Myth, Ritual And Religion Volume II Part 10

It is impossible here to do more than indicate the kind of modification which Egyptian religion underwent. Throughout it remained constant in certain features, namely, the _local_ character of its G.o.ds, their usefulness to the dead (their _Chthonian_ aspect), their tendency to be merged into the sun, Ra, the great type and symbol and source of life, and, finally, their inability to shake off the fur and feathers of the beasts, the earliest form of their own development. Thus life, death, sky, sun, bird, beast and man are all blended in the religious conceptions of Egypt. Here follow two hymns to Osiris, hymns of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties, which ill.u.s.trate the confusion of lofty and almost savage ideas, the coexistence of notions from every stage of thought, that make the puzzle of Egyptian mythology.

"Hail to thee, Osiris, eldest son of Seb, greatest of the six deities born of Nut, chief favourite of thy father, Ra, the father of fathers; king of time, master of eternity; one in his manifestations, terrible.

When he left the womb of his mother he united all the crowns, he fixed the urseus (emblem of sovereignty) on his head. G.o.d of many shapes, G.o.d of the unknown name, thou who hast many names in many provinces; if Ra rises in the heavens, it is by the will of Osiris; if he sets, it is at the sight of his glory."*

In another hymn** Osiris is thus addressed: "King of eternity, great G.o.d, risen from the waters that were in the beginning, strong hawk, king of G.o.ds, master of souls, king of terrors, lord of crowns, thou that art great in Hnes, that dost appear at Mendes in the likeness of a ram, monarch of the circle of G.o.ds, king of Amenti (Hades), revered of G.o.ds and men, who so knoweth humility and reckoneth deeds of righteousness, thereby knows he Osiris."***

* From Abydos, nineteenth dynasty. Maspero, _Musee de Boulaq_, pp. 49,50.

** Twentieth dynasty. _Op. cit._, p. 48.

*** "This phase of religious thought," says Mr. Page Renouf, speaking of what he calls _monotheism_, "is chiefly presented to us in a large number of hymns, beginning with the earliest days of the eighteenth dynasty. It is certainly much more ancient, but.... none of the hymns of that time have come down to us." See a very remarkable pantheistic hymn to Osiris, "lord of holy transformations," in a pa.s.sage cited, _Hib. Lect_., p. 218, and the hymns to Amnion Ra, "closely approaching the language of monotheism," pp. 225, 226. Excellent examples of pantheistic litanies of Ra are translated from originals of the nineteenth dynasty, in _Records of the Past_, viii. 105-128. The royal Osiris is identified with Ra. Here, too, it is told how Ra smote Apap, the serpent of evil, the Egyptian Ahi.

Here the n.o.blest moral sentiments are blended with Oriental salutations in the wors.h.i.+p of a G.o.d who, for the moment, is recognised as lord of lords, but who is also a ram at Mendes. This apparent confusion of ideas, and this a.s.sertion of supremacy for a G.o.d who, in the next hymn, is subjected to another G.o.d, mark civilised polytheism; but the confusion was increased by the extreme age of the Egyptian faith, and by the doubt that prevailed as to the meaning of tradition. "The seventeenth chapter of the _Book of the Dead_" which seems to contain a statement of the system of the universe as understood at Heliopolis under the first dynasties, "is known to us by several examples of the eleventh and twelfth dynasties." _Each of the verses had already been interpreted in three or four different ways_; so different, that, according to one school, the Creator, _Ra-Show_, was the solar fire; according to another school, not the fire, but the waters! The _Book of the Dead_, in fact, is no book, but collections of pamphlets, so to speak, of very different dates. "Plan or unity cannot be expected," and glosses only some four thousand years old have become imbedded in really ancient texts.* Fifteen centuries later the number of interpretations had considerably increased.**

Where the Egyptians themselves were in helpless doubt, it would be vain to offer complete explanations of their opinions and practices in detail; but it is possible, perhaps, to account for certain large elements of their beliefs, and even to untie some of the knots of the Osirian myth.

The strangest feature in the rites of Egypt was animal-wors.h.i.+p, which appeared in various phases. There was the local adoration of a beast, a bird, or fish, to which the neighbours of other districts were indifferent or hostile. There was the presence of the animal in the most sacred _penetralia_ of the temple; and there was the G.o.d conceived of, on the whole, as anthropomorphic, but often represented in art, after the twelfth dynasty, as a man or woman with the head of a bird or beast.***

* Cf. Tiele, _Hist Egypt_. Rel., pp. 26-29, and notes.

** Maspero, _Musee de Boulaq_, p. 149.

*** As to the animals which were sacred and might not be eaten in various nomes, an account will be found in Wilkinson's _Ancient Egyptians_, ii. 467. The English reader will find many beast-headed G.o.ds in the ill.u.s.trations to vol. iii. The edition referred to is Birch's, London, 1878.

A more scientific authority is Lanzoni, _Dizion. Mit_.

