Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/549

 Rh new beings, also, are of various character. Here we have merely material forces which are ordered by the gods, the universe is rent asunder by sheer force, separating heaven and earth; again, the world is fashioned on a potter's wheel; again, a world-egg is formed from which everything springs. Other authors have the world created, not by physical force, but by the word. The god pronounced the name of an object, and the object was. Others held this too laborious a process and unworthy of a deity. According to them the god merely uttered inarticulate sounds, lacking all connection with the object which came into existence at their utterance, which idea was subsequently elaborated in detail by the Greco-Egyptian gnostics. But even here we find variety. Sometimes the sounds uttered are certain letters, generally vowels, again their place is taken by certain natural sounds, as laughing, smacking the lips, etc. To this circle of ideas appears to belong the peculiar report that the Pelusians worshipped the act of breaking wind. If sounds emanating from the mouth could possess creative power, it could be ascribed finally to any natural sound. The weeping of gods is frequently mentioned in such connection, and to the tears flowing from the eye of Horus especially did humanity owe many objects, particularly incense and similar articles. That a myth has even men originate from tears will appear below.

The most common and simple mode in which the texts describe the origin of gods is the natural one of being begotten by a father and borne by a mother. To make this possible it was necessary to presuppose the existence of two deities, a male and a female, which actually occurs in many Egyptian myths. Occasionally, however, the number of pre-existent beings has been reduced still further, leaving but one primary god who performed the act of creation alone. The manner in which the Egyptian conceived the process in such a case is described most minutely in the comprehensive hieratic papyrus dated from the year 306-5 B. C. No. 10,188 of the British Museum. It was found in 1860 at Thebes, came into the Rhind collection and thence to the Museum. The contents are variegated, consisting of festival songs to the goddesses Iris and Nephthys, litanies of the god Sokaris, the book of the overthrow of the serpent Apepi.