Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 12 (Egyptian and Indo-Chinese).djvu/266

232 man, not merely the human race, but each individual, even the most humble; the very animals are objects of his fatherly care. Where earlier poetry praised the divine power exclusively and regarded it with awe alone, now the kindness of the gods toward the poor and needy is described. The sick, the orphan and the widow, and the unjustly accused will not pray in vain for deliverance from their misery (cf. p. 237). Such fatherly love must be reciprocated by a manifestation of man's love toward the deity and by devotion to him and to his worship. We no where find it stated in plain words that sacrifices or ritual alone cannot save; yet the wise Ani, who seems to have lived at the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty, at least denounces the belief that loud, formal, and lengthy prayers can compel the deity to do his worshipper's bidding.

With this lofty view of prayer we may contrast the contemporary stelae which pilgrims erected and on which they depicted first one pair of ears to express the invocation, "May the god hear my supplication!" and then multiplied these symbols to show how intensely they desired to compel the deity to hearken, as in the accompanying cut, whose inscription reads, "Praise to the soul (ka) of Ptaḥ, the lord of justice, great in might, (who) heareth prayer!"

Other advanced thinkers departed even further from formal-