These points in Egyptian religion have been the great puzzle both of antiquity and of modern mythology. The common priestly explanations varied. Sometimes it was said that the G.o.ds had concealed themselves in the guise of beasts during the revolutionary wars of Set against Horus.*

Often, again, animal-wors.h.i.+p was interpreted as symbolical; it was not the beast, but the qualities which he personified that were adored.**

Thus Anubis, really a jackal, is a dog, in the explanations of Plutarch, and is said to be wors.h.i.+pped for his fidelity, or because he can see in the night, or because he is the image of time. "As he brought forth all things out of himself, and contains all things within himself, he gets the t.i.tle of dog."*** Once more, and by a nearer approach to what is probably the truth, the beast-G.o.ds were said to be survivals of the badges (representing animals) of various tribal companies in the forces of Osiris. Such were the ideas current in Graeco-Roman speculation, nor perhaps is there any earlier evidence as to the character of native interpretation of animal-wors.h.i.+p. The opinion has also been broached that beast-wors.h.i.+p in Egypt is a refraction from the use of hieroglyphs.

If the picture of a beast was one of the signs in the writing of a G.o.d's name, adoration might be transferred to the beast from the G.o.d. It is by no means improbable that this process had its share in producing the results.**** Some of the explanations of animal-wors.h.i.+p which were popular of old are still in some favour.

* De Is. et Os., lxxii.

** Op. cit., xi.

*** Ibid., xliv.

**** Pietschmann, op. cit., p. 163, contends that the animal-wors.h.i.+p is older than these Egyptian modes of writing the divine names, say of Amnion Ra or Hathor. Moreover, the signs were used in writing the names because the G.o.ds were conceived of in these animal shapes.

Mr. Le Page Renouf appears to hold that there was something respectably mythical in the wors.h.i.+p of the inhabitants of zoological and botanical gardens, something holy apparent at least to the devout.* He quotes the opinion attributed to Apollonius of Tyana, that the beasts were symbols of deity, not deities, and this was the view of "a grave opponent".

Mr. Le Page Renouf also mentions Porphyry's theory, that "under the semblance of animals the Egyptians wors.h.i.+p the universal power which the G.o.ds have revealed in the various forms of living nature".** It is evident, of course, that all of these theories may have been held by the learned in Egypt, especially after the Christian era, in the times of Apollonius and Porphyry; but that throws little light on the motives and beliefs of the pyramid-builders many thousands of years before, or of the contemporary peasants with their wors.h.i.+p of cats and alligators. In short, the systems of symbolism were probably made after the facts, to account for practices whose origin was obscure. Yet another hypothesis is offered by Mr. Le Page Renouf, and in the case of Set and the hippopotamus is shared by M. Maspero. Tiele also remarks that some beasts were promoted to G.o.dhead comparatively late, because their names resembled names of G.o.ds.***

* _Hibbert Lectures_, pp. 6, 7.

** _De Abst_., iv. c. 9.

*** _Theolog. Tidjsch_., 12th year, p. 261.

The G.o.ds, in certain cases, received their animal characteristics by virtue of certain unconscious puns or mistakes in the double senses of words. Seb is the earth. Seb is also the Egyptian name for a certain species of goose, and, in accordance with the _h.o.m.onymous_ tendency of the mythological period of all nations, the G.o.d and the bird were identified.* Seb was called "the Great Cackler".** Again, the G.o.d Thoth was usually represented with the head of an ibis. A mummied ibis "in the human form is made to represent the G.o.d Thoth".*** This connection between Thoth and the ibis Mr. Le Page Renouf explains at some length as the result of an etymological confusion.**** Thus metaphorical language reacted upon thought, and, as in other religions, obtained the mastery.

While these are the views of a distinguished modern Egyptologist, another Egyptologist, not less distinguished, is of an entirely opposite opinion as to the question on the whole. "It is possible, nay, certain,"

writes M. Maspero, "that during the second Theban empire the learned priests may have thought it well to attribute a symbolical sense to certain b.e.s.t.i.a.l deities. But whatever they may have wors.h.i.+pped in Thoth-Ibis, it was a bird, and not a hieroglyph, that the first wors.h.i.+ppers of the ibis adored."***** M. Meyer is of the same opinion, and so are Professor Tiele and M. Perrot.******

* For a statement of the theory of "h.o.m.onymous tendency,"

see Selected Essays, Max Muller, i. 299, 245. For a criticism of the system, see Mythology in Encyclop, Brit., or in La Mythologie, A. Lang, Paris, 1886.

** Hibbert Lectures, 1880, p. 111.

*** Wilkinson, iii. 325.

**** Op. cit., pp. 116, 117, 237.

***** Revue de V Histoire des Religions, vol. i.

****** Meyer, Oeschichte des Alterthums, p. 72; Tiele, Manuel, p. 45; Perrot and Chipiez, Egyptian Art, English transl., i. 54. Hist. Egypt. Rel., pp. 97, 103. Tiele finds the origin of this animal-wors.h.i.+p in "animism," and supposes that the original colonists or conquerors from Asia found it prevalent in and adopted it from an African population.

Professor Tiele does not appear, when he wrote this chapter, to have observed the world-wide diffusion of animal-wors.h.i.+p in totem ism, for he says, "Nowhere else does the wors.h.i.+p of animals prevail so extensively as among African peoples".

