Page:Myth, Ritual, and Religion (Volume 2).djvu/366

352 is the real name, of which Unnu-neferu is a compound. The usual interpretation of the name Unnefer, which has been current since Champollion, is manifestly erroneous. Mythology does not deal with such names as 'good being.' 'Being' is much too metaphysical, and 'good' much too ethical a notion for names of this kind. A physical sense is the only one admissible. Nefer primarily means fair, beautiful, and only secondarily good. Neferu are the grace, the beauty, the brightness, the glory of a god. Unnu-neferu signifies 'the splendid or glorious hare.' This is, at least, a signification, which, in the abstract, admits of no contradiction. The question is, what is meant by 'Hare' when applied to Osiris or the sun? and it is a question which can only be solved by an inquiry into the original sense of the Egyptian word signifying hare. Now there is a variety of Egyptian words of which the syllable un is the essential part, and one and the same radical notion underlies the signification of them all; though one of them means a hare, another an hour, another open, another thrash, another transgress or overleap, and the most frequent of all is the very colourless auxiliary verb which we translate 'being.' This fundamental notion is up, rise, spring up, start up. Unnu, the appellative of 'a hare,' signifies 'a springer,' 'a leaper,' like the Sanskrit çaça, our word hare, and the Anglo-Saxon hara. The Greek has much the same meaning. Unnut, 'an hour or moment,' is identical with the word meaning 'she-hare,' and like it signifies 'leaper.' Our own poets speak of the fleeting hours—'hora agilis præceps fugitiva.' In Shelley's Prometheus: 'The hours were hounds, which chased the day like a wounded deer.' "

Voilà done les paroles de M. Le Page Renouf, si elles ont été rapportées exactement. Et qu'aura l'anthropologiste à répondre à tout cela? D'abord, il remarquera que, si M. Le Page Renouf a une connaissance exacte de la langue égyptienne le savoir de M. Maspero et de M. Tiele doit être inexact.