts of this
religion bear to each other ? Was the religion in its
later ages identical with the primitive religion of the
country ? Had there been advance or retrogression ?
The solution of these and many other obvious ques
tions was quite impossible until very recently. " The
learned Briicker, in his Critical History of Philosophy,
and Jablonski, in his Pantheon Aegyptiacum, have
with indefatigable industry put together all the evi
dence that can be found in Greek and Latin writers.
But they had no means of testing this evidence. No
history can be learnt with certainty except from evi
dence contemporaneous with the events recorded; no
religion can be studied with profit except in the very
words of its own votaries. But the knowledge of the

IO LECTURE I.
Egyptian language had not only actually perished,
but the key to the decipherment of its writings was
supposed to be irrecoverably lost. The hieroglyphic
characters, consisting of representations of the sun,
moon, animals, plants and other objects, either natural
or artificial, which are painted or sculptured upon so
many Egyptian monuments, were indeed looked upon
as symbols under which the mysteries of the religion
had been concealed from the vulgar, and several
attempts were made to explain them. All these
efforts, however, were destitute of any scientific
basis. The most elaborate attempts proceeded from
the learned Jesuit, Athanasius Kircher, who is not
without merit as one of the restorers of Coptic ; but
his enormous folios upon hieroglyphic inscriptions are
mere memorials of a frightful amount of time and
thought elaborately wasted. Every hieroglyphic sign
was supposed to represent an idea; and groups which
we now know to stand for the names and titles of the
Roman emperors Vespasian, Titus and Domitian, are
converted into long sentences of mystical rubbish.
Even at the beginning of the present century, the
Chevalier Palin indulged in dreams not unworthy of
Athanasius Kircher. Dr. Birch has briefly described
his views as follows. He " did not hesitate to assert
that it was only necessary to translate the Psalms of
David into Chinese, and write them in the ancient

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. n
characters of that language, in order to reproduce the
Egyptian papyri, and that these contained many
Biblical books."
Spurious monuments served the purposes of these
interpreters quite as well as genuine ones. In the
" Isiac table " Kircher discovered a variety of sacred
mysteries favourable to Christianity; Pegnorius read
in it precepts of moral and political wisdom. Another
critic (Jablonski) considered it as a calendar of festi
vals; while a fourth attempted to persuade the learned
world that " these characters described the properties
and use of the magnet, and of the mariner's com
pass." The discovery of the Rosetta stone Decipherment of
put an end to all this guess-work. Most Hieroglyphic
of you have probably seen this stone in '^^"''"g-
the British Museum. It is a tablet of black basalt,
about three feet long by about two and a half wide,
and was erected in honor of Ptolemy Epiphanes,
193 years before Christ. The inscriptions upon it are
in three distinct characters, the third of which is
Greek. The Greek text consists of a decree in hon
our of the king, and it is expressly stated in the last
line that this decree is to be engraved on the tablet,
rdlz Ts lepo7^ xai ifx<"pioic xai kXXrjvtxotz fpdppaaiv, " in
the sacred characters, in the vernacular and in Greek."
The tablet is unfortunately mutilated, great part of

12 LECTURE I.
the hieroglyphic portion is lost, and so is the end
Greek. Fifteen lines of the enchorial or (as it is now
generally called) demotic part have lost their first let
ters or words.
The conditions of the problem to be solved were
now of a very definite kind. The inquirer, instead of
guessing at the sense of the hieroglyphic text, had the
sense supplied to him. His problem lay in dividing
the hieroglyphic text into groups or words corres
ponding to the Greek words. The problem would be
completely solved if each Egyptian group were suc
cessfully analyzed and read, the verification of the
result being found in the facility of reading and inter
preting other texts by means of the alphabet and vo
cabulary thus obtained.
Several of the most eminent scholars in Europe
attempted the problem, and some of them even with
partial success. The great orientalist Silvestre de
Sacy determined the demotic groups corresponding
to Ptolemy, Berenike, Alexander and other proper
names; and the Swedish scholar Akerblad already,
in the year i8o2, even drew up a phonetic alphabet
of the demotic characters, which is remarkably cor
rect as far as it goes. The complete key to the deci
pherment of Egyptian was, however, not revealed to
the world till the publication. of Champollion's letter
to M. Dacier in the September of 1822.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION.

13

It is even to this day a common habit of English
men to couple the name of their coun
tryman Dr. Thomas Young with that Dr. Young.
of ChampoUion, as sharing with him the glory of this
discovery. No person who knows anything of Egyp
tian philology can countenance so gross an error.
Dr. Young was indeed a man of extraordinary genius,
but the true direction of it was long unrecognized by
those very countrymen of his who ridiculously put
him forward as a rival of ChampoUion. " It fell to
his lot," as Professor TyndaU has said, "to discover
facts in Optics which Newton's theory was incompe
tent to explain ; and he finally succeeded in placing
on an immovable basis the Undulatory Theory of
Light." Helmholtz, a kindred genius, thus speaks
of him : " His was one of the most profound minds
that the world has ever seen." But it is not true
that he discovered the key to the decipherment of
hieroglyphics, or even that his labours assisted Cham
poUion in the discovery. When the key was once
discovered and recognized as the true one, it was
found that one or two of Young's results were cor
rect. But there was nothing in his method or theory
by which he or any one else could distinguish be
tween his right and his wrong results, or which could
lead him or any one else a single step in advance.
Young was certainly right in assuming that the first

14 LECTURE L
two signs in the hieroglyphic name of Ptolemy' were
P and T, but his next step was a failure, and so was
the next after that. He did not succeed in analyzing
this royal name or that of Berenike. All his other
attempts were simple failures. " He mistook Auto-
krator for Arsinoe, and Caesar for Euergetes." " His
translations," says Dr. Birch, " are below criticism,
being as unfounded as those of Kircher.'' Besides
being unable to identify more than a very few alpha
betic characters, he failed to recognize the nature of
determinatives, no less an essential part of the key
than the phonetic. Champollion's discovery was of a
ChampoUion. ,.„ , -r. • t ,
very different nature. Besides the two
kinds of Egyptian characters which are used on the
Rosetta stone, there is a third, commonly called the
hieratic. The hieroglyphic characters, with their
accurately elaborate designs of animals, plants and
other objects, are very suitable for monumental in
scriptions, but very unsuitable for the ordinary pur
poses of life ; and the Egyptians had from the earliest
times used a tachygraphic or cursive character which
is a rough and abridged form of the hieroglyphic.
The stones of the great Pyramid bear notes upon
1 That the oval rings contained royal names was first pointed out by
the Danish scholar Zoega, who was also the first in modern times to
assert that some hieroglyphic characters were phonetic.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 15
them in this character which were already written in
the quarry. At a much more recent period (some
seven centuries before Christ), the character was still
further abridged and debased, and assumed the form
now called demotic, and this is the second character
on the Rosetta stone. A great many documents in
our museums are written in this character. Long
before he suspected the real nature of Egyptian writ
ing, ChampoUion had patiently studied the relations
between its three different kinds, and had discovered
the essential identity of the three, demotic being a
debasement of the hieratic, the hieratic a debasement
ofthe hieroglyphic. Through M. Dacier he had pre
sented two dissertations to the French Academic des
Sciences, one on the hieratic and a second on the
demotic character. His enemy Klaproth asserts that
he suppressed the dissertation on the hieratic char
acter for fear of its telling tales against him, and
showing his need of Young's guidance. I do not
know that it is true that ChampoUion tried to sup
press this "Memoire;" but if he did, it surely was not
for the purpose malignantly asserted by Klaproth and
ignorantly repeated in this country. The dissertation
in question is a very excellent work, chiefly consisting
in plates, wherein passages of the Book of the Dead
written in hieroglyphics are placed side by side with
the same passages copied from hieratic manuscripts,

1 6 LECTURE L
and the identity is made apparent to the most un
learned eye. And if, as Klaproth asserts, Champol-
lion had wished to destroy all trace of certain
passages which occur in his text, he would certainly
not have repeated them, as he does, in his letter to
M. Dacier. But the most important step in his pro
gress was discovering the identity of certain demotic
characters, the alphabetic nature of which had been
demonstrated by Akerblad, with the corresponding
hieratic ones, and consequently with their hierogly
phic originals. If any one has a right to be named
in conjunction with ChampoUion, it is not Young, but
Akerblad, to whom he does full justice (as he does
indeed to Young himself) at the very beginning of
his letter to M. Dacier. But in 1822,' ChampoUion
1 That ChampoUion never thought of hieroglyphic characters as pho
netic till after Young's publication, is one of Klaproth's unscrupulous
assertions which has been thoughtlessly repeated by some who should
have known better. It has been refuted by M. ChampoUion-Figeac,
who in the Revue Archeologique of 1856, 1857 and 1878, has produced
abundance of evidence from his brother's writings between the years
1808 and 18 14. In his Memoire sur les Ecritures Egyptiennes, read on
Aug. 7, iSio, before the Society of Sciences and Arts of Grenoble,
ChampoUion strongly insists upon the necessity of phonetism, for other
wise how could foreign names, for which no symbolism existed, be ex
pressed in writing? " L'inscription de Rosette pr&ents les noms Grecs
de Ptol6m^e, B^r^nice, Arsinoe, Pyrrha, d'Areia, de Diogenes, d'A^tes,
d'Alexandre, etc. ; ils ne pouvaient etre exprimis dans la partie hi^ro-
glyphique de ce monument, si ses hi^roglyphes n'avaient, comme nous
I'avons dit, la faculty de produire des sons."

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION.

17

had not only one bilingual inscription before him, but
two, the obelisk of Philae having been found, with an
Egyptian inscription and also a Greek one containing
the name of Cleopatra, which offered special facility
for decipherment, two of the letters in it being alike,
and others being the same as in the name of Ptolemy.
But in discussing this question it must not be forgot
ten that the key to hieroglyphic decipherment does
not consist in recognizing the phonetic nature of this
or that sign, but in the knowledge ofthe simultaneous
use of both phonetic and ideographic signs, not only
in every line, but in nearly every word, and of the
law of this use. And neither Akerblad, nor, since the
language had ceased to be spoken, had any one else
before ChampoUion a notion of this.
The truth of Champollion's alphabet was demon
strated by its enabling one to read the name not only
of Ptolemy and Cleopatra, but of all the Persian,
Greek and Roman sovereigns of the country. And,
what was far more important still, the meanings of
many hieroglyphic groups, on being read according
to his system, were immediately known from the
Coptic vocabulary, Champollion's hypothesis that the
old Egyptian language was identical with Coptic,
though a very imperfect one, and productive even at
the present day of many errors among those who
discard it, was not fatally wrong, for Coptic is in fact

1 8 LECTURE I
a later stage of the language in which the hiero
glyphic texts are written, and the vocabulary of the
latter is full of words which are as intelligible to the
Coptic scholar as the infinitives of Latin verbs are to
a mere Italian scholar. The remaining years of his
short life were spent in copying, studying and inter
preting Egyptian texts. The amount of work accom
plished by him in eight years is almost incredible.
He not only laid the foundations of a Grammar and
Dictionary, but illustrated the history and religion of
ancient Egypt by the translations and analyses of
short but authentic texts, opening an entirely new
world to the historical student, and convincingly pro
ving that scarcely a single page which had hitherto
been written upon Egyptian history or religion de
served the least credit. A splendid work which he
had begun on the Egyptian Pantheon was even dis
continued in consequence of the Egyptian religion
which he was perpetually discovering.
During his lifetime, ChampoUion had many oppo
nents and detractors, but not a single person can be
named who in the slightest degree contributed to the
modification or developement of his views. What
ever corrections he adopted resulted from his own
studies. His immediate disciples did not advance a
step beyond what they learnt from him. One of
them, Salvolini, was guilty of the infamous wicked-

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION.

19

ness, after his master's death, of using the manu
scripts of the latter for the purpose of winning glory
for himself at the expense of the generous friend who
had lent him his most valuable papers. It was not
till 1837, several years after the death of Champol-
lion, that his philological system was subjected to a
thoroughly scientific criticism by Dr. Lepsius in his
Letter to Rosellini, in which the obviously erroneous
portions of the system were eliminated, the relations
between the Coptic and the old Egyptian languages
Were set in a truer light, and a more accurate method
of transcription was adopted.
For a good many years after this,
° -^ •' His successors.
Egyptian archaeology was chiefly cul
tivated by dilettanti, whose knowledge of the lan
guage seldom extended beyond the decipherment of
royal names. Whole systems of Egyptian chro
nology have been devised by men incapable of
reading and .understanding a single line of Egyptian.
Till 1850, the only genuine scholars who can be
mentioned in addition to Lepsius, are Mr. Birch and
Dr. Hincks in this country, M. Emmanuel de Rouge
in France, and Dr. Brugsch (then a very young man)
in Germany. But every one of these was a scholar
of more than average ability, and has left his mark
for ever upon the science. The important discove
ries of M. Mariette belong to the next period, as also

20 LECTURE /.
do the first works of M. Chabas and Mr. Goodwin,
two scholars whose translations of some of the most
difficult texts in the language caused the study of it
to advance with gigantic strides. Since i860, and
particularly since the foundation in 1863 at Berlin of
a journal in which everything connected with the
language or archaeology of ancient Egypt might
be discussed, the number of highly distinguished
scholars has greatly increased. A very valuable
journal of the same kind was founded in Paris in the
year 1872. The names of Dumichen, Lauth, Ebers,
Stern, Eisenlohr, Wiedeman, Bergman and Reinisch
in Germany and Austria, Pleyte in Holland, Lieb-
lein in Sweden, Golenischeff" in Russia, Deveria, J. de
Rouge, Horrack, Maspero, Lefebure, Pierret, Gre-
baut, Robiou, Baillet and Rochemonteix in France,
Naville at Geneva, Rossi, Szedlo and Schiaparelli in
Italy, are authorities familiar to every Egyptologist.
To these I must add Canon Cook and Professor
Lushington in this country.
It is not without a melancholy feel-
Recovery ofthe j^ ^j^^^ j enumerate these names
ancient language. °
(many of them belonging to dear and
valued friends), for the hand of death has already
thinned our ranks, and some of us are growing old
and disabled. The spell, however, is broken ; the
language of ancient Egypt has really been recovered

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 21
— slowly, it is true, and step by step. The decipher
ment of a language does not at once put us in pos
session of a language. The ancient Etruscan writings
are read with ease, but they are as unintelligible as
ever. The relationship between Coptic and Egyp
tian happily enabled ChampoUion to find the mean
ings of many words and the general sense of entire
inscriptions. But the old Egyptian vocabulary, be
sides representing an earlier stage of the language, is
very much more extensive than the Coptic, and the
greater part of the words which compose it had to be
recovered, one after another, by an inductive process.
The truth of the vocabulary which has thus gradually
been built up is verified by its enabling to read and
understand entire documents of every kind. This
alone ought to be considered sufficient proof, for no
imaginary vocabulary can possibly adapt itself to the
needs of an indefinite number of texts. But sceptics
who are incapacitated by their imperfect acquaintance
with the processes of philological science from feel
ing the force of this proof, may at least be referred to
the confirmation of our vocabulary by the bilingual
inscription of Canopus. In 1866, Dr. Lepsius dis
covered a tablet at San, in Lower Egypt, of the same
nature as the Rosetta stone ; that is to say, contain
ing inscriptions in old Egyptian, demotic and Greek,
but much more considerable in extent and quite

2 2 'LECTURE 7.
perfect. The sense of this tablet, according to the
vocabulary already received among Egyptologists,
exactly agreed with that given by the Greek text.
And the truth of the grammar is proved in the same
manner. Already in i860, M. de Rouge declared
that there was no kind of Egyptian text the transla
tion of which might not be undertaken if only the
necessary pains were employed. We are now able
to read and understand not only the splendid and
accurate texts of the public inscriptions, but the
wretched scrawls of manuscripts in the cursive cha
racter. And some scholars — Mr. Goodwin, for in
stance, and Mr. Chabas, and before them Dr. Birch
and M. de Rouge — have successfully translated
texts so frightfully mutilated that in many places
only fragments of letters were visible. But their
familiarity with the cursive character enabled them
to restore the text with an accuracy of which
no competent critic can entertain a doubt. When
I speak of our being able to read and compre
hend the language, you will not understand me as
implying that all Egyptologists are equally learned
and skilful. Nor are all Egyptian texts equaUy
easy of translation.' As in all languages, some are
1 Other questions than those of a purely philological nature often arise
in reference to the texts translated. I do not quarrel with the transla
tions given by M. de Roug^ and other scholars ofthe great texts describ-

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION.

23

very easy and others extremely difficult. There is
one long and most interesting document, of which I
shall have occasion to speak later on, which will, I
fear, long continue to baffle the efforts of translators.
The progress of study was greatly
retarded at first by the difficulty of Egyptian'Texi^
obtaining authentic copies of Egyptian
texts. Almost all the old copies, not even excepting
those made by Belzoni, are absolutely worthless.
Science is insatiate, and its wants can never be
adequately supplied, yet much has been done, both
through the unassisted efforts of private individuals
and through the munificence of governments and
public bodies. The collection of published Egyptian
texts which can be relied upon is now very consider
able. To the plates contained in the Description de
I'Egypte published in 1809 by the French govern
ment, as the result of a great scientific expedition,
ing the invasion of Egypt in the time of Seti II. But I have always
considered the identification of the foreign invaders with the Achaeans,
Tyrrhenians, Sardinians and Sicilians, as in the highest degree improb
able. Nor do I believe that the Danai or the Pelasgi have been really
identified under hieroglyphic spelling. When we reflect that Deutsch-
land is called AUemagne in French and Germany in English, that the
people called Dutch by us are called HoUandais by the French, that the
Greeks only knew themselves as Hellenes, that the name Egypt was un
known to the inhabitants of that country, and that its real name, Kamit,
was unknown to Greeks and Romans, we should be very cautious in
identifying names on the mere strength of similarity in sound.

24 LECTURE I.
must be added the collections of ChampoUion, Rosel
lini and Prisse d'Avennes, Burton's Excerpta Hiero-
glyphica, Sharpe's Egyptian Inscriptions, Dr. Lee-
mans's Monumens Egyptiens du Musee de Leide,
Ungarelli's Obelisks, the magnificent Denkmaeler of
Lepsius, the Hieratic Papyri of the British Museum,
and many other splendid publications bearing the
names of Lepsius, Chabas, Bonomi, Rhind, Brugsch,
Dumichen, Mariette Bey, E. de Rouge, Rossi and
Pleyte, Naville, Ebers and Stern, Maspero, Guyesse,
Golenischeff, Bergman, Wiedeman and others. Some
of these costly works reproduce the original text in
facsimile ; in some of them the accuracy of the copy
is secured by photography.
But large as is the collection of these texts, it is
but a fragment of the texts actually in existence.
Mariette Bey has published four folio volumes of
plates from the temple of Denderah alone, but he
gives them only as a selection. To copy the whole
would, he says, be the work of years. Dr. Dumichen
has published another folio volume of texts of special
interest, selected from the same temple, without inter
fering with those published by M. Mariette. Every
square foot of the walls is in fact covered with picture
or text. I had the pleasure of passing some time, one
or two years ago, at Qurna, on the left bank of the
Nile, near Thebes, with a great scholar, who had

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION.

25

spent much time in copying the inscriptions of a sin
gle tomb ; but though he worked indefatigably and
rapidly, he was compelled to come away leaving a
great part of his intended work unaccomplished.
Would that we might rely upon the zeal of future
labourers for the completion of such tasks as the pre
sent generation is unable to perform ! Unfortunately
the monuments are rapidly perishing, and there are
no effectual means of arresting the progress of de
struction. The tombs are convenient abodes for Arab
families, who destroy the paintings and inscriptions
either by the dense smoke of their fires or by actually
pulling down walls. I was taken to see the " Lay of
the Harper," one of the most interesting remains of
Egyptian poetry, which was published a few years
ago by Dr. Dumichen ; but we found the walls on
which the poem was written a mere heap of ruins.
But the vandalism of European and American travel
lers is most fatal to the monuments. There is, or
rather was, a famous picture at Benihassan which was
formerly thought to represent Joseph presenting his
brethren to Pharaoh. An English lady has been
heard to request her guide to cut out for her the face
of Joseph.
But this destruction in some form or other has
been going on for centuries. Abd-el-Latif, a learned
Arabian writer of the middle ages, tells us in his
2

26 LECTURE L
description of Egypt that the ruins of Memphis in his
time extended half a day's journey in every direction,
and that, in spite of the removal for building purposes
of immense masses of materials, its ruins presented to
the spectator a re-union of marvels sufficient to con
found the intelligence, and which the most eloquent
man would vainly undertake to describe. He then
proceeds to give a very intelligent account of these
marvels, which must have been scarce less astounding
than those still to be seen at Thebes. But of Mem
phis there is at present hardly a trace left. And
other great cities known to ancient travellers have
disappeared with their monuments. Mummy-cases
and coffins with most interesting inscriptions have
for centuries been used as fuel. And innumerable
manuscripts have suffered the same fate.
In speaking of our stock of information respecting
the ancient world, Mr. Grote says that " we possess
only what has drifted ashore from the wreck of a
stranded vessel." If this be true with reference to
such a literature as that of Greece, with its immortal
poets, historians, orators and philosophers, how im
measurably more true is it of Egypt ! Yet if we only
look to quantity, the stock of original and trustworthy
materials actually in existence illustrative of the reli
gion of ancient Egypt, is more extensive than the
corresponding materials extant for the religions of

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION. 27
Palestine, Greece or Rome. Neither Romans nor
Greeks have left any sacred books. They have left
poetry of the highest order, but no psalms or hymns,
litanies or prayers, as the Egyptians have so largely
done. No people certainly were more remote than
the Egyptians from the idea that religion could exist
without outward forms of worship. In studying their
religion, we have to deal, not with a mere sentiment,
but with a vast and complicated system of beliefs and
institutions, resulting from their view of man's rela
tions to the unseen world.
Of the many thousands of texts Most of the
which have been rescued from destruc- Texts are of ^
tion and made accessible to us, there R^'igio^^ Nature.
are extremely few which do not bear directly upon
the subject of the present Lectures. There are two
reasons for this. The first is to be found in the fact
that the Egyptians were among the most religious of
the ancient nations. Religion in some form or other
was dominant in every relation of their lives. One of
the most extensive Egyptian works which has been
recovered is the great medical papyrus published by
Dr. Ebers. That work, however, though a medical
one, and descending to minute details about cosmetics
and even to receipts against vermin, is essentially a
religious book. The medical prescriptions are subor
dinate to the prayers or religious observances which

28 LECTURE I.
give them their efficacy. If we wish to keep clear of
religion in studying Egyptian literature, we shall have
to confine ourselves to mathematics. There is on the
staircase of the British Museum a papyrus treating of
various kinds of mathematical problems, and I confess
that in studying it I was surprised to find it of so
purely secular a character as it really is. It is only at
the very end that we meet at last with a mention of
prayers for fine weather and a high Nile.
But the principal reason why most of the docu
ments which have come down to us are of a religious
character is, that all the ancient monuments of Egypt
have perished except some which were necessarily of
a religious nature — the temples and the tombs. The
palaces of kings and nobles have utterly disappeared.
Our knowledge of Egyptian civil architecture is de
rived from paintings in the tombs. Many texts of
historical interest have been preserved, but their
original intention was not historical, but religious.
For us, the royal texts of Karnak, Abydos and
Saqara, are of historical value; but they have a purely
religious meaning on the walls where they were found.
We should in all probability never have recovered
the Annals of Tehutimes III. except for the splendid
donations to the god of Thebes which they commem
orate. All the objects in our museums and other
collections which seem to belong to civil or domestic

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION.

29

life, have only been preserved by being buried in the
tombs. On examining what appears to be a mere
trinket, you will often find a prayer for the departed.
And this is the case with the papyri, all of which
would infallibly have perished had they not been de
posited in tombs, and by the deep dry sand of the
desert been rendered inaccessible to external influ
ences. It is only accidentally that documents of a
purely secular character have been preserved, and
fragments of Greek and Coptic literature have in like
manner been recovered from tombs. The informa
tion which we possess about Egyptian history is en
tirely derived from the public inscriptions on the
Walls of the temples, and accidental details contained
in the funereal inscriptions of private individuals.
The first step to be taken in the endeavour to ob
tain light out of these materials is classification, and
the most essential kind of classification at starting, is
that of the order of succession. We shall never un
derstand the development of the Egyptian, or of any
other religion, if our ideas are uncertain as to the or
der in which the phenomena which represent it stand
towards each other in reference to time. The specu
lations of the ablest men are sure to fail if their chro
nology is fatally wrong. I remember the time when
men talked gravely and learnedly of reminiscences
cf primeval revelation respecting the Trinity and

30 LECTURE L
other Christian doctrines, as having been preserved,
though in a very corrupt state, in the Hindu tradi
tions about Trimiirti. Some, on the other hand, per
haps suspected that the Christian doctrine might
have been derived through some unknown channel
from a Hindu source. It is now acknowledged by
all scholars that the Hindu doctrine in question is
extremely modern ; the first traces of it are to be
sought more than fourteen hundred years, not before,
but after, the Christian era. The work upon India
of P. Von Bohlen used to be considered a decisive
authority respecting the influence of Indian upon
Egyptian culture. No such influence can any long
er be admitted. Many of you have probably read
Mr. McLennan's article on the Worship of Animals
and Plants. In order to show that the ancient no
tions passed through what he calls the Totem stage,
which he says must have been in pre-historic times,
he appeals to the signs of the Zodiac. " The Zodiac
al constellations figured on the porticos of Dendera
and Esne in Egypt are," he says, "of great anti
quity." The authority for this statement is a passage
from Chambers' Encyclopedia, to the effect that
" Dupuis, in his Origine des Cultes, has, from a care
ful investigation of the position of these signs, and
calculating precession at the usual rate, arrived at a
conclusion that the earliest of them date from 4000

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN RELIGION.

31

B. c. M. Fourier, in his ' Recherches sur la Science',
makes the representation at Esne 1800 years older
than M. Dupuis." Mr. McLennan is here more than
half a century behind his age. Every tourist on the
Nile in possession of Murray's Handbook, knows
that both Dupuis and Fourier were ludicrously mis
taken.' The Zodiacal representations in question, far
from being of great antiquity, belong to the very
latest period of Egyptian workmanship ; they are not
anterior to the Christian era or the Roman domi
nation ; they were borrowed from the Greeks, and
were entirely unknown to the ancient Egyptians.
It is not sufficient to be in possession of trust
worthy witnesses ; it is also necessary to know the
limit within which alone their evidence is really
available. I am obliged, therefore, to say something
about Egyptian chronology, especially as the current
opinions on the subject are very vague and inaccu
rate. I shall not, however, detain you by entering
into any of the questions which are still at issue
between learned men who had given their attention
to them, but will simply explain to you the nature of
the undisputed evidence upon which we assign
relative dates to the various periods of Egyptian civ-
1 All Mr. McLennan's statements about the ancient nations are based
on equally worthless authorities. He goes for his facts to Bryant and to
Lempriere's Dictionary.

32 LECTURE L j- f
ilization, and which imperatively demand that a very
early date indeed should be assigned to the origin
of that civilization.

LECTURE II.

ANTIQUITY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF EGYPTIAN
CIVILIZATION.

I PROMISED to explain the kind of
evidence which compels us to assign a gyp'^f" J°'
s^ ° nology depends
very remote antiquity to Egyptian civi- upon monuments
... . • 1 1 , recording Con-
hzation— SO remote indeed as to appear temporary Facts.
simply fabulous to men whose studies
of ancient history have been confined to Greece and
Rome, and who know how very soon historical evi
dence fails at the distance of a few centuries from the
Christian era. Such men are not unnaturally in
clined to suspect us of uncritically attaching import
ance to exaggerated or even fictitious numbers handed
down by untrustworthy authorities. Such a suspi
cion is entirely without foundation. There is not a
single Egyptian monument known which in its bear
ings upon chronology is liable to the charge of nu
merical exaggeration. The monuments, as a rule,
33

34 LECTURE IL
never speak of contemporary events. There are
a few instances in which a temple built by an ancient
sovereign is said to have been repaired or rebuilt by
another, but the interval between the two sovereigns
is unfortunately never stated.
Although Mena is the first of the
Monuments _, ... , . j. ji
mentioning the Egyptian kings, and is repeatedly
Year of a Reign, named, datcs are never reckoned from
his or from any other era, but are given by the year
of the reigning king. This is never so high as to
justify a doubt. We can certainly conceive the case
of a forged inscription on a tombstone, saying that
John Smith died on the 9th of September, 1876, or
(were such the custom of the country) in the 39th
year of Queen Victoria; but unless good reasons for
rejecting such a statement are produced, the law of
historical evidence compels us to admit it. '- Most of
the documents upon which we rely for Egyptian
chronology are of this simple nature, and no one who
has seen the tombs or buildings from which they
have been taken, can dream for an instant that these
inscriptions are less trustworthy than those in an
English churchyard.
The manifest defect for chronological purposes of
such inscriptions is, that the last monumental year
which happens to be preserved to us of a king is not
necessarily the last of his reign. An error of several

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 35
(perhaps of many) years is possible in each reign
when there is no direct evidence to the contrary.
But the error is at all events not on the side of exag
gerated numbers.
Still more important than the monu- Monuments fur-
ments which mention the year of a "'shing Evidence
of a Succession of
king, are those in which two or more Reigns.
sovereigns of the same period are men
tioned, especially if their succession or other precise
data are given. Such is the treaty made in the
twenty-first of his reign between Rameses II. and the
king of the Cheta, wherein Rameses II. calls himself
the son of Seti I., who in his turn is called the son of
Rameses I.' There is a very large number of inscrip
tions belonging to personages who have been born in
one reign and died in another, or who have served
several kings in succession. And the inscriptions of
the same period naturally confirm one another, or
supply details which were missing.
Thus, to take the case of the eighteenth dynasty,
the sepulchral inscription of Aahmes, the son of
Abana,^ gives the account of a naval officer who
served three sovereigns one after the other, — Aahmes
I., Amenhotep I. and Tehutimes I. (commonly called
Thothmes or Thothmosis). His father, the same
inscription tells us, served the king Sekenen-Ra.
1 " Records ofthe Past," Vol. IV. p. 25. » Ibid. Vol. VI. p. 5.

36 LECTURE IL
Another well-known inscription, now in the Louvre
at Paris,' begins the tale of its hero in the reign of
Aahmes L, and ends it in that of Tehutimes III. The
tablet of Nebuaiu, now in the Museum at Bulaq, gives
thanks to Tehutimes III., and his son Amenhotep IL,
who had honored Nebuaiu. King Amenhotep IL,
himself, on a tablet at Amada, speaks of Tehutimes
IIL, as his father. And a third and independent wit
ness, Amenemheb,^ tells us that Tehutimes IIL, in
whose service he was, died on the last day of the
month Phamenoth, in the 54th year of his reign, and
that he was succeeded by his son Amenhotep II.
The entire succession of the dynasty is established on
a large mass of evidence of the same kind, as may be
seen at length in an excellent dissertation of Dr.
Wiedeman.^ And the chronology of other periods
has been established in like manner.
The most remarkable series of inscriptions which
has been utilized for chronological purposes consists
of the inscriptions relating to the Apis bulls, whose
wonderful tombs were discovered by M. Mariette.
One of these sacred animals was born in the twenty-
eighth year of king Sheshonk IIL, lived twenty years,
1 " Records of the Past," Vol. IV. p. 7. "^ Ibid. Vol. II. p. 59-
^ " Geschichte der achtzehnten agyptischen Dyna.stie bis zum Tode
Tumes III.," in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesell
schaft, Bd. xxxi.

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 37
and died in the second year of king Pamai. Another
Apis was born in the twenty-sixth year of Taharqa,
and died in the twentieth year of Psammitichus I. A
hundred and sixty-eight tablets in honour of this one
Apis have been found, fifty-three of which are dated.
Another Apis, born on the nineteenth day of the
month Mechir, in the fifty-third year of Psammitichus
I., lived sixteen years, seven months and seventeen
days, and died on the sixth Paophi of the sixteenth
year of Necho II. This bull was succeeded by
another, born on the seventh Paophi of the sixteenth
year of Necho IL, lived seventeen years, six months
and five days, and died on the twelfth day of
the month Pharmuti, of the twelfth year of king
Apries. As documents of this kind bring us down past the
time of Cambyses and even into the Ptolemaic period,
that is, into a period of well-ascertained chronology,
we are able, by means of the Apis inscriptions alone,
to go back from Cambyses to the first year of Tahar
qa, about seven hundred years before Christ, the
limit of possible error being two or three years at the
utmost. And with Taharqa (the Tirhaka of Scrip
ture), who was the last king ofthe twenty-fifth dynas
ty, begins, as Brugsch observes, the latest period of
the history of the Pharaohs.
The first kind of monuments which I have de-

38 LECTURE IL
scribed is useful as furnishing the highest ascertain
able monumental year of a reign ; the
Royal lists and ,,., ,, , ., .1,
their verification ^econd kind enables us besides to deter-
by the monu- mine the order of succession of reigns.
"lents. , . ,
Both these kinds of monuments are con
temporaneous with the persons and events mentioned
upon them. But besides these, there are monuments
giving long lists of sovereigns, all of whom cannot
have been contemporaneous. Such are the famous
tablets of Abydos, that of Saqara,' the chamber of
Karnak, and some others. The royal hieratic canon
of Turin (which is unfortunately in so mutilated a
condition as practically to be of little use, and which
enumerates many kings and gives the lengths of
their reigns) is a document of the same historical
character, at least from the point of view from which
I am now looking at the matter.^ In the chamber
of Karnak, Tehutimes IIL, is represented as making
an offering to sixty-one of his royal predecessors,
whose names are given. At Abydos, Seti I., to-
1 Mariette, " La table de Saqqarah," in the Revue Archeologique,
1864, II. 169.
' It differs from the rest in being a professedly historical document.
The others may rather be compared to lists of saints in Catholic litanies.
That royal names should occur in this way in the prayers of private
persons, as in the tablet of Saqara, is not wonderful, when we learn from
the Book of the Dead (ch. 136, b. T4) that the pious dead are in the
company of the kings of the North and of the South.

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION.

39

gether with his son Rameses, then heir-apparent,
offers incense to no less than seventy-six kings.'
You will at once understand the im
portance of such a monument, if it can .,°] ^ °
^ ' Abydos.
be relied upon, when I remind you
that the Israelites in bondage are said to have been
employed in building the treasure cities (as the He
brew meschenoth is commonly translated), or rather
sanctuaries, of Pithom and Rameses. It may be
considered absolutely certain that no place in Egypt
ever had the name of Rameses till the appearance of
the celebrated hero of the name, who is actually re
presented on this monument as the son and heir-
apparent of Seti I. The name of the place is as
significant as the names of Alexandria, Antioch,
Ptolemais, Seleucia, Washington or Napoleonville.
The name of Rameses is a very peculiar one, the lat
ter part of it consisting of the reduplicated form of
the verb mes, not of the simple form, like the names
Rames, Aahmes, Tehutimes, Chonsumes, and I do
not believe any instance of it will ever be found
more ancient than that of Rameses I., the grand-
1 Dumichen, "Die Sethostafel von Abydos (mit Abbildung)," in the
Zeitschrift fur agyptische Sprache und Alterthumshinde, 1864, p. 81.
D^v^ria, " La nouveUe table d' Abydos, comparee aux autres listes
royales de I'ancienne Egypte, redig^e sous les Ramessides ou anterieure-
ment," in the Rev. Archeologique, 1865, I. 50, and Mariette, '' La nou
veUe table d' Abydos," Rev, Arch. 1866, I. 73.

40 LECTURE II
father of the great conqueror. Now if this tablet of
Abydos is correct, seventy-six kings, that is, very
many more kings than can be counted in English
history, must have reigned over Egypt before the
first books of the Bible were written. But if we go
back in English history to Ethelred II. in 976, we
shall find that not more than forty-four sovereigns
have reigned during a thousand years, and the aver
age length of an Egyptian king's reign cannot be
shown to be shorter than that of an English sove
reign. But are the names on the tablet of
Evidence of the ... r ,
Reality of Sover- Abydos names of real personages, or
eigns named. ^re they (or at least some of them) as
imaginary as the kings of Britain, beginning with
Brutus, as reported by Geoffrey of Monmouth, or the
kings of Scotland, beginning with Fergus L, whose
portraits adorn the walls of Holyrood ? There is but
one way of settling the question, and that is by look
ing out for evidence which will confirm or contradict
that given by these royal lists. As far as the test of
verification has been applied to these lists, there is no
reason whatever for distrusting them. Instead of ad
mitting sovereigns who have never lived, they have for
certain reasons omitted many, the existence of whom
is quite certain. The intention of the tablets was not
historical or chronological, but simply devotional, and

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 41
the selection and arrangement of names consequently
vary, though the most considerable names are the
same in all.
M. de Rouge has carefully studied all the monu
ments which belong to the first six dynasties. ' The
earliest monuments that can be found belong to king
Seneferu, the 20th on the list of Abydos ; and from
this king till the 38th on the list, the evidence is com
plete, and the order of succession thoroughly estab
lished by independent inscriptions contemporaneous
with the sovereigns of whom they speak. There is,
for instance, the tomb at Gizeh of a queen who graced
the courts of king Seneferu and the two kings who
followed him. Two officers have left inscriptions
which say that they had served the kings Unas and
Teta. The great inscription of Una ^ begins by say
ing that this officer served Teta, and ends with his
services under Merenra. This king was succeeded
by his brother Neferkara (No. 38 of the list). The
tomb of the mother of these royal brothers still
exists. She was the wife of Pepi-Merira (No. 36),
several monuments of whom are known; one of
them, in Wadi Magharah in the peninsula of Mount
Sinai, is dated in the eighteenth year of his reign.
1 " Recherches sur les monuments qu'on peut attribuer aux six pre
mieres dynasties de Manethon :" Paris, 1866.
2 " Records ofthe Past," Vol. II. p. i.

42

LECTURE IL

No period in any history that can be named is better
authenticated by contemporary monuments.
The same truth may be asserted of the twelfth
dynasty, which in the tablet of Abydos is represented
by Nos. 59 to 65. The number of monuments accu
rately dated belonging to this period is very consider
able. They are all perfectly consistent with one
another, and leave no doubt as to the length of each
reign and of the whole dynasty. It is to this dynasty
that the splendid tomb of Nahre-se-Chnumhotep at
Benihassan belongs. His inscription mentions the
first four sovereigns as having honoured three succes
sive generations of his family.
Omissions of ^^'^ "^^ '^°'^ Speak of the omissions
this List. of this tablet, which I have selected in
preference to others in consequence of its being
the longest and the most intelligible as to its arrange
ment. The most beautiful monuments of the eighteenth
dynasty were raised by the powerful queen Hatasu,'
daughter of Tehutimes L, who associated her with
him. She reigned for some years either alone or in
conjunction with her brothers Tehutimes II. and
Tehutimes III. successively; but her name and mem-
^ Of late very generaUy called Hashop, in simple forgetfulness of the
most undisputed rules of hieroglyphic decipherment. When an error of
this kind is once admitted, it is almost impossible to eradicate it.

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION.

