Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/739

715 RELIGION.] EGYPT 715 animal, or fetish, and every town its local divinities. As the animal worship was associated with higher ideas by the union of an animal s head with the body of a man in the figures of divinities, so the local divinities were connected with the monotheistic idea by intermediate forms, principally identifying them with Ra, who thus was the generally received form of the notion of one god. Accord ing to this view monotheism was not the parent of poly theism, but in a later phase connected with it. One great change affected the essential ideas of the Kgyptian religion. For many centuries Seth, specially the divinity of Lower Egypt, who seems to have represented then, as certainly afterwards, the destructive power of nature, held a place in the Pantheon, although regarded as the adversary of Osiris and thus of mankind, whom, how ever, he finally befriends. He seems thus to have a charac ter of necessary evil. At length, after the Empire, he was expelled from the Pantheon. This may have been because the worship of Seth was repugnant to a reigning house of Asiatic origin, which might have held the Persio.ii dualism which identified physical and moral evil. It may have been because Seth had been considered to be the divinity of the eastern neighbours of Egypt, and with their success and the fall of Egyptian supremacy had come to be thought hostile to that country. If this were the cause, the kings who proscribed his worship could have had no relation to the nations supposed to reverence Seth. In effect the change identified physical and moral evil and destroyed the earlier philosophical notions on the subject, besides introducing some confusion into the Pantheon. Herodotus speaks of orders of gods, Manetho of divine dynasties. The explanation is to be found in the worship at each town of a cycle of gods. This cycle is called &quot; the society of the gods,&quot; or &quot; the nine gods.&quot; M. de Rouge&quot; does not admit the second rendering except as a plural of excellence (&quot; Etudes,&quot; Rev. Arch., n.s., i. 237). The num ber varies at different places and in different lists at the same place, but is always nearly or exactly nine. The Egyptians themsslves explained this cycle as the self- development of Ra ; the other gods were in this view his attributes (De Rouge, I.e. 236, 237 ; Rit. xvii. 2, 3). Two forms of the cycle acquired the highest importance as repre senting the systems of the learned men of Memphis and Thebes, the successive great capitals of Egypt. 1 The two systems are thus given by Professor Lep- sius 2 : MEMF-TITTE SYSTEM. Ptah t&amp;lt;t&amp;gt;0a, &quot;H(pai&amp;lt;rros.) I THKBAN SYSTEM. 1. Amen C Afj./j.cav, Zeus.) 2. Mentu (Mc^S.) 3. Atmu (Tovfj..) 4. Shu. Tefnet. Seb. Nut. and 6. Hesiri. Hes. 7. Set. Nebti. and 3. Har Kat-har. i 9. Sebek. Tennet [consort of Mentu ?] Penit (or Tit?) [consort of Atmu ?] The views of Professor Lepsius on the origin and consti tution of these systems, with such modifications as later 1 These liave been called the systems of Memphis and Thebes. The local cycle of Memphis was, however, not the system of Manetho which has been called Memphite, and has a distinct local character (Brugsch, Geogr. Inschr., i. 237). 2 Sim, true spelling since discovered, is here put for Mu. 3. Shu (2&amp;lt;S&amp;gt;-) Tefnet. 4. Seb (K P (Ws) Nut ( Pea.) 5. ITesiii (&quot;O&amp;lt;npi?, (6.) lies f I&amp;lt;m, 8. (7.) Set (2rj0, Nebti (Ne &amp;lt;0u 7. (8.) Harfnpofj Hat-liar A0a researches liave suggested, may now be given. We first observe that the two systems are but variations, and may be treated as one. They consist of male divinities, most of whom are associated with goddesses. These goddesses hold an inferior place, and are not to be counted in reckon ing the number of the order, except perhaps Isis, whose importance is much greater than that of the others. An examination of the various forms of the two systems immediately suggests that they increased in course of time, Ptah and Amen, the chief gods of Memphis and Thebes, having been added for state reasons. The order thus reduced consists of two groups, the group of Ra, and that of Osiris. The group of Ra is wholly of solar gods, the group of Osiris begins with Seb and ends with Hathor. Sebek then stands alone, but he is wanting in the older lists, and is only an addition of tho Theban system. The solar group consists of Ra, or else Mentu and Atmu, and Shu. Mentu and Atmu are merely a division of Ra into his two chief phases, the rising and the setting sun, the sun of the upper and of the lower world. Both are solar divinities (Brugsch, Geor/r. Inschr., i. 254.) Shu, the solar light, is the son of Ra or of Mentu or Atmu ; Tefnet, the goddess associated with him, is the daughter of Ra. The Osiris group is not genealogically connected with tho solar group. The central point of the group is found in Osiris, with his consort Isis and his opponent Seth. Seb and Nut are merely extensions of the group upwards. They are, however, spoken of as parents of the gods, showing that they represent the commencement of a series. Osiris, Isis, Seth, and Nephthys were usually considered their children, and Horus, the child of Osiris and Isis. Hathor is&quot; associated with Horus, but her genealogical place is not clear. It is, however, certain that she is of the family of Osiris. The characteristics of this group are predominantly cosmic ; this is tru3 of the myth of Osiris, and consequently of the whole group, and is especially evident in the cases of Osiris and Isis, Seth, and Seb and Xut. How did these two groups come to be united in a single series 1 Professor Lepsius argues that this was due to the influence of Thinis, the oldest Egyptian royal seat, from which the first historic king Menes came to Lower Egypt and founded Memphis. Thinis at a very early time merged into the more famous Abydos. Abydos was the great seat of the worship of Osiris, which spread all over Egypt, establishing itself in a remarkable manner at Memphis. All the mysteries of the Egyptians and their whole doctrine of the future state attach themselves to this worship. Osiris was identified with the sun, and the union of the two groups was thus not forced. Both had indeed a common origin. Sun-worship was the primitive form of the Egyptian religion, perhaps even pre-Egyptian. The first development was the myth of Osiris, due to the importance of Thinis, just as the rise of Memphis put Ptah, an abstract idea of intellectual power, even before Ra. So- the rise of Thebes introduced Amen, who was identified in the form Amen-ra with Ra, and as. an intellectual principle placed before the physical solar powers. This argument derives great weight from the relative position given to the two groups, the solar divinities coming first, and from the circumstance that the religious reform under Dynasty XVIII. suppressed everything but material sun- worship, as though this had been the primitive belief of Egypt. 3 M. de Rouge, in his examination of the Egyptian Ritual, comes to a similar but more definite result in treating 3 See Lepsius, Ueber den crsten Aegyptischen GStterkreis und seine geschichtlich-mylhologischt EntslchungS Berl. Akad., 1351.