Ten Great Religions Part 21

Thus, the beginning of the first dynasty is placed by Bockh at B.C. 5702, by Lepsius B.C. 3892, by Bunsen B.C. 3623, by Brugsch B.C. 4455, by Lauth B.C. 4157, by Duncker 3233.[172] The period of the builders of the great Pyramids is fixed by Bunsen at B.C. 3229, by Lepsius at B.C. 3124, by Brugsch at B.C. 3686, by Lauth at B.C. 3450, and by Bockh at B.C.

4933.[173]

The Egyptian priests told Herodotus that there were three hundred and thirty-one kings, from Menes to Moeris, whose names they read out of a book. After him came eleven others, of whom Sethos was the last. From Osiris to Amasis they counted fifteen thousand years, though Herodotus did not believe this statement. If the three hundred and forty-two kings really existed, it would make Menes come B.C. 9150,--at an average of twenty-five years' reign to each king. Diodorus saw in Egypt a list of four hundred and seventy-nine kings. But he says in another place that Menes lived about four thousand seven hundred years before his time.

Manetho tells us that from Menes there were thirty dynasties, who reigned five thousand three hundred and sixty-six years. But he gives a list of four hundred and seventy-two kings in these dynasties, to the time of Cambyses. The contradictions are so great, and the modes of reconciling Manetho, Herodotus, Diodorus, Eratosthenes, and the monuments are so inadequate, that we must regard the whole question of the duration of the monarchy as unsettled. But from the time when the calendar must have been fixed, from the skill displayed in the Pyramids, and other reasons independent of any chronology, Duncker considers the reign of Menes as old as B.C. 3500.

The history of Egypt is divided into three periods, that of the old, the middle, and the new monarchy. The first extends from the foundation of the united kingdom by Menes to the conquest of the country by the Hyksos. The second is from this conquest by the Hyksos till their expulsion. The third, from the re-establishment of the monarchy by Amosis to its final conquest by Persia. The old monarchy contained twelve dynasties; the Hyksos or middle monarchy, five; the new monarchy, thirteen: in all, thirty.

The Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, were at first supposed to be the Hebrews: but this hypothesis adapted itself to none of the facts. A recent treatise by M. Chabas[174] shows that the Hyksos were an Asiatic people, occupying the country to the northeast of Egypt. After conquering Lower Egypt, Apapi was king of the Hyksos and Tekenen-Ra ruled over the native Egyptians of the South. A papyrus, as interpreted by M. Chabas, narrates that King Apapi wors.h.i.+pped only the G.o.d Sutech (Set), and refused to allow the Egyptian G.o.ds to be adored. This added to the war of races a war of religion, which resulted in the final expulsion of the Shepherds, about B.C. 1700. The Hyksos are designated on the monuments and in the papyri as the "Scourge" or "Plague," equivalent in Hebrew to the _Tzir'ah,_ commonly translated "hornet," but evidently the same as the Hebrew _tzavaath_, "plague," and the Arabic _tzeria_, "scourge," or "plague."[175]

According to the learned Egyptologist, Dr. Brugsch, the Hebrew slaves in Egypt are referred to in a papyrus in the British Museum of the date of Ramses II. (B.C. 1400), in a description by a scribe named Pinebsa of the new city of Ramses. He tells how the slaves throng around him to present pet.i.tions against their overseers. Another papyrus reads (Lesley, "Man's Origin and Destiny"): "The people have erected twelve buildings. They made their tale of bricks daily, till they were finished." The first corroboration of the biblical narrative which the Egyptian monuments afford, and the first synchronism between Jewish and Egyptian history, appear in the reign of Ramses II., about B.C. 1400, in the nineteenth dynasty.

It appears from the monuments and from the historians that somewhere about B.C. 2000, or earlier, this great movement of warlike nomadic tribes occurred, which resulted in the conquest of Lower Egypt by the pastoral people known as Hyksos. It was perhaps a movement of Semitic races, the Bedouins of the desert, like that which nearly three thousand years after united them as warriors of Islam to overflow North Africa, Syria, Persia, and Spain. They oppressed Egypt for five hundred years (Brugsch), and appear on the monuments under the name of Amu (the herdsmen) or of Aadu (the hated ones). Their kings resided at Tanis (in Egyptian Avaris), in the Delta. That their conquests had a religious motive, and were made, like that of Mohammed, in the interest of monotheism, seems possible. At all events, we find one of them, Apapi, erecting a temple to Sutech (the Semitic Baal), and refusing to allow the wors.h.i.+p of other deities.[176]