43

ory were persecuted by the latter, who resented her
dominion over him during the years of his minority.
Her name does not appear on the tablet of Abydos.
There is also an interval between the reigns of
Amenhotep IIL and Hor-em-heb, which chronolo
gically is filled up by the period of the sun-disk
worshippers. Amenhotep III. was followed by a
king, the fourth of the same name, who dropped it
when he assumed that of Chut-en-Aten, as the
founder of a new reUgion, which had but a very
partial and short-lived success. His attempts at
reformation led to his exclusion from the lists of the
legitimate kings. There is monumental evidence of
one or two reigns of short duration before that of
Hor-em-heb, who broke up the monuments of Chut-
en-Aten, and used them in the construction of his
own. It is not out of place to mention the fact that
the first information we obtained about this abortive
attempt at the transformation of the Egyptian reli
gion, was derived from blocks of one of the propyla
of Karnak, which Mohammed Ali had brutally pulled
down, that the stones might be broken up and
roasted to quick-lime, in order to furnish stucco for
his saltpetre works. Mr. Perring, an English archi
tect, who was there, was surprised to find that the
faces of the stones which had been placed inwards
and covered with cement were sculptured with

44 LECTURE IL
hieroglyphics of the same perfect execution as those
which had been engraved on them after their arrange
ment in the new building. This appropriation, of
which there are many instances, by one sovereign of
materials bearing the name and inscription of one of
his predecessors, is always of value as determining
the question of priority in time.
The omission of the heretical sovereigns is easily
accounted for, and Seti may have shared the dislike
of Tehutimes for queen Hatasu. But no satisfactory
explanation has yet been given of the omission of a
large number of names between the end of the twelfth
and the beginning ofthe eighteenth dynasty. The
immediate passage on the tablet from one of these
dynasties to the other, cannot mean that the king
numbered 65 was followed by the king numbered 66,
who is Aahmes I. The important inscription of the
naval officer Aahmes, son of Abana, which has al
ready been quoted, mentions king Sekenen-Ra as
the predecessor of Aahmes I. Sekenen-Ra is as
thoroughly historical a personage as any one of our
own sovereigns. There were even three kings of the
name, and their tombs have actually been found at
Thebes. On the other hand, the tablet of Ameni-
senb, now in the Louvre, belongs to the reign of a
king anterior to the eighteenth dynasty, but later
than the twelfth, as it records the restoration of a

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION.

45

temple at Abydos founded by Usertsen I ' The in
terval between the twelfth and the eighteenth dynasty
must have been very considerable. The time imme
diately preceding the eighteenth dynasty was the
period of the foreign domination generally known as
that of the Hyksos, or the Shepherd kings. So
much is certain, but it is absolutely impossible to
ascertain from Egyptian records when this period
began, and how long it lasted. The 5 1 1 years which
are ascribed to it by Manetho, as quoted by Josephus,
are neither to be simply accepted nor rejected, but
must remain subject to future verification. The only
evidence from Egyptian sources which bears upon
the subject is a monument of Rameses IL, dated from
the four hundredth year of one of these kings of
foreign origin. But a considerable number of native
kings must have reigned between the last king of the
twelfth dynasty and the beginning of the foreign in
vasion. There are numerous inscriptions which
prove that sovereigns powerful in the north of Egypt
had extended their dominion to the very heart of
Nubia. The monuments of Thebes, southern Egypt
and Nubia, might be consistent with the hypothesis
of a Hyksos kingdom in the north, but the presence
' Commonly caUed Usertesen, or still more erroneously Usirtasen.
Vsert is a feminine noun, and sen is a pronominal suffix, in allusion to
the child's parents, like ef, es and ari.

46 LECTURE IL
of equally important monuments of the Sebekhoteps
at Bubastis and Tanis, kings whose names occupy an
important place in the chamber of Karnak, would
alone be sufficient to overthrow this hypothesis.
There is in the Louvre a magnificent colossal statue
in real granite of Sebekhotep IIL, with reference to
which. M. de Rouge says : " A single statue of this
excellence and of such a material shows clearly that
the king who had it executed for the decoration of
his temples or palaces had not yet suffered from the
invasion of the Shepherds. It is evident that under
his reign Egypt was still a great power, peacefully
cultivating the arts." Perhaps the most interesting
monument of this period is the colossal statue of the
king Semench-ka-Ra (the eighteenth king of the thir
teenth dynasty, according to the royal Turin papy
rus), on the right shoulder of which one of the foreign
kings has had his name engraved in hieroglyphic
characters. Of the kings of the eleventh dynasty, only two
(Nos. 57 and 58) appear on the tablet of Abydos.
Very interesting inscriptions belonging to their reigns
are still extant; but other kings bearing the name of
Antuf and Mentuhotep are known to us, not only by
inscriptions, but by their cofifins in our museums. Of
Mentuhotep IIL, dates have been found as high as his
forty-third year. And a tablet has been found repre-

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION.

47

senting him as being worshipped by his successor,
Antuf IV. There is a very interesting fact connected
with one of the monuments of this dynasty. Many
years ago, ' Dr. Birch translated a papyrus, now in
the British Museum, describing a judicial inquiry con
cerning robberies committed in the royal tombs at
Thebes. The tombs of the kings are described as
having been inspected. In one of these tombs the
king Antuf-aa is reported to be represented on a tab
let accompanied by his hound Behkaa. This tomb
has quite recently been discovered by M. Mariette at
Drah-abu'lneggah, with the picture of the king, and
the dog's name was Behkaa written over the picture
of the animal. The inscription on the tablet is dated
from the fiftieth year of the king.
Evidence like this proves that there is no exaggera
tion in the list of Abydos. It does not aim at pre
senting a complete list of kings. It only mentions
those for whom Seti had a special devotion. The
disappearance of Memphis and other great cities is
quite sufficient to account for the absence of monu
mental evidence for some of the reigns. It is very
probable that the earliest kings left no monuments.
But for nearly every king on the tablet who is unre-
1 In the Revue Archeologique of 1836. See Dr. Birch's paper " On
the Tablet of Antefaa," in the Transactions of the Society of Biblical
Archaeology, Vol. IV. p. 172.

48 LECTURE II.
presented by monumental evidence, we can produce
another king omitted by the tablet, but whose reign
is proved by unimpeachable evidence.
The evidence of such genealogies as
Genealogies. ^^^ ^^^^^ .^ ^^^ ^^^j^^ j^^^^ ^^ ^j^^.^.
nological results very similar to those derived from
the succession of the kings. These genealogies have
nothing fabulous about them, like those against which
Mr. Grote cautions his readers ; they are as complete
ly matter of fact as any recorded on the tombstones
of our own churchyards. '
A great many writers who have
treated of Egyptian chronology have
endeavoured to utilize the names and numbers given
in the fragments of Manetho. There is not the
slightest reason for questioning the fact that Manetho
had access to authentic historical records ; and if his
work were still extant, it would be of invaluable ser
vice to us. As it is, we are indebted to him for the
notion of the division into dynasties with local
origins, all of which have been accurately verified.
1 The funereal tablets often mention the name of the father and mother
and some other near relatives of the departed. One tablet seldom goes
back three or more generations. And the longest genealogy which has
been recovered appears to be defective rather than otherwise. Dr.
Lieblein's " Dictionnaire des noms hieroglyphiques" contains an in
valuable collection of these family records arranged in chronological
order.

E G YPTIAN CIVILIZA TION.

49

But his work has unfortunately been lost, and the few
fragments of it which remain, and which give but an
imperfect notion of the whole, have been preserved
by writers who do not appear to have observed strict
accuracy in their quotations, and they have clearly in
some instances quoted hiin at second-hand. The late
Dr. Hincks, who had given great attention to the
subject, has pointed out a series of deliberate falsifica
tions of Manetho's lists made by the early Christian
and perhaps by Jewish chronologers for the purpose
of bringing these lists into harmony with the Old
Testament, or rather with fanciful interpretations of
the Old Testament. He does not attribute these fal
sifications to dishonest motives, but to " mistakes or
injudicious attempts to correct mistakes."
It was once generally supposed (and
T , 1/- .,, ¦ r r ,1 Absolute Dates.
I have myself written in favour of the
supposition ' ) that absolute dates might be detected
1 On " The Earliest Epochs of Authentic Chronology," in Home and
Foreign Review, 1862, p. 420. M. Biot, in his " Memoire sur quelques
dates absolues," and after him M. Romieu and Dr. Gensler, have dealt
with the Egyptian calendars as if they recorded the risings of certain stars.
But the text ofthe calendars distinctly speaks ofthe transits of the stars,
and never of their risings. I have discussed this question in the Chroni
cle, 25 Jan. 1868, and in the Transactions of the Society for Biblical
Archaeology, Vol. III. M. E. de Roug^ has a very important " note sur
quelques conditions pr^liminaires des calculs qu'on peut tenter sur le
calendrier et les dates egyptiennes," in the Revue Archeologique, 1864,
Vol. II. p. 8r.
3

50 LECTURE II.
on the monuments. The heliacal risings of certain
stars were calculated by M. Biot as fixing the reign
of one king in 1 300 B. c, and of another king in the
year 1444. But I no longer believe the Egyptian
texts really bear out the interpretation which fur
nishes the data for these calculations. Dr. Diimich-
en,' Dr. Lauth ^ and other scholars have written in
favour of other fixed dates which they believe can be
determined astronomically. But whether these dates
are right or wrong (and I am unwilling to express an
opinion on questions which I have not personally in
vestigated), matters but little for our present purpose.
The essential point upon which I wish to insist is,
that the Egyptian monarchy, according to the most
moderate calculation, must have already been in ex
istence fifteen hundred years at the very least, but
probably more than two thousand years, before the
book of Exodus was written.
1 " Die erste bis jetzt aufgefundene sichere Angabe iiber die Regie-
rungszeit eines agyptischen Konigs aus dem alien Reich, welche uns
durch dem medicinischen Papyrus Ebers iiberliefert wird :" Leipzig,
1874. 2 " Aegyptische chronologie, basirt auf die voUstandige Eeihe der
Epochen seit Bytes-Menes bis Hadrian-Antonin durch drei Sothisperio-
den==438o Jahre." See also a paper of M. Chabas, " Determination
d'une date certaine dans le rJgne d'un roi de I'ancien empire en
Egypte," in the Memoires presentes a V Academie des inscriptions et
belles lettres, 1877.

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 51
The composition of the book of
Exodus, however, cannot unfortunately archy anterior to
be considered a fixed date. The 3°°° ^- c-
opinion which used to be universally received, that
Moses is the author ofthe Pentateuch, must assuredly
be abandoned. I am quite ready to admit that the
co-existence in the Pentateuch of the documents
called Elohistic and Jehovistic is in itself no argument
against the authorship of Moses. But the fact that
these documents continue to run through the book
of Joshua furnishes an argument which admits of no
reply. The book of Joshua and the book of Exodus
are parts of one and the same work, and the historical
allusions in the book of Joshua have compelled some
of the commentators who pride themselves most upon
their orthodoxy (Matthew Henry, for instance), to
refer the authorship of it to times subsequent to the
foundation ofthe Hebrew monarchy. '
But though the book of Exodus as a whole may
not be the work of a contemporary, there is really no
reason for doubting the accuracy of the statement
about Pithom and Rameses. Egyptian history \
renders it most probable that Moses was a contem- '.
porary of the great Rameses. The exodus of the ¦'
Israelites cannot with any probability be brought j
lower down than 13 10 years before Christ, and it is ;
about 2050 before this that I would place the lowest <-

52 LECTURE IL
limit for estimating the beginning of the historical
Egyptian monarchy. The date of the Great Pyramid
cannot be more recent than 3000 b.c.
„ ,_. . This is undoubtedly a great and
Pre-histonc an- •'
tiquity of human venerable antiquity, but it is after all
gyp . ^^^ inferior to the antiquity of the
human race in Egypt, as demonstrated by the opera
tions suggested by Mr. Leonard Horner to the
Royal Society, and carried out at first at its expense,
and finally at the cost of Abbas Pacha, between the
years 185 1 and 1854. Ninety-five pits were sunk at
different spots into the alluvial soil ofthe Nile valley.
" Although," Professor Ansted teUs us,' " it cannot
be regarded as a matter about which there is no dis
pute, all the evidence that exists seems to point to
five inches' per century as fully representing the
average amount of elevation given by the Nile mud
to the bed of the Nile and the surrounding country
covered by the annual inundation." " The average
can hardly under any calculations have exceeded five
inches per century during the last several centuries,
whilst from the mere effects of long-continued pres
sure the beds must become more compact at some
depth below than they are near the surface, and the
rate of thickness ought to become gradually less the
deeper we penetrate." In the course of the opera-
1 " Geological Gossip," p. 190.

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION.

53

tions, remains showing the handiwork of man were
brought up from considerable depths : sculptured
granite, architecturally carved limestone, human and
animal figures, coloured mosaic, vases, jars, a copper
knife, and at very great depths — fifty, sixty, or even
seventy-two feet — bricks and fragments of pottery.
At thirty-three feet and a half, a tablet with inscrip
tions was found. There is not a single geologist
who does not at once infer from these facts an enor
mous lapse of time during which the human race
must have inhabited Egypt. Geologists are not
more deficient in common sense than other men, and
they are quite ready to allow that accidental circum
stances may have contributed to bury some articles
deeper than others; and their conclusions are not
drawn from this or that experiment, but from the
cumulative evidence derived from nearly a hundred
experiments made over a very extensive area of
land. In reply to the objection that the artificial objects
might have fallen into old wells which had after
wards been filled up. Sir Charles Lyell says : ' "Of
the ninety-five shafts and bprings, seventy or more
were made far from the sites of towns or villages ;
and aUowing that every field may have had its well,
there would be small chance of the borings striking
1 "Antiquity of Man," p. 38, 1873.

54 LECTURE IL
upon the site even of a small number of them in
seventy experiments."
I remember being once asked about these opera
tions, and when I had described them, one of my
friends came up to me and said in a voice of solemn
warning and protest, " If what you have been saying
is true, Christianity is a mere fable." I could only
reply, " No ; it only shows that your conception of
Christianity involves something fabulous." What
ever claim a religion may have to a divine authority,
that claim cannot be extended to its theology, which
is nothing else but a system of reasoning upon two
sets of data, namely, those furnished by the religion
itself, and those furnished by the science of the day.
Biblical chronology as understood by Usher, Peta-
vius or other learned men, depends not upon the
Bible only, but also upon the data of profane chro
nology as understood in their days, and the latter
chronology was built in great part upon statements
of Greek and Latin writers which at the present day
are known to be absolutely worthless.
The boring instruments which had
Egyptian
Ethnology. t° °s employed at great depths in the
operations of which I have been speak
ing, necessarily brought up everything in fragments.
There is therefore no proof that the Egyptians known
to us from history were descended from the pre-his-

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 5^"
toric men whose existence was first brought to light
by these operations. But the very proximate proba
bility of such a descent might have suggested itself
to ethnologists, who have persisted in looking for the
ancestors of the Egyptians among races the very
existence of which cannot be traced very far back.
At all events, the view is now entirely abandoned
according to which the Egyptians came down the
Nile from the more southern regions of Africa. It
has been most conclusively proved that they gradu
ally advanced from north to south, and the earliest
Ethiopian civilization is demonstrably the child, not
the parent, of the Egyptian. Most scholars now
point to the interior of Asia as the cradle of the
Egyptian people. I will only say that the farther
back we go into antiquity, the more closely does the
Egyptian type approach the European. This is the
opinion of Mariette Bey and of Dr. Birch, and the
same opinion was most powerfully expressed by Pro
fessor Owen at the Oriental Congress held in London
in 1874. In reference to one specimen. Professor
Owen said : " With English costume and complexion,
this Egyptian of the Ancient Empire would pass for
a well-to-do sensible British citizen and rate-payer."
And of another he said : " The general character of
the face recalls that of the northern German ; he
might be the countryman of Bismarck." In refer-

56 LECTURE IL
ence to another hypothesis which had been proposed,
he observed : " Unknown and scarce conceivable as
are the conditions which could bring about the con
version of the Australian into the Egyptian type of
skull, the influence of civilization and admixture
would be still more impotent in blotting out the den
tal characteristics of the lower race. The size of
crown and multiplication of fangs are reduced in the
ancient Egyptian to the standard of Indo-European
or so-called highly civilized races. The last molar
has the same inferiority of size."'
It is in vain, I believe, that the testi
mony of philology has been invoked in
evidence of the origin of the Egyptians. The lan
guage which has been recovered belongs to a very
early stage of speech, and is not, or at least cannot
be shown to be, allied to any other known language
than its descendant the Coptic. It is certainly not
akin to any of the known dialects either of North or
of South Africa, and the attempts which have hitherto
been made towards establishing such a kindred must
be considered as absolute failures. A certain number
of Egyptian words, such as i, " go," ta, " give, place,"
1 Transactions of the Second Session of the International Congress of
Orientalists, held in London, 1874, p. 353 and following. Professor
Owen here discusses the doctrine put forth by Professor Huxley upon
'¦ the Geographical Distribution of the chief Modifications of Mankind,"
in the Journal ofthe Ethnological Society of London, Jan. 1871.

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 57
have the same meaning as the corresponding Indo-
European roots. And a few other Egyptian words
sound very like Semitic words of the same meaning.
But the total number of words in the Egyptian voca
bulary which have the appearance of relationship
either with the Aryan or with the Semitic stock turns
out, after passing through the necessary process of
sifting, to be extremely small. A considerable num
ber of words have certainly passed from one language
into another, but all these have to be deducted.
Those who talk of Egyptian having its root in
Semitic, or say that its grammar is Semitic, must
mean something quite different from what these
words imply in the mouth of some one well versed in
the science of Language. I once heard a learned
Jew compare Hebrew with Portuguese. All that
he meant to say was, that it preferred the letter
m where the kindred languages took n, as the
Portuguese language often does in contrast with its
sister languages, the Spanish, French and Italian.
And those who speak of Egyptian grammar as being
Semitic are clearly thinking of some peculiarities of
it, in forgetfulness of very much more important ones.
It would be quite easy, under such conditions, to
discover Finnish or Polynesian affinities.
The Egyptian and the Seniitic languages belong to
quite different stages of language, the former to what
3*

58 LECTURE I I.
Professor Max MuUer calls the second or Termina-
tional, the latter to the third or Inflexional stage. In
the Terminational stage, two or more roots may
coalesce to form a word, the one retaining its radical
independence, the other sinking down to a mere
termination. The languages belonging to this stage
have generally been called agglutinative. Now the
Egyptian language has indeed reached this stage as
regards the pronominal and one or two other suffixes.
But in all other respects it most nearly resembles the
languages of the first or Radical stage, in which there
is no formal distinction between a root and a word.
The agglutination between an Egyptian word and its
pronominal suffix is of the lightest possible kind ; a
particle may, and often does, intervene between them,
A recent critic reviewing Rossi's Grammar a few
weeks ago, preferred that of Brugsch's to it in conse
quence of the paradigms of verbs which are to be
found in the latter. He might with equal wisdom
have found fault with both for omitting the declen
sions. My own criticism would have been very
different. There is, I believe, too much paradigm in
Rossi's Grammar. There are no paradigms at all
in Egyptian ; and those who have inserted such things
into their Grammars (I say it with the utmost defer
ence to such admirable scholars as E. de Rouge and
Brugsch) have been led astray by their efforts to find

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 59
in Egyptian what exists in other languages. But
each kind of language has its own processes. Hebrew
and Arabic verbs can as little be thrown into moods
and tenses corresponding to the Greek or Latin verbs,
as you can find Pual or Hithpahel forms in French or
English. Personal endings are indispensable to the
Indo-European and to the Semitic verbs. The Egyp
tian verb is unchangeable, and has no personal ending
properly speaking. The suffix which is sometimes
added to it is not really a personal ending. It is put
instead of a subject ; and when the subject is ex
pressed, the pronominal suffix is and must be omitted.
It would be impossible in Hebrew, or in any other
Semitic language, to suppress the personal ending,
which is an essential part of the word in which it
occurs. One of the chief differences between the Egyptian
language on the one hand and the Indo-European
and Semitic on the other, is, that the distinctions
between roots, stems and words, can hardly be said to
exist at all in the former. The bare root, which in
the languages of the third stage lies, as it were, below
the surface, and is only revealed by its developments
to scientific inquiry, is almost invariably identical in
Egyptian with the word in actual use. From one
Aryan or Semitic root, which is itself no part of
speech and has but an abstract existence, verbs.

6o LECTURE II.
nouns, adjectives, adverbs and other parts of speech,
are derived. The actual Egyptian word, taken by
itself, is in very many instances no part of speech, but
within the limits of the notion which it represents is
potentially noun, verb, adjective, adverb, &c. The
notion expressed by an Egyptian word is only deter
mined, as that of a verb in the strict sense (verbum
finitum), by the presence of a subject. When no
subject (that is, noun or pronoun) is expressed, we
may indeed have a "verbum infinitum," but this is
grammatically a noun or an adjective. How can a
language of this description be called Semitic in its
grammar ?
There are three different ways in which a verb may
be connected with its subject, but these are wholly
irrespective of time or mood, so that grammarians
who have introduced these forms into their paradigms
call them " Present- Past-Future," first, second or third.
They might add, " Indicative-Potential-Conjunctive,"
and so forth. The Egyptian verb is often accom
panied by an auxiliary, and is grammatically subordi
nate to it; and the combinations formed by these
auxiliary wonds with the verbal notion enable the
language to express meanings equivalent to those
expressed by our Indo-European tenses and moods.
But this is very different from what is meant by
paradigm.

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 6 1
I have just spoken of the grammatical subordina
tion of a verb to its auxiliary. This is almost the
only kind of grammatical subordination which exists
in the language, and the consequence of it is fatal to
anything like beauty of* construction in the form of
the sentences. It seems unfair to judge of the capa
bilities of a language of which almost the entire
literature has perished. How could we judge of the
capabilities of the Greek language had all its poetry
and oratory been lost, and nothing remained but its
inscriptions ? Yet enough remains to show what the
structure of the Egyptian sentences must necessarily
have been; we possess several narratives of consid
erable length and of different dates, a great many
hymns, and the heroic poem of Pentaur, which was
considered sufficiently important to be engraved on
the walls of at least four temples — Abydos, Luqsor,
Karnak and Ipsambul — at one of the periods of the
greatest glory of Egypt. It is evident that prose '
sentences like those of Plato, Demosthenes, Cicero
or Burke, or poetical ones like those of Sophocles,
Euripides or Horace (not to mention any other
names), are as impossible in Egyptian as they are in
Hebrew or Arabic. Whatever beauty there is in
Egyptian composition (and there often is considera
ble beauty) is derived either from the thought itself
or from the simplicity of the expression, not from the

62 LECTURE IL
artistic variety or structure of its periods. M. Re-
nan' has made very similar remarks upon the struc
ture of the Semitic sentence (which, however, admits
of much greater variety than the Egyptian, and does
not suffer in narratives from the perpetual repetition
of the same auxiliary verb), and he has inferred from
it the inferiority of the Semitic mind to the European
with reference to certain branches of intellectual
development. I have little doubt that M. Renan is
right to this extent, that certain languages as vehicles
of thought are inferior to others, and that as long as
men are confined to the inferior vehicle of thought,
they are unable to raise themselves to the level of
others who enjoy a more efficient instrument. It is
difficult to conceive the Egyptians as otherwise than
incapacitated by their language from profound philo
sophy. It is hardly possible to read a page written
in an Indo-European language, " from Sanskrit to
Keltic, without coming across some kind of dialectic
process of which I do not remember a single trace in
an Egyptian text. But if the Egyptian mind must be
Art considered inferior in some branches of
intellectual development, the world of Art, not indeed
in its full extent, but in many aspects, ranging from
1 " Histoire G^n^rale et systfeme compart des langues S^mitiques,''
livre i. chap. i. p. 21. The whole chapter is to the point.

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 63
mere elegance and prettiness to real beauty and sub- ^
limity, was revealed to it at a very early period in
deed. Those who know Egyptian art only through i
our northern museums can have no adequate concep
tion of what it really is or was. Almost all the ob
jects in our museums have suffered by frequent loco
motion, atmospheric influences, or other deleterious
causes. You should see the freshness of the articles ;
contained in the museum at Bulaq, which seem to ^
have just come from the hand ofthe artist, or inspect
some of the tombs which have not yet suffered from
the van-dalism of the moderns, or see the magnificent '
temples whose ruins have as yet escaped destruction.
But, even on the spot, imagination must come to our
aid if the past has to be realized.
Many of us have seen the Pyramids, and, as Dean
Stanley says, " One is. inclined to imagine that the
Pyramids are immutable, and that such as you see
them now, such they were always. Of distant views
this is true ; but taking them near at hand, it is more
easy from the existing ruins to conceive Karnac as it
was than it is to conceive the Pyramidal platform as it
was. The smooth casing of part of the top of the
second Pyramid, and the magnificent granite blocks :
which form the lower stages of the third, serve to show ;
what they must have been all from top to bottom ; ;
the first and second, brilliant white or yellow lime- ';

64 LECTURE IL
stone, smooth from top to bottom, instead of those
rude disjointed masses which their stripped sides now
present ; the third, all glowing with the red granite
from the first cataract. As it is they have the barba
rous look of Stonehenge ; but then they must have
shone with the polish of an age already rich with civili
zation, and that the more remarkable when it is re
membered that these granite blocks which furnish the
outside of the third and inside of the first must have
come all the way from the first cataract. It also seems,
from Herodotus and others, that these smooth out-
sides were covered with sculptures. Then you must
build up or uncover the massive tombs, now broken
or choked up with sand, so as to restore the aspect
of vast streets of tombs like those on the Appian
Way, out of which the Great Pyramid would rise like
a cathedral above smaller churches. Lastly, you must
enclose two other Pyramids with stone precincts and
gigantic gateways; and above all, must restore the
Sphinx as he (for it must never be forgotten that a
female Sphinx was almost unknown) was in the days
of his glory." '
I may perhaps appear open to the suspicion of
over-estimating the arts of ancient Egypt. I there
fore cannot do better than refer you to the mature
judgment of one who has written the History of
1 " Sinai and Palestine," p. Ivii.

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION.

65

Architecture' with consummate knowledge, ability
and taste.
" No one can possibly examine the interior of the Great
Pyramid," says Mr. Fergusson, " without being struck with
astonishment at the wonderful mechanical skill displayed in its
construction. The immense blocks of granite brought from
Syene — a distance of 500 miles— polished like glass and so fitted
that the joints can hardly be detected. Nothing can be more
wonderful than the extraordinary amount of knowledge dis
played in the construction of the discharging chambers over
the roof of the principal apartment, in the alignment of the
sloping galleries, in the provision of ventilating shafts, and in
all the wonderful contrivances of the structure. All these, too,
are carried out with such precision that, notwithstanding the
superincumbent weight, no settlement in any part can be de
tected to the extent of an appreciable fraction of an inch.
Nothing more perfect, mechanically, has ever been erected
since that time, and we ask ourselves in vain, how long it
must have taken before men acquired such experience and
such skill, or were so perfectly organized, as to contemplate
and complete such undertakings."
The walls ofthe most ancient tombs are decorated
with pictures.
" In all these pictures the men are represented with an
ethnic and artistic truth that enables us easily to recognize
their race and station. The animals are not only distinguish
able, but the characteristic peculiarities of each species are
1 See also the whole fifth book of Mr. Fergusson's " IUustrated Hand
book of Architecture.''

66 LECTURE IL
seized with a power of generalization seldom, if ever, sur
passed." " More striking than even the paintings are the portrait
statues which have recently been discovered in the secret
recesses of these tombs ; nothing more wonderfully truthful
and realistic has been done since that time till the invention
of photography, and even that can hardly represent a man
with such unflattering truthfulness as these old coloured terra
cotta portraits of the sleek rich men of the Pyramid period."
I now turn to the pages describing the buildings at
Thebes. " Though the Rhamession is so grand from its dimensions,
and so beautiful from its design, it is far surpassed in every
respect by the palace temple at Karnac, which is perhaps the
noblest effort of architectural magnificence ever produced by
the hand of man.
" Its principal dimensions are 1200 feet in length, by about
360 in width, and it covers therefore about 430,000 square
feet, or nearly twice the area of St. Peter's at Rome, and
more than four times that of any mediaeval cathedral existing.
This, however, is not a fair way of estimating its dimensions,
for our churches are buildings entirely under one roof; but at
Karnac a considerable portion of the area was uncovered by
any buildings, so that no such comparison is just. The great
hypostile hall, however, is internally 340 feet by 170, and
with its two pylons it covers more than 88,000 square feet, a
greater area than the cathedral of Cologne, the largest of all
our northern cathedrals ; and when we consider that this is
only a part of a great whole, we may fairly assert that the
entire structure is among the largest, as it undoubtedly is one
of the most beautiful, buildings in the world.

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION.

67

"We have thus in this one temple a complete history of
the style during the whole of its most flourishing period ; and
either for interest or for beauty it forms such a series as no
other country and no other age can produce. Besides those
buildings mentioned above, there are other temples to the
North, to the East, and more especially to the South, and
pylons connecting them, and avenues of sphinxes extending
for miles, and enclosing walls and tanks and embankments —
making up such a group as no city ever possessed before or
since. St. Peter with its colonnades and the Vatican make
up an immense mass, but as insignificant in extent as in style
when compared with this glory of ancient Thebes and its
surrounding temples.
" The culminating point and climax of all this group of
buildings is the hypostile hall of Manephthah. . . No language
can convey an idea of its beauty, and no artist has yet been
able to reproduce its form so as to convey to those who have
not seen it an idea of its grandeur. The mass of its central
piers, illumined by a flood of light from the clerestory, and
the smaller pillars of the wings gradually fading into obscu
rity, are so arranged and lighted as to convey an idea of
infinite space ; at the same time, the beauty and massiveness
of the forms, and the brilliancy of their coloured decorations,
all combine to stamp this as the greatest of man's architec
tural works, but such a one as it would be impossible to re
produce except in such a climate and in that individual style
in which and for which it was created."
There is one more quotation from which I am un
able to refrain.
" In all the conveniences and elegances of building they

68 LECTURE IL
seem to have anticipated all that has been in those countries
down to the present day. Indeed, in all probability, the an
cient Egyptians surpassed the modern in those respects as
much as they did in the more important forms of architec
ture." True artistic power may display itself in a gem as
well as in the design of a cathedral. The precious
materials of which Egyptian jewellery was composed
have naturally contributed to their destruction in for
mer times, but there are still extant trinkets of mar
vellous beauty. A few years ago some peasants near
Thebes dug up the coffin of the queen Aahhotep, wife
of king Rames. This king's name is one of those
which does not occur in the tablet of Abydos, but he
is known from different records, and his picture is
found at Qurnah in a tomb ofthe eighteenth dynasty.
Queen Aahhotep was the ancestress of this dynasty.
Her coffin contained treasures of jewellery, which
were brought to Paris at the last General Exhibition,
and are now objects of wonder and admiration to all
who visit the Museum at Bulaq. Between the linen
coverings, precious weapons and ornaments were
found, daggers, a golden axe, a chain with three large
golden bees and a breastplate, and on the body itself
a golden chain, with a scarabaeus, armlets, a fillet for
the brow and other objects. Two little barks in gold
and silver, bronze axes bearing the name of her

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION.

69

husband Rames, and great bangles for the ankles, lay
immediately upon the wood of the coffin. The
jewellers of Paris could not have produced more
exquisite workmanship.
I must not omit to tell you that, to the practised
eye of an archaeologist, every object of Egyptian art
bears upon it as well defined a date as a mediseval
church window or porch. The astonishing identity
which is visible through all the periods of Egyptian
art is consistent with an immense amount of change
which must exist wherever there is life. There are
periods of splendour, progress and deterioration, and
every age has its peculiar character. Birch, Lepsius
or Mariette, would at once tell you the age of a
statue, inscription or manuscript, without looking at
the text which actually mentions the exact date.
Painting, as understood in these later centuries, was
entirely unknown to the Egyptians, though they had
coloured pictures ; but the harmony of colours was
thoroughly understood by them, and their employ
ment of colour in architecture or generally in decora
tion puts our modern efforts to shame. " They were
aware" (as Sir Gardner Wilkinson says) "that for
decorative purposes the primary colours should pre
dominate, and that secondary hues should be second
ary in quantity and in position; their most usual
combinations were therefore blue, red and green;

70 LECTURE IL
, and a fillet of white or yellow was introduced between
them to obviate that false effect which is apt to con
vert red and blue into purple when placed together
' in immediate contact. When yellow was introduced,
a due proportion of black was added to balance it, and
for each colour was sought its suitable companion ; or
if certain colours occasionally predominated in a part
of the wall, the balance was restored by a greater
quantity of others elsewhere, so that the due propor
tions of all were kept up, and the general effect was a
, perfect concord."
The earliest monuments show the use of a great
variety of musical instruments — flutes, pipes, harps,
guitars, lyres and tamburines — and they give repre
sentations of concerts in which human voices are
combined with the sounds of several instruments.'
My learned friend Dr. Diimichen, himself an admira
ble musician, in noticing the presence not only of a
monkey, but of hounds, at a concert in the tomb of
Ptahhotep, is very much tempted to doubt the musi
cal taste of that great dignitary of the fifth dynasty,
and to suppose that he preferred the accompaniments
of his canine friends. There is, however, I believe,
1 See Wilkinson, "Ancient Egyptians," Vol. I. p. 431 ; Carl Engel,
" Music of the Most Ancient Nations," p. 180 ; and Lauth '' Ueber
altagyptische Musik," in the Sitiungsberichte of the Munich Academy,
3d July, 1869.

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION.

71

reason to suppose that the picture is intended to rep
resent dogs from the spirit-land, whose ears are no
doubt attuned to the- harmony of sweet sounds.
The Egyptians were not, as used on very insuffi
cient evidence to be supposed, a sad or morose
people. Their religion at least does not appear to
have been " designed to make their pleasures less."
The description of their festivals given by classical
writers is fully corroborated by authentic testimony,
and the national tendency, at least in the prosperous
times of the monarchy, was towards excess in the
exercise of conviviality. Great quantities of wine,
both native and foreign, were consumed ; and beer
houses, if we may judge ofthe frequency with which
they are inveighed against in the papyri, must have
been as serious a pest in the time of the great Ra
meses as they are in the England of the nineteenth
century. The point of the story which Herodotos
tells about the representation of a dead body in a
coffin being carried round and shown to the guests at
entertainments, lies in the final words uttered by the
bearer : " Cast your eyes on this figure ; after death,
you yourself will resemble it ; drink then, and be
happy." I think it would be easy to quote English,
French or German drinking-songs containing the
same moral. The element of mournfulness is intro
duced merely for the purpose of bringing out the

72

LECTURE IL

convivial sentiment into stronger relief. It is possible
that Herodotos makes allusion to a song of which
several copies or fragments of copies have reached
us. It is called the Song of King Antuf— a mon
arch of the eleventh dynasty, whom I have already
mentioned — and it says : '
" Fulfil thy desire while thou livest. Put oils
upon thy head, clothe thyself with fine linen adorned
with precious metals .... yield to thy desire —
fulfil thy desire with thy good things whilst thou
art upon earth, according to the dictation of thy
heart. The day will come to thee when one hears
not the voice, — when the one who is at rest hears not
their voices. Feast in tranquillity; seeing that there
is no one who carries his goods with him."
Another poem which has been preserved, "The
Lay of the Harper," is very similar in its tone : " Let
odours and oils stand before thy nostril. Let song
and music be before thy face, and leave behind thee
all evil cares. Mind thee of joy till cometh the day
of pilgrimage, when we draw near the land which
loveth silence."^
It is impossible to read these scraps of poetry
without being reminded of a passage in the book of
Ecclesiastes, written in the person of Solomon, by
' " Records ofthe Past,'' Vol. IV. p. 117.
' " Records of the Past,'' Vol. VI, p, 129.

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 73
some one living in the last century of the Persian
domination in Palestine. It begins : " Go thy way ;
eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a
merry heart, for God accepteth thy works. Let thy
garments be always white ; and let thy hand lack no
ointment." And it ends. — " for there is no work, no
device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave,
whither thou goest."'
And if it be true that the Preacher in another por
tion of his work reminds the young man to whom he
is addressing himself that for all these things God
will bring him into judgment, not less true is it that
the Egyptian harper also sang:
" Mind thee of the day when thou too shalt start
for the land to which one goeth to return not thence.
Good for thee will have been a good life ; therefore
be just and hate iniquity ; for he who loveth what is
Right shaU triumph."
The triumph of Right over Wrong,
of Right in speech and in action (for
the same word signifies both Truth and Justice) is
the burden of nine-tenths of the Egyptian texts which
have come down to us. Right ^ is represented as a
' Eccles. ix.-7, 8, 9.
'' The primitive notion implied by the word maat seems to be the
geometrical one " right," as in " right line," as opposed to xab, " bent,"
" perverse.'' Maat as a noun Is the " straight rule,'' " canon."
4

74 LECTURE IL
goddess ruling as mistress over heaven and earth and
the world beyond the grave. The gods are said to
live by it. Although funereal inscriptions are less to
be depended upon when they describe the virtues of
the deceased than when they give the dates of his
birth and death, they may at least be quoted in evi
dence of the rule of conduct by which actions were
estimated. We are not obliged to believe that this or
that man possessed all the virtues which are ascribed
to him, but we cannot resist the conviction that the
recognized Egyptian code of morality was a very
noble and refined one. " None of the Christian vir
tues," M. Chabas says, " is forgotten in it ; piety,
charity, gentleness, self-command in word and ac
tion, chastity, the protection of the weak, benevolence
towards the humble, deference to superiors, respect
for property in its minutest details, ... all is ex
pressed there, and in extremely good language." In
confirmation of this, I will add that the translators of
the Bible and of the early Christian literature, who
were so often compelled to retain Greek words for
which they could discover no Egyptian equivalent,
found the native vocabulary amply sufficient for the ex
pression ofthe most delicate notions of Christian ethics.
The following are specimens of the praises which
are put into the mouth of departed worthies :
" Not a little child did I injure. Not a widow did

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION.

75

I oppress. Not a herdsman did I ill-treat. There was
no beggar in my days ; no one starved in my time.
And when the years of famine came, I ploughed all
the lands of the province to its northern and southern
boundaries, feeding its inhabitants and providing their
food. There was no starving person in it, and I made
the widow to be as though she possessed a husband." '
Of another great personage it is said that, in admi
nistering justice, "he made no distinction between a
stranger and those known to him. He was the father
ofthe weak, the support of him who had no mother.
Feared by the ill-doer, he protected the poor ; he was
the avenger of those whom a more powerful one had
deprived of property. He was the husband of the
widow, the refuge ofthe orphan."^
It is said of another^ that he was " the protector of
the humble, a palm of abundance to the destitute,
food to the hungry and the poor, largeness of hand
to the weak;" and another passage implies that his
wisdom was at the service of those who were igno
rant. ' Inscriptions of Ameni, Denim, ii. pl.i2r.
' Tablet of Antuf, Louvre, c. 26. I quote from M. de Rouge's Notice
des Monuments, p. 88.
' British Museum, 381. This text, of which a copy is given in Sharpe,
" Egyptian Inscriptions," Vol. II. p. 83, is a difficult one, and would re
pay a careful study.