While the learned have advanced at various periods these conflicting theories of the origin of Egyptian animal-wors.h.i.+p, a novel view was introduced by Mr. M'Lennan. In his essays on _Plant and Animal Wors.h.i.+p_, he regarded Egyptian animal-wors.h.i.+p as only a consecrated and elaborate survival of totemism. Mr. Le Page Renouf has ridiculed the "school-boy authorities on which Mr. M'Lennan relied".* Nevertheless, Mr. M'Lennan's views are akin to those to which M. Maspero and MM. Perrot and Chipiez are attached, and they have also the support of Professor Sayce.

"These animal forms, in which a later myth saw the shapes a.s.sumed by the affrighted G.o.ds during the great war between Horus and Typhon, take us back to a remote prehistoric age, when the religious creed of Egypt was still totemism. They are survivals from a long-forgotten past, and prove that Egyptian civilisation was of slow and independent growth, the latest stage only of which is revealed to us by the monuments. Apis of Memphis, Mnevis of Heliopolis, and Pachis of Hermonthis are all links that bind together the Egypt of the Pharaohs and the Egypt of the stone age. These were the sacred animals of the clans which first settled in these localities, and their identification with the deities of the official religion must have been a slow process, never fully carried out, in fact, in the minds of the lower cla.s.ses."**

* Hibbert Lectures, pp. 6, 30.

** Herodotus, p. 344.

Thus it appears that, after all, even on philological showing, the religions and myths of a civilised people may be ill.u.s.trated by the religions and myths of savages. It is in the study of savage totemism that we too seek a partial explanation of the singular Egyptian practices that puzzled the Greeks and Romans, and the Egyptians themselves. To some extent the Egyptian religious facts were purely totemistic in the strict sense.

Some examples of the local practices and rites which justify this opinion may be offered. It has been shown that the totem of each totem-kindred among the lower races is sacred, and that there is a strict rule against eating, or even making other uses of, the sacred animal or plant.* At the same time, one totem-kindred has no scruple about slaying or eating the totem of any other kindred. Now similar rules prevailed in Egypt, and it is not easy for the school which regards the holy beasts as _emblems_, or as the results of misunderstood language, to explain why an emblem was adored in one village and persecuted and eaten in the next. But if these usages be survivals of totemism, the practice at once ceases to be isolated, and becomes part of a familiar, if somewhat obscure, body of customs found all over the world. "The same animal which was revered and forbidden to be slaughtered for the altar or the table in one part of the country was sacrificed and eaten in another."**

* This must be taken generally. See Spencer and Gillen in the _Natives of Central Australia_, where each kin helps the others to kill its own totem.

** Wilkinson, _Ancient Egyptians_, ii. 467.

Herodotus bears testimony to this habit in an important pa.s.sage. He remarks that the people of the Theban nome whose G.o.d, Ammon Ra, or Khnum, was ram-headed, abstain from sheep and sacrifice goats; but the people of Mendes, whose G.o.d was goat-headed, abstain from goats, sacrifice sheep, and hold all goats in reverence.*

These local rites, at least in Roman times, caused civil brawls, for the customs of one town naturally seemed blasphemous to neighbours with a different sacred animal. Thus when the people of Dog-town were feasting on the fish called oxyrrhyncus, the citizens of the town which revered the oxyrrhyncus began to eat dogs, to which there is no temptation.

Hence arose a riot.**

* Herodotus, ii. 42-46. The goat-headed Mendesian G.o.d Pan, as Herodotus calls him, is recognised by Dr. Birch as the goat-headed Ba-en-tattu. Wilkinson, ii. 512, note 2.

** De Is. et Os., 71, 72.

The most singular detail in Juvenal's famous account of the war between the towns of Ombi and Tentyra does not appear to be a mere invention.

They fought "because each place loathes the G.o.ds of its neighbours".

The turmoil began at a sacred feast, and the victors devoured one of the vanquished. Now if the religion were really totemistic, the wors.h.i.+ppers would be of the same blood as the animal they wors.h.i.+pped, and in eating an adorer of the crocodile, his enemies would be avenging the eating of their own sacred beast. When that beast was a crocodile, probably nothing but starvation or religious zeal could induce people to taste his unpalatable flesh. Yet "in the city Apollinopolis it is the custom that every one must by all means eat a bit of crocodile; and on one day they catch and kill as many crocodiles as they can, and lay them out in front of the temple ". The mythic reason was that Typhon, in his flight from Horus, took the shape of a crocodile. Yet he was adored at various places where it was dangerous to bathe on account of the numbers and audacity of the creatures. Mummies of crocodiles are found in various towns where the animal was revered.*

It were tedious to draw up a list of the local sacred beasts of Egypt;**

but it seems manifest that the explanation of their wors.h.i.+p as totems at once colligates it with a familiar set of phenomena. The symbolic explanations, on the other hand, are clearly fanciful, mere _jeux d'esprit_. For example, the sacred shrew-mouse was locally adored, was carried to Butis on its death, and its mummy buried with care, but the explanation that it "received divine honours because it is blind, and darkness is more ancient than light," by no means accounts for the mainly _local_ respect paid to the little beast.***