The majority of Egyptologists believe that the Hebrews entered Egypt while these Hyksos kings, men of the same Semitic family and monotheistic tendencies, were ruling in Lower Egypt. The bare subterranean temple discovered by M. Mariette, with the well near it filled with broken statues of the Egyptian G.o.ds, is an indication of those tendencies. The "other king, who knew not Joseph," was a king of the eighteenth dynasty, who conquered the Hyksos and drove them out of Egypt. Apparently the course of events was like that which many centuries later occurred in Spain. In both cases, the original rulers of the land, driven to the mountains, gradually reconquered their country step by step. The result of this reconquest of the country would also be in Egypt, as it was in Spain, that the Semitic remnants left in the land would be subject to a severe and oppressive rule. The Jews in Egypt, like the Moors in Spain, were victims of a cruel bondage. Then began the most splendid period of Egyptian history, during the seventeenth, sixteenth, fifteenth, and fourteenth centuries before Christ. The Egyptian armies overran Syria, Asia Minor, and Armenia as far as the Tigris.

Ramses II., the most powerful monarch of this epoch, is probably the king whose history is given by Herodotus and other Greek writers under the name of Sesostris.[177] M. de Rouge believes himself able to establish this ident.i.ty. He found in the Museum at Vienna a stone covered with inscriptions, and dedicated by a person whose name is given as Ramses Mei-Amoun, exactly in the hieroglyphics of the great king. But this person's name is also written elsewhere on the stone _Ses_, and a third time as _Ses Mei-amoun,_ showing that _Ses_ was a common abbreviation of Ramses. It is also written _Sesu_, or _Sesesu_, which is very like the form in which Diodorus writes Sesostris, namely, _Sesoosis_.[178] Now Ramses II., whose reign falls about B.C. 1400, erected a chain of fortresses to defend the northeastern border of Egypt against the Syrian nomads. One of these fortresses was named from the King Ramses, and another Pachtum. The papyri contain accounts of these cities. One papyrus, in the British Museum,[179] is a description by a scribe named Pinebsa, of the aspect of the city Ramses, and of the pet.i.tions of the laborers for relief against their overseers. These laborers are called _Apuru_, Hebrews. In a papyrus of the Leyden Museum, an officer reports to his superior thus: "May my lord be pleased. I have distributed food to the soldiers and to the Hebrews, dragging stones for the great city Ramses Meia-moum. I gave them food monthly." This corresponds with the pa.s.sage (Exodus i. 11): "They built for Pharaoh treasure-cities, Pithom and Raamses."[180]

The birth of Moses fell under the reign of Ramses II. The Exodus was under that of his successor, Menepthes. This king had fallen on evil times; his power was much inferior to that of his great predecessor; and he even condescended to propitiate the anti-Egyptian element, by wors.h.i.+pping its G.o.ds. He has left his inscription on the monuments with the t.i.tle, "Wors.h.i.+pper of Sutech-Baal in Tanis." The name of Moses is Egyptian, and signifies "the child."

"Joseph," says Brugsch, "was never at the court of an Egyptian Pharaoh, but found his place with the Semitic monarchs, who reigned at Avaris-Tanis in the Delta, and whose power extended from this point as far as Memphis and Heliopolis." The "king who knew not Joseph" was evidently the restored Egyptian dynasty of Thebes. These monarchs would be naturally averse to all the Palestinian inhabitants of the land. And the monuments of their reigns represent the labors of subject people, under task-masters, cutting, carrying, and laying stones for the walls of cities.

To what race do the Egyptians belong? The only historic doc.u.ment which takes us back so far as this is the list of nations in the tenth chapter of Genesis. We cannot, indeed, determine the time when it was written. But Bunsen, Ebers,[181] and other ethnologists are satisfied that the author of this chapter had a knowledge of the subject derived either from the Phoenicians or the Egyptians. Ewald places his epoch with that of the early Jewish kings. According to this table the Egyptians were descended from Ham, the son of Noah, and were consequently of the same original stock with the j.a.phetic and Semitic nations. They were not negroes, though their skin was black, or at least dark.[182] According to Herodotus they came from the heart of Africa; according to Genesis (chap. x.) from Asia.

Which is the correct view?

The Egyptians themselves recognized no relations.h.i.+p with the negroes, who only appear on the monuments as captives or slaves.