76

LECTURE IL

The tablet of Beka,' now at Turin, thus describes
the deceased:
" I was just and true without malice, placing God
in my heart and quick in discerning his will. I have
come to the city of those who dwell in eternity. I
have done good upon earth ; I have done no wrong ;
I have done no crime; I have approved of nothing
base or evil, but have taken pleasure in speaking the
truth, for I well know the glory there is in doing this
upon earth from the first action (of life) even to the
tomb  I am a Sahu who took pleasure in right
eousness, conformably with the laws (hapu) of the
tribunal of the two-fold Right. There is no lowly
person whom I had oppressed ; I have done no in
jury to men who honored their gods. The sincerity
and goodness which were in the heart of my father
and my mother, my love [paid back] to them. Never
have I outraged it in my mode of action towards
them from the beginning of the time of my youth.
Though great, I have acted as if I had been a little
one. I have not disabled any one worthier than my
self My mouth has always been opened to utter
true things, not to foment quarrels. I have repeated
what I have heard just as it was told to me."
Great stress is always in these inscriptions laid upon
' Published with a translation and commentary by M. Chabas, in the
Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, Vol. V. p. 459,

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. 77
the strictest form of veracity ; as, for instance, " I have
not altered a story in the telling of it." The works
of charity are commonly spoken of in terms which
are principally derived from the Book of the Dead.
" Doing that which is Right and hating that which
is Wrong, I was bread to the hungry, water to the
thirsty, clothes to the naked, a refuge to him that was
in want ; that which I did to him, the great God hath
done to me."'
" I was one who did that which was pleasing to
his father and his mother; the joy of his brethren, the
friend of his companions, noble-hearted to all those
of his city. I gave bread to the hungry ; ... I re
ceived [travellers ?] on the road ; my doors were open
to those who came from without, and I gave them
wherewith to refresh themselves. And God hath
inclined his countenance to me for what I have done ;
he hath given me old age i^pon earth, in long and
pleasant duration, with many children at my feet, and
sons in face of his own son."^
God's reward for well-doing is again mentioned in
the great inscription now at Miramar* in honour of a
lady who had been charitable to persons of her own
sex, whether girls, wives or widows.
' Duemichen, Kalenderinschriften, xlvi.
^ Bergmann, Hieroglyphische Inschriftcn, pi. vi. i. 8.
^ Ibid. pi. viii. ix.

78 LECTURE IL
" My heart inclined me to the Right when I was
yet a child not yet instructed as to the Right and
Good. And what my heart dictated I failed not to
perform. And God rewarded me for this, rejoicing
me with the happiness which he has granted me for
walking after his way."
We are acquainted with several collections of Pre
cepts and Maxims on the conduct of life. Such are
the Maxims of Ptahhotep contained in the Prisse
Papyrus, the Instructions of Amenemhat, and the
Maxims of Ani ; and fragments of other important
works are preserved in the Museums of Paris, Leyden
and St. Petersburg. The most venerable of them is
the work of Ptahhotep, which dates from the age of
the Pyramids, and yet appeals to the authority ofthe
ancients. It is undoubtedly, as M. Chabas called
it,' in the title of the memorable essay in which
its contents were first made known, " The most
Ancient Book of the World." The manuscript at
Paris which contains it was written centuries before
the Hebrew lawgiver was born, but the author of
the work lived as far back as the reign of king
Assa Tatkara of the fifth dynasty. This most pre
cious and venerable relic of antiquity is as yet very
imperfectly understood. Its general import is clear
1 " Le plus an9ien livre du monde," in the Revue Archeologique of
1857-

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION.

79

enough, and some of the sections are perfectly in
telligible ; but the philological difficulties with which
it abounds will for many years, I fear, resist the efforts
of the most accomplished interpreters.' These books
are very similar in character and tone to the book of
Proverbs in our Bible. They inculcate the study of
wisdom, the duty to parents and superiors, respect for
property, the advantages of charitableness, peaceable-
ness and cqntent, of liberality, humility, chastity and
sobriety, of truthfulness and justice; and they show
the wickedness and folly of disobedience, strife, arro
gance and pride, of slothfulness, intemperance, un
chastity and other vices. It is only through a
lamentable misunderstanding of the text that some
scholars have discovered anti-religious, epicurean or
sceptical expressions. ^
1 M. Chabas has fully explained the nature of these difficulties in the
Zeits. f. agypt. Spr. 1870, p. 84 fol. Dr. Lauth's essay in the .S//z«»^j-
berichte ofthe Academy of Munich, 1869 and 1870, is very valuable, and
I confess myself to be greatly indebted to it ; but even the best portions
of it can only be accepted provisionally.
""Let thy face be white (i. e. enjoy thyself) whilst thou hvest; has
there issued from the coffin (ma-^err chest) one who has entered there
in?" This hasty translation by Mr. Goodwin, (Zeitschr. 1867, p. 95)
does not deserve the success it has enjoyed, and I do not believe the
author of it would have published it, had his attention been called in
time to such difficulties as these : a., the Egyptian preposition en cannot
stand at the end of a sentence; ii, it never means "therein;" 3, the
word Ma xs;-(2 is never found in the sense of" coffin," but in that of" chest

8o LECTURE IL
The same morality is taught in the romantic litera
ture which sprung up at a very early period and con
tinued to flourish down to the latest times. It is an
interesting question, but one which cannot as yet be
answered with certainty, whether or no the moralizing
fables about animals attributed to ^sop are really of
Egyptian origin ? The Egyptian text of at least one
of these fables is contained in a papyrus of the Ley
den collection, but it is in "demotic," not in the early
language of the country.
I have laid before you some of the characteristic
features of Egyptian civilization, and I ought not to
conclude without alluding to two errors, one of which
may be considered as entirely obsolete among schol
ars, whilst the other may claim the sanction of very
high authority. As long as our information depended
upon the classical Greek authors, the
existence of castes among the Egyptians was ad
mitted as certain. The error was detected as soon as
the sense of the inscriptions could be made out. A
very slight knowledge of the language was sufificient
to demonstrate the truth to the late M. Ampere. '
of provisions ;" 4, the sentiment in question is absurdly out of place in
the context where the words occur.
1 '' Des Castes Dans I'ancienne Egypte,'' in the Revue des Deux
Mondes, Sept. 1S48.

EGYPTIAN CIVILIZATION. gl
Among ourselves, many men may be found whose
ancestors have for several generations followed the
same calling, either the army or the church, or some
branch of industry or trade. The Egyptians were
no doubt even more conservative than ourselves in
this respect. But there was no impassable barrier
between two professions. The son or the brother of
a warrior might be a priest. It was perhaps more
difficult to rise in the world than it is with us ; but a
man of education, a scribe, was eligible to any oflfice,
civil, military or sacerdotal, to which his talents or
the chances of fortune ipight lead him, and nothing
prevented his marriage with the daughter of a man
of a different profession.
The high position occupied in ancient
Egypt by the mother of the family, the
" mistress of the house," is absolutely irreconcilable
with the existence either of polygamy as a general
practice, or of such an institution as the harim. The
plurality of wives does not appear to have been con
trary to law, but it certainly was unusual. A few of
the Egyptian kings had a large number of wives, but
they appear in this respect to have followed foreign
rather than native custom. The use of the word
harem in the translation of hieroglyphic texts tends
to produce an entirely erroneous conception of,
ancient Egyptian society. The word itself is harm-

82 LECTURE IL
less; but (to say the least) it confounds Egyptian
with utterly foreign ideas, Arabian or Turkish ; and
when it is used to signify an establishment of concu
bines, I believe the translator has entirely misunder
stood the Egyptian text.'
1 Many excellent scholars have used '' harem " as the translation of
the Egyptian word -j^ent. The most important passage which would
justify this rendering is on the tablet of Pa-shere-en-Ptah. It is thus
translated in Brugsch's Hieroglyphic Lexicon, p. 1093: ''Es waren mir
schone Weiber, doch war ich bereits 43 Jahr alt ohne dass mir ein
m'annliches Kind geboren war.'' I believe the passage is better under
stood if taken in connection with the corresponding passage on the
tablet ofthe wife of Pa-shere-en-Ptah (Sharpe, " Egyptian Inscriptions,"
Vol. I. pi. 4). This lady says of her husband : " I had not borne to him
a male child, but daughters only." He therefore means to say : " I had
handsome girls, but I was already forty-three jfears old before a boy was
born to me." The German " Frauenzimmer," if put into hieroglyphic
orthography, would admit of the very determinative sign which leads to
the notion of " shutting up.''

LECTURE IIL

THE GODS OF EGYPT.

It was quite unnecessary for the
purpose of these Lectures that the Religious'^ insti-
sketch of Egyptian civilization which tutions from First
to Last.
I laid before you in the last Lecture
should be completed or filled up in detail. But in
studying the phenomena which a religion presents,
it is indispensable that we should understand certain
conditions accompanying those phenomena. Men's
thoughts are forced into certain channels and assume
definite forms according to the nature of their
occupations. It is not a matter of indifference
whether we have to do with people in what is called
the hunting stage, nomadic populations, agricultural
ists or merchants ; with men of hot or cold climates ;
with savages or with men in the most advanced
stages of culture. The religions and mythologies of
83

84 LECTURE IIL
such peoples differ very widely. Even among those
professing the same religion, great differences must
necessarily be found between men of highly educated
and cultivated minds, and unpolished men insensible
to art or poetry of a high order. Now it is certain
that at least three thousand years before Christ there
was in Egypt a powerful and elaborately organized
monarchy, enjoying a material civilization in many
respects not inferior to that of Europe in the last cen
tury. Centuries must have elapsed before such a
civilization became possible. Of a state of barbarism
or even of patriarchal life anterior to the monumental
period, there is no historical vestige. The earliest
monuments which have been discovered present to
us the very same fully developed civilization and the
same religion as the later monuments. The blocks
of the Pyramids bear quarry marks exhibiting the
decimal notation, and are dated by the months ofthe
calendar which was in use down to the latest times.
You must remember that the calendars of other
nations (Hebrews, Greeks and Romans) show great
ignorance of the real length of the year. It was only
after the conquest of Alexandria that the Roman
calendar was reformed. by Julius Caesar. The politi
cal division into nomes (provinces, each of which had
its principal deity) is as old as the age of the Pyra
mids. The gods whose names appear in the oldest

THE GODS OF EGYPT.

85

tombs were worshipped down to the Christian times.
The same kind of priesthoods which are mentioned
in the tablets of Canopus and Rosetta in the Ptolemaic
period are as ancient as the Pyramids, and more
ancient than any Pyramid of which we know the
date. There is in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford
the monument of a man whose priestly office had
been endowed by a king of the second dynasty.
Excellent scholars like Dr. Hincks and Mr. Goodwin
have ascribed the monument to this early date, and
have considered it the most ancient of all dated
monuments. This indeed cannot be proved ; but
there is no doubt whatever that it is the most
ancient authentic monument recording a religious
endowment. No temples of the ancient empire are Temples.
extant at present, except perhaps the
monument discovered some years ago in the neigh
bourhood of the great Sphinx ; but no one can say
whether this is a temple or a tomb. But this want
of early temples is certainly owing to the destruction
of the most ancient cities, like Memphis and Helio
polis. There is no reason for doubting the inscrip
tion first published by M. de Rouge, which says that
Chufu or Cheops built his pyramid near a temple of
Isis, and that he built or endowed a temple to Ha
thor ; or the inscriptions at Dendera, which ascribe

86 LECTURE III.
the restoration of its ancient temple to Tehutimes
III., "according to the plan found in ancient writings
of the time of king Chufu." There is every reason
for believing that in the ancient empire great and
splendid temples were built. But we must not take
for granted that temples at this early period were
places of worship in our modern sense of the term.
At no period of the Egyptian religion were the pub
lic admitted to the temples as worshippers. All the
temples we know were royal offerings made to the
divinity of the locality, and none but the priestly per
sonages attached to the temple itself had free access
to its precincts. But the image of the god and those
of the divinities associated with him were often
brought out in solemn processions, in which the en
tire population took part.
In the principal temple of each pro-
Triads and En- . ,,.,,. .
„ea(jg vince, the chief deity was associated
with other gods ; hence the expression
ds.oc auvvaot of the Greek inscriptions ; hence from an
early period triads (consisting of the principal god, a
female deity and their offspring), or enneads, consist
ing of nine gods. Thus at Thebes the triad consisted
of Amon, Nut and Chonsu ; at Abydos, of Osiris,
Isis and Horus. No special importance was attached
by the Egyptians to the number three, and it is a mis
take to look for triads everywhere, for the number of

THE GODS OF EGYPT.

87

gods varied according to the place ; the number nine
was much more frequent, and this is often nothing
more than a round number, signifying either the gods
of a locality or the entire Pantheon.
As each deity was connected with Local Character
1 ,., , . ,, of Egyptian
some locality, his name was generally worship.
foUowed by a phrase indicating this
relationship. A deity was said to be Lord of Abydos,
mistress of Senem, presiding in Thebes, inhabiting
Hermopolis ; sometimes a particle was interposed be
tween the name of the god and that of the town, as
" Anubis from Sechem," " Neith of Sais ;" sometimes
one or more epithets were added, as " the mighty,"
" the beneficent," " the august ;" sometimes the name
of an animal which was the recognized symbol of the
god, a bull, a ram or a lion. Special titles were given
to divinities according to the place in which they were
worshipped : Osiris, for instance, was called che, " the
child," at Thebes ; he was ura, " the great one," at
Heliopolis ; ati, " the sovereign," at Memphis. It
happened frequently that in the same town one god
was worshipped under different aspects, or as proceed
ing from different localities, and treated as though
there were different divine persons of the same name.
Chonsu in Thebes, under the name nefer-hotep, is
entreated to lend his miraculous power to Chonsu in
Thebes under the name ari seeker. We read of Set

88 LECTURE III.
the god of Senu, Set of Uau, Set of Un and Set of
Meru. Other forms of Set are well known, but those
I have cited are brought together in one inscription as
children of the god Tmu. I find invocations in a very
early inscription addressed to the Anubis of six dif
ferent localities. Apis is the son of Ptah, of Tmu, of
Osiris and of Sokari. Are all these fathers of Apis
one person ? Horus is the son of the goddess Isis,
but he is also the son of the goddess Hathor. Isis
must then be the same as Hathor, unless mythology
is proof against logic. Let us admit this, and also that
Seb, the father of Isis, is identical with Ra, the father
of Hathor ; but what shall we say on being told that
Horus was born in Tattu (the Mendes of the Greeks),
and also that he was born in Cheb ? Geographical
localities do not so easily lend themselves to identifi
cation. In a well-known text, Horus is called the son
of Isis and Osiris, but shortly afterwards Seb_is named
as his father. Students of mythology will not be
astonished or scandalized if they discover that Osiris
is at once the father, brother, husband and son of Isis,
and also the son of their child Horus. They will
read a text on the alabaster sarcophagus of Seti I.,
now in the Soane Museum, which speaks of "the son
who proceeds from the father, and the father who pro
ceeds from his son," and if their studies are rightly con
ducted, the mystery will not be hard to understand.

THE GODS OF EGYPT. 89
The Egyptian deities are innumer-
. 1 T,, ,, , . The deities
able. There were countless gods in j^^^^erabie.
heaven and below the earth. Every
town and village had its local patrons. Every month
of the year, every day of the month, every hour of
the day and of the night, had its presiding divinity,
and all these gods had to be propitiated by offerings.
I several times made the attempt to draw up an in
dex of the divine names occurring in the texts, but
found it necessary to abandon the enterprize. What
can all these gods mean ?
Nothing can be more clear than that Mean notions
under the name of God the Egyptians concerning tiiese
°-^ ^ deities.
did not understand, as we do, a being
without body, parts or passions. The bodies of the
gods are spoken of as well as their souls, and they
have both parts and passions ; they are described as
suffering from hunger and thirst, old age, disease,
fear and sorrow. They perspire, their limbs quake,
their head aches, their teeth chatter, their eyes weep,
their nose bleeds, " poison takes possession of their
flesh, even as the Nile takes possession of the land."
They may be stung by reptiles and burnt by fire.
They shriek and howl with pain and grief All the
great gods require protection. Osiris is helpless
against his enemies, and his remains are protected by
his wife and sister. Hathor extends her wings as a

90 LECTURE IIL
protection over the victorious Horus, or, as one form
of the legend expresses it, " she protects him with
her body as a divine cow ; " yet Hathor in her turn
needs protection, and even the sun-god Ra, though
invested with the predicates of supreme divinity, re
quires the aid of the goddess Isis. All the gods are
liable to be forced to grant the prayers of men,
through fear of threats which it is inconceivable to
us that any intelligence but that of idiots should
have believed. There are many aspects of this reli
gion, and some of them are extremely ridiculous.
The very impulse, however, which prompts us to
laugh at the religion of our fellow-men, ought to
suggest a doubt whether we have really caught their
meaning. Simplification We are tempted, in our bewilder-
of the List. j^gj^j. ^^ ^jjg number of the gods, to ask
whether the process of reduction is not applicable to
them as well as that of multiplication. And we dis
cover to our relief that such a process is actually sug
gested to us by documents of indisputable authority,
which show that the same god is often known under
many names. In the Litanies of the god Ra, which are
inscribed on the walls of the royal tombs at Biban-el-
m.oluk, the god is invoked under seventy-five different
names. A monument published in Burton's Excerpta
Hieroglyphica gives the names, or rather a selection

THE GODS OF EGYPT. gi
of the names, of Ptah, the principal god of Memphis.
The Book of the Dead has a chapter entirely con
sisting of the names of Osiris. The inscriptions of
the temple of Dendera give a long list of the names
of the goddess Hathor. She is identified not only
I with Isis, but with Sechet at Memphis, Neith at
Sais, Saosis at Heliopolis, Nehemauit at Hermopolis,
Bast at Bubastis, Sothis at Elephantine, and many
other goddesses. These authorities alone are suffi
cient, almost at a glance, to convince us that not only
are some inferior deities mere aspects of the greater
gods, but that several at least of the greater gods
themselves are but different aspects of one and the
same. Lepsius, in his Dissertation on the gods of the
first order, has published several lists of these divini
ties taken from monuments of different periods, the
most ancient list being taken from an altar of the
sixth dynasty. On comparing these lists together, it
is again plain that Mentu and Tmu, two of the great
gods of Thebes, are merely aspects of the sun-god Ra.
The entire li.st of the gods of the first order is easily
reduced to two groups ; the first representing the sun-'
god Ra and his family, and the second Osiris and his
family. It is most probable that neither Ptah nor
Amon were originally at the head of lists, but ob
tained their places as being chief divinities of the

92 LECTURE IIL
capitals Memphis and Thebes. Both these gods are
identified with the sun-god Ra, and so indeed are all
the chief local divinities. The whole mythology of
Egypt may be said to turn upon the histories of Ra
and Osiris, and these histories run into each other,
sometimes in inextricable confusion, which ceases to
be wonderful when texts are discovered which simply
identify Osiris and Ra. And, finally, other texts are
known, wherein Ra, Osiris, Amon and all other gods
disappear, except as simple names, and the unity of
God is asserted in the noblest language of mono-
, theistic religion. There are many very eminent
scholars who, with full knowledge of all that can be
said to the contrary, maintain that the Egyptian .
religion is essentially monotheistic, and that the mul
tiplicity of gods is only due to the personification of
" the attributes, characters and offices of the supreme
God."... „ ,. . No scholar is better entitled to be
Is the Religion
really Monothe- heard on this Subject than the late M.
Emmanuel Rouge, whose matured judg
ment is as follows : '
" No one has called in question the fundamental
meaning of the principal passages by the help of
1 " Conference sur la religion des anciens Egyptiens, pronon c^e au
Cercle Catholique, 14 avril, 1869," published in the Annates de la Philo
sophic Chretienne, tome XX. p. 327.

THE GODS OF EGYPT.

93

which we are able to establish what ancient Egypt
has taught concerning God, the world and man. I
said God, not the gods. The first characteristic of the
religion is the Unity [of God] most energetically ex
pressed : God, One, Sole and Only ; no others ¦\Yith
Him. — He is the Only Being — living in truth. — Thou
art One, and millions of beings proceed from thee. —
He has made everything, and he alone has not been
made. The clearest, the simplest, the most precise
conception. " But how reconcile the Unity of God with Egyp
tian Polytheism. History and geography will per
haps elucidate the matter. The Egyptian religion
comprehends a quantity of local worships. The
Egypt which Menes brought together entire under
his sceptre was divided into nomes, each having a
capital town ; each of these regions has its principal
god designed by a special name ; but it is always the
same doctrine which re-appears under different names.
One idea predominates, that of a single and primeval
God ; everywhere and always it is One Substance,
self-existent, and an unapproachable God."
M. de Rouge then says that from, or rather before,
the beginning of the historical period, the pure mono
theistic religion passed through the phase of Sabeism ;
the Sun, instead ofbeing considered as the symbol of
life, was taken as the manifestation of God Himself

94 LECTURE III.
The second characteristic of the religion was " a mys
tery which does honour to the theological intellect of
the Egyptians. God is self-existent ; he is the only
being who has not been begotten ; hence the idea of
considering God under two aspects, the Father and
the Son. In most of the hymns we come across this
idea of the double Being who engendereth Himself,
the Soul in two Twins — to signify two Persons never
to/be separated. A hymn of the Leyden Museum
... . calls Him ' the One of One.'
" Are these noble doctrines then the result of cen-
1 turies ? Certainly not ; for they were in existence
more than two thousand years before the Christian
era. On the other hand. Polytheism, the sources of
which we have pointed out, developes itself and pro
gresses without interruption until the time of the
Ptolemies. It is, therefore, more than five thousand
years since, in the valley of the Nile, the hymn began
to the Unity of God and the immortality of the soul,
and we find Egypt in the last ages arrived at the most
unbridled Polytheism. The belief in the Unity of the
Supreme God and in his attributes as Creator and
Lawgiver of man, whom he has endowed with an im
mortal soul — these are the primitive notions, enchased,
like indestructible diamonds, in the midst of the my
thological superfetations accumulated in the centuries
which have passed over that ancient civilization."

THE GODS OF EGYPT.

95

Although some of the texts here aUuded to have
most probably a somewhat different meaning from
that which M. de Rouge ascribes to them, the facts
upon which he relies are in the main unassailable.
It is incontestibly true that the sublimer portions of
the Egyptian religion are not the comparatively late
result of a process of development or elimination
from the grosser. The sublimer portions are demon
strably ancient; and the last stage of the Egyptian
religion, that known to the Greek and Latin writers,
heathen or Christian, was by far the grossest and
most corrupt. M. de Rouge is no doubt correct in
his assertion that in the several local worships one
and the same doctrine "re-appears under different
names and symbols. But he does not venture to as
sert that at any time within the historical period the
worship of one God was anywhere practised to the
exclusion of a plurality of gods. He only infers
from the course of history that, as polytheism was
constantly on the increase, the monotheistic doctrines
must have preceded it. Another conclusion, how
ever, is suggested by the Egyptian texts to which he
refers. The polytheistic and the so-called monothe
istic doctrines constantly appear together in one con
text; not only in the sacred writings handed down
by tradition, and subjected to interpolations and cor
ruptions of every kind, but even more frequently in

96 LECTURE IIL
literary compositions of a private nature, where no
one would dream of suspecting interpolation.
Throughout the whole range of Egyptian literature,
no facts appear to be more certainly proved than
these: (i) that the doctrine of one God and that of
many gods were taught by the same men ; (2) that no
inconsistency between the two doctrines was thought
of Nothing, of course, can be more absurd if the
Egyptians attached the same meaning to the word
God that we do. But there may perhaps be a sense
of the word which admits of its use for many as well
as for one. We cannot do better at starting than en
deavour to ascertain what the Egyptians really meant
when they use the word nutar, which we translate
" god."
Evidence as to ^^ ^''^^ sight, the Egyptian language
the meaning of is less likely to throw light upon the
subject than might be expected if it
really belonged to the same stage of speech as either
the Indo-European or the Semitic languages. In
these languages almost every word is closely allied
to several others connected together by derivation
from a common root, and the primitive notion con
veyed by the word in question can be illustrated by
the signification of the kindred words and their root.
Generally speaking, however, in Egyptian every word
is isolated. There is no distinction between word.

THE GODS OF EGYPT.

97

stem and root. The same Egyptian word may
sometimes have dififerent significations ; but this, as a
rule, only means that the one notion which is ex
pressed by a word in Egyptian has no single word
corresponding to it in English, French or German.
It seldom happens that we can advance a step be
yond such a fact as that the word nutar is rightly
translated "god." I am glad, however, to be able to
affirm with certainty that in this particular case we
can accurately determine the prirnitive notion at
tached to the word. None of .the explanations
hitherto given of it can be considered satisfactory.
That which I am about to propose will, I believe, be
generally accepted by scholars, because it is arrived
at as the result of a special study of all the published
passages in which the word occurs. Such a study,
as far as I am aware, has not yet been made, but if
made by any other person it must necessarily lead to
the same result.
The old Egyptian word nutar had already in the
popular pronunciation suffered from phonetic decay
and lost its final consonant as early as the nineteenth
dynasty, as we see by the inscriptions in the royal
tombs at Biban-el-moluk,' and it appears in Coptic
1 Zeitschr. f. Aegypt. Spr. 1874, P- i°S> and M. Maspero's article in
the Melanges d'Archeologie, 1874, p. 140. The orthography of these
popular forms is philologically of the highest importance. The form
5

98 LECTURE IIL
under the forms nuti, nute. It is remarkable that the
translators of the Bible into Coptic, who generally
abstained from the use of old Egyptian words con
nected with religion, and used Greek words instead,
nevertheless adopted this one as expressive of their
notion of God.
There is another word, nutra, very frequently used
either as verb or adjective, which is closely allied to
nutar. The sense of " renovation " was first attached
to it by M. E. de Rouge, on the strength of its final
sign, which he considered as a determinative of signi
fication. But this conjecture, which has been very
generally accepted, is really without any solid foun
dation ; the sign in question is here expressive of
nothing more than the sound tra, and it will be found
to all words so ending, whatever be their meaning ;
as hetra, whether signifying "join," "horse," or
" tribute ;"/^^r«, "behold;" ^ra, "season." Another
more obvious sense, "sacred," "divine," may be jus
tified by the Greek text of the tablet of Canopus,
where nutra is translated Upoz, as applied to the
sacred animals. But this meaning, though a certain
one, occurs but seldom in the Egyptian texts, and
when it so occurs is, after all, only a derived mean
ing, as is in fact the case with the Greek Upix;, the
nuntar I reserved for a future study ; M. Maspero published it with the
rest, but no one appears to have noticed it.

THE GODS OF EGYPT.

99

first sense of which is " strong," " vigorous." ' The
notion expressed by nutar as a noun, and nutra as an
adjective and verb, must be sought in the Coptic
nomti, which in the translation of the Bible corre
sponds to the Greek words duvaficq, laypz, laxopo^,
laxopoai, " power," " force," " strong," " fortify," " pro
tect." 2
The reason why the identification of the old form
nutar with the more recent nomti as well as nuti has
hitherto escaped observation is, that the connecting
link ?iuntar has either been unknown to scholars or
disregarded by them. In nuntar, a process as well
known to Egyptian as to Indo-European scholars has
taken place.^ The vowel of the first syllable has been
^ '\tp6Q corresponds to the Sanskrit ish-ira-s, vigorous, from ish, juice,
strength. See Curtius, Zeitschr. fur vergleichende Sprachforschung,
III. IS4, and his "Griechische Etymologic," p. 372. Plutarch (Mor.
981 D) mentions this original physical sense of the word as maintained
by certain persons, and the ogtovv lepov, " os sacrum," is given as an
example, 'lepa vdaot; also called fieydTiT/, is another striking instance. In
the Homeric poems, this physical sense gives the true force to such ex
pressions as Tpoiys lepov irroXttdpov, lepijv TTokcv ^Heriuvog, lepCi evi
i'tippifi, lepbv ithog 'A^MvdoiOj Upij if lij^efiaxoto.
" The Alexandrians invented the barbarous word Sma/i6a, which can
always be used as a translation of the verb nutra.
3 The change of n into m before t, as though the latter were preceded
by a labial consonant, is not usual, but it is not without a parallel in other
languages. Cf. ;i'/)i/iirr(a from root xP't ^he Latin tempto and the
Lithuanian temptyva, both the latter from root, ta nasahzed tan. The

lOO LECTURE IIL
strengthened by the addition of a nasal consonant.
The old Egyptian word heket (beer) has by this pro
cess become henke in the Thebaic, and hemki in the
Memphitic dialect.
The following examples will illustrate the usage of
the word.
Large stones are often said to be nutru. This does
not mean that they grow or that they are divine, but
that they are mighty. In one of those paraphrases
which are so common on the walls of Dendera, the
unequivocal word uru, " great, mighty," is substituted
for nutru} Sauit nutrit is a " strong wall.'' A crypt
is aat nutrit, a " strong-hold." Three of the chambers
of the temple of Dendera are said to be nutru.
" Qu'est ce qu'une salle divine ? " very pertinently.
asks M. Mariette. Sat nutrit is a " potent talisman."
Seti I. in his titles is the " potent image," secern nutra,
of Chepera. Nutra is constantly brought into paral
lelism with words implying " might." " Great [urd)
is the Eye of Horus, Mighty [ad) is the Eye of Horus,
Strong {nutra) is the Eye of Horus, the Giver of
observations of Curtius, " Gr. Et.," pp. 46 and 481, on the m in yafitiv
and the Lithuanian gim-ti, appear to me to justify the form tempto,
which Corssen rejects, though it occurs in the best manuscripts as well
as inscriptions.
' Mariette, Dendera, I. pi, 67. So in the royal titles of the eighteenth
Aja^stj, nutra sutenit of Tehutimes II. corresponds to the -uah sutenit
of Tehutimes III. and to the simpler ur sutenit oi Qh-aX. en Aten.

THE GODS OF EGYPT. loi
Strength {senutra) is the Eye of Horus."' "A
mighty wall to Egypt, proteqting their limbs ; his
force ipehti) is like Ptah in prostrating the barbarians,
a child of might {sif nutra) in his coming forth like
Harmachis."^ "He is strong {ten-re) in performing
his duties to Amon-Ra, he is vigorous {nutra) in per
forming his duties to the sovereign, his lord." In the
Demotic text of the tablet of Canopus, nutra is trans
lated by x^, which signifies, "strengthen, fortify,
protect, invigorate." It has constantly this meaning
in the hieroglyphic texts. " Thy body is fortified
{nutri-td), protected {xu-td), restored {seput-td)." ^ "Thy
limbs are fortified {nutri-td) by the Power {sexeni)
which is in heaven."* Nutra men ma pet, " strong
and durable as heaven." Nutra-/ nut-ek er neken,
" He fortifies thy city against destruction." Nutra-f
Nutrit er nefu, " He strengthens Nutrit against
harm."' Nutrit, the name of a town (in this place
equivalent to Dendera), has exactly the same mean
ing as Samaria, Ashdod, Gaza, Valentia, and many
other names significant of strength. Religious puri
fications were supposed to give strength, and the verb
1 Sharpe, " Egyptian Inscriptions," Vol. II. p. 28.
' Duemichen, Historische Inschr. Vol. II. pp. 46, 12.
' Je de Rouge, Inscriptions, Vol. I. pi. sS-
* Sharpe, Vol. II. p. 92.
6 Many ofthe examples occur in Mariette's Dendera, Vol. I. pi. 6, 46.

I02 LECTURE IIL
nutra is therefore often found in parallelism with ah
and tur, both of which have the sense of religious
purification. I will add one more illustration, which by itself
might not be of much weight, but is really important
when taken in conjunction with other evidence. The
goddess Isis is distinguished among other divinities
by the frequent epithet nutrit. When the inscriptions
in her honor are written in Greek, she is most fre
quently called fisydk/j or fisyiarrj.
There is yet another Egyptian word cognate to
those we have been studying. Nutrit signifies " eye
ball." The notion here is of something fortified, pro
tected, guarded. " Custodi me ut pupillam oculi :"
" Keep me as the apple of the eye." The Arabic word
hadaqat, which means the same thing, has an exactly
similar etymology. And several other parallel instan
ces might be cited.
The Egyptian nutar, I argue therefore, means
Power, which is also the meaning of the Hebrew El.
The extremely common Egyptian expression nutar
nutra^ exactly corresponds in sense to the Hebrew
El Shaddai, the very title by which God tells Moses
1 M. de Rougi, Chrestomathie, Fasc. iii. p. 25, translates this, " dieu
devenant dieu," and says in a note, " On ne sail pas au juste le sens du
verbe nuter, qui forme le radical du mot nuter, ' dieu.' Cest une id^e
analogue h. ' devenir ' ou ' se renouveler,' car nuteri est appliqu^e &
I'ame resuscit^e qui revet sa forme immortelle."

THE GODS OF EGYPT.

103

that He was known to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
"And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, 'I
am Jahve : and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac
and unto Jacob by the name of El Shaddai, but by my
name Jahve was I not known to them.' " Nutar nutra
amtu heret is "the Almighty Power which is in
heaven." It is very remarkable that " Brahman in Sanskrit
meant originally Power, the same as El. It resisted
for a long time the mythological contagion, but at last
it yielded like all other names of God, and became
the name of one God.'" But the Egyptian nutar
never became a proper name. It was indeed restric
ted in its use, as far back as our knowledge of the
language enables us to trace it, but it never ceased to
be a common noun, and was applied indifferently to
each of the powers which the Egyptian imagination
conceived as active in the universe, and to the Power
from which all powers proceed. Horus and Ra and
Osiris and Set are names of individual finite powers,
but a Power without a name or any mythological
characteristic is constantly referred to in the singular
number, and can only be regarded as the object of
that "sensus numinis," or immediate perception of t
the Infinite, which like my learned predecessor Pro
fessor Max Miiller, I consider " not the result of rea-
1 M. Miiller, " Chips," Vol. I. p. 363.

I04 LECTURE IIL
soning or generalizing, but an intuition as irresistible
as the impressions of our senses." ' The following
instances are taken from the moral writings of which
I spoke in the last Lecture.
I. The Maxims of Ptahhotep.
The Power. They speak of "God forbidding"
and "God commanding."
"The field which the great God hath given thee to
till." " If any one beareth himself proudly, he will be
humbled by God, who maketh his strength."
" If thou art a wise man, bring up thy son in the
love of God."
" The magnanimous man is the object of God's
regard, but he who listens to his belly is scorned by
his own wife."
" Thy treasure has grown to thee through the gift
of God."
" God loveth the obedient and hateth the disobe
dient." A good son is spoken of as " the gift of God."
2. A papyrus of Leyden.^
1 " Science of Language," Second Series, p. 479, 7th ed.
' Published in Leemans's Monuments Egyptiens du Musee de Leide,
Pap. i. p. 344, i. — vi. An account of it is given in Dr. Lauth's " Alta
gyptische Lehrspriiche," in the Transactions ofthe Academy of Munich,
July, 1872.

THE GODS OF EGYPT. 105
" Happy is the man who eateth his own bread.
Possess what thou hast in the joy of thy heart.
What thou hast not, obtain it by work. It is profita
ble for a man to eat "his own bread ; God grants this
to whosoever honors Him ."
3. A papyrus at St. Petersburg.'
" Praised be God for all His gifts."
" God knows the wicked ; He smites the wicked,
even to blood."
4. The Maxims of Ani.
" Whoso acts, God will raise his name above the
sensual man."
" The sanctuary of God abhors [noisy manifesta
tions ?]. Pray humbly with a loving heart all the
words of which are uttered in secret. He will pro
tect thee in thine affairs ; He will listen to thy words ;
He will accept thine offerings."
" In making thine oblation to God, beware of what
He abhors  Exaggerate not the liturgical pre-
1 This is described by Dr. Golenischeff in Lepsius's Zeitschrift, 1876, p.
107. ^ This very interesting book, published with the other papyri of Bulaq
by M. Mariette, has been described by Brugsch-Bey in the Zeitschrift,
1872, and has been translated ty M. E. de Roug^ and M. Chabas. The
version of the latter scholar is the most "careful and exact, all the dif
ficulties of the text being minutely considered and discussed. It oc
cupies the greater part of the scientific journal V Bgyptologie, entirely
written by M. Chabas,

I06 LECTURE TIL
scriptions ; it is forbidden to give more than what is
prescribed. Let thine eyes consider the acts of His
wrath. Thou shalt make adorations in His name.
It is He who granteth genius with endless aptitudes ;
who magnifieth him who becometh great. The God
ofthe world is in the light above the firmament; His
emblems are upon earth ; it is to them that worship
is rendered daily."
Another section is upon maternal affection. It de
scribes the self-sacrifice of an affectionate mother
from the earliest moments of the child's existence,
and continues as follows : " Thou wast put to school,
and whilst thou wast being taught letters she came
punctually to thy master, bringing thee the bread and
the drink of her house. Thou art now come to
man's estate ; thou art married and hast a house ; but
never do thou forget the painful labour which thy
mother endured, nor all the salutary care which she
has taken of thee. Take heed lest she have cause to
complain of thee, for fear that she should raise her
hands to God and He should listen to her prayer."
" Give thyself to God, keep thyself continually for
God, and let to-morrow be like to-day. Let thine
eyes consider the acts of God ; it is He who smiteth
him that is smitten."*
5. The author of the Maxims contained in the
demotic papyrus of the Louvre.

THE GODS OF EGYPT. 1 07
" Curse not thy master before God."
It was in this style that in all periods of their his
tory, in the earliest not less confidently than in the
latest, the Egyptians spoke of the Nutar in the sin
gular number. There can, I trust, be no doubt who
that Power is which, in our translations, we do not
hesitate to call God. It is unquestionably the true
and only God, who " is not far from any one of us, for
in Him we live and move and have our being," whose
" eternal power and Godhead " and government ofthe
world were made known through " that Light which
enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world."
In the extracts which I have quoted, and in many
similar passages, we recognize the elements of true
religion, free from all admixture of mythology. But
if such be the Power, what are the " powers " {nutriu),
and what are their relations to it ?
In the formation of a theory of the „, „
•' The Powers.
universe, the notion of Power produc
tive of results may, according as it is defined, lead to
very different consequences. It may be conceived
very much in the same sense as a Cause, and lead, as
the notion of Cause will always lead reflecting men,
in spite of the protests of critical philosophers, to the
admission of One First Cause or Power from which
all others are derived. But, as we know equally well
from the history of speculation, the notions of Power

I08 LECTURE in.
and Substance may be identified, and it is easy to
imagine one universal Force in nature, in itself eter
nal and unchangeable, but manifesting itself in the
most different forms. In both cases the result is
Unity ; Theistic in the first case. Pantheistic in the
second. I shall have occasion to speak of the com
plete and final triumph of the latter of these con
ceptions. But the triumph did not take place till a
comparatively late period, and till then the Egyptian
religion may be considered as susceptible of either a
Theistic or a Pantheistic interpretation. In either
case the gods of the mythology represent the real or
imaginary powers of the universe ; and what these
powers were in the most primitive conception enter
tained of them by the Egyptians, can only be dis
covered by the same scientific process which has been
applied with such success to the mythology of the
Indo-European races.
Myth and Le- "^^^ most common opinion held by
gE"<i- the best scholars only a few years ago
was, that however many gods the Egytians might
have, they had no mythology properly speaking.
The only myth they were supposed to possess was
that about Osiris, and even this was imagined to have
' been brought into shape through Hellenic influences.
This opinion is altogether an erroneous one : it con
fuses the notion of myth with that of mythological

THE GODS OF EGYPT. 109
tale or legend ; and whilst the Egyptians really had
an abundance of legendary tales, their myths are
simply innumerable. The tale of Osiris is as old as
Egyptian civilizatioa itself; that is, very much more
than two thousand years before Hellenic influences
came into operation.
Several mythological tales of considerable extent
are now well known to us. The legend of the revolt
of the first men against the god Ra and his destruc
tion of them was discovered by M. Naville in one of
the tombs at Biban-el-moluk. A long narrative of the
victories of Horus was copied by the same accom
plished scholar from the walls of the temple at Edfu.
It is written in the style of the heroic annals of the
kings of Egypt, and accounts for the names of geo
graphical localities by the exploits of the divine
warrior. The tale of Osiris, as told in the Greek
work attributed to Plutarch, is made up out of
several genuine Egyptian legends, and the wander
ings of the widowed Isis formed the subject of many
legendary narratives. But the religious texts are
literally crowded with allusions to mythological
legends, and these allusions though they are neces
sarily obscure to us, must have been familiar to the
Egyptians. The mythological legend grew out of myth, but
must not be confounded with it. The myth was in

no LECTURE IIL
Egypt, what it was everywhere else, a mere phrase,
often consisting of not more than a single word, des
criptive of some natural phenomenon, such as the
rising or setting of the sun, the struggle between light
and darkness, and the alternate victory of the one or
the other. The science of Language has established
the fact that all names were general terms ; and one of
the most eminent masters ofthe science' begins a work
on " Proper Names" by laying it down as a first princi
ple that for the etymologist there are no such things
as " proper names," but only " appellatives." These
appellatives, when applied to natural phenomena, are
either such predicates as the most prosaic observer
might use at the- present day, or they are metaphorical.
An early stage of language is always highly meta
phorical, its terms being derived from sensuous percep
tion, and being ill adapted to express abstract ideas.
Many roots were required to express the different
stages or determinations of a single notion. Even in
reference to so simple a notion as that expressed by
the verb to see, the Greeks had recourse to no less than
three roots (in bpim, oipoptat, eldov), according as the
action was considered as continued, completed or
momentary. We ourselves say I go, but I went ; je
vais, nous allons, j'irai. As the motives for applying
an appellative to a phenomenon are many, it is evident
1 Pott, " Die Personennamen."

