III. 5. 6. IV. 7. 8. V. 9. 10. VI. 11. 12. VII. 13. 14. Mu and Tefnut (splendour and father's hall ?).93 Seb and Nu (or Nut-hur) (star and hall Osiris and Isis (the Lord in the Upper Set and Nephthys (the Lord in the Horus and a Goddess, probably Hathor In this Theban representation the dualism runs through the whole. It is represented in the two former by two male antitheses; in the others by a God and Goddess. The symbolical and contemplative element is nowhere more visibly depicted than in this instance. Thus all the deities represented on the monuments fall within the above series of seven Gods. The whole number is arranged in two groups. The last four are taken from the Osiris cycle; the first three from representations in which the Sun-God appears singly or predominantly. But it is not a whit more easy to explain the number seven by this view of it, or the transition to eight; for the former Gods themselves grew out of the conjunction of four Powers, some of which displaced the others (owing to the prevalence of the Sun-worship); some are co-ordinate as parallel members. They consequently cannot contain the basis of the seven, any more than the junction of the seven with the eight by means of Thoth-Hermes-Hercules can be explained by them. XII. The numbers Seven and Eight are explainable by the oldest kosmogonical system and primitive worship of the seven children of Ptah-Hephaistos. 93 The position of the words in Tef-nut is exactly the reverse of the usual order, in which the genitive comes first; as in Hes-iri, Atar-beki (Hathoris urbs, from baki, city). It is the same in Aramæan for the name Baal-bek (Baal's city, 'Hλióñoλiç). Herodotus mentions (iii. 37.) that the seven sons of Ptah were shown to Kambyses in the sanctuary of the royal city of Memphis erected by Menes. They were dwarfish figures, like their father, set up in the adytum of the temple; and were exactly like those figures on the Phoenician ships, he says, which they call Pataikoi. We shall endeavour, in the later sections of this work, to explain the importance they possess for both Europe and Asia, and shall only call attention here to two points. We shall find among the Phoenicians the seven children of Sydyk (the truthful, just), and an eighth, Esmun ("the Eighth "-), the Esculapius of the Greeks: the seven are called Kabiri, or the strong. We shall see, in the second place, that seven is neither an accidental nor an ideal number; it was either borrowed from the phase of the moon (the week) or it represented the universe by the planetary solar cycle; the five planets with the sun and moon being symbolical of the kosmogonical powers of the universe, the unity of which is called the Father of the Strong, or the Soul of the World. The identity of this representation with the first group of Egyptian Gods, as regards the number seven and its transition to eight, is decisive for this second explanation. We cannot explain these two numbers and their indissoluble connexion from the groups of Gods themselves. Besides, the adytum of the temple of Ptah was dedicated by Menes to the primitive worship of that God and his seven attendants. In all the representations of Thoth, the God of Sesennu (Ashmunain), "the city of the Eighth," he is always represented, in conjunction with the seven Gods, as the one who reveals himself. Thoth ("the word") is the Unity which has become the Assistant, the Revealer. With this idea, all the representations and all the series of Gods both in the annalists and on the monu ments can be explained. By means of it, also, the relation between the religious feeling of Egypt and the primitive religion of Western Asia becomes intelligible. C. MORE DETAILED ANALYSIS OF THE IDEAL AND LOCAL ELEMENTS OF THE ORIGINAL EGYPTIAN PANTHEON. I. THE fundamental elements of the Egyptian Pantheon, according to their local centres. The propositions already established have made us acquainted with the following Gods in their different localities: 1. PTAн, the kosmogonic element, indigenous in the Lower Country: so that when Menes united the two countries he became the deity of the shrine of Memphis. 2. SET, the (Phallic) God of the Delta: universally worshipped in the earliest times of the Old Empire: a kosmogonico-physical element, like Osiris, but the ceremonies connected with his worship were of a cruel character. 3. RA, the God of On or Heliopolis, in the Delta, not far from the site of Memphis in later times: pure sun-worship. 4. HER, corresponding to Ra, in the Upper Country. 5. AMUN, in the city of Thebes. 6. NUM, in the Theban Nome, and especially at the Cataracts, both of them of a kosmogonico-physical character with a tendency to animal-worship. 7. OSIRIS (with Isis), the God of Abydos, in Upper Egypt: the most complete kosmogonico-psychical element: an entire contrast to the system of Amun-Num. Horus is the Thoth of this system. In the Upper Country: Her-Amun-Num-Osiris. In the Lower Country: Ptah-Set-Ra. The great fact connected with Menes is that he established the unity of the empire upon the worship of Osiris, which gradually absorbed the other elements. Isis is the Queen of Heaven, the All-Mother, All-Goddess. Osiris himself is the Sun-God (not the disk), without ceasing to be the real Lord, the Self-created, the God of the human Soul. The proof of all these points is contained in the facts adduced in the First Book, and in the above theses. For the full explanation, however, we must go beyond Egyptian researches. The myth of Osiris is Asiatic. II. The symbol of the Sun is of the highest antiquity in Egypt, but the belief in the sun as a divinity is neither the beginning nor the end, but simply a transitional point which became fixed in the obscured religious consciousness of Egypt. Lepsius has maintained that the sun-worship was primeval in Egypt in two senses, a symbolical one, in so far as the sun is considered as the symbol of creating, sustaining, and destructive divine power, and the other in the fetish-worship of the sun's disk. But all history proves that feticism is the genuine type of the African mind when left to itself, or of Asiatic religious feeling embodied in an African shape. It is therefore impossible for me to acquiesce in Lepsius' view without some qualification. I think that in Egypt, as elsewhere, the oldest form of religion was kosmogonical, and that this is exhibited strictly in Ptah, although the Egyptians very early merged it in the symbolism of the sun. But even the kosmogonical element alone can never be the basis of the religious worship of a people aspiring to civilisation, and this the Egyptians were in a high degree. As has been shown in the First Part of this Book, the foundation of all worship is laid in the consciousness of the immediate relation between the human soul and God and the universe. It is hardly possible that nations, and least of all that Asiatics, should have been led to a common form of worship by the belief in the creative power of nature operating in the sun and stars: although at a certain stage of the mythological process the astral element is found in Asia as a suitable symbol of the relation of the soul to God. III. The psychical element, or Osiris-worship, is the real intellectual centre of the worship or religious consciousness of the Egyptians. The psychical element is certainly of quite as early date as the kosmogonical in the Osiris-cycle: but earliest of all in the Set of the Delta, who appears in Asia as the earliest and highest Semitic God. The joint worship of Set and Osiris was introduced at the union, and is consequently coeval with, or posterior to, Menes. Osiris himself, the God of Upper Egypt, is the central point from the time of Menes. Everything that is most deepseated in the religious feeling of the people is connected with him, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul in conjunction with transmigration. In this circle, therefore, the internal relation of the human soul to God was the feeling which originally predominated. The perfect soul is called the Son of God, Osiris: man, after he had passed through the judgment of the lower world, becomes united with his Father. It was, consequently, very natural, and even necessary, that the religious union on which Menes founded the unity of the empire of the Upper and Lower Country, should find its expression in the Osiris-worship of This (Abydos). In other words, it was the profound |