History, therefore, helps us little in this question of race. How is it with Comparative Philology and Comparative Anatomy?

The Coptic language is an idiom of the old Egyptian tongue, which seems to belong to no known linguistic group. It is related to other African languages only through the lexicon, and similarly with the Indo-European.

Some traces of grammatic likeness to the Semitic may be found in it; yet the view of Bunsen and Schwartz, that in very ancient times it arose from the union of Semitic and Indo-European languages, remains only a hypothesis.[183] Merx (in Schenkel's Bibel-Lexicon) says this view "rests upon a wish formed in the interest of the Philosophy of History; and the belief of a connection between these tongues is not justified by any scientific study of philology. No such ethnological affinity can be granted,--a proof of which is that all facts in its favor are derived from common roots, none from common grammar." Benfey, however, a.s.sumed two great branches of Semitic nationalities, one flowing into Africa, the other into Western Asia.[184] Ebers[185] gives some striking resemblances between Egyptian and Chaldaic words, and says he possesses more than three hundred examples of this kind; and in Bunsen's fifth volume are comparative tables which give as their result that a third part of the old Egyptian words in Coptic literature are Semitic, and a tenth part Indo-European. If these statements are confirmed, they may indicate some close early relations between these races.

The anatomy of the mummies seems to show a wide departure from negro characteristics. The skull, chin, forehead, bony system, facial angle, hair, limbs, are all different. The chief resemblances are in the flat nose, and form of the backbone.[186] Scientific ethnologists have therefore usually decided that the old Egyptians were an Asiatic people who had become partially amalgamated with the surrounding African tribes.

Max Duncker comes to this conclusion,[187] and says that the Berber languages are the existing representatives of the old Egyptian. This is certainly true as concerns the Copts, whose very name is almost identical with the word "Gupti," the old name from which the Greeks formed the term aegypti.[188] Alfred Maury (Revue d. D. Mondes, September, 1867) says that, "according to all appearances, Egypt was peopled from Asia by that Hamitic race which comprised the tribes of Palestine, Arabia, and Ethiopia. Its ancient civilization was, consequently, the sister of that which built Babylon and Nineveh. In the valley of the Nile, as in those of the Euphrates and the Tigris, religion gave the motive to civilization, and in all the three nations there was a priesthood in close alliance with an absolute monarchy." M. de Rouge is of the same opinion. In his examination of the monuments of the oldest dynasties, he finds the name given to the Egyptians by themselves to be merely "the Men" (Rut),--a word which by the usual interchange of R with L, and of T with D, is identical with the Hebrew Lud (plural Ludim), whom the Book of Genesis declares to have been a son of Misraim. This term was applied by the Israelites to all the races on the southeast sh.o.r.e of the Mediterranean. It is, therefore, believed by M. de Rouge that the Egyptians were of the same family with these Asiatic tribes on the sh.o.r.es of Syria. Here, then, as in so many other cases, a new civilization may have come from the union of two different races,--one Asiatic, the other African. Asia furnished the brain, Africa the fire, and from the immense vital force of the latter and the intellectual vigor of the former sprang that wonderful civilization which illuminated the world during at least five thousand years.

-- 6. The Three Orders of G.o.ds.

The Egyptian theology, or doctrine of the G.o.ds, was of two kinds,--esoteric and exoteric, that is, an interior theology for the initiated, and an exterior theology for the uninitiated. The exterior theology, which was for the whole people, consisted of the mythological accounts of Isis and Osiris, the judgments of the dead, the transmigration of the soul, and all matters connected with the ceremonial wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.ds. But the interior, hidden theology is supposed to have related to the unity and spirituality of the Deity.

Herodotus informs us that the G.o.ds of the Egyptians were in three orders; and Bunsen believes that he has succeeded in restoring them from the monuments. There are eight G.o.ds of the first order, twelve G.o.ds of the second order, and seven G.o.ds of the third order. The G.o.ds of the third order are those of the popular wors.h.i.+p, but those of the first seem to be of a higher and more spiritual cla.s.s. The third cla.s.s of G.o.ds were representative of the elements of nature, the sun, fire, water, earth, air. But the G.o.ds of the first order were the G.o.ds of the priesthood, understood by them alone, and expressing ideas which they shrank from communicating to the people. The spiritual and ideal part of their religion the priests kept to themselves as something which the people were incapable of understanding. The first eight G.o.ds seem to have been a representation of a process of divine development or emanation, and const.i.tuted a transition from the absolute spiritualism of the Hindoos to the religion of nature and humanity in the West. The Hindoo G.o.ds were emanations of spirit: the G.o.ds of Greece are idealizations of Nature. But the Egyptian G.o.ds represent spirit pa.s.sing into matter and form.