THE GODS OF EGYPT. \\\
that many myths may refer to the same phenomenon
under different names. And every myth which
involves a metaphor naturally suggests a legend,
which in its turn is susceptible of an indefinite amount
of development in the hands of poets or other mytho-
graphers, long after the primitive meaning of the myth
has been forgotten.
It is therefore only through a radical misconception
of the nature of a myth that attempts can be made to
discover a consistent system in the mythology of any
country. One myth was originally quite independent
of every other.
Another serious mistake is to suppose that all the
details of a mythological legend are of equal import
ance. The Psalmist speaks of a tabernacle in the
heavens set for the sun, whom he compares to " a
bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoicing
as a strong man to run a race." Call the sun the
Bridegroom or the Racer (and he is so named in
several mythologies), and a series of images will at
once be suggested correlative to each of these names,
and adventures will be invented to suit them. But
these details are no real part of the myth, and fre
quently conceal its true meaning. One of the chief
difficulties in dealing with a myth lies in distinguish
ing the essential from the non-essential portions of
the legend to which it has given rise.

I I 2 LECTURE IIL
On the other hand, the moment we understand the
nature of a myth, all impossibilities, contradictions
and immoralities disappear. If a mythological per
sonage really be nothing more than a name of the
sun, his birth may be derived from ever so many
different mothers. He may be the son of the Sky or
of the Dawn or of the Sea or of Night. He may be
identical with other mythical personages which are
also names of the sun, and yet be absolutely different
from them, as the midday sun differs from the rising
and from the setting sun, or the sun of to-day from
that of yesterday. He may be the husband of his
own mother without the guilt or stain of incest. All
myths are strictly true, but they can only be har
monized when translated into the language of physi
cal reality.
All phenomena which attracted sufficient attention
furnished matter for myths. It had been remarked,
for instance, that certain stars never set, whereas all
others, after performing their course, sink below the
horizon. The Egyptians expressed this by the myth
of the Crocodile of the West which fed upon the
Achmu Uretu (the setting stars).' Thunder and
lightning, storm and wind and cloud and rain, were
1 Todt. 32, -.s. The translation of axmu uretu by "restless " is inad
missible. See M. Chabas, " Papyrus Magiqud," p. 84. We have
nothing here to do with planets and fixed stars.

THE GODS OF EGYPT. 113
no doubt duly personified, but they occupy a very
small part of the mythology, which is almost ex
clusively concerned with the regularly and perpetu
ally recurring phenomena. Whatever may be the
case in other mythologies, " I look upon the sunrise
and sunset, on the daily return of day and night, on
the battle between light and darkness, on the whole
solar drama in all its details, that is acted every day,
every month, every year, in heaven and in earth, as
the principal subject"' of Egyptian mythology.
There can be no controversy about j^^ ^^^ j^j^
the meaning of Ra. Ra is not only Family.
the name of the sun-god, it is the usual word for sun.
In other mythologies the sun-god is borne iii a
chariot or on horseback ; in Egypt, his course across
the sky is made in a boat. The sky {Nti) is accord
ingly conceived as an expanse of water, of which the
Nile is the earthly representative. Ra is said to pro
ceed from " Nu, the father of the gods." His adver
sary is Apap, who is represented as a serpent pierced
with the weapons of the god. The conflict is not
between good and evil, but the purely physical one
between light and darkness. Shu and Tefnut are the
children of Ra; Shu is Air, and Tefnut is some form
of moisture, probably Dew.^
' Max Muller, " Science of Language," Second Series, p. 565.
* In the Legend of the Destruction of Mankind, Ra calls before him

I I 4 LECTURE IIL
Osiris and his The myth of Osiris, though much
Family. more elaborate, has the same meaning.
Osiris is the eldest of the five children of Seb and Nut.
"He is greater than his father, and more powerful
than his mother." He wedded his sister Isis whilst
they were yet in their mother's womb, and their
offspring was the elder Horus. Set and Nephthys,
another wedded pair, are their brother and sister.
In this myth the antagonist of Osiris is Set, by whom
he is slain, but he is avenged by his son Horus, and
he reigns in the nether world, like the Indian Yama,
and judges the dead from his throne in the hall ofthe
Two-fold Right. And this he does daily.
The explanation of this myth exercised the imagi
nations of the ancients. The priests and poets ofthe
eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties already identified
Osiris with the highest of all Powers. In later times,
as we see from the treatise ascribed to Plutarch, he
was identified with various abstract "principles." By
the help of the light which comparative mythology
supplies, we are enabled to arrive at a truer sense of
the myth.
The parents of Osiris are Seb and Nut, and about
these there can be no mistake. Seb is the Earth, and
Nut is Heaven. Seb is identified with the earth in
Shu, Tefnut, Seb, Nut, and the fathers and mothers who were with him
when he was still in Nu.

THE GODS OF EGYPT. 115
the older texts, and in the later ones " the back of
Seb " is a familiar term for the earth. Seb is also the
Egyptian name for a certain species of goose, and in
accordance with the homonymous tendency of the
mythological period of all nations, the god and the bird
were identified ; Seb was called " the great cackler,"
and there are traces of the myth of a " mundane egg "
which he " divided " or hatched. Nut is the name of
a female goddess,' frequently used synonymously with
the other names of the sky, and she is as frequently
pictured with her arms and legs extended over the
earth, with the stars spread over her body. The mar
riage of Heaven and Earth is extremely common in
mythologies ; what is peculiar to the Egyptian myth
is that Earth is not represented as the Mother of all
things, ds.iLv [r^r/jp, &Xof_' Ohpavou dazipdevTOi;, but the
Father,^ and Heaven is here the Mother ; though, as
we have seen in speaking of Ra, Heaven was also
conceived as a male power, like the Indian Varuna
and the Greek Uranos. From the union of Seb and
Nut sprung the mild Osiris, the Sun, the Isis, the
1 In the legend of the Destruction of Mankind, Nu and Nut address
each other as father and daughter. But in the Book of the Dead, 42, 20,
Unbu (one of the names of Osiris) issues from Nu, his mother being Nut.
2 There is indeed a passage (Duemichen, Hist. Inschr. II. 44 e) in
which Seb seems to be called the mother of Osiris. But as the words
are immediately followed by "whom Nut brought forth," I suspect an
error in the text.

II 6 LECTURE IIL
Dawn, wedded before they were born, and the fruit of
their marriage was Horus, the Sun in his full strength.
Set the destroyer is also the son of Seb and Nut, but
his triumph is in the west; he is Darkness, and his
spouse Nephthys, a deity of mixed character, is the
Sunset. There are the traces of a legend according
to which Osiris mistook Nephthys for his wife Isis.
Nephthys, who loved him, encouraged the illusion,
and from their embraces Anpu (Anubis) was born.
Anubis, like his mother, is a deity of a mixed cha
racter, partly belonging to the diurnal, partly to ¦ the
nocturnal powers. It is said of him that " he swal
lowed his father Osiris." I believe that he represents
the Twilight or Dusk immediately following the dis
appearance of the sun.
I am quite aware that texts may be quoted to prove
that Osiris is the Moon, but these texts belong to a
pantheistic period in which the god was recognized
under all forms.' It might rather be doubted whether
the story of Osiris had not reference to the annual
rather than to the daily sun. His death might be
supposed to represent the reign of winter. Some of
the Egyptian usages in commemoration of his death
and resurrection, such as the sowing of plants and
1 A hymn at Dendera says: " Hail to thee, Osiris, lord of eternity 1
When thou art in heaven thou appearest as the sun, and thou renewest
thy form as the moon." Mai-iette, Dendera, Vol. IV. 44 a.

THE GODS OF EGYPT.

117

watching their growth, might be cited in support of
this view. But the closer we look at these matters of
detail the less will they disturb our conviction that
the victory of Set over Osiris is that of Night over
Day, and the resurrection of Osiris is the rising of
the Sun. And I do not think Osiris will be spoken
of as dead throughout an Egyptian winter by any
one who has had any experience of that delightful
season. There is a passage in the Book of the Dead,' which
says that " Osiris came to Tattu (Mendes) and found
the soul of Ra there ; each embraced the other, and
became as one soul in two souls." This may be a
mythological way of saying that two legends which
had previously been independent of each other were
henceforth inextricably mixed up. This, at all
events, is the historical fact. In the words of a
sacred text, " Ra is the soul of Osiris, and Osiris the
soul of Ra."
But Horus also is one of the names Horus."
of the Sun, and had his myths quite
independently of Ra or Osiris. The most prominent
1 Ch. xvii. 1. 42, 43.
2 M. LefiJbure has published several important essays illustrative of
the myths of Osiris and Horus. I should be glad to find real evidence
of allusions to lunar eclipses, but it is impossible to reconcile the lunar
hypothesis about these myths with the most elementary astronomy.
How can a lunar eclipse, for instance, regularly coincide with a fixed

I I 8 LECTURE in.
ones in comparatively later times described his vic
tories over Set or the monster Tebha (the Typhon of
the Greeks). But the victory of Darkness over Light
was appropriately represented by the myth of the
Blind Horus. An ancient text speaks of him as
" sitting solitary in the darkness and blindness." He
is introduced in the royal Ritual at Abydos, saying,
" I am Horus, and I come to search for mine eyes."
According to the 64th chapter of the Book of the
Dead, " his eye is restored to him at the dawn of
day." A legend contained in the 112th chapter of
the sarae Book describes Horus as wounded in the
eye by Set in the form of a black boar. Anubis
fomented the wound, of which Horus appears at first
to have thought him the author, ' and according to
another legend, Isis stanched the blood which flowed
from the wound. But according to another account,
Set swallowed the eye, and was compelled to vomit
it from the prison in which he was confined, with a
chain of steel fastened* about his neck. The Eye of
Horus is constantly spoken of as a distinct deity,
terrible to the enemies of light.
day in a month of thirty days ? The synodical month is nearly of this
length, but the eclipses depend upon the nodes.
1 And he said, " Behold, my eye is as though Anubis had made an in
cision in my eye." — Todt. 112. Although Anubis in the sequel restores
the eye, the allusion is clearly to his nocturnal power.

THE GODS OF EGYPT. 119
The conflict of Light and Darkness is represented
in many other mythical forms. The great Cat in the
alley of Persea trees at Heliopolis, which is Ra,
crushes the serpent. In most parts of Egypt the sun
sets behind a mountain-range; it is only in the north
that the body of Osiris is said to have been plunged
into the water. According to another legend, the
crocodile Maka, the son of Set, devoured the arm of
Osiris. Other disastrous mutilations are described
as befalling Osiris, Ra, Horus and Set, in their turn.
Set and the other powers of darkness assumed the
forms of fishes. Horus pursued them, and Set was
caught in a net.' Horus, on the other hand, was
changed into a fish, and was saved by his mother
Isis. Set, though the antagonist of Light
in the myths of Ra, Osiris and Horus,
is not a god of evil. He presents a physical reality,
a constant and everlasting law of nature, and is as
true a god as his opponents. His worship is as an
cient as any. The kings of Egypt were devoted to
Set as to Horus, and derived from them the sove
reignty over north and south. On some monuments,
one god is represented with two heads, one being
that of Horus, the other that of Set. The name of
the great conqueror Seti signifies, " he that is devo-
' Indra used a net as well as other weapons against his foes.

I20 LECTURE IIL
ted to Set." It was not till the decline of the empire
that this deity came to be regarded as an evil demon,
that his name was effaced from monuments, and
other names substituted for his in the Ritual.
The Egyptian god Tehuti is known
to the readers of Plato under the name
of Thoyth. He is the Egyptian Hermes, and the
name of Hermes Trismegistos is translated from the
corresponding Egyptian epithet which is often added
to the name of Tehuti. He represents the Moon,
which he wears upon his head, either as crescent or
as full disk ; and as our word moon is derived from
the root ma, to measure, and " was originally called
by the former the measurer, the ruler of days and
weeks and seasons, the regulator of the tides, the lord
of their festivals, and the herald of their public assem
blies,"' we shall not be surprised if we find a very si
milar account of the etymology and attributes of Te
huti. There is no such known Egyptian word as tehu
but there is texu, which is a dialectic variety, and is ac
tually used as a name of the god. This form supplies
us with the reason why the god is represented as an
ibis. As Seb is the name both of a goose and of the
Earth-god, so is Techu the name of an ibis and of the
Moon-god. Tehuti probably signifies, as M. Na
ville has suggested, the " ibis-headed." But it means
' Max Miiller, " Science of Language," I. p. 7.

THE GODS OF EGYPT. 12I
something besides. Techu is the name of the instru
ment' which corresponds to the needle of the balance
for measuring weights, the ancient Egyptian cubit of
Techu. He is called "the measurer of this earth."
He is said to have " calculated the heaven and
counted the stars," to have "calculated the earth and
counted the things which are in it."^ Heis "the
distributor of time," the inventor of letters and learn
ing (particularly of geometry), and of the fine arts.
Whatever is without him is as though it were not.
All this is because the Moon is the measurer.
It is impossible, after this rapid, but, I trust, not
deceptive glance at the myths of some of the chief
Egyptian gods, to withstand the conviction that this
mythology is very similar indeed to that of the Indo-
European races. It is the very same drama which is
being acted under different names and disguises. The
god slays the dragon, or a monster blinds, maims or
devours the god. What bright god is born from the
embrace of Heaven and Earth, and who is his twin
sister and spouse ? Who are his two wives ? Who
is the " husband of his own mother " ? Who is the
divine youth who emerges from the lotus-flower?
' The instrument itself is a vase, and the primitive meaning of the word
texu is to be "full;" hence the sense of drunkenness which it sometimes
has. Dr. Duemichen has thoroughly illustrated the use of the word in
his " Bauurkunde v. Dendera,'' and in the Zeitschrift, 1872, p. 39.
s See Brugsch, Zeitschrift, 1872, p. 9.
6

122 LECTURE IIL
And what is the lotus? Which is the god who,
having performed his course from east to west, is
worshipped as the king and judge of the departed ?
Sanskrit scholars who do not know a word of Egyp
tian, and Egyptologists who do not know a word
of Sanskrit, will give different names to these person
ages. But the comparative mythologist will hardly
hesitate about assigning his real name to each of
them, whether Aryan or Egyptian. One of the most
curious instances of the identification of myths is to
be seen in a bas-relief at the Louvre, wherein the
legend of our own St. George and the Dragon, which
is at bottom the same as that of Indra and Vritra,
is represented by Horus spearing a crocodile.'
The Lectures on the Science of Language delivered
nearly twenty years ago by Professor Max Miiller,
have, I trust, made us fully understand how, among
the Indo-European races, the names of the sun, of
sunrise and sunset, and of other such phenomena,
came to be talked of and considered as personages of
whom wondrous legends are told. Egyptia|i mytho
logy not merely admits, but imperatively demands,
the same explanation. And this becomes the more
evident when we consider the question how these
mythical personages came to be invested with the
1 " Horus et St. George d'aprSs un bas-relief inddit du Louvre," by M.
Clermont Ganneau, in the Rev. Arch. 1876, September and December.

THE GODS OF EGYPT. 123
attributes of divinity by men who, like the Egyptians,
as we have seen, had so lively a sense of the divine.
Here we are at once brought into contact with the
notion of the Reign of Law.
M. de Rouge, in the extract which I ^^^^ j^^- ^^
have read from his Lecture, quotes the Law.
Egyptian expression, "the Only Being, living in
truth," "le seul Etre, vivant en verite." But the
original words, anx em maat, mean very much more
than " living in truth." A more grammatically exact
translation would be, " who lives by truth,"or "whose
existence depends upon truth ;" but " truth " is not
the exact meaning of maat. When speaking of the
moral code recognized by the Egyptians, I used the
word "Right" as including both Truth and Justice.
But it now becomes necessary to define the term more
precisely. Maat as a noun signifies a perfectly straight and
inflexible rule. It is evidently, I believe, derived from
the root md, " to stretch out," or " hold out straight
before one," " protendere," as in the act of presenting
an offering, md hotep} " I have stretched out {md-nd)
my hand, as the master of the crown," says the Osiris
in the Book of the Dead.^ " Tehuti has extended to
her {md-nes) his hand," is said in one of the texts at
' Sharpe and Bonomi, " Sarcophagus,'' pi. 8, lines s and 8.
2 Todt. 40, -^, comp. with 12, 2.

124 LECTURE IIL
Dendera.' With this notion of stretching out are con
nected, in the Egyptian as well as in the Indo-
European and the Semitic languages, the notions of
"straight, right, righteous, true, rule, row, order."
Our own word rule, like the Latin regula and rectus,
is derived from the Aryan root ar^, from which we
have in Sanskrit nnge, I stretch myself (like the
Greek dpiyopm), rigus straight, right, righteous ; ra,^s,
a line, a row ; in Zend, erezu, straight, right, true, and,
as a substantive, finger.^ In Gothic we have rak-ja
(uf-rak-ja, stretch out), rach-ts, right, straight.^ The
Egyptian maat is not only Truth and Justice, but
Order and Law, in the physical as well as in the
moral world. It is in allusion to the fixed and un
alterable laws of nature (which of course were very
imperfectly known to them) that the Egyptians used
the expression anx ^''^ maat, " living or existing by or
upon rule," which, if not actually a term equivalent
to divinity, is at least with them the attribute most
' Other words connected with the same root are maat, an offering,
irpdSeai;, ma. signifying that part of the forehead from which the horns
project in cattle, md a fair wind, and ma an extent of water.
2 A finger is sometimes in Egyptian found as a " determinative " of
ma. ' Curtius, " Gr. Et.'' p. 184. Compare Gesenius on the Hebrew
^^i?  " ordine S. ad lineam disposuit, struxit, nostr. reihen, richten, gr.
rdaaa, rdTToi (vie. '^^S recta protendit, extendit, et in Unguis indo-
germ. Reiche [Reige, Riege] reihen intens. rechen; rego [non pro
reago ut nonnulli volunt] regula, rectxis." " IjlS . . . ordo, strues."

THE GODS OF EGYPT.

125

constantly connected with it. It was in consequence
of the persistent recurrence of the same physical phe
nomena in an order which never varied and was never
violated, that the Sun and Moon and other powers,
even the days of the month and the twenty-four hours
of day and night, became the great and everlasting
gods- There js another Egyptian expression extremely
frequent in the religious texts, the accurate meaning
of which has never been recognized. E-in ser en
maat'^ is now generally -allowed to mean "rightly,"
"perfectly," but it does not literally signify " in cal-
culo veritatis," as Brugsch says in his Lexicon. Ser
is the measuring line used by builders, and em, ser
signifies " ad amussim," " nach der Schnur," " au
cordeau," " according to the line ; " hence, " with the
strictest accuracy." The whole expression therefore
means, " according to the strict accuracy of Law," to
which is constantly added, hehu en sep, " millions of
times." Maat is Law,^ not in the forensic sense of a
' p. S7S. The sign which I read ser was formerly read hebs, which
has the same ideograph. But " in calculo " implies the very different
word hesb, and if blundering scribes sometimes misspelt these words, this
is no reason for attributing the ideograph of hebs in the very best texts to
a word which is only confounded with it by a clerical error. The con
nection of ideas between hesb and ser is however very intimate. See
Todt. 100, 8, hesb su Tehuti cm ser m-adt.
^ The opposite notion to Maat, considered as Law, is asfet, lawless
ness, disorder, iniquity.

126 LECTURE IIL
command issued either by a human sovereign au
thority or by a divine legislator, like the Law of the
Hebrews, but in the sense of that unerring order
which governs the universe, whether in its physical
or in its moral aspect. This is surely a great and
noble conception.
You will not be surprised to learn that Maat is
spoken of as a mythical personage. She is called
mistress of heaven, ruler of earth and president of
the nether world, which indeed is recognized as her
special domain. She is called the daughter of Ra,
but she might as truly have been called his mother.
Each of the great gods is said to be neb maat, liter
ally, " lord or master of Maat ; " but it is equally
said that " she knows no lord or master." If she is
brought into closer connection with Thoth than with
other gods, this is because Thoth is essentially the
" Measurer ; " and if certain texts speak of the winds
as proceeding from either Thoth or Maat, it is not
because these personages are wind-gods, but because
the cardinal points from which the winds come are
naturaUy the domain of the god who has measured
and mapped out the universe, and because the winds
themselves are obedient to Law.
Such were the gods of Egypt. They were not the
ghosts of ancestors or other dead men, or represen
tatives of abstract principles, as ancient and modern

THE GODS OF EGYPT.

127

philosophers have supposed, nor were they impure
spirits or foul demons, as an uncritical though not
unnatural interpretation of their Scriptures led the
early Christian missionaries to imagine. "AU the
gods of the nations are nought," says -the Psalmist;
but the Greek and Latin translators used the word
" daemonia," which in Christian times never meant
anything but " devils." The gods of the Egyptian, as \
well as those of the Indian, Greek or Teutonic my
thologies, were the " powers " of nature, the " strong
ones," whose might was seen and felt to be irresist- .
ible, yet so constant, unchanging and orderly in its
operations, as to leave no doubt as to the presence of \
an ever living and active Intelligence.' '
1 Much in this Lecture will be new, and perhaps appear doubtful, to
my learned colleagues in Egyptology, especially to those whose studies
have not led them into the field of Indo-European philology. From the
time of ChampoUion, the Egyptian language and literature have been
almost exclusively illustrated from Semitic, not to say purely Hebrew,
sources. This is a fatal mistake, though perhaps inevitable at first. I
have for years been humbly endeavouring to bring the Science of Lan
guage to bear upon Egyptian philology, and I trust this Lecture will at
least induce some eminent scholars to study the Egyptian by the light of
other mythologies. M. Lefebure has already done most valuable work
in this direction. M. Grebaut, though confining himself entirely to
Egyptian mythology, has, in his " Hymne k Ammon-Ra," published in
the Bibliotheque de I'ecole des hautes etudes, and in an article of the
Melanges d'Archeologie, tome II. p. 247, demonstrated several impor
tant truths, and he has very nearly approached the true conception of
Maat. As regards the identification of certain deities, I have very nearly

128 LECTURE IIL
been anticipated by M. Naville, who in his admirable work on the
" Litany of the Sun," p. 38, is inclined to consider Isis and Nephthys
" comme personnifiant des elres dont chacun caracterisait plus particu-
liferement I'un des horizons ; peut etre I'etoile du matin et celle du soir,
ou encore le crepuscule du matin et celui d-u soir ; les deux formules de
la titanic se coTnprendraient alors facilement." But he puts Isis at the
west, and Nephthys at the east.

LECTURE IV.

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD.

A BELIEF in the persistence of life
after death, and the observation of reli
gious practices founded upon this belief, may be dis
covered in every part of the world, in every age, and
among men representing every degree and variety of
culture. Classical scholars are familiar with the
terms of Inferiae and Parentalia, names given by the
Romans to the propitiatory offerings which they pre
sented to the manes of their departed ancestors.
The Greeks had their ivayca/iara. The worship of
the Fravashis by the Iranians, and that of the Pitris
by the Hindu, are evidences of the antiquity in the
Indo-European family of this form of religion, many
traces of which remain to this day in the practices
of European nations. And the celebration of rites in
honour of their ancestors is perhaps the most ancient
6* T29

130 LECTURE IV.
institution of the oldest civilization now in existence,
that of China.
The habits of savages without a history are not in
themselves evidence which can in any way be de
pended upon. To take for granted that what the
savages now are, perhaps after millenniums of degra
dation, all other people must have been, and that
modes of thought through which they are now pass
ing have been passed through by others, is a most
unscientific assumption, and you will seldom meet
with it in any essay or book without also finding
proof that the writer did not know how to deal with
historical evidence. Authorities are sure to be
quoted which the historian knows to be worthless,
and evidence in itself irreproachable will be com
pletely misunderstood. The universality of a belief
or practice, even among savages, would of course, if
proved, be a very weighty fact, tending to prove that
the belief or practice in question had its origin either
in reason or in tradition. It is, however, impossible
to exaggerate the value of Sir Henry Maine's protest
against " the very slippery testimony concerning
savages which is gathered from travellers' tales."
" Much," he says, " which I have personally heard
in India bears out the caution which I gave as to the
reserve with which all speculations on the antiquity
of human usage should be received. Practices re-

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. \ 3 1
presented as of immemorial antiquity and universally
characteristic of the infancy of mankind, have been
described to me as having been for the first time re
sorted to in our days through the mere pressure of
external circumstances or novel temptations.''
Far more important than any single instance from
the descriptions of modern savages is the ancient
tomb of Aurignac. " If the fossil memorials," says
Sir Charles Lyell, " have been correctly interpreted
— if we have before us at the northern base of the
Pyrenees a sepulchral vault, with skeletons 'of human
beings consigned by friends and relatives to their last
resting-place — if we have also at the portal of the
tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and within it indica
tions of viands destined for the use of the departed
on their way to a land of spirits, while among the
funeral gifts are weapons wherewith in other fields to
chase the gigantic deer, the cave lion, the cave bear
and woolly rhinoceros — we have at last succeeded in
tracing back the sacred rites of burial, and, more in
teresting still, a belief in a future state, to times long
anterior to those of history or tradition."^
1 " Village Communities," p. r7.
2 " Antiquity of Man," p. 193, 1863. I leave the words of the above
passage as they were delivered. I was not aware at the time that the
evidence of M. Lartet had been contested, and that Sir Charles Lyell
had in his last edition admitted this evidence to be doubtful. See the

132 LECTURE JV.
But if from pre-historic we pass to historic times,
we at once meet on Egyptian ground with an entire
system of notions wonderfully (indeed, almost incred
ibly) similar to those entertained by our Indo-Euro
pean ancestors. There is, however, no confirmation
of Mr. Herbert Spencer's hypothesis, that the rudi
mentary form of all religion is the propitiation of dead
ancestors. If the Egyptians passed through such a
rudimentary form of religion, they had already got
beyond it in the age of the Pyramids, for their most
ancient propitiation of ancestors is made through
prayer to Anubis, Osiris, or some other gods. The
deceased is already described in the funereal inscrip
tion as " faithful to the great God." And in no case
can it be proved that the propitiation of departed
ancestors preceded a belief in divinity of some other
kind. The Tombs and "The Egyptians," we are told by
their inscriptions. Diodoros, " call their houses hostelries,
on account of the short time during which they in
habit them, but the tombs they call eternal dwelling- j
places." The latter part of this is strictly and literally '
true ; pa t'eta, " eternal dwelling-place," is an expres
sion which is met with at every instant in the inscrip
tions of the earliest period, descriptive of the tomb.
article of Mr. W. B. Dawkins, on "The Date of the Interment in the
Aurignac Cave," in Nature, Vol. IV. p. 208.

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. 133
The word dnchiu, which literally signifies the " living,"
is in innumerable places used emphatically for the
" departed," who are enjoying everlasting life. The
notion of everlasting life, dnch t'eta, is among the few
words written upon the wooden coffin, now in the
British Museum, of king Mykerinos, of the third
pyramid. Neb anch, " Lord of life," is one of the
names given to the sarcophagus. In the very ancient
inscription of Una, the coffin is called hen en dnchiu,
" the chest of the living." It is only evil spirits who
are spoken of in the sacred writings of the Egyptians
as " the dead."
The ancient Egyptian tomb' consisted of three
essential parts: (i) a chamber above ground, entered
by a door, which appears to have always remained
open ; (2) a corridor, now commonly known as the
serdab, in the interior of the masonry, containing
statues of the deceased; and (3) a pit, sunk to a con
siderable depth through the rock, and communica
ting with the sepulchral vault hollowed in the rock,
and containing the sarcophagus of the dead. The
1 The most complete account of early Egyptian tombs is found in M.
Mariette's article, '' Sur les tombes de I'ancien empire qu'on trouve i
Saqqarah," in the Revue Archeologique, 1869, Vol. I. pp, 7 — 22, 81 — 8g,
much of which is repeated in his admirable description of the Museum
of Bulaq. See also Duemichen, " Ueber die Tempel und Graber im
alten Aegypten," the very interesting text of his Photographische Resul-
tate, and Brugsch, " Die Aegyptische Graberwelt."

134

LECTURE IV.

chamber (which sometimes consisted of several
rooms) was the only part accessible to human foot.
Its walls were often covered with pictures, but
the most essential portion of it was a tablet
invariably facing the east. At the foot of this,
lying on the ground and made of granite limestone
or alabaster, was a table for the offerings. The
serdab, or corridor, was only accessible through a
small aperture, through which the smoke of incense
might be conveyed from the chamber to the statues
which the solid walls concealed from sight. The
representations upon the walls of the chamber repro
duce the entire domestic and social life of the period.
It is from these pictures that Sir Gardner Wilkinson
has drawn up his admirable work on the Manners
and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, and de
scribed the Egyptian house, with its furniture, its
gardens, its farm-yards, its vineyards — the occupa
tions of its owner and the amusements of his guests —
the games within and out of doors, the hunting and
fishing, the agricultural operations, the numerous
arts, manufactures and trades — all of which are repre
sented to the life. Short inscriptions accompany the
pictures; the names of men, animals and other objects
are written over them; descriptive titles are con
stantly given, such as "ploughing," "mowing," "the
slaughter of a young bull ; " sometimes scraps of

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD.

135

dialogue occur, generally of a very trivial character.
" Hold hard," a master says to his servant ; and the
lad replies, ari heset-ek, "Thy will be done." One
man says, " This donkey is wild ; " and another
replies, " I will tame him." A peasant is engaged in
combing flax, and he says to another who brings him
a fresh supply of stalks, " If you bring me eleven
thousand and nine, I will comb them." The other man
rather rudely replies, " Make haste, and none of your
chatter, you prince of clod-hoppers ! " The tomb in
which this dialogue occurs is rich in texts of the
same kind. It was here that ChampoUion found the
" Song of the Oxen." But all these representations
are really subordinate to one end, and that is the wor
ship of the departed. The slaughter of the ox or the
antelope is not introduced for its own sake, but really
as a sacrifice; and the pictures of men bearing joints
are on the point, as they are sometimes actually
represented, of offering them to the image of the
deceased. An endowment was always intended to
provide for the celebration of these propitiatory ser
vices, as well as for keeping the tomb in perpetual
repair. The usual form of inscription over the lintel of the
tomb, and which is often repeated within the cham
ber, is as follows :
" A royal table of propitiation grant Anubis, who

136 LECTURE IV.
dwells within the divine house. May sepulture be
granted in the nether world, in the land of the divine
Menti,' the ancient, the good, the great, to him [the
departed] who is faithful to the great God. May he
advance upon the blissful paths upon which those
advance who are faithful to the great God. May the
funeral oblations be paid to him aL.the beginning of
the year, on the feast of Tehuti, on the first day of
the year, on the feast of Uaka, on the feasts of the
Great and of the Small Heat, on the apparition of
Sechem, at the feast of Udh-ach, at the feasts of each
month and the half-month and every day."
Such is the ordinary formula, which however ad
mits of variations and additions, especially in the later
inscriptions. I will mention one or two not more
recent than the sixth dynasty. One of them consists
in the repetition of the words em hotep, " in peace,"
like the aW'a of the Hebrew and the In pace of the
Christian funereal inscriptions. It is extremely fre
quent in Egyptian texts, and may really be the origin
of the Jewish and Christian form of petition for the
departed, though the primitive signification has been
altered. 1 In later times this name was written Amenti, and was supposed to be
derived from the word amen, " conceal." This meaning is implied in
the royal tombs at Biban-el-moluk. But in the oldest tombs the name
is distinctly written Menti, and the name of the presiding divinity ^ent
menti. See Denkmaler, ii. pi. 45, 48, loi.

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. 137
There is also a petition that the departed may
"traverse the firmament" "in company with the per
fect spirits of the nether world." The word ba, which
I translate firmament, properly signifies " steel." '
The notions of blue and of steel seem to have been
associated in the Egyptian mind, and the colour of
the sky suggested the notion of a metallic firmament.
The word spirit is given as the translation of the
Egyptian chu, but this name for the dead signifies
"glorified one."
A third petition is, that the deceased should be
proclaimed glorified, or, as we should say, canonized
{sechut), by the ministers of religion, the cher-heb or
the smer, priestly officials who are frequently named
in the inscriptions, especially in connection with the
rites of the dead. A considerable number of priests
bearing these and other titles, representing various
functions, took part in these ceremonies, but the pre
sence of a priest was not always indispensable. The
offerings might be made, or rather had to be made, by
the sons and daughters and other members of the
family of the deceased. The pictures in which no
minister of religion is seen (and they are perhaps the
most numerous), all either directly represent religious
1 Cf. the Homeric aiSrjpeov oiipavbv, Od, xv. 329, xvii. 565. We have
already met with another conception of heaven, namely, as an ocean
upon which the sun travels in his bark.

138 LECTURE IV.
rites or preparations for them. The very games and
dances are religious ceremonies. In the tomb of Te-
bahen, the statue of the deceased is represented as
standing within a shrine, before which a table of pro
pitiatory offerings is laid. Men are advancing up the
inclined plane which leads to it, bearing fowls and legs
of oxen. On one side, other men are kneeling, with
sacrificial cakes or vases of water in their hands ;
whilst on the other side, women are performing a
solemn dance, also in presence of a table of offerings.
In the great tomb of Nahre-se-Chnumhotep at Beni
hassan, women are tumbling in presence of a solemn
religious service, in which libations are being poured
by the " .^«-minister." The words written over the
scene are part of a prayer which is supposed to be
recited, " Let the gates of heaven be opened that the
god may enter !"
The later form of the sepulchral inscriptions, as
found on the tablets of our museums, is, more or less
fully, as follows :
" A royal table of propitiation grant Osiris, dwell
ing in Amenti, Lord of Abydos [or of Tattu] : " other
divinities are often added. " May he [or they] grant
the funereal oblations, bread, beer, oxen, geese, wine,
milk, oil, incense, wrappings, all gifts of vegetation,
whatever heaven gives or earth produces, to enjoy
the Nile, to come forth as a living soul, to come in

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. \ 39
and go out at the Ristat, that the soul may not be re
pulsed at the gates of the nether world, to be glori
fied among the favored ones in presence of Un-nefer,
to receive the aliments on the altars of the great God,
to breathe the delicious breezes of the north wind,
and to drink from the depth of the river." Then fol
lows the name of the person, generally accompanied
by that of his mother ; but on almost all tablets after
the time of Amenemhat I., these celestial gifts are
said to be given not to the person, but to the ka of
the person, — an important expression which has been
misunderstood till quite lately.
This prayer is called the Suten-hotep-td, from its
first words ; and as we speak of saying an " Our Fa
ther," the Egyptian texts speak of " a son making a
Suten hotep-td" The great tablet of Abydos has for
title, "The making of a Suten-hotep-td," Sec, to the
kings of Egypt by king Seti.
The greatest importance was attached to the per
manence of the tomb, to the continuance of the reli
gious ceremonies, and to the prayers of passers-by.
We constantly find men praised for having made to
live again the names of their father and mother or of
their "fathers." There is a very common formula
stating that the person who raised the tablet " made
it as a memorial to his fathers who are in the nether
world, that he built up what he found imperfect, and

140 LECTURE IV.
renewed what was found out of repair." In the great
inscription at Benihassan, Chnumhotep says, " I made
to flourish the name of my father, and I built the
chapels for his ka. I caused my statues to be con
veyed to the holy dwelling, and distributed to them
their offerings in pure gifts. I instituted the officiating
priest, to whom I gave donations in lands and pea
sants. I ordered funeral offerings for all the feasts
of the nether world, at the feast of the New Year, at
the beginning of the year, at the feast of the Little
Year, at the feast of the Great Year, at the feast of the
great joyful feast, at the feast of the Great Heat, at the
feast of the Little Heat, at the feast of the five supple
mentary days of the year, at the feast of Shetat, at
the feast of the Sand, at the twelve monthly feasts, at
the twelve half-monthly feasts, at all the feasts of the
plain and the mountain. If it happens that the priest
or any other cease to do this, then may he not exist,
and may Ms son not sit in his seat!'
The great inscription of Rameses II. at Abydos
minutely relates the provision made by that sove
reign for the worship of his father, Seti I.
" The most beautiful thing to behold," says Ra
meses, "the best thing to hear, is a child with a
thankful breast, whose heart beats for his father.
Wherefore my heart urges me to do what is good
for Mineptah. I will cause them to talk forever and

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. 141
eternally of his son who has awakened his name to
life. My father Osiris will reward me for this with a
long existence, like his son Horus. Let me do what
he did, let me be excellent as he was excellent,
for my parent, I, who am a scion of the sun-god
Ra." 
" Awake," he says to his father, " raise thy face to
heaven, behold the sun, my father Mineptah, thou
who art like God. Here am I who make thy name
to live. I am thy guardian, and my care is directed
to thy temple and thy altars which are raised up
again  I set apart revenues for thee for thy wor
ship daily, to be just towards thee  I appoint for
thee the priests of the vessel of holy water, provided
with everything for sprinkling the water on the
ground  I dedicated to thee the lands of the
south for the services of thy temple, and the lands of
the north they bring to thee their gifts before thy
beautiful countenance. I gathered together the peo
ple of thy service one and all, assigning them to the
prophet of thy temple  I dedicated to thee ships
with their freight on the great sea  I fixed for
thee the number of the fields .... great is their num
ber according to their valuation in acres. I provided
thee with land-surveyors and husbandmen, to deliver
the corn for thy revenues."
He proceeds to enumerate the barks with their

142 LECTURE IV.
crews, labourers for the felling of wood, herds of all
kind of cattle, tributes of birds, fishermen. The
temple is provided with all kinds of guilds of handi
craftsmen, men-servants and women-servants working
in the fields.
" But I obtain by my prayers the breath of life at
thy awaking  So long as I stay on earth, I will
offer a sacrifice to thee. My hands shall bring the
libations for thy name to thy [remembrance] in all
thy abodes." '
It is only natural to suppose that the religious
endowments here mentioned must in the course of
years come to an end. There is, however, in the
Louvre a monument which shows the astonishing
length of time during which institutions continued
to be respected. The kings who built the Pyramids
endowed a priestly office for the purpose of cele
brating the periodical rites in their behalf The same
priest often officiated for several departed kings. The
tablet of the Louvre shows that Psamtik, son of
Ut'ahor, who lived in the time of the twenty-sixth
dynasty, was priest of Chufu or Cheops of the great
Pyramid, and of two other sovereigns of the same
period, who certainly had lived and endowed his
office more than two thousand years before his time.
1 Brugsch Bey, " History of Egypt," Vol. II. pp. 36, 40, English
transl.

