Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/394

 EGYPT

344

EGYPT

dsemons or spirits which animated almost everj^hing man came in contact with — stones, plants, animals — and the lesser deities which presided over every stage of himian life — birth, naming, etc. The worship they received was of an entirely local and private nature, and we know almost nothing of it.

Each nome had its own chief deity or divine lord, male or female, apparently inherited from the ancient tribes. With each deity an animal, as a rule, but sometimes also a tree or mineral, was associated. Thus Osiris of Busiris was associated with a pillar, or the trunk of a tree; Hathor of Denderah, with a sycamore; Osirisof Mendes, withagoat; SetofTanis, with an ass; Buto of the city of the same name, with a serpent; Bast of Bubastis, with a cat; Atilm, or Tum, of Heliopolis, with a serpent, a lion, or possibly, later the bull Mnevis; Ptah of Memphis, with the bull Apis; Sovek, in the Fayvmi and at Ombos (Kom Ombo), with a crocodile ; Anubis of Assiut, with a jackal ;

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Thoth of Hermopolis, with an ibis or a baboon; Amon of Thebes, and ChnCmi, at the Cataract, with a ram; Horus of el-Kab and Edfu, with a hawk. According to some scholars, this association at first was merely symbolical ; it was not till the Nineteenth Dynasty that sacred animals, having gradually come to be con- sidered as incarnations, or at least as dwelling-places, of the various gods, began to be worshipped as gods (Breasted, "Hist. Anc. Egypt.", 59, 324). But this view, once quite common, is now generally abandoned, and fetishistic animal-worship is now considered as the true basis of the Egyptian religion [cf. Chantepie de la Saussaye. "Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte" (1905), I, 194 sqq.]. In any case the origin of the association of certain animals with certain gods, whether symbolical or not, is imknown ; as a rule, the same may be said of the various attributes of the vari- ous gods or goddesses. We understand that Thoth, being a lunar god, could have been considered the god of time, computation, letters, and science (although we do not know how, being associated with the ibis or a baboon, he became a lunar god) ; but we do not see why the ram-god Chnum should have been repre- sented as a potter, nor why the cow-goddess, Hathor, and the cat-goddess, Bast, were identified with beauty, joy, and love, while the lioness-deity, Sekhmet, was the goddess of war, and Neith was identified both with war and with weaving. The names of the gods, as a rule, give no clue. At an early date the crude primitive fetish- ism was somewhat mitigated, when the deities were supposed to reside in statues combining human fig- ures with animal heads.

Triads. — In other respects gods and goddesses were imagined to be very much like men and women; they ate, drank, married, begat children, and died. Each nome, besides its chief god or goddess, had at least two secondary deities, the one playing the part of a wife or husband to the chief deity, the other that of a son. Thus, in Thebes the group of Amon, Milt (or

Ament), and Chons; in Memphis the group of Ptah, .Sekhmet, and Nefertem; etc. Sometimes the triad consisted of one god and two goddesses, as at Ele- phantine, or even of three male deities. Those groups were probably first obtained by the fusion of several religious centres into one, the number three being sug- gested by the human family, or possibly by the family triad Osiris, Isis, and Horus, of the Osiris cycle. In some cases the second element was a mere grammati- cal duplicate of the first, as Ament, wife of Amen (Amon), and was considered as one with it; it was then natural to identify the son with his parents, and so arose the concept of one god in three forms. There was in this a germ of monotheism. It is doubtful, however, whether it would ever have developed be- yond the limits of henotheism but for the solar religion which seems to have sprung into existence towards the dawn of the dynastic times, very likely under the influence of the .school of Heliopolis. But before we turn to this new phase of the Egj-ptian religion, we must consider another aspect of the ancient gods which may have furnished the first basis of unification of the various local worships.

The Gods of the Dead. — Gods, being fancied like men, were, like them, subject to death, the great lev- eller. Each community had the mummy of its god. But in the case of gods, as in that of men, death was not the cessation of all life. With the assistance of magical devices the dead god was simply transferred to another world, where he was still the god of the de- parted who had been his devotees on earth. Hence two forms of the same god, frequently under two dif- ferent names which eventually led to the conception of distinct gods of the dead. Such were Ghent- Ament, the first of the Westerners (the dead) at Abydos, Sokar (or Seker), probably a form of Ptah, at Mem- phis. Sometimes, however, the god of the dead re- tained the name he had before, as Anubis at Assiilt, Ivhonyu at Thebes, and Osiris, wherever he began to be known as such.

Legend of Osiris. — Each of these gods had his own legentl. Osiris was the last god who reigned upon the earth, and he was a wise and good king. But his brother Set was a wicked god and killed Osiris, cutting his body into fragments, which he scattered all over the land. Isis, sister and wife of Osiris, collected the fragments, put them together, and embalmed them, with the assistance of her son Horus, Anubis (here, perhaps, a substitute for Set, who does not seem to have been originally conceived as his brother's slayer), and Nephthys, Set's wife. Isis then, through her magical art, revives her husband who becomes king of the dead, while Horus defeats Set and reigns on the earth in his father's place. According to another ver- sion, Qeb, father of Osiris, and Set put an end to the strife by dividing the land between the two competi- tors, giving the South to Horus and the North to Set.

Sidereal and Elemental Gods. — It is generally con- ceded that some of the local gods had a sidereal or ele- mental character. Horus, of Edfu and el-Kab (Ili- thyaspolis~l,andAnher, of This, re presented one or other aspect of the sun. Thoth of Hermopolis and Khonsu of Thebes were lunar gods. Min, of Akhmim(Chemmis) and Goptos, represented the cultivable land and Set, of Ombos (near Xakadeh), the desert. Hapi was the Nile, Hathor the vault of heaven. In some cases this sidereal or elemental aspect of the local gods may be primitive, especially among the tribes of Asiatic origin; but in other cases it may be of later date and due to the influence of the solar religion of Re, which, as we have already said, came into promi- nence, if not into existence, during the early dynastic times.

Solar Gods, Re or Ra. — That Re was such a local god representing the sun, is generally taken for granted although by no means proven. We cannot assign him to any locality not furnished with another