Accordingly, if we examine in detail the G.o.ds of the first order, who are eight, we find them to possess the general principle of self-revelation, and to const.i.tute, taken together, a process of divine development. These eight, according to Bunsen, are Amn, or Ammon; Khem, or Chemmis; Mut, the Mother G.o.ddess; Num, or Kneph; Seti, or Sate; Phtah, the Artist G.o.d; Net, or Neith, the G.o.ddess of Sais; and Ra, the Sun, the G.o.d of Heliopolis. But according to Wilkinson they stand in a little different order: 1. Neph, or Kneph; 2. Amun, or Ammon; 3. Pthah; 4. Khem; 5. Sate; 6. Maut, or Mut; 7.

Pasht, or Diana; and 8. Neith, or Minerva, in which list Pasht, the G.o.ddess of Bubastis, is promoted out of the second order and takes the place of Ra, the Sun, who is degraded.

Supposing these lists to be substantially correct, we have, as the root of the series, Ammon, the Concealed G.o.d, or Absolute Spirit. His t.i.tles indicate this dignity. The Greeks recognized him as corresponding to their Zeus. He is styled King of the G.o.ds, the Ruler, the Lord of Heaven, the Lord of the Thrones, the Horus or G.o.d of the Two Egypts. Thebes was his city. According to Manetho, his name means concealment; and the root "Amn"

also means to veil or conceal. His original name was Amn; thus it stands in the rings of the twelfth dynasty. But after the eighteenth dynasty it is Amn-Ra, meaning the Sun. "Incontestably," says Bunsen, "he stands in Egypt as the head of the great cosmogonic development."

Next comes Kneph, or G.o.d as Spirit,--the Spirit of G.o.d, often confounded with Amn, also called Cnubis and Num. Both Plutarch and Diodorus tell us that his name signifies Spirit, the Num having an evident relation with the Greek p?e?a, and the Coptic word "Nef," meaning also to blow. So too the Arabic "Nef" means breath, the Hebrew "Nuf," to flow, and the Greek p???, to breathe. At Esneh he is called the Breath of those in the Firmament; at Elephantina, Lord of the Inundations. He wears the ram's head with double horns (by mistake of the Greeks attributed to Ammon), and his wors.h.i.+p was universal in Ethiopia. The sheep are sacred to him, of which there were large flocks in the Thebaid, kept for their wool. And the serpent or asp, a sign of kingly dominion,--hence called basilisk,--is sacred to Kneph. As Creator, he appears under the figure of a potter with a wheel. In Philae he is so represented, forming on his wheel a figure of Osiris, with the inscription, "Num, who forms on his wheel the Divine Limbs of Osiris." He is also called the Sculptor of all men, also the G.o.d who made the sun and moon to revolve. Porphyry says that Pthah sprang from an egg which came from the mouth of Kneph, in which he is supported by high monumental authority.

The result of this seems to be that Kneph represents the absolute Being as Spirit, the Spirit of G.o.d moving on the face of the waters,--a moving spirit pervading the formless chaos of matter.

Perhaps the next G.o.d in the series is Pthah, by the Greeks called Hephaestus, or Vulcan, representing formation, creation by the truth, stability; called in the inscriptions, Lord of Truth, Lord of the Beautiful Face, Father of the Beginnings, moving the Egg of the Sun and Moon. With Horapollo and Plutarch, we may consider the Scarabeus, or Beetle, which is his sign, as an emblem of the world and its creation. An inscription calls him Creator of all things in the world. Iamblicus says, "The G.o.d who creates with truth is Pthah." He was also connected with the sun, as having thirty fingers,--the number of days in a month. He is represented sometimes as a deformed dwarf.

The next G.o.d in the series is Khem, the Greek Pan,--the principle of generation, sometimes holding the ploughshare.