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. 1 43
We have actually the tombs of some of his prede
cessors who filled the office almost immediately after
the death of the sovereign.
Innumerable inscriptions call upon the passers-by
to invoke the gods in behalf of the departed. "O all
ye who are living upon earth," " who love life and hate
death," " you who are in the service of Osiris or of
Anubis," " priest, prophet, scribe, spondist, ministrant,
male or female, every man and every woman passing
by this tomb, statue, tablet or shrine, whether you be
passing northwards or southwards — as you desire to
enjoy the favour of the king — or as you desire your
names to remain upon earth, or to transmit your dig
nities to your children — or as you love and obey the
gods of Egypt, or as you wish to be blessed by the
gods of your cities, or by your wish to possess a part
of the divine abode of Osiris who dwells in Amenti —
or to be faithful to the great God — or as you wish to
flourish upon earth and pass on to the blessed — say a
Suten-hotep-td',' the entire formula being repeated, or
merely (as an abbreviation) "thousands of oxen,
geese, bread, beer," &c.
Such is the burden of all these funereal tablets. No
one tablet contains all that I have quoted, and no two
tablets are exactly alike, but all are made upon the
same model and contain some portions of the whole.
Many centuries after the construction of a tomb.

144 LECTURE IV.
Egyptian travellers have left a record upon its walls
of the splendour of the sacred abode, of the abund
ance of the materials which they found provided for
the fulfilment of the rites for the departed, and of
their own repetition of the funereal formula.' The
Suten-hotep-td was supposed to have been delivered
by divine revelation. An ancient text speaks of a
"Suten-hotep-td exactly corresponding to the texts of
sacrificial offerings handed down by the ancients as
proceeding from the mouth of God." ^
It was most important that a man should have a
son established in his seat after him who should per
form the due rights and see that they were performed
by others ; that he should, as it is expressed, " flourish
in the children of his children." The duty of per
forming these rites comes immediately after that of
worshipping the gods, in the enumeration of virtuous
actions. It is enforced in the moral writings as well
as in the theology of ancient Egypt.
" Give the water of the funereal sacrifice to thy
father and ^mother who repose in the tomb ; renew
the water of the divine oblations  Neglect not
to do it, even when thou art away from thy dwelling.
Thy son will do it for thee in like manner!'
These words are taken from the Maxims of Ani.
1 ChampoUion, Notices, Vol. II. pp. 423 — 425.
' Denkm. iii. pi. 13.

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD.

145

We find the following among the good wishes
made for a person : " Mayst thou receive the lustral
water from the hands of thy son each tenth day. . . .
May every heir who offers the libation to his own
father, contribute his offering of water to thy ka ;
and as he propitiates his father or buries his mother,
may thy name be uttered together with his own
father." '
On the other hand, the wish that a man may not
have a son after him is the most terrible of impreca
tions. " Whoever shall preserve this inscription," we read,
" in the temple of Amon Ra, the Lord of Senneferet,
he shall be favoured by Amon Ra, and his son shall
be established in his place ; but whosoever shall re
move this inscription from the temple of Amon Ra,
Amon Ra wUl curse him, and his son shall not be
established in his place." ^
Another text says :
" Whoso destroys this inscription, Bast, the great
goddess of Bubastis, will annihilate him for ever ; he
will never have a son after him." '
The trustees of a religious foundation are threat
ened with the most tremendous penalties in case of
their not carrying out the intentions of the founder ;
1 Louvre, Inv. 908. ^ Zeitschrift f. agypt. Sprache, 1871, p. 60.
s lb. p. 8.
7

146 LECTURE IV.
they are to " be delivered over to Sutech in the day
of his wrath, whose serpent diadem will spit out
flames of fire upon their heads, annihilating their
limbs and consuming their bodies. May they not
receive the reward of righteousness ; may they not
partake of the feast of the blessed ; may the water
from the spring of the river not refresh them ; may it
not come to pass that their posterity should sit in
their place." But to faithful trustees the most splen
did prospects are held out, one of which is, " Son of
son, heir of heir, will be born to him." " May your
bodies," they are finally told, " rest in the nether
world of Amenti after a course of a hundred and ten
years, and may the sacrificial gifts likewise be multi
plied to you."
The inscription of Ptolemy, the son of Lagos, in
the fourth century before Christ, ends as follows : '
" The land of Buto, whoever tries to plan tlie re
moval of any part thereof, may he incur the ban of
those gods who are in Pe, may he be accursed by
those who are in Tep, may he be in the flame of
Aptaui in the day of her terrible wrath, may he have
no son or daughter to give him the lustral water."
One of the most recent of the Ptolemaic tablets
records the fulfilment of a promise made in a dream
by the god I-em-hotep to Pasherenptah with refer-
1 Zeitschrift f. agypt. Sprache, 1871, p. 60.

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. 147
ence to the birth of a son, and it contains the invoca
tion, " Oh, all ye gods and goddesses who are un
named, let a child remain in my place for ever and
ever .... keeping alive the name of my house."
The lustral water offered upon earth to the dead
had its counterpart in the other world. The most
usual representation of this is the picture in which
the goddess Nut pours out the water of life to the de
ceased, from the interior of a sycamore-tree. In a
picture published by M. Chabas,' the deceased kneels
before Osiris, and receives from him the water of life
from a vessel under which is written dnch ba, " that
the soul may live." The picture is taken from the
mummy of a priest who lived twelve hundred years
before Christ. But the same idea occurs in a Greek
inscription found at Saqara by Mr. C. Wescher.
"She lived twenty-five years," the inscription says,
" and Osiris beneath the earth gave her the refreshing
water." ^
Now let me remind you that the oblation of cakes
and water is one of the five great ceremonies of the
Hindus, and, as Professor Max Miiller told you last
year, that " without a son to perform the funeral rites,
a Brahman believed that he could not enter into
heaven." Here is undoubtedly a most remarkable
coincidence between two religions which never came
1 Revue Arch. i86z. Vol. I. p. 370. ' lb. 1864, Vol. II. p. 222.

148 LECTURE LV.
into contact. Nor can any even indirect influence of
one upon the other be considered admissible. It is
the logical process which has taken the same direc
tion in both, and it can be traced in other branches
ofthe Indo-European family.
Readers of ecclesiastical history will remember the
fierce persecutions to which the first converts to
Christianity were subjected in Persia, chiefly in con
sequence of the doctrines they held on the subject of
virginity and celibacy, so much at variance with a re
ligion which considered children as " a bridge leading
to heaven;" but as this religion has special grounds
of its own for condemning celibacy, over and above
those which it derives from the Indo-European tradi
tions, it is instructive to read Dr. Hearne's remarks on
the traditions of Greece and Rome.
" The personal motives which led to marriage were
in the early world very strong. The popular senti
ment is emphatically expressed by Isaios when he
says, ' No man who knows he must die can have so
little regard for himself as to leave his family without
descendants, for then there would be no one to ren
der him the worship due to the dead.' A remarka
ble illustration of this sentiment occurs on a memo
rable occasion in Grecian history. When Leonidas
arrived at the scene of his desperate defence of Ther-
mopylse, he was accompanied, says the historian, 'by

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. 1 49
the 300 men which the law assigned him, whom he
had himself chosen from among the citizens, and who
were all of them fathers with sons living.' According
to modern notions, a forlorn hope would naturally be
composed of men who had not given hostages to for
tune. Such, however, was not the light in which the
latter presented itself to the Greek mind. The hu
man plant had flowered. The continuance of the
house was secure. It was therefore comparatively
of little moment what befel the man whose duty to
his ancestors had been fulfilled. In the aspect of the
case now before us, the fact that a man married or
that he remained single, was not a matter which af
fected himself alone. The condition of his ancestors,
the permanence of his household, depended upon his
conduct. We cannot, therefore, doubt that celibacy
was regarded as a deadly sin. Even the State,
although it was slow to interfere in matters merely
privati juris, lent its aid to enforce this primary duty.
Solon prohibited celibacy. The laws of the Dorians,
the most conservative of the Hellenes, contained
similar provisions. Criminal proceedings might be
taken, both at Athens and at Sparta, against those
who married beneath them, and against those who
did not marry at all. There is evidence that a pro
hibition to the same effect existed in early Rome." '
1 " The Aryan Household : an Introduction to Comparative Jurispru
dence,'' p. 71.

150 LECTURE IV.
I have thought it well to insist upon this feature of
the Egyptian religion, in consequence of the import
ance attached to the celibate life in later times in four
different religions : first, in the great system of Budd
hism; secondly, in Judaism; thirdly, in Christianity;
and fourthly, in Manicheism. Christian monasticism,
as is well known, first grew up in Egypt, and was
introduced into Europe through Christians from
Egypt. But the monastic life and the word monas
tery already existed before Christianity among the
Jewish ascetics, whose mode of life is described by
the Alexandrian Philo. ' It certainly was not from
the Egyptian religion that monastic institutions were
derived. "
It is no doubt extremely natural, when phenomena
are discovered which bear close resemblance to each
other, to look out for some historical connection be
tween them. But in the history of human thought,
the supposition of such a connection frequently proves
to be an illusion. No historical connection can pos
sibly be admitted between the Egyptian and the
^ Tom. II. p. 47S, 15. 'Ev kulLaTi) Si o'lKiq, karlv olKri/ia, hpbv, b Ka-
/leirai uefivelov aaX /zovaoT^pcov, hv g) fiovov/^evat. rd. tov fSlov aejivov fiva-
rijpia Te'hovvTai.
2 The Greek papyri speak of a class of persons called ot iv Kardxi}, oi
KaTexdfievoi , who led a cloistered life ; that is to say, they were restricted
to the precincts of the temple to which they were attached. But they
were not ascetics or necessarily celibates.

eansys=-idmitted

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. I 5 1
Indo-European doctrines of the necessity of mar
riage, and all the doctrines in favour of religious celi
bacy may very probably turn out to be historically
independent of each other. The late Professor Baur,
of Tiibingen, wrote an exceedingly able work, in
which he endeavoured to trace the Manichean,
tem to Buddhism.' His arguments were ao
by Neander and many other learned men ; among
others, by Dr. Pusey in this country. Admirable,
however, as Baur's analysis of the Manichean system
must be confessed to be, his' conception of Buddhism
was radically false. This is not to be wondered at,
for the book was written before any authentic infor
mation on the subject of Buddhism was yet accessi
ble, and the principles which in the Gnostic and
Manichean systems were wrongly ascribed to Budd
hism were taken from the Platonic, Neo-Pythagorean
or some other Hellenic philosophy. And all at
tempts to discover Buddhist influences in Jewish or
Christian theologies will, I am sure, prove equally
abortive. What they have in common is human
reason, working according to the same natural laws.
The question, however, is one which should be de
cided upon strictly historical evidence, independently
' I have discussed this question at length in an article on " Oriental
ism and Ancient Christianity," in the Home and Foreign Review, July
1863, p. 151.

152 LECTURE IV.
of all dogmatic prejudice. Not a trace of the philo
sophic theories peculiar to the Buddhist canon has
yet been discovered in any of the philosophic or. reli
gious systems of the Western world, and why should
we be alarmed if it could be proved that the sublime
precepts of humanity, purity, charity and unworldli
ness, inculcated by the moral code of Sakya Muni
had historically paved the way for CJiristianity?'
1 " Le bouddhisme reform^, ^tabli au Thibet sous la supreme direc
tion du grand lama, a vivement excite la curiosite des Europeens. Les
premiers missionaries qui en eurent connaissance au dix-septifeme siScle,
ne furent pas peu surpris de retrouver au centre de I'Asie des monast^res
nombreux, des processions solennelles, des pelerinages, des fetes re-
ligieuses, une cour pontificate, des colleges des lamas superieurs, elisant
leur chef souverain ecclesiastique et pSre spirituel des Thibetains et des
Tartares en un mot un organisation assez semblable k celle de I'eglise
romaine." Hue, " Le Christianisme en Chine en Tartaric et au Thibet,"
tome II. p. 9. The French philosophers of the last century inferred
from this that Christianity was derived from Buddhism, and " qu le culte
catholique avail ete calqu6 sur les pratiques lamaiques." But M. Hue
shows that the most striking points of resemblance are owing fo changes
Sn the Tibetan worship since the time of Kubla Khan, in the thirteenth
century, who had had frequent relations with Christian missionaries, and
may have wished to imitate their institutions. The intercourse between
the Mongolian conquerors and Western Christendom was very active at
this period. Mongolian envoys repeatedly visited Rome, and some were
present at the great Council of Lyons. Some points of resemblance are
certainly more ancient, but it is worthy of notice that the resemblances
are much more numerous as regards the Latin than as regards the
Eastern churches. This would not be the case if Buddhism were the
fountain-head. On matters such as spiritual direction, both religions
have developed very similar methods quite independently one of the

COMMUNION WITII THE UNSEEN WORLD. I 5 3
I now come to another very remarkable point of
coincidence between the Egyptian and the Indo-
Eurppean religions.
When we speak of a man of genius, ^. ^°^
of a genius for poetry or for warfare, or
of being inspired by the genius of the place, we are
often forgetful of the original use of the word genius.
The genius was a god, " sanctus et sanctissimus
deus," as Servius calls him, in the religion of the
Romans, worshipped with libations, incense and gar
lands of flowers. Every man had his own genius,
which was to be propitiated by sacrificial offerings,
and so had every god and even every locality. The
genius was a sort of spiritual double of each indi
vidual. Men swore by their own genius, by the
genius of Rome, of the gods, or of the emperor.
Very similar facts are to be found in the Greek and
in the Persian religions. The Fravishis in the reli
gion of Zoroaster were heavenly types of created
things, whether gods, men, mountains, streams or
other objects, and formed a divine society, the guard
ian angels, as it were, of the good creation. Each
individual thing was furnished with its Fravishi. On
the Persian monuments, especially those of Per
sepolis, the king's Fravishi is represented standing
other. In regard to the subject of the development of dogma, no his
tory is more instructive than that of Buddhism.
7*

154 LECTURE IV.
close to the king, just as the royal ka is represented
on Egyptian monuments down to the times of Ves
pasian. The notion was deeply rooted in all the
branches of the Indo-European family, and has been
preserved in many of the superstitions still current
among us. You remember how in the novel of
Waverley the Highland chieftain saw his own wraith.
The water-wraith would in classical language be
called the genius of the stream or of the billows, and
this not in mere poetical phraseology, but in the
severe prose of every-day life. The belief itself is
not limited to the Egyptian and Indo-European
families, but is nearly universal. " Everywhere," as
Mr. Herbert Spencer tells us,' "we find expressed or
implied the belief that each person is double ; and
that when he dies, his other self, whether remaining
near at hand or gone far away, may return, and con
tinues capable of injuring his enemies and aiding his
friends." But the development of this belief among the
Egyptians is in many of its details surprisingly similar
to the corresponding process among Indo-Europeans.
The Egyptian word corresponding to the Latin
genius is ka. It original signification, as I have
recently endeavoured to show, in a paper read before
the Society of Biblical Literature,^ is image. The
1 Fortnightly Review, May i, 1870, p. 537.
' Transactions, Vol. VI. pp. 494 — 508.

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. 155
use of the Greek icdmhv and the Latin imago in the
sense of ghost is well known.' The oblations which
in the funereal formula are made to the ka of the
departed are really made to his image. It is quite
true that, as Dr. Hincks pointed out many years ago
the word ka was not introduced into the Suten-hotep-
td till the twelfth dynasty ; but the word itself in its
religious signification is as old as the language, as far
back as we can trace it, and it enters with that signifi
cation into a large number of proper names of the
earliest times f so that at all events no new doctrine
or practice was introduced when idolatry in the
strictest sense of the term, namely, the worship of
idola, was in so many words made part of the reli
gious prayers of the Egyptians.
^ Tiy/U us elpyovai tpvxai, elSala Ka/x6i>T(jn>. Iliad, xxiii, 72.
ElSa^ov 'Apyov yriyevovg. .<Esch. Prom. 568.
Infelix simulacrum atque ipsius umbra Creusae
Visa mihi ante oculos, et nota major imago. Ma. ii. 772.
^Et nunc magna mei sub terras ibit imago. lb. vi. 464.
2 The hen ka, or minister ofthe ka, is represented on the oldest monu
ments. In' Denkmaler, ii. pi. 23, he occurs three times presenting offer
ings. In pi. 25 he is at the head of a procession of persons, each bearing
offerings ; he himself is pouring lustral water. Elsewhere he is repre
sented offering incense ; in pi. 58 he is doing so to statues of the de
parted.

156 LECTURE IV.
It is not to be supposed that so intelligent a people
as the Egyptians were ignorant of the absurdity of
propitiating the wooden or stone images of their
ancestors or of themselves. It is the living image
which is said to be worshipped, and was supposed to
reside in the wood or stone. There is an ancient
text ' which, in reference to Ptah, the chief divinity of
Memphis, whom the Greeks identified with Hephaes-
tos as the inventor of the arts, distinctly speaks of
the gods as being made through his agency to enter
into their bodies, namely, their images of wood or
stone. When enumerating the experiences which tend to
generate the belief in a double personality, Mr. Her
bert Spencer speaks of the shadow which, following
a savage everywhere and moving as he moves,
suggests to him the idea of his duality, the shadow
being perhaps considered as a specific something
which forms part of him ; and he adds :
" A much more decided suggestion of the same
kind is likely to result from the reflection of his face
and figure in water, imitating him as it does in his
form, colors, motions, grimaces. When we remember
that not unfrequently a savage objects to have his
portrait taken, because he thinks whoever carries
away a representation of him carries away some part
' gharpe, " Egyptian Inscriptions," Vol. I. pi. 30.

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD.

157

of his being, we see how probably it is that he thinks
his double in the water is a rea,lity in some way
belonging to him."
I quote these words in order to suggest to yoq the
kind of impression made upon a people who must
haveworked through a long course of years before
they produced such marvels of life-like reality as
some of the portrait sculptures of the age of the
Pyramids. The art of sculpture was intimately con
nected with their religion, and its merits and demerits
arise from this connection. It is not true, as is com
monly supposed, that the Egyptians were not able,
like the Greeks, to represent in sculpture motion and
activity. They did this, and they did it wonderfully
well, as small statutes in the Museum at Bulaq
abundantly show; but most of the statues of this
description have perished, like the private houses to
which they belonged. But the statues of the gods
ahd ancestors were intended to represent, not the
concrete activity of a single moment, but the abstrac
tion and repose of eternity.
As the Iranian Fravishi is represented accompany
ing the Persian king, so is the Egyptian ka, or royal
living image or genius, depicted in numberless re
presentations. As the Roman swore by the genius
of the emperor, so did the Egyptian by the ka of his
king. As the Roman appeased his genius, so is the

158 LECTURE IV.
Egyptian king frequently sculptured in the act of
propitiating his own ka. Votive tablets are addressed
to the royal ka in company with Ptah or other gods.
Each of the gods had his ka or genius. And as the
Persians, Greeks and Romans, had their local genius,
so had the Egyptians. The kau, like the genii, manes
and lares (who are radically identical), formed a whole
class of divine beings, who are mentioned in thou
sands of inscriptions as " the kau who live everlast
ingly." A well-known and interesting tablet contains
the prayer, " May I journey upon the everlasting
road in company with kau and glorified ones."'
Not the least curious coincidence between Egyp
tian and European thought is the use of the words
genius and ka to express mental gifts. " Genius " is
not used in this way in classical Latin, but by being
made synonymous with spirit, and spirit being used
as in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah ("the spirit of
wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and
might, the spirit of knowledge, of the fear of the
Lord "), genius has come to signify a divine gift.
Now the Egyptian word ka had certainly acquired
this secondary signification as early as the time of
Rameses 11.,^ and I have but little doubt, though the
proof is not absolute, that this signification already
existed in the earliest times known to us.
1 Denkm. iii. 114. 2 lb. iii. 194.

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. I 59
The anthropology of the Egyptians oOUlSj fans."
was very different from that recognized dows, Appa-
in our modern systems of philosophy.
We are in the habit of speaking of man as consisting
of body and soul, the soul being considered the im
material part of man. We should be astonished at a
person calling himself a Christian and yet denying
the immateriality of the soul. Yet this belief was
not always recognized by the defenders of Chris
tianity as a true one. M. Guizot shows, in his sixth
Lecture on the History of Civilization in France, that
the earliest doctors of the Church were strongly im
pressed with the conviction of the material nature of
the soul, and that it was only by slow degrees that the
opposite opinion prevailed. God alone was thought
to be immaterial by nature, and it was only as rela
tive to gross matter that angels, spirits and souls
were allowed to be called immaterial or corporal.'
The disembodied personality of each individual
was therefore supposed by the Egyptians to be pro
vided with a material form and substance. The soul
had a body of its own, and could eat and drink. We
are unfortunately prevented, through want of ma
terials, from accurately determining the relation be
tween a man's soul and his ka. His shadow was also
considered an important part of his personality, and
1 Compare Petavius, De Angelis, I. iii. 12.

l6o LECTURE IV.
was restored to him in the second life. The Book of
the Dead treats the shadows as something sub
stantial. We shall not be surprised to find the belief in ap
paritions of the dead. There is a letter in one of
the papyri of the Museum of Leyden in which a
man complains bitterly of the persistent annoyance
caused to him by his deceased wife.'
The most terrific form, however, of
Possession. .
annoyance is that caused by what
we commonly call possession. We are accustomed
to hear of possession by evil spirits only, but this is
because from a Christian point of view possession by
spirits is necessarily incompatible with the goodness
of the spirits ; but the Greek dadfiauv was not neces
sarily an evil spirit, nor was the Egyptian chut.
There is an interesting inscription now preserved in
the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris, the translation
of which was first given by Dr. Birch.^ It records
the possession by a spirit of the princess of Bechten,
an Asiatic country which has not yet been satisfac
torily identified. She was connected by marriage
1 " L'epoux se plaint des mauvais precedes de I'ipouse defunte dont k
ce qu'il parait la mort ne I'a pas suffisamment debarass^." M. Chabas
in his Introduction to the Papyri of Leyden, p. 71.
' The inscription has been repeatedly translated. See " Records of the
Past," Vol. IV. p. S3. A still more recent translation is that of Brugsch
Bey, in his '' History of Egypt."

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. I 6 1
with the court of Egypt. Her sister had been mar
ried to one of the kings of the twentieth dynasty.
She had fallen ill, and an Egyptian practitioner who,
at her father's request, had been summoned to see
her, declared that she was possessed by a spirit {chui)
with which he was himself unable to cope. The
image of the god Chonsu,' one of the divine triad of
Thebes, was solemnly sent in his ark, accompanied
by a talisman of the same god under a different title,
for the purpose of exorcising the princess, and the
spirit yielded at once to the superior divinity of such
a god, who, speaking through his prophet, ordered
that a sacrifice should be offered to propitiate the
spirit. The inscription assures us that during the
time that the god and the spirit were in presence of
each other, the king of Bechten and all his army
were in a state of excessive terror. The result, how
ever, was so satisfactory, that he kept the Theban
god by him for upwards of three years, and would
probably never have allowed him to return, had he
not been terrified by a dream ; in consequence of
which the god was sent back to Egypt with presents
of great value.
The belief in dreams, as revelations Dreams.
from a world quite as real as that
1 Chonsu is the moon, and one of his attributes is hesb aha, the reck
oner of time.

1 62 LECTURE IV.
which we see about us whilst waking, was shared by
the ancient Egyptians. The great tablet which is
buried in the sand before the great Sphinx at Gizeh,
records a dream in which the God appeared to Te
hutimes IV, whilst yet a prince, spoke to him as a
father to a son, and promised him the kingdom, the
white and the red crown, with the throne of Seb, and
the earth in its length and breadth. This promise
was made on the condition that Tehutimes should
clear away the sand which then as now encumbered
the mighty image of the god. King Mer-en-Ptah
II., was encouraged by the god Ptah in a dream, and
directed in his warfare against the northern invaders
of Egypt.
One of the many valuable tablets found by Mari
ette Bey at Gebel Barkal is well known under the
name of Stek du Songe. It belongs to the Ethiopian
period, and records an event which happened in the
first year of a king (Nut) of the seventh century
before. "His Majesty had a dream in the night.
He saw two serpents, one at his right hand and the
other at his left. And when he awoke he found
them not. Then he said, ' Let these things be ex
plained to me at once.' And they explained them,
saying, ' The land of the South is thine, and thou
shalt seize the land of the North, and the two crowns
shall be set upon thy head. The earth is given to

COMMUNION With THE UNSEEN WORLD. \ 63
thee in all its length and its breadth.' " The tablet
proceeds to describe the accomplishment of the
dream, and the king's gratitude as testified by his
splendid donations.
I have already quoted the Ptolemaic tablet which
speaks of the fulfilment of a dream in which the god
I-em-hotep promised a son to Pasherenptah.
The Egyptians invoked their de-
, . , , , , . Oaths.
ceased fathers and the gods in attesta
tion of the truth of their assertions. Oaths were
resorted to in legal investigations. The primitive
sense of the word drqu, which signifies to swear, is
" bind." To " clear one's-self by an oath " is a recog
nized form of speech,' and it was no empty form, for
the presence of the gods was strongly impressed upon
the Egyptian mind. Even when the original mean
ing of a myth had not been entirely lost, the god was
no longer identified with the physical phenomenon,
but was supposed to be a living personal power con
nected with it. The absence of the sun was compati
ble with the presence of the sun-god Ra.
The presence of the gods is every- ^odT'^°^*^
where taken for granted, but the calen
dar of lucky and unlucky days contained in the
Fourth Sallier papyrus, and translated by M. Chabas,
supplies a large amount of evidence as to the popular
' See Brugsch, Zeitschrift, 1868, p. 73.

1 64 LECTURE IV.
belief in the immediate intervention of the gods in
human affairs. The days of the year are marked as
lucky or unlucky according as they commemorate
events in the legendary history of the war between
the powers of Light and those of Darkness. But
there are incessant cautions about leaving the house
or looking at certain objects on days when certain
gods are visiting the earth. Whatever was seen on
some days was sure to be of prosperous omen ; on
other days, the sight of a flame or of a rat, the touch
of a woman or the getting into a boat, might prove
fatal. " Do not go out of thine house at eventide " on the
15th Paophi; "the serpent that comes forth at even,
whoever sees him, his eye is injured on the spot."
On the 23rd of the month Choiak, a man is
blinded if the eyes of certain deities fall upon him.
On the 28th day of the same month it is unsafe to
eat fish, because on this day the gods of Tattu assume
the form of a fish.
On the I ith Tybi, "Approach not any flame on
this day ; Ra is there for the purpose of destroying
the wicked."
On the 9th Pharmuti, " Do not go out by night ;
Ra is coming forth on his way to Hai-ren-sen."
On the 24th Pharmuti, " Do not pronounce the
name of Set aloud."

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. I 65
The superstition of the Evil Eye naturally arose
from a doctrine which led to such prescriptions.
The Egyptian proper names bear distinct witness to
the existence of this superstition.
Our word angel is derived from the Angels.
Greek S.yys.lo'z, which is the literal ren
dering of the Hebrew maldch, a messenger or envoy.
This latter word is used in the Bible not only for
human envoys, either of private individuals or of the
king, but of supernatural beings sent by God to ac
complish His purposes. The Egyptian language has
a word, {aput) which is used exactly in the same
manner. It occurs repeatedly in the Book of the
Dead, particularly in the sense of messenger of divine
vengeance. The Maxims of Ani speak of the Angel
of Death.
The notion of Destiny, which plays Destiny.
so important a part in Greek mytho
logy, does not appear to have been foreign to Egyp
tian thought. In two of the romantic tales which
have reached us, the Hathors appear in the character
of the Fates of classical mythology, or the Fairies of
our own folk-lore. In the tale of the Two Brothers,
they foretell a violent death to the newly-fashioned
spouse of Bata. In the tale of the Doomed Prince,
" when the Hathors came to greet him at his birth,
they said that he would either die by a crocodile, a

1 66 LECTURE IV.
serpent or a dog." Hathor, in the more recent theo
logy of the texts of Dendera, is not only the Sun
himself with feminine attributes, but the universal
God of Pantheism. Mythologically, however, she is,
even in these very texts, the daughter of Ra and
mother of Horus. Like Isis, she is in fact the Dawn,
which from different points of view may be con
sidered either as the daughter or mother, sister or
spouse, of the Sun. The Hathors, as represented in
the pictures, have the appearance of fair and bene
volent maidens ; they are not the daughters of
Night, like the Erinyes, but they are names of one
and the same physical phenomenon, and are spoken
of in very much the same relation to human des
tiny. The Homeric poems constantly speak of the [idcpae
together with the ijepofoTni; iptvuq. The Greek
Moira has its counterpart in the Egyptian Shai. In
the pictures of the Psychostasia which occur in many
copies ofthe Book of the Dead, two personages are
seated together; the male is called Shai, the female
Renenet. They clearly preside over the meschen, or,
as we should say, the cradle of the infant. Several
important texts, which he has quoted in his recent
translation of the tale of the Doomed Prince, have
induced M. Maspero to translate Shai fate, and Ren
enet fortune. I believe that the word sha means

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. \ 67
" divide, portion out ; " hence shai, " the divider," and
intransitively " the division, part, lot, fate." Renenet,
as quoted by ,M. Maspero, may fairly be translated
" fortune," but it has several other well-known mean
ings. It is used in the sense of " young " and
" maiden ; " and Renenet is the name of the goddess
of the eighth month and of harvest. All these mean
ings can be harmonized if we think of the Greek Sbpa,
copaxoq. Hora is the time fxed by natural laws} the
fitting time ; it is also used in the sense of the spring
or prime of life ; -fj iopaia is the season of corn and
fruit-ripening. The name Renenet is surely well
chosen for a goddess presiding over birth. But she
is also represented as suckling the infant Horus.
And'in whose lap can the Sun be nursed more fitly
than in that of the Dawn ?
I must not quit this part of my sub
ject without a reference to the belief ^j^j^ ^^
that the ruling sovereign of Egypt was
the living image and vicegerent of the sun-god. He
1 Compare the Hebrew DJ/ "terapus .... spec, (i) de anni tempore
(gr. Spa) .... (2) de tempore vitas humanse, max. de Juvenili aetate
puellae . . . ; Cf. '"Ii? juventus .... (3) tempus justum, ut gr. naipdQ . .
(4) tempus alicujus, i. e. dies alie . . . . i. e. tempus supremum fatale alie,
interitus ejus." Gesenius. One of the kindred words is l.y', " indicavit
definivit, constituit," and the corresponding Arabic verb u'ada, "prae-
significavit aliquid, pec. boni, sed passim etiam minatus est aliquid
mali."

I 68 LECTURE LIL
was invested with the attributes of divinity, and that
in the earhest times of which we possess monumental
evidence. We have no means of ascertaining the
steps by which the belief came to be established as
an official dogma. It was believed in later times that
the gods formerly ruled in Egypt; the mortal kings
before Mena were called the " successors of Horus."
But the kings who built the Pyramids and all the
kings after them took the title ofthe "golden Horus;"
Chafra and all after him were called " son of Ra and
natur da, " great god." The sun in his course from
east to west divides the earth and sky into two re
gions, the north and the south. The king of Egypt,
as son and heir ofthe Sun, assumed the title of King
of the North and of the South ; not, as has generally
been thought, with reference to Egypt, but, as Le-
tronne contended and as M. Grebaut has convinc
ingly shown, with reference to the universe.
The sovereign of Egypt is always said to be seated
upon the throne of Horus, and he claimed authority
over all nations of the world. He was the "emana
tion" ofthe sun-god, his "living image upon earth."
"All nations are subjected to me," says queen Hatasu
on her great obelisk at Karnak. " The god hath ex
tended my frontiers to the extremities of heaven;"
" the whole circuit of the sun he hath handed over
{md-nef) to her who is with him." " I have ordained

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. I 69
for thee," says the god of Tehutimes III., " that the
whole world in its length and in its breadth, the east
and the west, should be thy mansion." Amenophis
II., is the " victorious Horus, who has all nations sub
ject to him, a god good like Ra, the sacred emanation
of Amon, the son whom he begot; he it is who
placed thee in Thebes as sovereign of the living, to
represent him." The king himself says, " It is my
father Ra who has ordained all these things. . . . He
has ordained for me all that belonged to him, the
light of the eye which shines upon his diadem. All
lands, all nations, the entire compass of the great cir
cuit [of the sun], come to me as my subjects." " He
made me lord of the living when I was yet a child in
the nest  He hath given me the whole world
with all its domains." The royal inscriptions are full
of similar language, in the temples all the gods are
represented as conferring upon the kings whatever
gifts they have to bestow. There is a long inscrip
tion which appears first in honour of Rameses II., at
Ipsambul, and is again found elsewhere, but set up to
glorify Rameses III. The god says to the king, " I
am thy father ; by me are begotten all thy members
as divine ; I have formed thy shape like the Mende-
sian god ; I have begotten thee, impregnating thy
venerable mother  Around thy royal body the
glorious and mighty assemble festively, the high
8

170 LECTURE IV.
goddesses, the great ones from Memphis and the
Hathors from Pithom; their hearts rejoice and their
hands hold the tambourine and hymns of homage
when they see thy glorious form. Thou art lord like
the majesty of the sun-god Ra ; the gods and god
desses are praising thy benefits, adoring and sacrific
ing before thine image." " I give to thee the sky
and what is in it ; I lend the earth to thee and all that
is upon it." " Every creature that walks upon two or
upon four legs, all that fly or flutter, the whole world
I charge to offer her productions to thee."' The
same texts assign to the king the fourteen kas of Ra.
I have already explained the meaning of ka, which
corresponds in this place to our word " spirit." But
Ra was said to possess seven souls {baiii) and four
teen kas? This explains the true meaning of the ex
pression, " the souls of the king," which has puzzled
many scholars. It is very frequently found and at
a very early period. The king had the seven souls
of Ra.*
' I quote, with slight alteration, the excellent English version given in
Madame Duemichen's translation of the " Flotte einer agyptischen
Konigin." ' Transactions ofthe Society of Biblical Archaeology, Vol. VI. p. 501.
8 It is quite true, as M. Grdbaut says. Melanges d'Arch. Vol. III. p.
60, " que le singulier \bd\ variait avec la forme \baiu\ pour I'expression
de la meme idee et dans les mSmes formules.'' This is also the case with
ka and the plural kau.

COMMUNION WITII THE UNSEEN WORLD.

171

That the sovereign in his official utterances should
proclaim his divinity, is less to be wondered at than
that private individuals should speak of him in the
same style. But the doctrine was universally re
ceived. " Thou art," says an ode translated by M.
Chabas and Mr. Goodwin, " as it were the image of
thy father the Sun, who rises in heaven. Thy beams
penetrate the cavern. No place is without thy good
ness. Thy sayings are the law of every land. When
thou reposest in thy palace, thou hearest the words
of all the lands. Thou hast millions of ears. Bright
is thy eye above the stars of heaven, able to gaze at
the solar orb. If anything be spoken by the mouth
in the cavern, it ascends into thine ears. Whatso
ever is done in secret, thy eye seeth it. O Baenra
Meriamen, merciful Lord, creator of breath." Mr.
Goodwin, whose version I have been quoting, judi
ciously observes : ' " This is not the language of a
courtier. It seems to be a genuine expression of the
belief that the king was the living representative of
Deity, and from this point of view is much more in
teresting and remarkable than if treated as a mere
outpouring of empty flattery."
It must not be forgotten that' the kings are fre
quently represented in the humblest postures of
adoration before the gods. And they are also re-
> '' Records of the Past," Vol. IV. p. 102.

172 LECTURE IV.
presented as worshipping and propitiating their
own genius."
The doctrine of the king's divinity was proclaimed
by works of art even more eloquently than by words.
Dean Stanley writes as follows :'
" What spires are to a modern city — ^what the towers
of a cathedral are to its nave and choir — that the
statues of the Pharaohs were to the streets and temples
of Thebes. The ground is strewn with their fragments ;
there were avenues of them towering high above plain
and houses. Three of gigantic size still remain. One
was the granite statue of Rameses himself, who sat on
the right side of the entrance to his place. By some
extraordinary catastrophe, the statue has been thrown
down, and the Arabs have scooped their millstones
out of his face ; but you can still see what he was —
the largest statue in the world. Far and wide that
enormous head must have been seen, eyes, mouth and
ears. Far and wide you must have seen his vast
hands resting on his elephantine knees. You sit on
his breast and look at the Osiride statues which sup
port the portico of the temple, and which anywhere
else would put to shame even the statues of the
cherubs in St. Peter's — and they seem pigmies before
him. His arm is thicker than their whole bodies.
The only part of the temple or palace at all in pro-
1 " Sinai and Palestine," p. xxxv.

COMMUNION WITH THE UNSEEN WORLD. J 'J'^
l^ortion to him must have been the gateway, which
rose in pyramidal towers, now broken down, and
rolling in a wide ruin down to the plain.
Nothing which now exists in the world can give any
notion of what the effect must have been when he was
erect . . . No one who entered that building, whether it
were temple or palace, could have thought of anything
else but that stupendous being who thus had raised
himself up above the whole world of gods and men.
" And when from the statue you descend to the
palace, the same impression is kept up  Every
where the king is conquering, worshipping, ruling.
The palace is the Temple, the king is Priest. But
everywhere the same colossal proportions are pre
served. He and his horses are ten times the size of
the rest of the army. Alike in battle and in worship,
he is of the same stature as the gods themselves.
Most striking is the familiar gentleness with which — -
one on each side — they take him by each hand, as
one of their own order, and then in the next com
partment introduce him to Ammon and the lion-
headed goddess. Every distinction, except of degree,
between divinity and royalty, is entirely levelled, and
the royal majesty is always represented by making
the king, not like Saul or Agamemnon, from the head
and shoulders, but from the foot and ankle upwards,
higher than the rest of the people.

174 LECTURE IV.
" It carries one back to the days ' when there were
giants on the earth.' It shows how the king, in that
first monarchy, was the visible God upon earth. No
pure Monotheism could for a moment have been
compatible with such an intense exaltation of the
conquering king."

LECTURE V.

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT.

