Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/409

 The Temple under the Ancient Empire. 319 Egyptian pantheon.^ The composite proper names often seem to express .individual devotion to some particular deity, and to indicate some connection between the latter and the mortal who bore his name and lived under his protection. These divinities must, then, have already been in existence in the minds of the Egyptians. The most that can be said is that they had not yet arrived at complete definition ; art, perhaps, had not vet eiven them those unchanorino- external features and characteristics which they retained to the last days of paganism. It is quite possible that they were, more often than not, represented by those animals which, in more enlightened times, served them for symbols. If the inscription and the figured representations still existing upon a certain stele which was found a short distance eastward of the pyramid of Cheops- are to be taken literally, we must believe that that monarch restored the principal statues of the Egyptian gods and made them pretty much what we see them in monuments belonofino- to times much more recent than his. The upper part of the stele in question shows the god ot generation, Horus, Thoth, Isis in several different forms, Nephthys, Selk, Horus as the avenger of his father, Harpocrates, Ptah, Setekh, Osiris, and Apis. These statues would seem to have been in gold, silver, bronze and wood. Mariette, however, is inclined to think that this stele does not date from the time of Cheops, that it is a restoration made during the middle, or, perhaps, even during the New Empire. On attempting to restore so venerable a lelic of the author of the greatest 1 We may take a few of those in the Boulak Museum at random : Ra-Hotep (No. 590), Hathor-En-Khe'ou (588), Ra-Xefer (23), Ra-Our (25), Sokar-Kha-Ca-u (993), Noum-Hotep (26), Hathor-Xefer (41), Ptah-Asses (500), Ptah-Hotep, iv:c. The names of several deities are to be found in the inscription upon the wooden coffin or mummy-case of Mycerinus, now in the British Museum. (Maspero, Histoire Ancienne, p. 75). A priest of Apis is mentioned upon a tomb of the fourth dynasty; Osiris is invoked in the steles of the sixth d} nasty. (Boulak Catalogue, Xo. 41.) Amen, or Ammon, is never mentioned on the monuments of the Ancient Empire ; his first appearance is contemporary with the twelfth dynasty. (Grebault, Hymue a Ammofi-Ra, introduction, part iii. p. i3"6.) This is natural enough. Amen was a Theban god, and Thebes does not seem to have existed in the time of the Ancient Empire. 2 Notice des principaux ]lonumei:ts exposes dans les Galeries provisoires dii Mmee d'An/iquites Eg},ptieniies a Boulak. (Edition of 1876, Xo. 582.)