Then come the feminine principles corresponding with these three latter G.o.ds. Amun has naturally no companion. Mut, the mother, is the consort of Khem the father. Seti,--the Ray or Arrow,--a female figure, with the horns of a cow, is the companion of Kneph. And Neith, or Net, the G.o.ddess of Sais, belongs to Pthah. The Greek Minerva Athene is thought to be derived from Neith by an inversion of the letters,[189]--the Greeks writing from left to right and the Egyptians from right to left. Her name means, "I came from myself." Clemens says that her great shrine at Sais has an open roof with the inscription, "I am all that was and is and is to be, and no mortal has lifted my garment, and the fruit I bore is Helios." This would seem to identify her with Nature.

For the eighth G.o.d of the first order we may take either Helios or Ra or Phra, the Sun-G.o.d; from whence came the name of the Pharaohs, or we may take Pasht, Bubastis, the equivalent of the Greek Diana. On some accounts it would seem that Ra was the true termination of this cycle. We should then have, proceeding from the hidden abyss of pure Spirit, first a breathing forth, or spirit in motion; then creation, by the word of truth; then generation, giving life and growth; and then the female qualities of production, wisdom, and light, completed by the Sun-G.o.d, last of the series. Amn, or Ammon, the Concealed G.o.d, is the root, then the creative power in Kneph, then the generative power in Khem, the Demiurgic power in Ptah, the feminine creative principle of Nature in Neith, the productive principle in Mut, or perhaps the nouris.h.i.+ng principle, and then the living stimulus of growth, which carries all forward in Ra.

But we must now remember that two races meet in Egypt,--an Asiatic race, which brings the ideas of the East; and an Ethiopian, inhabitants of the land, who were already there. The first race brought the spiritual ideas which were embodied in the higher order of G.o.ds. The Africans were filled with the instinct of nature-wors.h.i.+p. These two tendencies were to be reconciled in the religion of Egypt. The first order of G.o.ds was for the initiated, and taught them the unity, spirituality, and creative power of G.o.d.[190] The third order--the circle of Isis and Osiris--were for the people, and were representative of the forms and forces of outward nature. Between the two come the second series,--a transition from the one to the other,--children of the higher G.o.ds, parents of the lower,--neither so abstract as the one nor so concrete as the other,--representing neither purely divine qualities on the one side, nor merely natural forces on the other, but rather the faculties and powers of man. Most of this series were therefore adopted by the Greeks, whose religion was one essentially based on human nature, and whose G.o.ds were all, or nearly all, the ideal representations of human qualities. Hence they found in Khunsu, child of Ammon, their Hercules, G.o.d of Strength; in Thoth, child of Kneph, they found Hermes, G.o.d of Knowledge; in Pecht, child of Pthah, they found their Artemis, or Diana, the G.o.ddess of Birth, protector of women; in Athor, or Hathor, they found their Aphrodite, G.o.ddess of Love. Seb was Chronos, or Time; and Nutpe was Rhea, wife of Chronos.

The third order of G.o.ds are the children of the second series, and are manifestations of the Divine in the outward universe. But though standing lowest in the scale, they were the most popular G.o.ds of the Pantheon; had more individuality and personal character than the others; were more universally wors.h.i.+pped throughout Egypt, and that from the oldest times.

"The Osiris deities," says Herodotus, "are the only G.o.ds wors.h.i.+pped throughout Egypt." "They stand on the oldest monuments, are the centre of all Egyptian wors.h.i.+p, and are perhaps the oldest original objects of reverence," says Bunsen. How can this be if they belong to a lower order of Deities, and what is the explanation of it? There is another historical fact also to be explained. Down to the time of Ramses, thirteen hundred years before Christ, Typhon, or Seth, the G.o.d of Destruction, was the chief of this third order, and the most venerated of all the G.o.ds. After that time a revolution occurred in the wors.h.i.+p, which overthrew Seth, and his name was chiselled out of the monuments, and the name of Amun inserted in its place. This was the only change which occurred in the Egyptian religion, so far as we know, from its commencement until the time of the Caesars.[191] An explanation of both these facts may be given, founded on the supposed amalgamation in Egypt of two races with their religions.

Supposing that the G.o.ds of the higher orders represented the religious ideas of a Semitic or Aryan race entering Egypt from Asia, and that the Osiris group were the G.o.ds of the African nature-wors.h.i.+p, which they found prevailing on their arrival, it is quite natural that the priests should in their cla.s.sification place their own G.o.ds highest, while they should have allowed the external wors.h.i.+p to go on as formerly, at least for a time. But, after a time, as the tone of thought became more elevated, they may have succeeded in subst.i.tuting for the G.o.d of Terror and Destruction a higher conception in the popular wors.h.i.+p.