The hopes and fears of the Egyptians with refer
ence to the world beyond the grave are revealed to
us in various books or collections of writings which
have been preserved to us by the tombs.
Most of the evidence upon which the preceding
Lectures are based has been taken from inscriptions
sculptured or painted upon monuments of stone.
But from the very earliest times to which it is possi
ble to go back, the Egyptians were acquainted with
the use of the pen and of papyrus as a material for
writing upon. Leather skins are also recorded to
have been used for certain documents, and some of
these have actually been preserved. But the dura
bility and other qualities of the papyrus recom
mended it for ordinary use beyond all other writing
materials. The age of some of the papyri now in
175

176 LECTURE V.
our museums must necessarily seem fabulous to
those whose experience has been limited to Greek or
Latin manuscripts, which are considered as of most
venerable antiquity if they were written in the fourth
or fifth century after Christ, and, unless like the rolls
of Herculaneum they can plead special reasons, are
justly liable to suspicion if they lay claim to higher
antiquity. There is probably not a Hebrew manu
script of the Old Testament which is a thousand
years old. The oldest existing Sanskrit manuscripts
were written only a few centuries ago. Some of our
Egyptian papyri are not less than four thousand
years old. You must bear in mind the difference of .
the conditions under which the oldest manuscripts of
each country have been preserved. The climate and
the insects of India are absolutely destructive of all
organic substances. The Hebrew Biblical manu
scripts of olden times have been intentionally de
stroyed, either out of reverence for a roll which was
no longer in a condition suitable for use, or because
the text of it, as being at variance with the Masoretic
recension, was considered to be erroneous. The
causes which have led to the destruction of Greek
and Latin manuscripts, especially of the classical
literature, are so obvious, that we can only wonder
and be thankful that so much has been preserved.
But the Egyptian manuscripts which we now possess

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 177
— very few, alas ! in comparison with the myriads
which have perished — have been preserved by being
kept from the air and damp in a perfectly dry
climate, hermetically sealed in earthen or wooden
vessels or under mummy coverings, sometimes at a
depth of ninety feet within the living rock, and still
further protected by a thick covering of the pure,
dry sands of the desert.
The literature which has thus been preserved and
recovered is naturally for the most part of a religious
character. It is perhaps necessary that I should apologize for
using the term literature in speaking of compositions
written in the hieroglyphic character. It is, I know,
hard to make strangers to the writing understand
that signs representing birds or beasts may be and
are as purely alphabetic letters as our A, B, C. Such,
however, is the fact, and every simple sound in the
language, whether vowel or consonant, had its cor
responding letter.' The language had no medial
sounds, so that if a ,^ or a (f had to be transcribed
from a foreign language, a ;^ or a ^ had to be substi
tuted. But it was from the alphabetic signs of the
* This is the case with the most ancient hieroglyphic writing known to
us. If some scholars, like Dr. Hincks, have maintained that all the
alphabetic signs were formerly syllabic, this is pure speculation, and may
be true or false without interfering with the fact stated in the text.
8*

178 LECTURE V.
Egyptians that the Phoenicians derived their own,
and from the Phoenician alphabet all those of Europe
and Asia were derived: Greek, Etruscan, Roman,
Hebrew, Syriac, Arabic, Sanskrit and Zend. The
Egyptian writing, it is true, was not confined to alpha
betic characters. Some signs are syllabic, but these
might at will be exchanged for the equivalent com
bination of alphabetic ones, just as the Greek abbre
viations which are so puzzling to some persons,
either in the manuscripts or in the Aldine and other
old editions of the classics, give place at the present
day to the simple letters. And just as some persons
saw considerable advantage in the use of Greek ab
breviations, every Egyptologist will tell you that,
each syllabic character being necessarily confined to
a limited number of words, he is able to detect at a
glance over a page the presence of a word he is look
ing for. But syllabic signs were not used, any more
than Greek abbreviations, in consequence of a want
of signs to express purely alphabetic values. In this
matter Egyptian orthography differs essentially from
Chinese or Assyrian. It may, however, be objected
that Egyptian writing admits a certain number of
ideographic signs commonly called determinatives,
which are not pronounced; a sign, for instance,
representing two legs is placed after words signifying
motion. But if we compare our own writing either

TIIE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 179
with Sanskrit or with ancient Greek or Latin manu
scripts, we shall find plenty of ideographic signs in it.
What else are notes of exclamation or of interroga
tion ? What are inverted commas and vacant spaces
between the words ? Capital letters are to this day
determinatives of proper names in English and
French, arid of substantives in German orthography.
Our ideography is undoubtedly much simpler than
the Egyptian, but it is quite as real. An English or
French sentence written without it would be simply
unintelligible to the ordinary English or French
reader. I cannot therefore see what there is in the
system of Egyptian writing which is to prevent the
Maxims of Ptahhotep, written in the age of the Pyra
mids, or the tales in the Berlin papyri, written more
than two thousand years before Christ, from being
considered literature as truly as they would be if they
were now written in English, French or Italian.
The majority of the manuscripts The Book of the
which have been recovered from the Dead.
tombs contain chapters of the collection generally
known under the title of the Book of the Dead.
These chapters, though apparently handed down at
first by tradition, were committed to writing at a
very early period. The vignettes which are found
on so many copies, and which represent the burial
procession, suggested to ChampoUion the name of

I So LECTURE V.
the "Funeral Ritual." Lepsius, however, pointed
out the fact that the chapters are supposed to be re
cited by the deceased person himself in the nether
world. M. de Rouge, though not objecting to the
title "Book of the Dead," proposed by Lepsius as
more appropriate, nevertheless defended the use of
the term " Ritual " on the ground that many chap
ters contain prescriptions for parts of the funeral, and
certain prayers are formally mentioned as intended to
be recited during the burial. Although the prayers
are as a rule put into the mouth of the departed,
they were certainly recited for him by those present.
On the first vignette of the book, a priest is seen
reading the formulary out of a book which he holds
in his hands. And rubrics at the end of several
chapters attach important advantages in the next
world to the accomplishment of what has been pre
scribed in the foregoing text.
It is not only in papyrus rolls that the Book of the
Dead has been preserved. Many of the chapters are
inscribed upon coffins, mummies, sepulchral wrap
pings, statues and the walls of tombs. Tombs of the
time of the twenty-sixth dynasty, like those of
Bekenrenef or Petamonemapt, may be said to contain
entire recensions of the book. The chambers of the
latter of these tombs occupy together nearly an acre
and a quarter of ground excavated in the rock, and

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. l8l
every square inch of their high walls is covered with
beautifully sculptured inscriptions from the Book of
the Dead and other religious texts.
The Egyptian title of the work is, " Book of the
peri em hru" three very simple words, perfectly un
ambiguous when taken singly, but by no means easy
of explanation when taken together without a con
text. Pen signifies " coming forth," hru is day, and
em is the preposition signifying " from," but suscepti
ble, like the same preposition in many other lan
guages, of a great variety of uses. I will not take up
your time with a discussion of the matter, but will
simply tell you that peri em hru most probably means
" coming forth by day," and that the sense of this
expression can only be gathered from a study of the
contents of the book so entitled.
It is a very curious fact that, out of the many manu
scripts which are extant, no two contain exactly the
same chapters or follow exactly the same arrange
ment. The papyrus of Turin, the facsimile of which is
published by Lepsius, contains 165 chapters; and it
is the longest known. A very considerable number
of chapters, however, which are found in other manu
scripts, are not included in it. None of the copies
therefore contains the entire collection of chapters.
The date of the Turin papyrus is not known, but it
certainly is not anterior to the twenty-sixth dynasty.

1 82 LECTURE V.
The more ancient manuscripts contain much fewer
chapters, and their order is quite different. The anti
quity of the chapters in the long recensions is not at
all inferior to that of those in the shortest recensions,
and the chapters omitted by the Turin manuscript are
as old as any. The oldest chapters of all are omitted.
There is a great uniformity in the style and the
grammatical forms of the language as compared with
other productions of Egyptian literature, especially
those more recent than the twelfth dynasty. Nothing
can exceed the simplicity and the brevity of the sen
tences. And yet the difficulties which a translator
has to overcome are very great.
In the first place, the text is extremely corrupt.
This unsatisfactory condition of the text is owing to
different causes. The reasons which writers on He
brew, Greek or Latin palaeography have enumerated
for the purpose of accounting for mistakes in manu
scripts, apply with much greater force to the funereal
manuscripts of the Egyptians ; for as these were not
intended to be seen by any mortal eye, but to remain
for ever undisturbed in the tomb, the unconscientious
scribe had no such check upon his carelessness as if
his work were liable to be subjected to the constant
inspection of the living. But the most conscientious
scribe might easily admit numerous errors. Many of
our finest manuscripts in hieroglyphic characters are

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 1 83
evidently copied from texts written in the cursive or,
as it is called, the hieratic character. Many of the
errors of the manuscripts are to be traced to a con
fusion between signs which resemble each other in
hieratic but not in hieroglyphic writing.
Besides the errors of copyists, there are different
readings, the origin of which is to be traced to the
period during which the chapters were handed down
by word of mouth only. There are copies which bear
evidence that a critical choice has been made between
the different readings of a passage ; but the common
practice was to admit the inconsistent readings into
the text itself, the first being followed by -the words
ki t'et, " otherwise said." This practice is ofthe most
remote antiquity. The different readings of the
seventeenth chapter according to the Turin text are
already found in the text of that chapter .which Sir
Gardner Wilkinson copied from the sarcophagus of a
queen ofthe eleventh dynasty.
Some of these variants have unquestionably arisen
from the difificulty of understanding the ancient texts.
I have no doubt whatever that some of the chapters
of the Book of the Dead were as obscure to Egyp
tians living under the eleventh dynasty as they are
to ourselves. The Book of the Dead is mythological
throughout, and the true sense of a mythology dies
away with the stage of*'culture which has produced it.

184 LECTURE V.
A critical collation of a sufficient number of copies of
each chapter will in time restore the text to as
accurate a standard as could be attained in the most
flourishing days of the Egyptian empire. This revi
sion of the text, which, for want of the requisite
leisure, I was sorrowfully compelled to decline when
it was proposed to me by Dr. Lepsius at the Con
gress of Orientalists in 1874, is now being actively
conducted by a most competent scholar, M. Naville,
of Geneva. The most accurate knowledge of the
Egyptian vocabulary and grammar will, however, not
suffice to pierce the obscurity arising from what M.
de Rouge called symbols or allegories, which are in
fact simply mythological allusions. The difficulty is
not in literally translating the text, but in understand
ing the meaning which lies concealed beneath familiar
words. Dr. Birch's translation,' though made about
thirty years ago, before some of the most important
discoveries of the full meanings of words, may still be
considered extremely exact as a rendering of the cor
rupt Turin text, and to an Englishman gives nearly
as correct an impression of the original as the text
itself would do to an Egyptian who had not been
carefully taught the mysteries of his religion. Many
parts of this translation, however, when most faithful
1 Published in the fifth volume of Bunsen's " Egypt's Place in Uni
versal History."

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 185
to the original, must, in consequence of that very
fidelity, be utterly unintelligible to an English reader.
The Book of the Dead, I repeat, is essentially my
thological, and, like all other Egyptian books of the
kind, it assumes the reader's thorough knowledge of
the myths and legends. It is perhaps hopeless to
expect that the legends will be recovered ; the allu
sions to them will no doubt always remain obscure.
But the mythical personages who are constantly
mentioned are the very gods about whom I spoke in
the last Lecture : Ra and his family and the dragon
Apap, Seb and his family. Nut, Osiris, Isis, Horus,
Set and Nephthys. Thoth is one of the most im
portant names which occur. If the explanation
which I gave of these personages is borne in mind,
one great difficulty in the interpretation of the Book
of the Dead will be overcome. The subject always
is the contest between Darkness and Light. Ptah,
"the Opener," or "the Artist,'" and Chnemu, "the
1 The Egyptian Ptah, hke the Hebrew nriiJ. [[aperuit), and in the
Pihel terram aperuit aratro, aravit et (quod huic simile est) sculpsit,
insculpsit tum ligno, tunc gemmis, etiam de ornandis lapidibus ad
aedificandum. Gesenius] combines the sense of opening, or rather lay
ing open, with that of artistic work. The primitive meaning is opening,
and there are well-known instances of itin old Egyptian, but it no longer
exists in Coptic, which has only retained the sense of sculpere. It was
because the Sun was the Opener that he was considered the Artist,
especially in Memphis, the seat of the arts, of which he was the chief
divinity.

1 86 LECTURE V.
BuUder,"' are only names of the Sun. Tmu,'' "the
Closer," whose name occurs more frequently, is also
one of the principal designations of the Sun. The
fifteenth chapter gives an instance of the very differ
ent mythological treatment which the same physical
phenomenon may receive, according as it is looked
at from different points of view. Osiris, Horus and
even Ra, suffer death or dismemberment ; but Tmu
is daily received into the arms of his mother Nut as
he sinks into the west, and the arms of his father
Tanen close over him. Neith, the great goddess of
Sais, is rarely mentioned. She was the mother of
the sun-god Ra, and is commonly supposed to repre
sent Heaven ; but some expressions ^ which are
hardly applicable to Heaven render it more proba
ble that she is one of the many names of the Dawn.
The goddess Sechet is the raging heat of the
Sun.* 1 The word is used as a common noun, and as the name of a profes
sion. See Brugsch, " Bau u. Maasse des Tempels von Edfu," in the
Zeitschr. 1872, p. 5.
2 Otherwise written Atma, the prosthetic vowel being prefixed as a
support to the two consonants at the beginning of a word. For the
meaning " shut," " close," of the word tmu, see Brugsch's Lexicon. It
is preserved in Coptic.
^ For instance, the verb uben, expressive of an act of Neith (Todt. 114,
I, 2), is inapplicable to Heaven, and is never used except for the sun
rise. * This is universally aUowed, but the etymology of Sechet is doubtful.
Sex in old Egyptian signifies " wound." The Coptic has the word sesh-

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 1 87
The gods of Thebes are conspicuous by their ab
sence from the Book of the Dead, or at least from al
most every chapter. Amon, the great god of Thebes,
is named once only, and that in a chapter where
the text is extremely doubtful. Chonsu, the moon-
god, is only once named. But even the frequent oc
currence of these gods would not introduce a differ
ent series of conceptions.
The Beatification of the Dead is. Beatification of
the Dead.
however, the main subject of every
chapter. The everlasting life promised to the faith
ful may be considered in three of its aspects.
I . The blessed is represented as en-
¦'¦ The renewed
joying an existence similar to that Existence "as
which he had led upon earth. He has "^°"
the use of all his limbs, he eats and drinks, and satis
fies every one of his physical wants, exactly as in his
former life. His bread is made of the corn of Pe, a
famous town of Egypt, and the beer he drinks is
made from the red corn of the Nile. The flesh of
cattle and fowl is given to him, and refreshing waters
are poured out to him under the boughs of syca
mores which shade him from the heat. " The cool
breezes of the north wind breathe upon him. The
gods themselves provide him with food : he eats from
ef, in the Thebaic version of the Bible, corresponding to the Greek
ava^rioaivuv. Her lion form is symbolic of solar heat.

1 88 LECTURE V.
the table of Osiris at Ristat, and from the tables of
the sun-god Ra. He is given to drink out of vessels
of mUk or wine; cakes and flesh are provided for him
from the divine abode of Anubis. The gods of Heli
opolis themselves bring the divine offerings. He
eats the bread which the goddess Tait herself has
cooked, and he breathes the sweet odour of flowers.
He washes his feet in silver basins which the god
Ptah of Memphis, the inventor of all arts, has himself
sculptured. Fields also are allotted to him in the
lands of Aarru and Hotep, and he cultivates them.
It is characteristic of an industrious and agricultural
population that part of the bliss of a future state
should consist in such operations as ploughing and
hoeing, sowing and reaping, rowing on the canals and
collecting the harvests daily. Warriors and kings
who in the course of ages had risen to the head of a
mighty empire, still looked forward toward these de
lights with the same religious faith which inspired
them when, on the great panegyrical festival of the
ithyphallic Amon, they received the iron sickle from
the hands of a priestly ministrant, cut the ears of
corn, and presented them as an offering to the god
presiding over vegetation and increase.' We are told
1 There are two representations of this, one at the Memnonium
{Denkm. iii. pi. 163, 164), and another at Medinet Abu {Denkm. iii. pi.
212, 213).

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 189
that the height of the corn in the. fields of Aarru is
seven cubits, and that that of the ears is two (in some
readings, four) cubits. This blissful place is surround
ed by a wall of steel, and it is from its gate that the
sun comes forth in the eastern sky.
2. But the happy dead is not con- Transformation.
fined to this locality, or to the human
form, or to an earthly mode of existence. He has
the range of the entire universe in every shape and
form that he desires. This, is repeatedly stated in the
Book ofthe Dead, and twelve of the chapters consist
of formulas through which certain transformations
are operated. The forms assumed, according to these
chapters, are the turtle-dove, the serpent Sata,' the
bird called Bennu (which has generally, but, I think,
upon insufficient grounds, been thought to have given
rise to the story of the Phoenix), the crocodile Sebek,
the god Ptah, a golden hawk, the chief of the prin
cipal gods, a soul, a lotus-flower and a heron.
Brugsch has found a monument according to which
these transformations correspond to the twelve suc-
1 The later texts show that Sata is Horus Sam-taui, who comes out of
the lotus-flower in the middle of the solar bark. See picture in Mariette,
Dendera, II. pi. 48, 49. In one of the crypts of Dendera he is called
" the living soul of Atmu." Elsewhere, Dendera, III. pi. 45, he is called
" the soul rising out of the lotus in the Maat" the morning boat of the

190 LECTURE V.
cessive hours of the day. There is, however, no
evidence as to the date at which such a correspond
ence was first imagined, or of the general recognition
of this correspondence. And the transformations to
which these chapters refer are far from exhausting
the list of possible ones. No limit whatever is im
posed on the will of the departed.
The subject has often been misunderstood through
a confusion between Egyptian notions and either
Pythagorean or Hindu netions. The Pythagoreans
held the notion of the metempsychosis, and the
legendary history of their founder represented him as
having travelled in the East, and as having been
initiated by Egyptian priests into their mysteries.
The Pythagorean doctrines about the destinies of the
human soul have, in consequence of this unauthenti-
cated history, been transferred to the Egyptians, even
by scholars who might have known better. There is
really no connection, either doctrinally or historically,
between the two systems. Nothing in the Pytha
gorean system is foreign to previously existing Hel
lenic modes of thought, or which requires in any
way to be accounted for by foreign influence, and its
metempsychosis is essentially based upon the notions
of expiation and purification. Men were supposed to
be punished in various forms of a renewed life upon
earth, for sins committed in a previous state of ex-

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT.

191

istence. There is not a trace of any such conception
to be found in any Egyptian text which has yet been
brought to light. The only transformations after
death depend, we are expressly told, simply on the
pleasure of the deceased or of his " genius."
Nor is there any trace to be found of the notion of
an intermediate state of purification between death and
final bliss. Certain operations have to be performed,
certain regions have to be traversed, certain prayers to
be recited, but there is no indication of anything of an
expiatorial nature. If the judgment in the Hall of
Law is favourable, the departed comes forth triumph
antly as a god whom nothing can harm ; he is identi
fied with Osiris and with ever).' other divinity. The
nether world, and indeed the universe at large, is full
of terrible and hostile forces ; but through his identi
fication with the great gods and his uttering words
of power in their name, he passes unhurt in any
direction that he pleases. ,, ,.. .
'^ Identification
3. The identification of the departed with Osiris and
..,.-....- - , I'.i other gods.
With Osiris is first found explicitly as
serted on the wooden coffin (now in the British
Museum) of king Menkaura of the third pyramid.
The inscription, which, with different names and other
variations, occurs on a good many coffins, is as
follows : " Osiris, king Men-kau-Ra, living eternally,
born of Heaven, issue of the goddess Nut, heir of

192 LECTURE V.
Seb! She stretches herself out, thy mother Nut,
above thee in her name of Heavenly Mystery. She
hath granted that thou shouldest become a god with
out an opponent, king Men-kau-Ra, living eternally !"
On two royal coffins of the eleventh dynasty, the
goddesses Isis and Nephthys are quoted as addressing
their brother Osiris.'
The rituals of this early period do not actually
insert the name of Osiris before the name of the
departed, but all later rituals do so, except in the
more recent periods, when women were called
Hathor instead of Osiris. And throughout the
Book of the Dead in the earliest forms known to us,
the identification with Osiris or assimilation to him is
taken for granted, and all the. deities of the family of
Osiris, or whose acts have relation to Osiris, are
supposed to perform for the deceased whatever the
legend records as having been dope for Osiris.
Thus in the eighteenth chapter (which, if we may
judge from the innumerable copies of it, must have
been considered one of the most important of all) the
deceased is brought before a series of divinities in
succession, the gods of Heliopolis, Abydos, Tattu
and other localities, and at each station the litany
begins: "O Tehuti, who causest Osiris to triumph
1 See Birch, " On the Formulas of Three Royal Coffins," in the
Zeitschr. 1869, p. 49.

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 1 93
against his opponents, cause the Osiris (such a one)
to triumph against his opponents, even as thou hast
made Osiris to triumph against his opponents." He
then repeats the names of the divinities of the place,
generally in conjunction with some allusion to the
legendary history of Osiris. In the next chapter,
which is another recension of the eighteenth, and is
entitled the " Crown of Triumph," the deceased is
declared triumphant for ever and ever, and all the
gods in heaven and earth repeat this "in presence of
Osiris, presiding in Amenti, Unnefer, the son of Nut,
on the day that he triumphed over Set and his asso
ciates, before the great gods of Heliopolis on the
night of the battle in which the rebels were over
thrown, before the great gods of Abydos on the
night wherein Osiris triumphed over his opponents,
before the great gods of the western horizon on the
day of the festival of ' Come thou to me.' " It ends :
" Horus has repeated this declaration four times, and
all his enemies fall prostrate before him annihilated.
Horus, the son of Isis, repeats it millions of times,
and all his enemies fall annihilated. They are carried
off to the place of execution in the East ; their heads
are cut off, their necks are broken, their thighs are
severed, and delivered up to the great destroyer who
dwells in Aati ; they shall not come forth from the
custody of Seb for ever."

194 LECTURE V.
The term mad-xeru is always added to the name of
the faithful departed, and used to be translated " the
justified." The sense of "veridique," truthful of
speech, veracious, has been defended by some
French scholars; but the real sense is "triumphant;"
literally, "one whose word is law," not merely
truth. '
But, as I have said,~it is not only to Osiris that the
deceased is assimilated. In the forty-second chapter
every limb is assimilated to a different deity: the hair
to Nu, the face to Ra, the eyes to Hathor, the ears to
Apuat, the nose to the god of Sechem, the lips to
Anubis, the teeth to Selket, and so on, the catalogue
ending with the words, "There is not a limb in him
without a god, and Tehuti is a safeguard to all his
members." Later on, it is said, " Not men, nor gods,
nor the ghosts of the departed, nor the damned, past,
present or future, whoever they be, can do him hurt.
He it is who cometh forth in safety; 'Whom men
know not' is his name. The 'Yesterday which sees
endless years' is his name, passing in triumph by the
roads of heaven. The deceased is the Lord of eter
nity; he is reckoned even as Chepera; he is the mas
ter of the kingly crown." And as Osiris himself is
1 The sense " triumphant " is manifest from a multitude of passages,
and is not denied ; but it cannot be etymologically derived when maat is
taken for Truth, and the whole compound is translated "veridique."

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 195
identified with many other gods, so the deceased
person is perpetually introduced speaking of himself
in the person of Ra, Tmu, Chnemu, Seb, Horus and
many others. The allusions are often simple enough,
as when it is said, " I am Horus, and I am come to
see my father Osiris;" or even, "I am he who resides
in the middle of the eye;" for in all mythologies the
Sun is spoken of as the eye, either of heaven ' or of
some deity. But a god is sometimes named who is
never mentioned elsewhere, and whose name was so
little familiar to the copyists of the book that they
write it in very different ways. Our ignorance here
is of very trifling importance.
The preliminaries to the beatification of the dead
1 " Heaven's eye " is a frequent expression in Shakespeare, and the
Friar in " Romeo and Juliet " says :
" Now ere the Sun advance his burning eye."
The following expressions of the Greek poets will be familiar to all :
Toi^ T^avdizTTpt KViikov rj7.iov. .^sch. Prom. 92.
'£2 jptiffOTf d/ispac pTiicpapov. Soph. Antig. 103.
'AXi-ov, "AXcov alru rovro 
(5 KpaTtffrevuv Kar' 6/ifia. Trach. 96,
'AA/la BV yap 67) ndaav M x^^'""- ''O' nara tcSvtov
aldepog hu d'lTjg KaradipKeat aKTivcaai. Homer, Hymn, in Dem. 69.
From the Latin poets I will only quote Ovid's
Omnia qui video, per quem videt omnia tellus,
Mundi oculus. Met, iv. 227.

196 LECTURE V.
consisted in the removal of all physical or moral
obstacles originating either in himself or in others.
Those things of which death had deprived him are
restored to him. His soul, his ka and his shadow
are given back to him. There is a chapter, with a
vignette, representing the soul uniting itself to the
body, and the text promises that they shall never
again be separated. The use of his mouth, hands and
other limbs are given to him. There is a series of
chapters relating to the restoration and protection of
the heart, two forms of which, the ab and the hdti, are
distinctly and repeatedly mentioned. The next
eleven chapters have reference to combats which the
deceased has to encounter with strange animals —
crocodiles, serpents, tortoises — and to the sacred
words in virtue of which he may confidently rely
upon success. The chapter for repelling all reptiles
is a short one. " O serpent Rerek ! advance not ! the
gods Seb and Shu are my protection ; stop ! thou
who hast eaten the rat which the sun-god abhors,
and hast chewed the bones of a rotten cat."
Another series of eleven chapters is intended to
secure the Osiris against other dangers in the nether
World, such as having his head cut off", dying the
second death, suffering corruption, being turned away
from one's house, going to the Nemmat, an infernal
block for the execution of the wicked, going head-

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF .EGYPT. 197
long in the cherti-nutar, eating or drinking filth. The
next series of chapters in the Turin manuscript gives
the deceased power over air and water, and some
chapters are but different recensions of one text, the
well-known vignette of which represents the Osiris
receiving the water poured out to him by a hand
coming out of a tree. The chapter begins, " O syca
more of the goddess Nut ! let there be given to me
the water which is in thee."
The 149th chapter gives an account of the terrible
nature of certain divinities and localities which the
deceased must encounter — gigantic and venomous
serpents, gods with names significant of death and
destruction, waters and atmospheres of flames. But
none of these prevail over the Osiris; he passes
through all things without harm; unhurt he breathes
the fiery atmosphere and drinks the waters of flame ;
and he lives in peace with the fearful gods who pre
side over these abodes. Some of these gods remind
one of the demons in the Inferno of Dante. But
though ministers or angels of divine justice, their
nature is not evil. Some of the invocations con
tained in the seventeenth chapter will give some idea
of the terrors of the Egyptian nether world.
" O Ra, in thine &gg, radiant in thy disk shining
forth from the horizon, swimming over the steel fir
mament, sailing over the pillars of Shu, thou who

198 LECTURE V.
hast no second among the gods, who producest the
winds by the flames of thy mouth, and who enUght-
enest the worlds with thy splendours, save the
departed from that god whose nature is a mystery
and whose eyebrows are as the arms of the balance
on the night when Aauit was weighed."
" O Lord of the great dwelling,' supreme king of
the gods, save the Osiris from that god who has the
face of a hound and the eyebrows of a man, who
feeds upon the accursed."
" O Lord of victory in the two worlds, . . . save the
Osiris from that god who seizes upon souls, devours
hearts and feeds upon carcases."
" O Scarabaeus god in thy bark, whose substance
is self-originated, save the Osiris from those watchers
to whom the Lord of spirits has entrusted the ob
servation of his enemies, and from whose observation
none can escape. Let me not fall under their swords
nor go to their block of execution, let me not remain
in their abodes, let me not rest upon their beds [of
torment], let me not fall into their nets. Let nought
befal me which the gods abhor."
These trials which the departed undergo, and which
are triumphantly overcome by the Osiris, sufficiently
1 " The great dwelling " is the universe, as the Hall {usexet) of Seb is
the earth, the Hall of Nut is the heaven, and the Hall of the two-fold
Maat is the nether world.

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 1 99
show the fate which the wicked must expect. This
fate is called " the second death."
The faithful dead expect to be protected from the
dangers of their new existence, partly indeed by the
virtue of amulets and talismans to which the gods
have given power, partly also by the knowledge of
religious formulas (such as the chapters of the Book
of the Dead) or of divine names, but chiefly by the
conformity of their conduct with the standard of law
by which they are judged by Osiris in the Amenti.
The use of amulets was certainly Amulets.
carried to the most extravagant excess,
and the Book of the Dead even in its earliest form
shows the importance attached to such things. In
the thirty-second chapter, the deceased drives off the
infernal crocodiles by pointing to the potent talismans
upon his person. " Back ! Crocodile of the West !"
he says, " who livest upon the Achemu who are at
rest ; what thou abhorrest is upon me ; I have eaten
the head of Osiris ; I am Set. Back ! Crocodile of
the West ! there is an asp upon me ; I shall not be
given to thee ; dart not thy flame upon me. Back I
CrocodUe of the East ! who feedest upon impurities ;
what thou abhorrest is upon me ; I have passed ; I
am Osiris ;" and so on. Directions are given in the
rubrics of certain characters for the construction of
these talismans, such as the Tat of gold (ch. 155)

200 LECTURE V.
emblematic of the vertebrae of Osiris ; the buckle of
red quartz (ch. 156), which the text connects with the
blood of Isis and the magic words of Osiris ; and the
golden vulture (ch. 157), which has reference to some
parts of the history of Isis and Horus. The most
important probably of these talismans was the scara
baeus which had the thirtieth chapter inscribed upon
it. The rubric directs it to be placed upon the heart
of the deceased person. An immense number of
these scarabaei have been found with the chapter in
scribed upon them ; there is probably no chapter of
which the text can be restored with greater difficulty.
Its antiquity is extreme, and the different readings
already abounded at the time of the eleventh dynasty.
The belief in the magic power of
Words of Power. , , i , i i • . r-
sacred words, whether religious for
mulas or the names of gods, was also acknowledged
and was the source of a frightful amount of supersti
tion. The rubric at the end of the first chapter is a
specimen of what occurs in others. " If this chapter
be known upon earth or if it be written upon his
coffin, he will come forth every day. that he pleases,
and enter his house without being prevented ; there
shall be given to him bread and beer, and flesh upon
the tables of Ra ; he will work in the fields of Aarru,
and there shall be given to him the wheat and barley
which are there, for he shall flourish as though he

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 20I
were upon earth." Another rubric says : " If this
chapter be recited over him, he will go forth over the
earth, and he will pass through every kind of fire, no
evil thing being able to hurt him."
The power of the book of Tehuti (that is, of the
Book of the Dead), it is said in one place, is the
cause of the triumph of Osiris over his ghostly ene
mies. And in very many places the Osiris bases his
claims on the simple fact of knowing the names of
the gods whom he addresses, or of the localities in
the divine world which he inhabits.
The superstitious repetition of names (many of
which perhaps never had any meaning at all) is parti
cularly conspicuous in numerous documents much
more recent than the Book of the Dead ; from the
time, in fact, of the eighteenth dynasty down to Chris
tian times. But the last chapters of the Turin copy of
the Book of the Dead, which, though really no por
tion of it, are probably very ancient, already indulge
in this gross superstition. " Iruka is thy name,
Markata is thy name, Ruta is thy name, Nasakaba is
thy name, Tanasa-tanasa is thy name, Sharusatakata
is thy name."
From rubbish like this, which is Moral Doctrine.
only worthy of the spells of vulgar
conjurors, it is pleasant to pass to the moral doctrines
of the Book of the Dead, which are the same which
9*

202 LECTURE V.
were recognized in the earliest times. No one could
pass to ^the blissful dwellings of the dead who had
failed at the judgment passed in presence of Osiris.
No portion of the Book of the Dead is so generally
known as the picture which represents the deceased
person standing in the presence of the goddess Maat,
who is distinguished by the ostrich-feather upon her
head ; she holds a sceptre in one hand and the sym
bol of life ' in the other. The man's heart, which
represents his entire moral nature, is being weighed
in the balance in presence of Osiris, seated upon his
throne as judge ofthe dead. The second scale con
tains the image of Maat. Horus is watching the in
dicator of the balance, and Tehuti, the god of letters,
is writing down the result. Forty-two divinities are
represented in a line above the balance. These gods
correspond to the same number of sins which it is
their office to punish. It is with reference to these
sins and the virtues to which they are opposed that
the examination of the deceased chiefly consists.
The hundred and twenty-fifth chapter is entitled
" Book of entering into the Hall of the Two-fold
Maat ¦? the person parts from his sins that he may
1 Let me protest in this place against the stupid and utterly unfounded
identification of this symbol of life with phallic emblems. When the
Egyptians meant to represent anything phallic, they did so in such a way
as to leave no doubt as to their meaning.
2 Maat is here and elsewhere put in the dual. The reason of this is

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 203
see the divine faces." The deceased begins : " Hail
to you, ye lords of the Two-fold Maat, and hail to
thee, great god, lord of the Two-fold Maat ! I have
come to thee, my lord, I have brought myself to see
thy glories. ... I know thy name, and I know the
hames of thy forty-two gods who are with thee in
the Hall of the Two-fold Maat, who live by the
punishment of the wicked, and devour their blood
on that day of weighing the words in presence of
Unnefer, the triumphant." A good deal which
follows in the Turin copy is not contained in all the
manuscripts. But the following extracts deserve
mention. " I have brought you Law,' and subdued
for you iniquity. I am not a doer of fraud and
iniquity against men. I am not a doer of that which
is crooked in place of that which is right. I am not
cognizant of iniquity ; I am not a doer of evil. I do
not force a labouring man to do more than his daily
task. ... I do not calumniate a servant to his
master;* I do not cause hunger; I do not cause
not quite clear. The word used to be translated " the two Truths ;'' ac
cording to M. de Roug^, "la double Justice." Dr. Ludwig Stem
argues from the analogy of other Eastern expressions that the dual form
here signifies " Right and Wrong." I rather adhere to M. Grebaut's
view, that the realm of Maat, being traversed by the sun, is thereby
divided, like heaven and earth, into two parts.
1 The kings of Egypt are constantly represented with the image or
emblem of Maat I'n their hands as a religious offering.

204 LECTURE V.
weeping ; I am not a murderer ; I do not give order
to murder privily ; I am not guilty of fraud against
any one ; I am not a falsifier of the measures in the
temples. ... I do not add to the weight of the
scale ; I do not falsify the indicator of the balance ;
I do not withhold milk from the mouth of the
suckling." The catalogue of the forty-two sins,
each of which has an avenging deity, includes some
of those I have quoted and omits others. The sins
are not catalogued according to any scientific ar
rangement. Besides the crimes of violence and
theft, different sins against chastity are mentioned;
not only evil-speaking and lying, but exaggeration,
chattering and idle words are condemned; he who
reviles the king, his father or his god, the evil
listener and he who turns a deaf ear to the words
of truth or justice, he who causes pain of mind to
another, or who in his heart thinks meanly of God —
all these fail to satisfy the conditions of admission
into the ranks of the triumphant dead.
The 125th chapter of the Book of the Dead cer
tainly contains the oldest known code of private and
public morality. The fifteenth chapter, which is a
hymn to the rising and to the setting Sun, is the
most ancient piece of poetry in the literature of the
world.' The seventeenth chapter is not less remark-
' M. L6f^bure has published a critical edition, with a translation and
commentary.

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 205
able. It consists, as Bunsen says,' "of short and
obscure ejaculations, and of glosses and commen
taries upon this text ; " " of an original sacred hymn,
interspersed with such glosses or scholia as must
have been collected by a vast number of interpreters.
This is identical with saying that the record was at
that time no longer intelligible. Yet the text of the
whole chapter is written, not only in the Turin
papyrus, but on the coffin of the eleventh dynasty.
Add to this that the text thus confounded in every
verse with its glosses is written so confusedly, both
on the coffin and in the papyrus, that the scholia are
jumbled into wrong spaces  Suppose a psalm
of the Hebrew text to have been copied on a royal
monument with a whole catena of commentaries and
glossaries, but copied uno tenore, without distinction
of text and notes. Such exactly is the state of
the Egyptian record." Since Bunsen wrote, consider
able liglit has been thrown upon the chapter. M.
de Rouge has translated the chapter, after having
carefully collated all the manuscripts accessible to
him, and has learnedly commented upon both the
original texts and the glosses.^ Lepsius has greatly
added to our knowledge by publishing two texts of
the chapter copied from coffins of the ancient empire,
1 " Egypt's Place in Universal History," Vol. V. pp. 89, 90.
' " Etudes sur la Rituel Funeraire des anciens Egyptiens," i860.

206 LECTURE V.
with his learned annotations.' The whole of the
chapter is important, but the most interesting portion
is the beginning of it, which may be thus translated :
" I am Tmu, who have made heaven, and have
created all the things which are ; and I exist alone,
rising out of Nu. I am Ra with his diadem, when he
began the kingdom which he made." The gloss asks,
" What is this ? " and the answer is, that " Ra began
to exercise his sovereignty when as yet there was no
firmament, and when he was on the height of Am-
chemun, for then he established the children of inert
ness^ upon the height of Am-chemun." The mean
ing of this is, that there was a time of chaos when no
distinction as yet existed between earth and sky. But
the kingdom of Ra was already established, and in his
reign the firmament was raised, and certain person
ages, called the children of inertness, were established
(as gods, according to one reading) on the height of
Am-chemun, where Ra himself had resided before.
Chemun is the Egyptian name of Hermopolis, but it
1 " Aelteste Texte 'des Todtenbuchs," 1867.
2 '' Fils de la r^volte," according to M. de Roug^. There are two
words which are sometimes confounded, even in Egyptian texts, beshet
and betesh. They may be etymologically connected by metathesis (the
first is even sometimes written shebet), for both mean "stretch out ;" the
former, however, in active opposition, the second in helplessness. Betesh
has some of the meanings of the Hebrew Pl^tJ', cessavit, desiit ; hence
desidia, interpellatio operis.

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 207
also signifies the number Eight. The " children of
inertness " are the elementary forces of nature, which
according to Egyptian ideas were eight in number.
These elements, born out of chaos or inertness,
henceforth became active, and were made to rule the
world under Ra as the demiurgus.'
" The text proceeds — " I am the great God, self-
existent ; " but a longer recension adds, " that is to
say the Water, that is to say Nu, the father of the
gods." According to a gloss, the self-existent god
is Ra Nu, the father of the gods, and other glosses
speak of Ra as " creating his name as Lord of all the
gods, or as producing his limbs; which become the
gods who are in his company." Besides this cosmo
logy, the chapter contains a number of interesting
details on the mythology and on the symbolism
which is connected with it ; as, for instance, that the
ithyphallic god Amesi is Horus, the avenger of his
father, and that the two feathers upon his head are
the twin sisters Isis and Nephthys.^
The sixty-fourth chapter is scarcely less interest
ing; but in spite of the excellent labours of M.
Guyesse, who has carefully edited and translated
several recensions of it, much remains to be done
before it can be made thoroughly intelligible, not
' See the excellent article of M. Naville in the Zeitschrift, 1874, P- S7.
2 There are other glosses at variance with this interpretation.

