Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/138

 are always found in the development of religious life, co-existed in the mind of the nation. A few more or less isolated thinkers were already seeking to formulate monotheism. The élite of the nation—the king, the priest, and the military class—were adoring Amen and Ptah, Khons or Khonsu, Mouth, Osiris and Horus, Sekhet, Isis, Nephtis and many other divinities; all more or less abstract in their nature, and presiding over special phenomena. As for the lower orders of the people, they knew the names of these deities and associated themselves with the great public honours which were paid to them; but their homage and their faith were more heartily rendered to such concrete and visible gods as the sacred animals, as the bulls Apis and Mnevis, the goat of Mendes, the ibis, the hawk, &c. None of the peculiarities of Egyptian civilization struck Greek travellers with more amazement than this semi-worship of animals.

Later theology has succeeded in giving more or less subtle and specious explanations of these forms of worship. Each of these animals has been assigned, as symbol or attribute, to one of the greater deities. As for ourselves we have no doubt that these objects of popular devotion were no more than ancient fetishes. In the long prehistoric centuries, while the Egyptian race was occupied in making good its possession of the Nile valley and