The myth of Isis and Osiris, preserved for us by Plutarch, gives the most light in relation to this order of deities.

Seb and Nutpe, or Nut, called by the Greeks Chronos and Rhea, were the parents of this group. Seb is therefore Time, and Nut is Motion or perhaps s.p.a.ce. The Sun p.r.o.nounced a curse on them, namely, that she should not be delivered, on any day of the year. This perhaps implies the difficulty of the thought of Creation. But Hermes, or Wisdom, who loved Rhea, won, at dice, of the Moon, five days, the seventieth part of all her illuminations, which he added to the three hundred and sixty days, or twelve months. Here we have a hint of a correction of the calendar, the necessity of which awakened a feeling of irregularity in the processes of nature, admitting thereby the notion of change and a new creation. These five days were the birthdays of the G.o.ds. On the first Osiris is born, and a voice was heard saying, "The Lord of all things is now born." On the second day, Arueris-Apollo, or the elder Horus; on the third, Typhon, who broke through a hole in his mother's side; on the fourth, Isis; and on the fifth, Nepthys-Venus, or Victory. Osiris and Arueris are children of the Sun, Isis of Hermes, Typhon and Nepthys of Saturn.

Isis became the wife of Osiris, who went through the world taming it by means of oratory, poetry, and music. When he returned, Typhon took seventy-two men and also a queen of Ethiopia, and made an ark the size of Osiris's body, and at a feast proposed to give it to the one whom it should fit. Osiris got into it, and they fastened down the lid and soldered it and threw it into the Nile. Then Isis put on mourning and went to search for it, and directed her inquiries to little children, who were hence held by the Egyptians to have the faculty of divination. Then she found Anubis, child of Osiris, by Nepthys, wife of Typhon, who told her how the ark was entangled in a tree which grew up around it and hid it.

The king had made of this tree a pillar to support his house. Isis sat down weeping; the women of the queen came to her, she stroked their hair, and fragrance pa.s.sed into it. She was made nurse to the queen's child, fed him with her finger, and in the night-time, by means of a lambent flame, burned away his impurities. She then turned herself into a swallow and flew around the house, bewailing her fate. The queen watched her operations, and being alarmed cried out, and so robbed her child of immortality. Isis then begged the pillar, took it down, took out the chest, and cried so loud that the younger son of the king died of fright.

She then took the ark and the elder son and set sail. The cold air of the river chilled her, and she became angry and cursed it, and so dried it up.

She opened the chest, put her cheek to that of Osiris and wept bitterly.

The little boy came and peeped in; she gave him a terrible look, and he died of fright. Isis then came to her son Horus, who was at nurse at Buto.

Typhon, hunting by moonlight, saw the ark, with the body of Osiris, which he tore into fourteen parts and threw them about. Isis went to look for them in a boat made of papyrus, and buried each part in a separate place.

After this the soul of Osiris returned out of Hades to train up his son.

Then came a battle between Horus and Typhon, in which Typhon was vanquished, but Isis allowed him to escape. There are other less important incidents in the story, among them that Isis had another son by the soul of Osiris after his death, who is the G.o.d called Harpocrates, represented as lame and with his finger on his mouth.[192]

Plutarch declares that this story is symbolical, and mentions various explanations of the allegory. He rejects, at once, the rationalistic explanation, which turns these G.o.ds into eminent men,--sea-captains, etc.

"I fear," says he, "this would be to stir things that are not to be stirred, and to declare war (as Simonides says), not only against length of time, but also against many nations and families of mankind, whom a religious reverence towards these G.o.ds holds fast bound like men astonished and amazed, and would be no other than going about to remove so great and venerable names from heaven to earth, and thereby shaking and dissolving that wors.h.i.+p and persuasion that hath entered almost all men's const.i.tutions from their very birth, and opening vast doors to the atheists' faction, who convert all divine matters into human." "Others,"

he says, "consider these beings as demons intermediate between G.o.ds and men. And Osiris afterwards became Serapis, the Pluto of the under-world."

Other explanations of the myth are given by Plutarch. First, the geographical explanation. According to this, Osiris is Water, especially the Nile. Isis is Earth, especially the land of Egypt adjoining the Nile, and overflowed by it. Horus, their son, is the Air, especially the moist, mild air of Egypt. Typhon is Fire, especially the summer heat which dries up the Nile and parches the land. His seventy-two a.s.sociates are the seventy-two days of greatest heat, according to the Egyptian opinion.