208 LECTURE V.
only to the public at large, but to professional schol
ars. Tradition, as represented by the rubrics of the
chapter, assigned the discovery of this document
either to the time of king Menkaura, according to
some manuscripts, or to that of king Septi of the first
dynasty. The chapter is twice copied on the sarco
phagus of the queen of the eleventh dynasty, and in
one of the copies king Septi's name is given; the
other copy foUows the tradition in favour of king
Menkaura, though the scribe has blundered about the
name, and inserted that of Mentuhotep, which is the
royal name to which the coffin itself belongs. The
1 30th chapter is also said to have been found in the
palace of king Septi. It is very doubtful whether
these traditions rest upon any authentic basis.
Other Sacred ^^ ^^^ Book of the Dead is the most
Books. ancient, so it is undoubtedly the most
important of the sacred books of the Egyptians.
Other works are interesting to the archaeologist, and
require to be studied by those who desire to have
minute and accurate knowledge of the entire mytho
logy, but they are extremely wearisome and repulsive
to all whose aim extends beyond mere erudition. I
am not now referring to hymns and other private
compositions (found in papyri or on the walls of
tombs and temples) some of which I shall have occa
sion to speak of in the next Lecture, but to the books

THE RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF EGYPT. 2O9
which were evidently recognized as having public
and, if I may say so, canonical authority. Those who
are best known have reference to the passage of the
sun through the twelve hours of the night. That
part of the world which is below the earth and
visited by the sun after his setting, is called the Tuat.
The bark of the sun is represented as proceeding
over a river called the Uranes, through fields culti
vated by the departed. The whole space is divided
into twelve parts, separated by gates. The " Book of
that which is in the Tuat " contains a short descrip
tion of these twelve divisions, their names, the names
of the hours of the night, of the gates and of the gods
belonging to each locality, and it states the advan
tages to be derived from a knowledge of these names,
and also from the due observance upon earth by the
living of the rites due to the departed. It is said, for
instance, that if these rites are conducted em ser
maat, " with the strict accuracy of Law," the honors
paid to him on earth are transmitted to him in the
lower world. If he knows the names of the gods he
encounters, no harm will come to him. The papyri
which contain this composition are always illustrated;
the text is indeed in great part simply descriptive of
the picture to which it refers.
Very similar in its nature is the composition which
covers the beautiful alabaster sarcophagus of Seti I.,

2IO LECTURE V.
now in the Soane Museum. Other copies of it are
known to us. Perhaps the most interesting part of
'¦ this text is the scene which recognizes men of for
eign and hostile races, the Tamehu, the Aamu, and
the Negroes, men of the Red land {Tesheret) as well
as those of the Black land {Kamit, Egypt), as created
and protected by the gods of Egypt. M. Lefebure
has translated this text, and part of his transla
tion has already appeared in the "Records of the
Past." '
1 See also his paper on " Les quatre races au Jugement Dernier," in
the fourth volume of the Transactions of the Society of Biblical Litera
ture.

LECTURE VL

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS: HENOTHEISM,
PANTHEISM AND MATERIALISM.

Lamentations of ^^^ Lamentations of Isis and Neph-
Isis and Neph
thys. thys are a poetical composition sup
posed to be recited by the two sisters of Osiris for the
purpose of effecting his resurrection, but intended to
be repeated by two priestly personages over the dead.
It has been completely translated for the first time by
M. de Horrack. The first section begins with the
cries of Isis :
" Come to thine abode, come to thine abode ! God
An, come to thine abode ! Thine enemies are no
more. O gracious Sovereign, come to thine abode !
Look at me : I am thy sister who loveth thee. Do
not remain far from me, O beautiful youth ! Come
to thine abode, quickly ! quickly ! I see thee no
more. My heart is full of sorrow because of thee.
Mine eyes seek after thee. I seek to behold thee :
211

212 LECTURE VL
will it be long ere I see thee ? will it be long ere I see
thee ? Beholding thee is happiness {bis) ; O god An,
beholding thee is happiness. O Unnefer the trium
phant, come to thy sister, come to thy wife {bis). O
thou whose heart is motionless, come to thy spouse.
I am thy sister by thy mother ; do not separate from
me. Gods and men turn their faces towards thee,
weeping together for thee, whenever they behold
me. I call thee in my lamentations even to the
heights of heaven, and thou hearest not my voice. I
am thy sister who loveth thee upon earth ; no one
else hath loved thee more than I, thy sister, thy
sister !"
Then Nephthys takes up the strain :
" O gracious Sovereign, come to thine abode !
Rejoice; all thine enemies are annihilated. Thy two
sisters are near thee, protecting thy funeral bed :
calling thee in weeping, thee who art prostrate on
thy funeral bed. Speak to us, supreme Ruler,
our Lord. Chase all the anguish which is in our
hearts," &c.
In the invocations of which this book chiefly con
sists, protection is said to be afforded to the body
of Osiris, that is, of the deceased person, by various
gods in succession : by Isis, Nephthys, Tehuti, Neith,
the divine mother of Osiris, and the children of
Horus.

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 213
The last invocation is as follows : " Come and
behold thy son Horus as supreme ruler of gods and
men. He hath taken possession of the cities and the
districts by the greatness of the respect he inspires.
Heaven and earth are in awe of him ; the barbarians
are in fear of him. Thy companions who are gods
and men have become his. . . . Thy two sisters are
near to thee, offering libations to thy ka; thy son
Horus accomplished for thee the funeral offering of
bread, of beverages, of oxen and of geese. Tehuti
chanteth thy festival songs, invoking thee by his
beneficial formulae. The children of Horus are the
protection of thy members, benefiting thy soul each
day. Thy son Horus saluteth thy name in thy mys
terious abode ; the gods hold vases in their hands to
make libations to thee. Come to thy companions,
supreme Ruler, our Lord! Do not separate thyself
from them."
The rubric prescribes that whilst this is recited,
two beautiful women are to sit upon the ground,
with the names Isis and Nephthys inscribed upon
their shoulders. Crystal vases of water are to be
placed in their right hands, and loaves of bread made
in Memphis in their left hands.
Very similar to these Lamentations Book of glorify
ing Osiris.
is the " Book of glorifying Osiris in
Aqerti," contained in a papyrus of the Louvre,

214 LECTURE VL
which has been published and translated by M.
Pierret. It is also supposed to be recited by Isis
and Nephthys, and it begins :
" Come to thine abode, O come to thine abode
god An, come to thine abode ; good bull, the Lord
of all men who love thee and all women ; god of the
beautiful countenance, who residest in Aqerti. An
cient one among those of the sacred West. Are not
all hearts swelling with love of thee, O Unnefer I . .
. . Gods and men raise their hands in search of thee,
as a son seeketh his mother. Come to them whose
hearts are sick, grant to them to come forth in glad
ness, that , the bands of Horus may exult, and the
abodes of Set may fall in fear of thee. Ho ! Osiris
who dwellest among those in Amenti ; I am thy sis
ter Isis ; neither god nor goddess hath done what I
have done for thee. I am who was a female have
done a man's part to give life to thy name upon
earth. Thy potent seed within my womb I have set
down upon the earth to avenge thee  Set yields
to his wounds, the partizans of Set rejoin him, but
the throne of Seb is for thee who art his beloved
son." The book continues to speak of the war ener
getically conducted with the aid of Nephthys and
Horus against all the enemies of Osiris. The de
parted, considered as Osiris, is directly identified
with the first cause of all things.

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS.

215

" O Osiris .... thou art the Youth at the horizon *
of heaven daily, and thine old age is the beginning of
all seasons. The Nile cometh at the bidding of thy
mouth, giving life to men by the emanations which
proceed from thy limbs, who by thy coming causest
all plants to grow up  O Osiris, thou art the 1
Lord of millions, raising up all wild animals and all \
cattle; the creation of all that is proceedeth from \
thee. To thee belongeth all that is upon earth ; to
thee all that is in heaven ; to thee all that is in the
waters ; to thee belongeth all that is in life or in
death ; to thee all that is male or female. Thou art
the sovereign king of the gods, the prince amid the
company ofthe gods."
The text concludes with enumerating a multitude
of localities in which Osiris is adored, and is more
interesting from a geographical than from a religious
point of view. In this composition (the manuscript
of which belongs to the time of the twenty-sixth
dynasty) the only passages which imply any ethical
sympathy are these: "Thou art the lord of Maat
(here signifying Righteousness), hating iniquity. . . .
The goddess Maat is with thee, and the whole day
she never withdraweth herself from thee. Iniquity
approacheth thee not wherever thou art."
In the later periods, instead of the
'¦ Book of the
Book of the Dead, another work, more Breaths of life.

2l6 LECTURE VL
systematically composed and partly abridged from it,
was buried with the dead and placed under the left
arm near the heart. This book was called the Shdit
en sensen, " Book of the Breaths of Life, made by
Isis for her brother Osiris, for giving new life to his
soul and body, and renewing all his limbs, that he
may reach the horizon with his father the Sun, that
his soul may rise to heaven in the disk ofthe Moon,
that his body may shine in the stars of the constella
tion Orion, on the bosom of Nut." It might be called
a Breviary of the Book of the Dead, all the ideas in
it being borrowed from that older collection, but the
obscurities both in form and in matter are studiously
avoided. It was first published in the plates to the Travels
of Vivant-Denon ; then Brugsch, in an early publica
tion of his, translated it into Latin, calling it the
Book of the Metempsychosis of the ancient Egyp
tians ; and finally, a critical edition has been given of
it, with a French translation by M. de Horrack.
Of the many other compendiums, paraphrases and
imitations of the Book of the Dead, I shall only men
tion one, and that for the sake of a sort of definition
which it gives of the gods. The English language is
less suited than Greek or German for the translation
of cheper chenti chep chct neb em-chet cheper-sen, which
is literally, " the Becoming which is in the Becoming

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 21 7
of all things when they become." Under this play of
words the writer wishes to describe "the cause of
change in everything that changes," and he adds:
"the mighty ones, the powerful ones, the beneficent,
the nutriu, who test by their level the words of men,
the Lords of Law (Maat), Hail to you, ye gods,
ye associate gods, who are without body, who rule
that which is born from the earth and that which
is produced in the house of your cradles [in hea
ven]  Ye prototypes of the image of all that
exists, ye fathers and mothers of the solar orb, ye
forms, ye great ones {uru), ye mighty ones {aaiti), ye
strong ones {nutria), first company of the gods of
Almu, who generated men and shaped the form of
every form, ye lords of all things : hail to you, ye
lords of eternity and everlasting."
The author of this composition, the text of which
has only been published quite recently,' and was
quite unknown to me when I delivered my third
Lecture, has evidently the same conception of the
gods of Egypt as that which I inferred from the
scattered utterances we come across in the course of
the national literature. The gods of Egypt are the
1 Wiedemann, Hieratische Texte aus den Museen zu Berlin und
'Paris ; Leipzig, 1879, Taf. i. This text is from the Louvre papyrus
3283, of which a notice is found in Deveria's " Catalogue des Manu-
scrits Egyptiens," p. 143.
10

2l8 LECTURE VL
"mighty ones," the forces acting throughout the
universe, in heaven and on earth, according to fixed
and unchangeable law, for ever and ever.
A still more recent book is one
Rhind Papyri. ^^^^^ ^^^ discovered by Mr. Rhind
at Thebes. The papyri are of the Roman period,
and they are bilingual. The upper portion of
each page is in the ancient language, written in
hieratic characters; the lower contains a translation
into the vernacular of Egypt in the time of Au
gustus, and this is written in demotic characters
The form of this work is quite unlike that of the
Book of the Dead, but the ideas remain unchanged.
The same view of the world beyond the grave, and
of the gods who influence the destiny of the de
parted, prevails to the last. The actual deification
of the departed is not perpetually dwelt upon, but it
is distinctly recognized. " Thou art the eldest
brother among the five gods to whom thou art
going '' (Osiris is called in the Book of the Dead the
eldest of the five gods of the family of Seb). " O
thou august child of the gods and goddesses, O thou
king of the gods and men, who art king of the
Tuat," that is, of the nether world. And there is
the same disregard of consistency as in the older
times, for the departed is spoken of, almost in the
same sentence, as one of those who are in the service

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 219
of Osiris, whom he addresses, " O my lord and father
Osiris ! "
One of the chief differences between Magical litera-
ture.i
the earlier and the most recent formu
laries is, that the latter are simply said over the
deceased, instead of being intended to be said by him.
Hence the absence of the personification of the gods
by the dead, and the utterance in their names of
words of power. This assimilation to divinity, which
appears to be the most potent means of overcoming
all dangers and disasters after death, was equally
resorted to for the purpose of triumphing over all the
dangers and the disasters of the present life. The
metaphysical axiom, that every effect has its cause,
the Egyptians conceived in another way; namely,
1 The authorities to be consulted on this subject are :
Chabas, " Papyrus Magique Harris."
Birch, " Egyptian Magical Text," in " Records of the Past," Vol. VI.
p. 113.
Pleyte, " foudes 6gyptologiques," and " Papyrus de Turin."
Ebers, " Papyros Ebers, das Hermetische Buch iiber die Arzneimittel
der alten Aegypten."
Goodwin " Graeco-Egyptian Fragment on Magic," in the Publications
- of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society.
A good many extracts from magical works will be found in Brugsch's
" Grammaire Demotique," and some entire compositions are translated
by M. Maspero in his " Etudes Demotiques," published in the Recueil
de travaux relatifs a la philologie et a, V archeologie egyptiennes et assy-

2 20 LECTURE VL
that everything that happened was owing to the
action of some divinity. They believed therefore in
the incessant intervention of the gods; and their
magical literature is based on the notion of frighten
ing one god by the terrors of a more powerful divi
nity, either by prayer placing a person under the
protection of this divinity, or by the person actually
assuming its name and authority. Disease and pain
being caused by the intervention of some god, the
efficacy of the medicines which are taken is owing
chiefly to the prayers or incantations which are said
over them. Isis is the great enchantress, and she
delivers the sick and suffering from the gods and
goddesses who afflict thern, even as she delivered her
son Horus from his wounds received in his battle
with Set. The sun-god Ra had himself been ill, and
the gods Shu, Tefnut, Seb, Nut and Isis, had prepared
medicine for him. Even when no medicines are
taken, palm-sprigs may serve as a charm, if a formula
be pronounced relative to the palm-branch with
which Horus defended himself against Set, and if Isis,
the mother of Horus, be invoked. But sometimes
the speaker boldly says, " I am Anubis, the son of
Nephthys; I am Anubis, the son of Ra; I am Horus,
I am Amon, I am Mentu, I am Set." Sometimes
threats are uttered. The person using the spell relies
upon his knowledge, and consequently on his power

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 221
of revealing mysterious secrets. "N., son of N., is
the messenger of Ra. ... He is the messenger of
every god and every goddess, and he utters the pro
clamation of Tehuti. N., son of N., knows the
mysterious chest which is in Heliopolis, and all the
hidden things of HeliopoUs." " If he who is in the
waters opens his mouth, ... I will cause the earth
to fall into the sea, the south to be changed into the
north, and the whole world to be overturned."
There is a terrible spell in behalf of a lady in child
birth. The lady is first identified with Isis, and the
gods are invoked to prepare a place for her delivery.
They are told that, in case of their not doing so,
"You shall be undone, you cycle of the gods; there
shall no longer be any earth ; there shall no longer
be the five supplementary days of the year ; there
shall be no more any offerings to the gods, lords of
Heliopolis. There shall be a sinking of the southern
sky, and disasters shall come from the sky of the
north ; there shall be cries from the tomb ; the mid
day sun shaU no longer shine; the Nile shaU not
furnish its waters at its wonted time. It is not I who
say this ; it is not I who repeat it ; it is Isis who
speaketh ; she it is who repeateth it."
The very same kind of threats are spoken of by
Porphyry, about 270 a. d., as mentioned by Chaere-
mon, a sacerdotal scribe in the first century, and

222 LECTURE VL
affirmed by him to be of potent efKcacy. " What a
height of madness," says Porphyry, "does it not
imply in the man who thus threatens what he neither
understands nor is able to perform, and what base
ness does it not attribute to the beings who are sup
posed to be frightened by these vain bugbears and
figments, like silly children !" An Egyptian priest
of the name of Abammon is introduced in the work
of Jamblichos as replying to the objections of Por
phyry. He distinguishes between the gods, proper
ly speaking, and the daifiov^z, who are subordinate
ministers, and he says that it is to the" latter alone
that threats are used. And the authority of the the-
urgist he derives from identification with the divinity.
But the days of the Egyptian religion were already
numbered when the book of Jamblichos was written.
Constantine was reigning, and the gods of Egypt
were already being deserted by their worshippers,
who transferred their devotion to Christianity in one
of its austerest forms. A very few years after the
work of Jamblichos was written, the emperor Valens
issued an edict against the monks of Egypt, and a de
tachment of cavalry and infantry, consisting of three
thousand men, was sent into the desert of Nitria
to compel the able-bodied ascetics who had retired
thither to enlist in the imperial armies. In the next
generation, Gibbon tells us, " The stately and popu-

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 223
lous city of Oxyrinchus, the seat of Christian ortho
doxy, had devoted the temples, the public edifices
and even the ramparts, to pious and charitable uses ;
and the bishop who might preach in twelve churches
computed 10,000 females and 20,000 males of the
monastic profession. The Egyptians, who gloried in
this marvellous revolution, were disposed to hope
and to believe that the number of monks was equal
to the remainder of the people."
We have unfortunately no history of the gradual
conversion of the Egyptians to Christianity. But
when we compare the notions of the Divinity as con
tained in the authorized books of Egyptian theology
with those which we ourselves hold, we cannot but
ask whether so intelligent a people never came near
er to the truth than their most recent books would
appear to show. What, then, do we mean by God ?
I will not venture to use my own words, but will use
those of one of the greatest masters of the English
language. " I mean, then, by the Supreme Be- True notion of
ing, one who is simply self-dependent, ° '
and the only Being who is such; moreover, that he
is without beginning, or eternal ; that in consequence
he has lived a whole eternity by himself; and hence
that he is all-sufficient, sufficient for his own blessed
ness, and all-blessed, and ever-blessed. Further, I

2 24 LECTURE VL
mean a Being who, having these prerogatives, has the
supreme Good, or rather is the supreme Good, or has
all the attributes of Good in infinite intenseness; all
wisdom, all truth, all justice, all love, all holiness, all
beautifulness ; who is omnipotent, omniscient, omni
present ; ineffably one, absolutely perfect ; and such
that we do not know, and cannot even imagine of
him, is far more wonderful than what we do and can.
I mean, moreover, that he created all things out of
nothing, and preserves them every moment, and
could destroy them as easily as he made them ; and
that in consequence he is separated from "them by an
abyss, and is incommunicable in all his attributes.
And further, he has stamped upon all things, in the
hour of their creation, their respective nature, and has
given them their work and mission, and their length
of days, greater or less, in their appointed place. I
mean, too, that he is ever present with his works, one
by one, and confronts everything he has made by his
particular and most loving Providence, and manifests
himself to each according to its needs ; and has on
rational beings imprinted the moral law, and given
them power to obey it, imposing on them the duty of
worship and service, searching and scanning them
through and through with his omniscient eye, and
putting before them a present trial and a judgment to
come."

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 225
Now as I carefully examine each paragraph of this
beautiful passage (in which many will at once recog
nize the language of John Henry Newman),' I am
obliged to acknowledge that single parallel passages
to match can be quoted from Egyptian far more
easily than either from Greek or from Roman reli
gious literature. I am not speaking of philosophy,
which both in Greece and Rome was generally sub
versive of the popular religion. Where shall we find
a heathen Greek or Latin saying like that of a papy
rus on the staircase of the British Museum : " The
great God, Lord of heaven and of earth, who made
all things which are " ? Or where shall we find such a
prayer in heathen Greek or Roman times as this : O
my God and Lord, who hast made me, and formed
me, give me an eye to see and an ear to hear thy
glories " ? On the other hand, passages like these
are constantly accompanied by others in which the
old polytheistic language is used without hesitation.
Some phrases, again, are ambiguous, and if their true
sense be a good one, the popular interpretation may
be a bad one. No words can more distinctly express
the notion of " self-existent Being " than chepera che
per t'esef words which very frequently occur in
Egyptian religious texts. But the word chepera sig
nifies scarabaeus as well as being, and the scarabaeus
I " Idea of a University," p. 60 and foUowing.

226 LECTURE VL
was in fact an object of worship, as a symbol of divi
nity. How many Egyptians accepted the words in a
sense which we ourselves should admit to be correct?
Was there really, as is frequently asserted, an esoteric
doctrine known to the scribes and priests alone, as
distinct from the popular belief? No evidence has
yet been produced in favour of this hypothesis.
The nature of Henotheism as distinct
Henotheism. . , . , . ,
from Monotheism was explained in last
year's Lectures as a phase of religious thought in
which the individual gods invoked are not conceived
as limited by the power of others. " Each god is to
the mind of the suppliant as good as all the gods. He
is felt at the time as a real divinity, as supreme and
absolute, in spite of the necessary limitations which
to our mind a plurality of gods must entail on every
single god. All the rest disappear from the vision,
.... and he only who is to fulfil their desires stands
in full light before the eyes of the worshippers."'
This phase of religious thought is chiefly presented
to us in a large number of hymns, beginning with the
earliest days of the eighteenth dynasty. It is cer
tainly much more ancient, but the literature, properly
speaking, ofthe older period is very small. None of
the hymns of that time have come down to us.
1 Max Miiller, " Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, as
illustrated by the Religions of India," p. 285.

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 227
One of the most interesting hymns to Osiris is en
graved on a funereal tablet now in the Bibliotheque
Nationale in Paris, and was published and translated
in 1857 by M. Chabas. The ancient date of it is
marked by the hammering out of it of the iiame
Amon, during the period of the sun-disk worshippers.
It probably belongs to the time of Tehutimes III.
Osiris is called " Lord of eternity, king of the gods,
of many names, of holy transformations, of mysterious
forms in the temples  He is the substance of
the world, Atmu, feeder of beings among the gods,
beneficent spirit in the abode of spirits. From him
the (celestial ocean) Nu derives its waters, from him
comes the wind, and respirable air is in his nostrils
for his satisfaction and the taste of his heart. For
him the ground brings forth its abundance ; in obedi
ence to him is the upper heaven and its stars, and he
opens the great gates. He is the master of invoca
tions in the southern heavens, and of adorations in
the northern heavens ; the ever-moving stars are
under obedience to him, and so are the stars which
set  He is the excellent master of the gods,
fair and beloved by all who see him  He is the
eldest, the first of his brothers, the chief of the gods ;
he it is who maintains law in the universe, and places
the son in the seat of his father  He has made
this world with his hands ; its waters, its atmosphere,

2 28 LECTURE VL
its vegetation, all its flocks, all its flying things, all its
fish, all its reptiles and quadrupeds. . . . His diadem
predominates at the zenith of heaven and accompanies
the stars ; he is the guide of all the gods. Fie is
beneficent in will and words ; he is the praise of the
great gods, and the love ofthe inferior gods."
What follows is textually applied to Horus, but it
is to Horus considered as Osiris born again, and as
the son ofthe widowed Isis.
" The gods recognize the universal Lord. . . . He
takes the royalty of the double world; the crown of
the south is fixed upon his head. 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 god of seeds, he giveth all herbs and the abun
dance of the soil. He affbrdeth 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.'"
1 The " Records ofthe Past," give the translatidn of this hymn, and of
some of the others which are here quoted. I have in these Lectures

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 229
An ancient text now in the British Museum is in
so mutilated a condition that it is in many places
quite illegible. There is one passage in it which
refers either to Tehuti or to Ptah. Of this god it is
said that " he gave birth to the gods, he made towns
and organized provinces. . . . All things proceed
from him. The divine word is made for those who
love and for those who hate it ; it gives life to the
righteous, and it gives death to the unjust. 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 fortitude of heart, the
vigour of hand, activity in body and in mouth of all
the gods and men and of all living animals, intelli
gence and speech ; whatever is in the heart and
whatever is on the tongue."
" Hail to thee, Tehuti," says the tablet of Hor-em-
heb in the British Museum, " Lord of Hermopolis,
self-existent, without birth, sole God, who regulatest
the nether world and givest laws to those who are
in the Amenti, and to those who are in the service
of Ra."
" Hail to thee," we read in another hymn, " Ra-
Tmu-Horus of the double horizon, the one God,
availed myself freely of the existing translations, but have not scrupled
to introduce important alterations, for which no one but myself is re
sponsible.

230 LECTURE VL
living by Maat, who makest all things which are,
who createst all that exists of beasts and men pro
ceeding from thine eyes. Lord of heaven. Lord of
earth, who makest those who are below and those
who are above. Lord of all  King of heaven.
Lord of all gods. O supreme King, amid the society
ofthe gods, almighty i3od, self-existent, two-fold sub
stance, existing from the beginning." '
In a papyrus at Turin, the following words are put
into the mouth of " the almighty God, the self-ex
istent, who made heaven and earth, the waters, the
breaths of life, fire, the gods, men, animals, cattle,
reptiles, birds, fishes, kings, men and gods " [in
accordance with one single thought]  "I am the
maker of heaven and of the earth. I raise its moun
tains and the creatures which are upon it; I make
the waters, and the Mehura comes into being 
I am the maker of heaven, and of the mysteries of
the two-fold horizon. It is I who have given to all
the gods the soul which is within them. When I
open my eyes, there is light; when I close them,
there is darkness  I make the hours, and the
hours come into existence. I am Chepera in the
morning, Ra at noon, Tmu in the evening."
Another text says, " I am yesterday, I am to-day,
I am to-morrow."
" Hail to thee, O Ptah-tanen, great god who con-

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 23 1
cealeth his form, .... thou art watching when at
rest; the father of all fathers and of all gods. . . .
Watcher, who traversest the endless ages of eternity.
The heaven was yet uncreated, uncreated was the
earth, the water flowed not ; thou hast put together
the earth, thou hast united thy limbs, thou hast
reckoned thy members ; what thou hast found apart,
thou hast put into its place ; O God, architect of the
world, thou art without a father, begotten by thine
own becoming; thou art without a mother, being
born through repetition of thyself Thou drivest
away the darkness by the beams of thine eyes.
Thou ascendest into the zenith of heaven, and
thou comest down even as thou hast risen. When
thou art a dweller in the infernal world, thy knees
are above the earth, and thine head is in the upper
sky. Thou sustainest the substances which thou
hast made. It is by thine own strength that thou
movest ; thou art raised up by the might of thine own
arms. Thou weighest upon thyself, kept firm by the
mystery which is in thee. The roaring of thy voice
is in the. cloud; thy breath is on the mountain-tops;
the watete of the inundation cover the lofty trees of
every region  Heaven and earth obey the com
mands which thou hast given; they travel by the
road which thou hast laid down for them; they
transgress not the path which thou hast prescribed to

232 LECTURE VI.
them, and which thou hast opened to them 
Thou restest, and it is night ; when thine eyes shine
forth, we are illuminated  O let us give glory to
the God who hath raised up the sky, and who
causeth his disk to float over the bosom of Nut, who
hath made the gods and men and all their genera
tions, who hath made all lands and countries, and
the great sea, in his name of ' Let-the-earth-be ! '
.... The babe who is brought forth daily, the ancient
one who has reached the limits of time, the im
movable one who traverses every path, the height
which cannot be attained."
A beautiful hymn (written, it is expressly stated,
for the harp), preserved in two MSS. now in the
British Museum, identifies the Nile with Ra, Amon,
Ptah and other gods, and even with the maker and
creator of all things.
" Bringer of food ! great lord of provisions, creator
of all good things. Lord of terrors and of chiefest
joys ! all are combined in him. He produceth grass
for the oxen ; providing victims for every god 
He fiUeth the granaries, enricheth the storehouses;
he careth for the state of the poor. He causeth
growth to fulfil all desires — he never wearies of it.
He maketh his might a buckler. He is not graven
in marble as an image bearing the double crown.
He is not beheld ; he hath neither ministrant nor

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 233
offerings ; he is not adored in sanctuaries ; his abode
is not known; no shrine [of his] is found with
painted figures. There is no building that can con- ;
tain him  Unknown is his name in heaven ; he j
doth not manifest his forms ! Vain are all represen- 1/
V^^^ tations." Yet the last of these passages, which 1
would seem to have reference to the purest worship
of one God, is preceded by lines which speak simply
of the Nile inundation and of the offerings made to \
it, oxen slain and great festivals celebrated.
But it is chiefly in honour of Amon ' that we find
hymns full of expressions closely approaching the
language of Monotheism. This pre-eminence which
Amon enjoys in the literature we have recovered,
arises no doubt chiefly from the fact of his being the
principal divinity at Thebes, and consequently of the
great capital of Egypt during its most splendid
period. Amon himself, according to the popular
mythology, was not without a beginning. His le
gend relates that every year he left his temple at
Karnak, and paid a visit to the valley of the dead,
and poured a libation of lustral water upon a table of
propitiation to his father and mother. Yet he is
identified with the supreme and uncreated Being in
• He is called in the temple of Seti at Qurnah " the Lord of lords
King of the gods, the father of fathers, the powerful of the powerful, the
substance which was from the beginning." Denkm. iii. 150.

234 LECTURE VI.
hymns such as that (now in the Museum at Bulaq)
from which the following extracts are made :
" Hail to thee, Amon Ra, Lord of the thrones of
the earth, .... the ancient of heaven, the oldest of
the earth. Lord of all existences, the support of
things, the support of all things. The One in his
works, single among the gods ; the beautiful bull of
the cycle of the gods ; chief of all the gods ; Lord of
truth, father of the gods ; maker of men, creator of
beasts, maker of herbs, feeder of cattle, good power
begotten of Ptah, . . . . to whom the gods give
honour. Maker of things below and above, enlight
ener of the earth, sailing in heaven in tranquillity;
king Ra, triumphant one, chief of the earth. Most
glorious one. Lord of terror, chief maker of the earth
after his image, how great are his thoughts above
every god ! Hail to thee, Ra, Lord of law, whose
shrine is hidden. Lord of the gods ; Chepra in his
boat, at whose command the gods were made. Atmu,
maker of men, . . . giving them life, . . . listening
to the poor who is in distress, gentle of heart when
one cries to him. Deliverer of the timid man from
the violent, judging the poor, the poor and the
oppressed. Lord of wisdom, whose precepts are
wise ; at whose pleasure the Nile overflows : Lord of
mercy, most loving, at whose coming men live :
opener of every eye, proceeding from the firmament.

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 235
causer of pleasure and light ; at whose goodness the
gods rejoice; their hearts revive when they see him.
O Ra, adored in Thebes, high crowned in the house
of the obelisk (Heliopolis), sovereign of life, health
and strength, sovereign Lord of all the gods ; who
art visible in the midst of the horizon, ruler of the
past generations and the nether world ; whose name
is hidden from his creatures; in his name,. which is
Amon 
" The One, maker of all that is ; the one, the only
one, the maker of existences ; from whose eyes man
kind proceeded, from whose mouth are the gods ;
maker of grass for the cattle (oxen, goats, asses, swine
and sheep); of fruitful trees for men of future genera
tions ; causing the fish to live in the river, the birds
to fill the air; giving breath to those in the egg;
feeding the bird that flies ; giving food to the bird
that perches, to the creeping thing and the flying
thing alike ; providing food for the rats in their holes ;
feeding the flying things in every tree.
" Hail to thee for all these things — the one, alone
with many hands, lying awake while all men sleep,
to seek out the good of his creatures, Amon, sustainer
of all things : Tmu and Horus of the horizon pay
homage to thee in all their words ; salutation to thee
because thou abidest in us, adoration to thee because
thou hast created us.

236 LECTURE VL
" Hail to thee, say all creatures : salutation to thee
from every land; to the height of heaven, to the
breadth of the earth, to the depth of the sea : the
gods adore thy majesty, the spirits thou hast created
exalt thee, rejoicing before the feet of their begetter;
they cry out. Welcome to thee, father of the fathers
of all the gods, who raises the heavens, who fixes the
earth. Maker of beings, creator of existences, sov
ereign of life, health and strength, chief of the gods,
we worship thy spirit who alone hast made us ; we
whom thou hast made (thank thee) that thou hast
given us birth ; we give to thee praises on account of
thy abiding in us.
" Hail to thee, maker of all beings. Lord of law,
father of the gods ; maker of men, creator of beasts ;
Lord of grains, making food for the beast of the
field  The One alone without a second 
King alone, single among the gods ; of many names,
unknown is their number."
Another hymn begins : " I come to thee, O Lord
of the gods, who hast existed from the beginning,
eternal God, who hast made all things that are.
Thy name be my protection ; prolong my term of life
to a good age ; may my son be in my place (after
me) ; may my dignity remain with him (and his) for
ever, as is done to the righteous, who is glorious in
the house of his Lord."

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 237
And it is with reference to Amon that we most
frequently find evidence of the devotion of the people.
Thus the prayer of Rameses II. when in danger :
" Who then art thou, O my father Amon ? Doth
a father forget his son? Surely a wretched lot
awaiteth him who opposes thy will ; but blessed is he
who knoweth thee, for thy deeds proceed from a
heart full of love. I call upon thee, O my father
Amon ! behold me in the midst of many peoples, un
known to me; all nations are united against me, and
I am alone ; no other is with me. My many soldiers
have abandoned me, none of my horsemen hath
looked towards me ; and when I called them, none
hath listened to my voice. But I believe that Amon
is worth more to me than a million of soldiers, than a
hundred thousand horsemen and ten thousands of
brothers and sons, even were they all gathered to
gether. The work of many men is nought ; Amon
will prevail over them."
The same confidence is expressed by humbler men
in poems contained in papyri of the British Museum.
" Oh I Amon, lend thine ear to him who is alone
before the tribunal ; he is poor (and not) rich. The
court oppresses him ; silver and gold for the clerks
of the books, garments for the servants. There is no
other Amon, acting as a judge to deliver one from
his misery when the poor man is before the tribunal."

238 LECTURE VL
" I cry, the beginning of wisdom is the cry of
Amon, the rudder of (truth). Thou art he that giveth
bread to him who has none, that sustaineth the ser
vant of his house. Let no prince be my defender in
all my troubles. Let not my memorial be placed
under the power of any man who is in the house 
My Lord is my defender. I know his power, to wit
(he is) a strong defender. There is none mighty ex
cept him alone. Strong is Amon, knowing how to
answer, fulfilling the desire of him who cries to him."
Another hymn says: "Come to me, O thou Sun;
Horus of the horizon, give me (help); thou art he
that giveth (help); there is no help without thee,
except thou givest it  Let my desires be ful
filled, let my heart be joyful, my inmost heart in
gladness. Hear my vows, my humble supplications
every day, my adorations by night  O Horus of
the horizon, there is no other besides like him, pro
tector of millions, deliverer of hundreds of thousands,
the defender of him that calls to him  Reproach
me not with my many sins."
It is remarkable that a religious reformation at the
end of the i8th dynasty in behalf of one god, spent
its special wrath upon the name of Amon. The king
whose title would under ordinary circumstances have
been Amenhotep IV., set up the worship of a single
god whose symbol was the sun-disk ; he caused the

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 239
names of other gods, particularly that of Amon, to
be hammered out of inscriptions even when it only
occurred in proper names, as in his own, which he
changed into Chut en Aten, " Glory of the Sun-disk."
And as Thebes was the great seat of worship of
Amon, he abandoned it and tried to set up another
capital. His reformation lasted but a short time, his
own immediate family having abandoned it after his
death. All his monuments were destroyed by his
successors, yet several hymns belonging to this
short-lived phase of religion have escaped destruc
tion. One of them says:
"The whole land of Egypt and all people repeat
all thy names at thy rising, to magnify thy rising in
like manner as thy setting. Thou, O God, who in
truth art the living one, standest before the Two
Eyes. Thou art he which createst what never was,
which formest everything, which art in all things : we
also have come into being through the word of thy
mouth." Another says: "Thou living God! there is none
other beside thee ! Thou givest health to the eyes by
thy beams. Creator of all beings. Thou goest up
on the east horizon of heaven to dispense life to all
that thou hast created : to man, to four-footed beasts,
birds, and all manner of creeping things on the earth
where they live  Grant to thy son who loves

2AO ~ LECTURE VL
thee, life in truth  that he may live united with
thee in eternity."
The language of these hymns and prayers is ex
actly similar to that of ordinary Egyptian orthodoxy,
and there is nothing heterodox in the symbol itself;
the heresy consisted in refusing worship to all the
other gods. But the magnificent predicates of the
Pantheism. ^^^ ^^^ ^^j^ ^^^^ however recognized
by Egyptian orthodoxy, never in fact led to actual
Monotheism. They stopped short in Pantheism—
namely, in the doctrine that " all individual things
are nothing but modifications, affections, of the One
and All, the eternal and infinite God-world; that
there is but one universal force in nature in different
forms, in itself eternal and unchangeable."
This doctrine is perhaps most clearly expressed in
a hymn upon the walls of the temple in the oasis of
El-Khargeh :
" The gods salute his royal majesty as their Lord,
who revealeth himself in all that is, and hath names
in everything, from mountain to stream. That which
persisteth in all things is Amon. This lordly god
was from the very beginning. He is Ptah, the
greatest of the gods  Thy secret is in the
depths of the secret waters and unknown. Thou hast
come on the road, thou hast given light in the path.

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 24 1
thou hast overcome all difficulties in thy mysterious
form. Each god has assumed thy aspect ; without
shape is their type compared to thy form. To thee,
all things that are give praise when thou returnest
to the nether world at even. Thou raisest up Osiris
by the radiance of thy beams. To thee, those give
praise who lie in their tombs, .... and the damned
rise up in their abodes  Thou art the King,
thine is the kingdom of heaven, and the earth is at
thy will. The gods are in thine hand, and men are
at thy feet. What god is like to thee ? Thou hast
made the double world, as Ptah. Thou hast placed
thy throne in the life of the double world, as Amon.
Thy soul is the pillar and the ark of the two heavens.
Thy form emanated at first whilst thou shinest as
Amon, Ra and. Ptah  Shu, Tefnut, Nut and
Chonsu are thy form, dwelling in thy shrine under
the types of the ithyphallic god, raising his tall plumes,
king of the gods  Thou art Mentu Ra. Thou
art Sekar; thy transformations are into the Nile.
Thou art Youth and Agfe. Thou givest life to the
earth by thy stream. Thou art heaven, thou art
earth, thou art fire, thou art water, thou art air, and
whatever is in the midst of them."
This very remarkable hymn is put in the mouth of
the gods of the elements, eight in number, four male
and four female. What these elements are is not
II

242 LECTURE VL
perfectly clear. They used to be thought peculiar to
the Ptolemaic period, and were then supposed to
have been borrowed from the four Greek elements,
Earth, Air, Fire and Water, but they have been re
cognized in much earlier texts. They are, in fact, the
eight gods mentioned in the seventeenth chapter of
the Book of the Dead, and belong to the oldest cos-
mogonical part of the religion. This chapter, as we
have already seen, speaks of a time when as yet there
was no firmament, and when these eight divinities
were set up as the gods of Hermopolis ; in other
words, when chaos disappeared, and the elements be
gan to rule with fixed and unchangeable laws.
Another hymn, copied by Brugsch at the same
temple, sings " the mysterious names of the God who
is immanent in all things {men em xet neb), the soul of
Shu (breath) to all the gods. He is the body of the
living man, the creator of the fruit-bearing tree, the
author of the inundation ; without him nothing liveth
within the circuit of the earth, whether north or south,
under his name of Osiris, the giver of light : he is the
Horus of the living souls, the living god of the gen
erations yet to come. He is the creator of every
animal under his names of Ram of the sheep, god of
the goats. Bull of the cows  He loves the
scorpion in his hole ; he is the god of the crocodiles
who plunge in the water  he is the god of

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 243
those who rest in their graves. Amon is an image,
Atmu is an image, Chepera is an image, Ra is an
image ; he alone maketh himself in millions of ways.
He is a great architect, who was from the beginning,
who fashioned his body with his own hands, in all
forms according to his will  Permanent and
'enduring, he never passeth away. Through millions
upon millions of endless years he traverseth the
heavens, he compasseth the nether world each
day  He is the moon in the night and king of
the stars, who maketh the division of seasons, months
and years ; he cometh living everlastingly both in his
rising and in his setting. There is no other like
him ; his voice is heard, but he remains unseen to
every creature that breathes. He strengthens the
heart of the woman in travail, and gives life to those
who are born from her  He travels in the
cloud to separate heaven and earth, and again to re
unite them, permanently abiding in all things, the
Living One in whom all things live everlastingly."
But the Litanies of Ra which M. Naville copied
from the royal tombs of -the 19th dynasty are already
pantheistic. All things are represented as mere
emanations from Ra. The learned editor of these
Litanies has not failed to remark that the pantheistic
influence of the doctrine has told upon the ethical
system, which can hardly be said to exist at all;

2 44 LECTURE VL
whereas the notions of right and wrong, iniquity and
sin, are perpetually occurring in the Book of the
Dead and in all the ancient inscriptions.' It is only
out of condescension to popular language that pan
theistic systems can recognize these notions. If
everything really emanates from God, there can be
no such thing as sin. And the ablest philosophers
who have been led to pantheistic views have vainly
endeavoured to harmonize these views with what we
understand by the notion of sin or moral evil. The
great systematic work of Spinoza is entitled " Ethi-
ca," but for real ethics we might as profitably con
sult the Elements of Euclid.
I believe, therefore, that, after closely approaching
the point at which polytheism might have turned
into monotheism, the religious thought of Egypt
turned aside into a wrong track. And this was fol
lowed by a decided and hopeless course of retrogres
sion. Those elements ofthe Egyptian religion which
the Greeks and the Jewish and Christian writers
looked upon with such disgust, had existed from the
first, but in a very subordinate position ; they now
became nearly predominant.
1 " Puisque toute chose bonne ou mauvaise ^mane ^galeraent du
Grand Tout, il est clair que la valeur morale du bien est necessairement
fort affaiblie. Nous ne trouvons rien dans ces textes qui rappelle la morale
si eiev^e qu'enseigne le chapitre 125 du Livre des Morts, rien meme qui
nous parle de la responsabiliti." — La Litanie du Soleil, p. 128.

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS.

245

There can be no doubt that, from the earliest days,
symbolism had played a great part in the • religion of
Egypt. We are ourselves so familiar with certain
symbols in Hebrew or Christian writings, or with the
poetic figures which classical literature has brought
home to us, that when we meet with symbols of
another kind, we are far more shocked than we really
have a right to be. We think it natural enough to
speak of a hero we venerate as a lion or an eagle,
while quite other associations are connected with a
fox or a dog. Christians have other associations
with the lamb or the dove. But the Egyptians, as
far back as we know them, seemed to have studied
the animal creation with a minute accuracy which
only the natural history of our own times can rival.
Their symbolism is not necessarily the same as ours.
Certain characteristics of animals have in the course
of ages fixed themselves in our minds, but in this we
are simply following a tradition. Other character
istics of the same animals had impressed the minds of
the Egyptians, and their symbolism is based on the
peculiar observations made by them. Some of the
inscriptions enable us to understand parts of the
symbolism. Who of us would Uke to be called a
crocodile, a jackal, or even a young bull ? Yet the
Egyptian poet gives these names to Tehutimes III.
in a song of triumph, and he at the same time en-

246

LECTURE VL

lightens us as to the meaning of these words : the
crocodile is terrible in the waters, and not to be
encountered without disaster ; the young bull whets
his horns, and is not to be attacked without peril ;
and so on. The "bull" is a favourite name for a king
or a god. However foreign the symbol may be to
our own poetical conceptions, we can easily under
stand how an ancient agricultural people was
impressed by certain qualities of the animal, his
might, his courage, the terror he inspires when angry,
the protection he affords to the herd, and his marital
or paternal relations to it. The rays of the sun and
the moon's crescent have at all times suggested the
notion of horns. The cow in Egypt, as well as in
India, represents the Sky,' the Dawn and other
powers. The hawk was among birds what the bull
was among quadrupeds, and they admired his rapid,
lofty and unerring flight, the piercing sight which
nothing can escape, and the irresistible grasp of his
talons. All this with us is mere poetry, but all early
language is poetry. There is nothing more certainly
established by the science of language than " the fact
that all words expressive of immaterial conceptions
are derived by metaphor from words expressive of
sensible ideas." But besides such metaphors as those
1 See Transactions of the Society of Biblical Literature, Vol. IV. pi.
I, where the cow has the stars upon its belly.

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 247
of which I have just been speaking, and which are
intelligible even when translated, there are others
which are necessarily peculiar to the language in
which they originated. The names of Seb and of
Tehuti, as we have seen, were to the Egyptians con
nected with the names of the goose and the ibis.
Anpu (Anubis) " is apparently," as Mr. Goodwin says,
"the ancient Egyptian name for a jackal." Sebek,
one of the names of the Sun-god, is also the name of
a kind of crocodile. It is not improbable that the cat,
in Egyptian mdu, became the symbol ofthe Sun-god,
or Day, because the word mdu also means light. It
is, I think, quite easy to see how the mythological
symbolism arose through these varieties of meta
phorical language. And this metaphorical language
reacted upon thought, and, as in other religions,
obtained the mastery.
The triumph of the symbol over the thought is
most sensibly visible in the development of the wor
ship ofthe Apis Bull. This worship is indeed as old
as the age of the Pyramids, but an inspection of the
tombs of the bulls in the Serapeum discovered by
M. Mariette under the sands of Saqara, shows how
immeasurably greater the devotion to the sacred
animals was in the later times than in the former.
Dean Stanley ' has described these :
1 " Sinai and Palestine," p. hi.

248 LECTURE VL
"Long galleries, hewn in the rock and opening
from time to time — say every fifty yards — into high-
arched vaults, under each of which reposes the most
magnificent black marble sarcophagus that can be
conceived — a chamber rather than a coffin ' — smooth
and sculptured within and without ; grander by far
than ever the granite sarcophagi of the Theban king,
— how much grander than any human sepulchres any
where else ! And all for the successive corpses of the
bull Apis ! These galleries formed part of the great
temple of Serapis, in which the Apis mummies were
deposited; and here they lay, not in royal, but in
divine state. The walls of the entrances are covered
with ex-votos. In one porch there is a painting at
full length, black and white, of the bull himself as he
was in life."
No one who has seen the tombs of these strange
gods can doubt the accounts given by the classical
writers as to the extravagant expenses incurred at a
single funeral. But if one of the funerals of an Apis
cost fifty talents, not less than a hundred talents are
said to have been expended by curators of other
sacred animals. The Apis was called " the second
Ufe of Ptah," the god of Memphis. The sacred Ram
of Mendes was called " the Ufe of Ra." Three other
sacred Rams are mentioned, " the soul of Osiris,"
1 A breakfast-party has been held in one of these coffins.

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS.

249

" the soul of Shu," and " the soul of Chepra." ' They
were also conceived as united in one, who is repre
sented with four heads, and bears the name of Shef-
thdt. Primeval Force. This name I believe to be
comparatively modern, and to bear the impress of
pantheistic speculation rather than of mythology;
but the word Ba, which means a ram, also means
soul; so that here again there is every probability
that the god originated, like so many others, in homo
nymous metaphor. The encouragement given to his
worship by the Ptolemies is circumstantially exhibi
ted in the great tablet of Mendes published by M.
Mariette, ^ and translated by Brugsch-Bey.'
If Pantheism strongly contributed to
, ,¦ , /- 1 • .1 Materialism.
the development of this animal wor
ship and to all the superstition therewith connected,
it also led to simple Materialism. The hymns at
Dendera in honour of the goddess Hathor irresisti
bly remind one of the opening of the poem of Lu
cretius. Hathor, like the mother of the Aeneadae,
is "sole mistress of the nature of things, and without
her nothing rises up into the divine borders of light,
nothing grows to be glad or lovely;" "through her
1 Or, according to another text, " of Seb."
'^Monumens divers, pi. 43, 44.
> Zeitschrift, 187S, p. 33. An English version has been published in
the " Records ofthe Past."

250

LECTURE VL

every kind x)f living thing is conceived, rises up and
beholds the light of the sun." ' But we know the
Roman poet's apology^ for these poetical concep
tions, " however well and beautifully they may be set
forth." " If any one thinks proper to call the sea
Neptune, and corn Ceres, and chooses rather te mis
use the name of Bacchus than to utter the term that
belongs to that liquor, let us allow him to declare
that the earth is mother of the gods, if he only for-
1 Per te genus omne animantum
Concipitur visitque exortum lumina soils ;
Te dea, te fugiunt venti, te nubila caeli
Adventumque tuum, tibi suavis daedala tellus
Summittit flores tibi rident aequora ponti
Placatumque nitet diffuso lumine caelum. . . .
Quae quoniam rerum naturam sola gubemas
Nee sine te quicquam dias in luminis oras
Exoritur neque fit laetum neque amabile quicquam, &c.
De Rerum Natura, i. 4 — 9, 21 — 24 ; Munro.
I do not quote these lines to prove that the hymns of Dendera are
atheistic or epicurean, but that they are not inconsistent with an entire
disbelief in religion. AU these hymns are absolutely epicurean.
' Hie siquis mare Neptunum Cereremque vocare
Constituit fruges et Bacchi nomine abuti
Mavolt quam laticis proprium proferre vocamen,
Concedamus ut hie terrarum dictitet orbem
Esse deum matrem, dum vera re tamen ipse
Religione animum turpi contingere parcat. lb. ii. 652 — 657.

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 25 1
bear in earnest to stain his mind with foul religion."
Man had formerly been led to associate the earth and
sun and sky with the notion of infinite power behind
those phenomena; he now retraced his steps and
recognized in the universe nothing but the mere phe
nomena. The heathen Plutarch and the Christian
Origen equally give evidence of this atheistical inter
pretation put upon the myths of Osiris and Isis.
Plutarch protests against the habit of explaining
away the very nature of the gods by resolving it, as
it were, into mere blasts of wind, or streams of rivers,
and the like, such as making Dionysos to be wine
and Hephaistos fire. We might suppose that Plu
tarch is simply alluding to Greek speculation, but it
is certain that the Egyptian texts of the late period
are in the habit of substituting the name of a god for
a physical object, such as Seb for the earth, Shu for
the air, and so on. Origen, as a Christian apologist,
sees no advantage to be gained by his adversaries in
giving an allegorical interpretation to Osiris and Isis,
"for they will nevertheless teach us to offer divine
worship to cold water and the earth, which is subject
to men and all the animal creation."
The transformation of the Egyptian religion is no
where more apparent than in the view of the life
beyond the grave which is exhibited on a tablet
which has already been referred to, that of the wife

252

LECTURE VL

of Pasherenptah. This lady thus addressed her hus
band from the grave : '
" Oh my brother, my spouse, cease not to drink
and to eat, to drain the cup of joy, to enjoy the love
of woman, and to make holiday : follow thy desires
each day, and let not care enter into thy heart, as
long as thou livest upon earth. For as to Amenti, it
is the land of heavy slumber and of darkness, an
abode of sorrow for those who dwell there. They
sleep in their forms ; they wake not any more to see
their brethren ; they recognize not their father and
their mother; their heart is indifferent to their wife and
children. Every one [on earth] enjoys the water of
life, but thirst is by me. The water cometh to him
who remaineth on earth, but I thirst for the water
which is by me. I know not where I am since I
came into this spot; I weep for the water which
passes by me. I weep for the breeze on the brink of
the stream, that through it my heart may be re
freshed in its sorrow. For as to the god who is here,
' Death-Absolute ' is his name. ^ He calleth on all,
and all men come to obey him, trembling with fear
before him. With him there is no respect for gods
^ Sharpe, Egyptian Inscriptions, i. pi. 4.
^ Tdv navlSkeQpov 8cbv ....
"Of ovd' Iv "AtSov rbv Savdvr' elevdepoi. Aesch. Suppl. 414.

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 253
or men ; by him great ones are as little ones. One
feareth to pray to him, for he listeneth not.' No one
comes to invoke him, for he is not kind to those who
adore him ; he has no respect to any offering which
is made to him." There is something of this un
doubtedly in the song of King Antuf and in the Lay
of the Harper, but the moral which the harper taught
has utterly disappeared : " Mind thee of the day
when thou too shalt start for that land." There is
no allusion to the necessity of a good life; no recom
mendation to be just and hate iniquity; no assurance
that he who loveth what is just shall triumph. The
tablet on which this strange inscription is found has
upon it the figures of several of the Egyptian gods,
in whom it professes faith, but the religion must have
been already at its end when such a text could be
inscribed on a funereal tablet.
The short time which is now left will
not allow me to enter at length into a Egyptkn upon°
discussion of certain questions which foreign thought.
have naturally arisen as to the influence of Egyptian
upon foreign thought, as, for instance, on the Hebrew
or Greek religions and philosophies. It may be con-
1 La Mort a des rigueurs ^ nuUe autre pareilles.
On a beau la prior ;
La cruelle qu'elle est se bouche les oreilles,
Et nous laisse crier.

254

LECTURE VL

fidently asserted that neither Hebrews nor Greeks
borrowed any of their ideas from Egypt. It ought, I
think, to be a matter of wonder that, after a long time
of bondage, the Israelites left Egypt without having
even learnt the length of the year. The Hebrew year
consisted of twelve lunar months, each of them empi
rically determined by actual inspection of the new
moon, and an entire month was intercalated when
ever it was found that the year ended before the
natural season. The most remarkable point of con
tact between Hebrew and Egyptian religion is the
identity of meaning between " El Shaddai " and nutar
nutra; but the notion which is expressed by these
words is common to all religion, and is only alluded to
as characterizing the religion of the patriarchs in con
trast to the new revelation made to Moses. But even
this revelation is said to have been borrowed from
Egypt. I have repeatedly seen it asserted that Moses
borrowed his concept of God, and the sublime words,
ehyeh asher ehyeh {" I am that I am," in the Au
thorized Version), from the Egyptian nuk pu nuk. I
am afraid that some Egyptologist has to bear the-
responsibility of this illusion. It is quite true that in
several places of the Book of the Dead the three
words nuk pu nuk are to be found; it is true that nuk
is the pronoun I, and that the demonstrative pu often
serves to connect the subject and predicate of a sen-

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 255
tence. But the context of the words requires to be
examined before we can be sure that we have just an
entire sentence before us, especially as pu generally
comes at the end of a sentence. Now if we look at
the passages of the Book of the Dead where these
words occur, we shall see at once that they do not
contain any mysterious doctrine about the Divine na
ture. In one of these passages ' the deceased says,
" It is I who know the ways of Nu." In another place ^
he says, " I am the Ancient One in the country [or
fields] ;* it is I who am Osiris, who shut up his father
Seb and his mother Nut on that day of the great
slaughter." "It is I who am Osiris, the Ancient
One." In another recension of the same text, con
tained in the 96th chapter, the words nuk pu nuk
disappear, because the narrative is in the third per
son. " He is the Bull in the fields, he is Osiris who
shut up his father," and so forth. I have looked
through a number of works professing to discover
Egyptian influences in Hebrew institutions, but have
not even found anything worth controverting. Purely
external resemblances may no doubt be discovered in
abundance, but evidence of the transmission of ideas
1 Todt. 78, 21.
2 lb. 31, 4.
' Two of the many names of Horus are " the Youth in Town " and
" the Lad in the Country." Todt. 85, 8, 9.

256 LECTURE VL
will be sought in vain. I cannot find that any of the
idolatries or superstitions of the Israelites are derived
from Egyptian sources. The golden calf has been
supposed, but on no sufficient grounds, to represent
Apis or Mnevis. The worship of oxen, as symbols
of a Divine power, is not peculiar to Egypt, but is
met with in all the ancient religions. The chariot
and horses of the sun which the kings of Judah had
set up " at the entering in of the house of the Lord,"
and which Joash burnt with fire, show that the
Israelites had an independent mythology of their
own. The existence of Egyptian elements in Hellenic
religion and philosophy has long since been dis
proved. The supposed travelers of Pythagoras and
other ancient philosophers to Eastern climes, Chal-
daea, Persia, India and Egypt, are fabulous inven
tions, the historical evidence of which does not begin
till at least two centuries after the death of the phil
osopher, but continues increasing after this time.
Internal evidence tells the same tale as the external.
Every step in the history of Greek philosophy can be
accounted for and explained from native sources, and
it is not merely unnecessary, but impossible (to the
historian of philosophy, ridiculously impossible), to
imagine a foreign teacher, to whom the Greeks would
never have listened, as being the author of doctrines

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS.

257

which without his help the Greeks would themselves
certainly have discovered, and at the very time that
they did so.
The importance of Alexandria as a medium of
interchange of ideas between the Eastern and Western
worlds must also be considered as exploded. Noth
ing was more common, about forty or fifty years ago,
than to hear learned men account for the presence of
Oriental ideas in Europe by the transmission of these
ideas through the channel of Alexandria. Alex
andria was supposed to be the seat of Oriental phil
osophy, and Philo, Origen, Porphyry, Plotinos and
other great names, were imagined to be the repre
sentatives of the alliance between Greek and Oriental
thought. All this is now considered as unhistorical
as the reign of Jupiter in Crete. It was a mere a
priori fancy, which has not been verified by facts.
The most accurate analysis of the Alexandrian phil
osophy has not succeeded in discovering a single
element in it which requires to be referred to an
Oriental source. All attempts to refer Alexandrian
opinions to Eastern sources have proved abortive.
And long before the great work of Zeller on Greek
Philosophy had dealt with the problem in detail, M.
Ampere* had shown hcv extremely improbable the
received hypothesis was. Alexandria was a com
mercial Greek town, inhabited by a population which

258

LECTURE VL

cared not the least for Eastern ideas. The learned
men in it were Greeks who had the utmost contempt
for barbarians and their opinions. Of the Egyptian
language and literature, they were profoundly igno
rant. "It is incredible," he says, "to what an
extent the Greeks of Alexandria remained strangers
to the knowledge of the Egyptian language and
writing-; one could not understand it if there were
not other instances of the contemptuous aversion of
the Greeks and Romans to the study of the barbarous
languages." The greatest part of the information
they give us is utterly erroneous, and even when it
has been derived from an authentic source, it never
fails to be completely hellenized in passing through a
Greek channel. The Oriental works, like those at
tributed to Zoroaster, said to have been preserved in
the Library at Alexandria, were Greek forgeries.
" En somme," M. Ampere says, "Alexandre fut tres
grecque, assez juive et presque point egyptienne.'"
And if Alexandria was not the means of communica
ting Egyptian ideas to the Western world, still less
was it the channel of learning from the farther East.
It is an error to suppose that Alexandria was on the
chief line of traffic between Europe and Asia. Dur-
' Revue des Deux Mondes, Sept. 1846, p. 735. Ampfere refutes the
opinions of Matter and of Jules Simon as expressed in their Histories of
the Alexandrian School.

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS.

259

ing the whole period which followed the foundation
of Alexandria down to the Roman times, there was
no direct communication between this city and the
distant East. Indian traffic was in the hands of the
seafaring Arabs of the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of
Oman and the Gulf of Akaba. It came to the
shores of the Mediterranean through Seleucia,
Antioch and Palmyra, or through Gaza and'Petra,
the chief town ofthe Nabataeans.'
The interest which the history of
. . Conclusion.
Egyptian religion inspires must be de
rived solely from itself, not from any hypothetical
connection with other systems.
We have seen Egypt a powerful and highly civil
ized kingdom not less than two thousand years
before the birth of Moses, with religious beliefs and
institutions at least externally identical with those
' " Presque tout le temps que les Ptolemees regnSrent en Egypte, les
navires qui partaient des cStes Egyptiennes ne depassaient pas la cote
meridionale de I'Arabie. lis relachaient soit dans un port situE en terre
ferme, notamment Aden, ou bien dans quelq' ile, telle que Socotora.
LSl arrivaient les navires arabes, indiens et malais, avec les produits
destines Si I'occident." — Reinaud, " Sur le royaume de la MesSne et de
la Kharas^ne," in the Mem. de t'Acad. des Inscr. t. xxiv. pt. 2, p. 213.
See also the chapter vi. (Du .Commerce) of Lumbroso, " Recherches sur
I'economie politique de I'Egypte sous les Lagides." M. Reinaud has
also shown that the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, which displays an
accuracy of information quite unknown to Strabo, Pliny or Ptolemy, was
not written before the middle ofthe third century after Christ,

260 LECTURE VL
which it possessed till the last years of its existence.
This religion, however, was not from the first that
mere worship of brutes which strangers imagined in
the days of its decline.
The worship of the sacred animals was not a prin
ciple, but a consequence ; it presupposes the rest of
the religion as its foundation, and it acquired its full
development and extension only in the declining
periods ofthe Egyptian history.
It is based upon symbols derived from the mytho
logy. The mythology has exactly the same origin as the
mythology of our own Aryan ancestors. The early
language had no words to express abstract concep
tions, and the operations of nature were spoken of in
terms which would now be thought poetical or at
least metaphorical, but were then the simplest ex
pressions of popular intuition. The nomina became
numina. The Egyptian mythology, as far as I can see, dealt
only with those phenomena of nature which are con
spicuously the result of fixed law, such as the ris
ing and setting of the sun, moon and stars. ' The
1 This is my reason for being inclined (see p. 113) to identify the god"
dess Tefnut with the Dew, rather than with the Rain. Tefnut, as a
common noun, is undoubtedly some form of moisture, but rain, though
far from unknown in ancient Egypt, must always have been a compara-

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 261
recognition of law and order as existing throughout
the universe, underlies the whole system of Egyptian
religion. The Egyptian maat, derived like the San
skrit nta, from merely sensuous impressions, became
the name for moral order and righteousness.
Besides the powers recognized by the mythology,
the Egyptians from the very first spoke of the Power
by whom the whole physical and moral government
of the universe is directed, upon whom each indi
vidual depends, and to whom he is responsible.
The moral code which they identified with the law
governing the universe, was a pure and noble one.
The summary of it as given in the Book ofthe Dead
has often been quoted : " He hath given bread to the
hungry, water to the thirsty, clothes to the naked; he
hath given a boat to the shipwrecked ; he hath made
the offerings to the gods, and paid the due rites to
the departed."
The rites are paid to the departed, because death is
but the beginning of a new life, and that life will
never end.
lively rare and apparently irregular phenomenon. Otherwise it would
be very tempting to identify the two lions, Shu, and Tefnut, children of
Ra, with the -Wind and the Rain. I do not find any god as the personifi
cation of Thunder, which rather appears as the roaring of a lion-god, or
the bellowing of a bull-god. This illustrates the position which oc
casional phenomena occupy in Egyptian mythology. The position of
Fire in this mythology affords matter for an interesting inquiry.

262 LECTURE VL
A sense ofthe Eternal and Infinite, Holy and Good,
governing the world, and upon which we are de
pendent, of Right and Wrong, of Holiness and Virtue,
of Immortality arfd Retribution — such are the ele
ments of Egyptian religion. But where are these grand
elements of a religion found in their simple purity ?
Mythology, we know, is the disease which springs
up at a peculiar stage of human culture, and is in its
first stage as harmless as it is inevitable. It ceases to
be harmless when its original meaning is forgotten,
when, instead of being the simple expression of man's
intuition of real facts, it obtains a mastery over his
thought, and leads him to conclusions which are not
involved in the original premises. This disease of
thought was terribly aggravated, I believe, by the
early development of Art, and the forms which it
assumed in Egypt. That Power which the Egyptians
recognized without any mythological adjunct, to
whom no temple was ever raised, "who was not
graven in stone," " whose shrine was never found
with painted figures," " who had neither ministrants
nor offerings," and " whose abode was unknown,"
must practically have been forgotten by the worship
pers at the magnificent temples of Memphis, Helio
polis, Abydos, Thebes or Dendera, where quite other
deities received the homage of prayer and praise and
sacrifice.

RELIGIOUS BOOKS AND HYMNS. 263
A highly cultured and intelligent people like the
Egyptians, it is true, did not simply acquiesce in the
polytheistic view of things, and efforts are visible
from the very first to cling to the notion of the Unity
of God. The "self-existent" or "self-becoming" One, '
the One, the One of One, " the One without a I
second," " the Beginner of becoming, from the first," '
" who made all things, but was not made," are ex
pressions which we meet constantly in the religious
texts, and they are applied to this or that god, each
in his turn being considered as the supreme God of
gods, the Maker and Creator of all things. But the
conclusion which seems to have remained was, that
all gods were in fact but names of the One who
resided in them all. But this God is no other than
Nature. Both individuals and entire nations may
long continue to hold this view, without drawing the
inevitable conclusion, that if there is no other God
than this, the world is really without a God. But
when the conclusion is once brought home, it is, as
we have seen in our own day, most eagerly accepted.
But the fate of a religion which involves such a con
clusion, and with that conclusion the loss of faith in
immortality, and even in the distinction of Right and
Wrong, except as far as they are connected with
ritual prescriptions, is inevitably sealed.'
1 On looking back over these pages, I find that I have quoted (p. 103)

264

LECTURE VI.

from Professor Max Miiller an etymology of the Sanskrit Brahman
which is at variance with his more mature judgment in Hibbert Lectures,
p. 358, note.
At page 20, the name of M. Guyesse is too important to be omitted
from the list of French scholars. M. Revillout, the most eminent Coptic
scholar now in Europe, is also highly distinguished for his publication
and interpretation of demotic records. "To the German names I should
add those of Pietschmann, Erman and Meyer.
And I do not think it out of place here to say, that as the thanks of
scholars are due to private persons like Mr. Sharpe and the late Mr.
Bonomi, for the publication of accurate Egyptian texts, no small amount
of gratitude should be felt towards booksellers like Messrs. Hinrichs, of
Leipzig, for the publication of so many inestimable works by Brugsch,
Diimichen and Mariette, which, however indispensable to the student,
have necessarily but a limited sale, and cannot be immediately re
munerative.

INDEX.

AAHHOTEP, Queen, 68.
Abdellatif, on ruins of Memphis, 25.
Abydos, tablet of, 38, 68.
Achmu uretu, the stars which set,
112.
Akerblad, 12, 16.
Alexandria, 2S7.
Amenemhat, Instructions of, 78.
Amenti, 136
Amesi, ithyphallic form of Horus,
207. '
Amon, god of Thebes, 86, 232.
— hymns to, 232.
— proscription of name, 43, 237.
Ampfere, 80, 238.
Anaxandrides, 3.
Anchiu, "the living,'- designation
of the departed, 133.
Angels, i6s.
— of death, i6s.
Ani, Maxims of, 78, 104, 1^4, 165.
Anpu, Anubis, the Dusk, child of
the Sun and of Sunset, 116, 118,
247.
— " he has swallowed his own fa
ther, 1x6.
Ansted, 52.
Antiphanes, 3.
Antuf, Song of, 72.
12

Antuf aa, 47.
Apap, the dragon. Darkness, 113.
Apis, 36, 88, 247, 248.
Apollonios of Tyana, 7.
Ass, supposed worship of, by Chris
tians and Jews, 5.
BA, steel, 137.
Ba signifies "ram" and "soul,"
249.
Baillet, 20.
Bechten, possessed princess of, 161.
Belzoni, 23.
Bergman, 20.
Biot, so.
Birch, 10, 14, 19, 22, 47, sSi 184,
219.
Bohlen, P. von, on India, 30.
Book ofthe Dead described, 180.
— of the Lamentations of Isis and
Nephthys, 213.
— of glorifying Osiris, 215.
— ofthe Breaths of Life, 216.
Brahman, 103, 264.
Briicker, 9.
Brugsch, 19, 105, 12S, 133, 106, 219,
222, 242, 249.
Buddhism, 109.
Bulaq Museum, 63, 69, 167. 26s

266

INDEX.

Bull, symbol of kings and gods, 24s.
Bunsen, 205.
CALENDARS, 49, 84, 163,
Canon, hieratic, of Turin, 38.
Castes, 80.
Cat, symbol of Light, 118, 247.
Celibacy, 148.
Celsus, 8.
Chabas, 20, 22, 50, 74, 7S, 77, 103,
147, 160, 163, 171, 219, 227.
ChampoUion, 14.
ChampoUion-Figeac, 16.
Cher-heb, a priestly official, 137.
"Children of inertness,'' 209.
China, 130.
Chonsu, the Moon, 161, 187.
Chu, glorified one, the dead, 137.
Chut en Aten, 44, 239.
Clement of Alexandria, 1.
Cook, Canon, 20.
Cow signifies the Sky, the Dawn
and other powers, 246.
Curtius, 99, 100, 124.
D-\RKNESS, mythological forms
of:
— Apap, 113.
— Anpu, 116.
— Set, iig.
— Maka, 119.
— Crocodile, 112.
Dawn, names of the :
~ Isis, 115.
— Hathor, 91, 163.
— Rennet, 166.
— Neith, 186.
" Death-absolute," 232.
Decimal notation, 85.
Deities, 86.
Dendera, Zodiac of, 30.

Destiny, 165.
Deveria, 20, 217.
Diodorus, s, I3S-
Dreams, 161.
Dual form of all words designating
space, traversed by the sun,
203.
Diimichen, 20, 24, 30, 70, 121, 133,
170.
EARTH, the father of gods, 115.
— his wife, the Sky, 115.
Ebers, 20, 219.
Egg of Ra, 200.
— Seb, lis.
Eight elementary gods, 202, 241.
Eisenlohr, 20.
El, God, power, 101.
Em hotep=\n pace, 136.
Enneads, 86.
Erman, 264.
Ethnology of Egypt. 34.
Everlasting life, 133.
Evil eye, 164.
Eye, name of the sun, 193.
FABLES of .iEsop are found in
Egyptian, 80.
Fergusson on the architecture of
Egypt, izg, 133.
Firmament of steel, 136.
Fravasuis, 129, 133.
GENEALOGIES, 48.
Genius, 133.
Gensler, 49.
George, St., and the Dragon, 122.
Gibbon, 222.
God, true notion of, 223.
Golden calf, 236.
Golenischeff, 20, 105.

INDEX.

267

Goodwin, 20, 22, 79, 171, 219,
Goose, IIS, 247.
Grebaut, zo, 127, 170, 172, 203.
Guizot, 139.
Guyesse, 207, 264
HALL of Nut=Heaven, 198.
— Seb=Earth, 198.
— Maat=the Nether world, 198.
Harem, 81.
Harper, ^,ay of the, 72.
Hatasu, Queen (wrongly called Ha
shop), 42, 44, 168.
Hathor, many names of, 90.
— the Dawn, 165.
— the Fates, 165.
— name given to beatified women,
192.
Hawk, name of the sun, 246.
Hearne, 148.
Heaven, the mother of gods and
wife of Earth, 198.
— the HaU of Nut, 198.
Helmholtz, 13.
Hen en anchiu, name of coffin, 138.
Hen ka, a priestly official, 155.
Henotheism, 226.
Henry, Matthew, 31.
Hermes Trismegistos, 120.
Herodotos, 9.
Hincks, 19, 47.
Horns, symbols of sun or moon,
246.
Horrack, 20, 206, 216.
Horus, the sun in his full strength,
116.
— blindness of, 118.
— Eye of, 118.
— " the Youth in Town," 233.
— "the Lord in the Country," 2SS.
Hue, 206.
Hyksos, 43.

Hymn to Osiris, 226.
— Ptah, 230.
— the Nile, 231.
— Amon, 232, 237, 238.
— Pantheistic, 240, 242.
— to Hathor, 249.
IBIS, 120, 247.
Ideography in modern writing, 179.
Idolatry, 155.
'lepof, etymology of, 99.
Imago, a ghost, 155.
Inscription of Apis tablets, 36.
— Canopus, 21.
— obelisk of Philae, 17.
— Pasherenptah and his wife, 163.
— Ptolemy, son of Lagos, 146.
— Rosetta, 11.
Isaios, 148.
Isis, the Dawn, daughter of Earth
and Sky, sister and wife of Osi
ris, 116.
JABLONSKI, 9.
Jamblichos, 222.
Joshua, book of, 31.
Juvenal, 4.
KA, 140, ISS.
Kamit, the Black land, name of
Egypt, 23, 210.
King, the, as god, 167.
Kircher, 10.
Klaproth, 13, 16.
LAMENTATIONS of Isis and
Nephthys, 211.
Language of Egypt, 56.
Lauth, 20, 30, 70, 79, 103.
Lefebure, 20, 117, 127, 212.
Legend, 108. 109.
Leonidas, 148.

268

INDEX.

Lepsius, 19, 20, 91, 180, 203.
Lieblein, 20, 48.
Litanies of Ra, 244.
Lucretius, 230.
Lunar eclipses, 117.
Lustral water, 144.
Lyell, S3, 131 and note.
Lushington, 20.
MAATS, 73, 123.
Magical literature, 220.
Maine, Sir Henry, 130.
Maka, crocodile god, son of Set, 119.
Manetho, 49.
Manicheism, 131.
Manuscripts, Egyptian, Greek, La
tin and Hebrew, 176
Mariette, 19, 24, 36, 53, 136, 163,
247, 249.
Marriage, 80.
Maspero, 20, 98, 219.
Materialism, 289.
McLennan, 30, 31.
Mena, 33.
Menti, afterwards Amenti, 136.
Mentu, a name of the sun, 91.
Mentuhotep III., 47.
Moira, 167.
Monasticism, 130.
Monogamy, 81.
Monotheism, 92, 240.
Moon, the measurer, 120.
— names of Tehuti, 120. Chonsu,
161. An, 212.
— Osiris identified with, 116, 212.
Moral code, 73.
Moral doctrines of the Book of the
Dead, 202.
Moses not author of Pentateuch, 32.
— contemporary of Rameses II., 52.
Miiller, Professor Max, 58, 103, 104,
113, 122, 147, 226, 264.

Mykerinos, 133.
Myth, 109.
NAHRE-SE-CHNUMHOTEP—
tomb ot, 43, 138, 140.
Names, superstitious repetition of,
201.
NavUle, 20, 128, 207, 243.
Neb-anch, lord of life, name of cof
fin, 133.
Neith, the Dawn, mother of the
Sun, goddess of Sais, 186.
Nemmat, infernal block, 196.
Nephthys, the Sunset, sister of the
Sun and of the Dawn, wedded
to the darkness, and mother of
the Dusk, 116.
Newman, J. H., on the notion of
God, 223.
Nile, hymn to the, 232.
Nile mud, depth of, 32.
Nomes, 84.
Notation, decimal, 84.
Nu, father of the gods, the celestial
ocean, 113, 206, 207.
Nuk pu nuk, 234.
Nuntar, nasalized form of nutar, 99.
Nut, goddess, Heaven, 113.
Nutar, its meaning, 96.
Nutar nutra=E\ Shaddai, 102.
Nutra, 98.
Nutrit, name of tovra, 102. Eye
ball, 102.
''One of One,'' 96.
Origen, 2, 251.
Osiris, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 114, 116.
Owen, Prof., 36.
Oxyrinchus, 223.
PALIN. 10.
Pantheism, 240.

INDEX.

269

Papyri, age of, 175.
Paradigms, 38.
Pasherenptah, 146, 163, 252.
Pentaur, 61.
Perring, 44.
Persia, 147, 133, 137.
Phallic emblems, imaginary, 202.
Philo. 7.
Philostratos, 7.
Pierret, 20, 213.
Pietschmann, 264.
Pegnorius, 11.
Pithom and Rameses, 39.
Pitris, 129.
Pleyte, 20, 219.
Plutarch, 109, 251,
Polygamy, 81.
Polytheism, 88.
Porphyry, 8, 222.
Possession, 160.
Pott on Proper Names, no.
Power, words of, 200.
Ptah, the Opener, the Artist, 185.
Ptah-hotep, Maxims o^ 78, 104, 183.
Pyramid, date of Great, 31.
Pythagorean system not of Egyptian
origin, 190, 256.
QUTNA, 24.
RA, the Sun, 113.
Ram of Mendes, 248.
Rameses, name of, 38.
Rameses II., great inscription at
Abydos, 141.
— prayer to Amon, 237.
Reinisch, 20.
Renan, 62.
Renenet, 166.
Revillout, 264.
Rhind papyri, 218.
Robiou, 20.

Rochemonteix, 20.
Romien, 30.
Rosetta inscriptions, 11.
Rossi, 20, 38.
Roug^, E. de, ig, 22, 41, 4g, 58, 92,
98, 102, 105, 123, 179, 203, 206,
207.
Rojige, J. de, 20.
Royal Lists, 28, 38.
— Abydos, 39.
— Karnak, 38.
— Saqara, 38.
SALVOLINI, 18.
Sata, 189.
Savages, habits of, worthless as evi
dence of ancient belief, 129.
Sciaparelli, 20.
Szedlo, 20.
Seb, the earth, husband of the Sky
and father of gods, 114.
— a goose so named, 113.
Sebekhotep, monuments, 46.
Sebekhotep III., statue of, 46.
Sechet, raging heat of the sun, 187.
Sekenen-Ra, 36.
Self-existence, 223.
Semench-ka-Ra, statue of 46.
Sepulchral rites, I2g.
Set, Darkness, 88, 114, 116, 117.
Seti I., father of Rameses II., his
sarcophagus, 2og.
Shadow, 136, 138.
Shai, the divider. Fate, 166.
Shu, the Air, 113.
Smer, a priestly official, 33.
Song of King Antuf, 72.
— of the Harper, 72.
— of the Oxen, 136.
Souls, 1S4.
— of Ra, 170.
Spencer, H., 66, 132, 134, 156.

270

INDEX.

Spinoza, 244.
Stanley on Apis tombs, 248.
— king's divinity, 171.
— Pyramids, 63.
Stern, 20, 203.
Sun, names of the :
— Ra, IIS. Osiris, 116. Horus, 118.
— Ptah, Opener, Artist, 185.
— Chnemu, Builder, 185.
— Tmu, Closer, 186.
— Chepera, Scarabaeus in his bark,
. ig8.
— Sebek, Crocodile, 247.
Suten-hotep-ta, 139.
Symbols, 140.
TANEN, 186.
Tebha=Typhon, 118.
Techu, meaning of, 120.
Tefnut, goddess, the Dew, 113, 260.
Tehuti, Thoth, the Moon, 120, 124.
Tehutimes I'V., dream of, 162.
Temples, 83.
Thoth, 120.
Thunder, roaring of a lion, 260.
— bellowing of a bull, 260.
Timokles, 3.

Tmu, or Atmu, name of the sun, 88,
206.
Tomb, parts of an Egyptian, 122.
Triads, world beneath the earth, 209.
UNBU, son of Nu and Nut, name
of Osiris, 113.
Unnefer, name of Osiris, 212.
Uranes, a celestial stream in the
Tuat, 209.
Usertsen (wrongly called Userte
sen), 44.
¦Valens, edict against the monks of
Egypt, 222.
¦Wescher, 147.
¦Wiedeman, 20, 36, 217.
¦Wilkinson, 69, 134.
Xenophanes of Colophon, 3.
¦yama, 114.
Young, 13. «
Zoega, 14.
Zoolatry, i, 245.

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'>^- "

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