Nepthys, his wife, sister of Isis, is the Desert outside of Egypt, but which in a higher inundation of the Nile being sometimes overflowed, becomes productive, and has a child by Osiris, named Anubis. When Typhon shuts Osiris into the ark, it is the summer heat drying up the Nile and confining it to its channel. This ark, entangled in a tree, is where the Nile divides into many mouths at the Delta and is overhung by the wood.

Isis, nursing the child of the king, the fragrance, etc., represent the earth nouris.h.i.+ng plants and animals. The body of Osiris, torn by Typhon into fourteen parts, signifies either the division of the Nile at its mouths or the pools of water left after the drying up of the inundation.

There is so much in this account which accords with the facts, that there can be no doubt of its correctness so far as it goes. At the same time it is evidently an incomplete explanation. The story means this, but something more. Beside the geographical view, Plutarch therefore adds a scientific and an astronomical explanation, as well as others more philosophical. According to these, Osiris is in general the productive, the creative power in nature; Isis, the female property of nature, hence called by Plato the nurse; and Typhon the destructive property in nature; while Horus is the mediator between creation and destruction. And thus we have the triad of Osiris, Typhon, and Horus, essentially corresponding to the Hindoo triad, Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu, and also to the Persian triad, Ormazd, Ahriman, and Mithra. And so this myth will express the Egyptian view of the conflict of good and evil in the natural world.

But it seems very likely that it was the object of the priests to elevate this Osiris wors.h.i.+p to a still higher meaning, making it an allegory of the struggles, sorrows, and self-recovery of the human soul. Every human soul after death took the name and symbols of Osiris, and then went into the under-world to be judged by him. Connected with this was the doctrine of transmigration, or the pa.s.sage of the soul through various bodies,--a doctrine brought out of Egypt by Pythagoras. These higher doctrines were taught in the mysteries. "I know them," says Herodotus, "but must not tell them." Iamblicus professes to explain them in his work on the Mysteries.

But it is not easy to say how much of his own Platonism he has mingled therewith. According to him, they taught in the mysteries that before all things was one G.o.d immovable in the solitude of unity. The One was to be venerated in silence. Then Emeph, or Neph, was G.o.d in his self-consciousness. After this in Amun, his intellect became truth, shedding light. Truth working by art is Pthah, and art producing good is Osiris.

Another remarkable fact must be at least alluded to. Bunsen says, that, according to the whole testimony of the monuments, Isis and Osiris not only have their roots in the second order, but are also themselves the first and the second order. Isis, Osiris, and Horus comprise all Egyptian mythology, with the exception of Amun and Neph. Of this fact I have seen no explanation and know of none, unless it be a sign of the purpose of the priests to unite the two systems of spiritualism and nature-wors.h.i.+p into one, and to elevate and spiritualize the lower order of G.o.ds.

One reason for thinking that the religious system of the priests was a compromise between several different original tendencies is to be found in the local wors.h.i.+p of special deities in various places. In Lower Egypt the highest G.o.d was Pthah, whom the Greeks identified with Vulcan; the G.o.d of fire or heat, father of the sun. He was in this region the chief G.o.d, corresponding to Ammon in Upper Egypt. Manetho says that Pthah reigned nine thousand years before the other G.o.ds,--which must mean that this was by far the oldest wors.h.i.+p in Egypt. As Ammon is the head of a cosmogony which proceeds according to emanation from spirit down to matter, so Pthah is at the beginning of a cosmogony which ascends by a process of evolution from matter working up to spirit. For from Pthah (heat) comes light, from light proceeds life, from life arise G.o.ds, men, plants, animals, and all organic existence. The inscriptions call Pthah, "Father of the Father of the G.o.ds," "King of both Worlds," the "G.o.d of all Beginnings," the "Former of Things." The egg is one of his symbols, as containing a germ of life.

The scarabaeus, or beetle, which rolls its ball of earth, supposed to contain its egg, is dedicated to Pthah. His sacred city was Memphis, in Lower Egypt. His son, Ra, the Sun-G.o.d, had his temple at On, near by, which the Greeks called Heliopolis, or City of the Sun. The cat is sacred to Ra. As Pthah is the G.o.d of all beginnings in Lower Egypt, so Ra is the vitalizing G.o.d, the active ruler of the world, holding a sceptre in one hand and the sign of life in the other.