Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 12 (Egyptian and Indo-Chinese).djvu/38

12 African paganism. The rude carvings of that time show that most, if not all, of the later gods, with their names, symbols, and artistic types, existed then and that they had already been transmitted by ancient tradition from ancestral days. Thus we may assume that the Egyptian pantheon had its origin in the most remote and obscure neolithic (or, perhaps, even palaeolithic) age, and we may safely consider it a product of a most primitive barbarism. It may seem a little strange that the swift development of Egyptian civilization somewhat before 3000 B.C. should not have led to a better systematization of the religious traditions. Until we know what political conditions produced that rapid evolution,3 we must rest content with the explanation which we have already advanced, i.e. that everywhere conservatism is one of the most important factors in religion, and that the mind of the ancient Egyptians was peculiarly conservative throughout their history. This conservatism is strikingly illustrated by Egyptian art, which, even in the time of its highest development, could not free itself from the fetters of traditionalism, but tenaciously kept the childish perspective of primitive days, although as early as the Pyramid Age artists were able to draw quite correctly, and occasionally did so. In the religious art this adherence to tradition constituted an especially grave barrier to artistic development; accordingly the figures of the gods always preserved, more or less, the stiff and in some details childishly imperfect style of the early period. For example, all the pictures of Ptah, one of the oldest gods, point back to a clumsy type betraying an age when the artists were not yet able to separate arms and legs from the body. The savage simplicity of the age which created the Egyptian religion and indelibly stamped its subsequent evolution is clearly evidenced likewise in the barbarous head-dresses of the divinities,4 which consist of feathers, horns, and rush-plaited crowns, as well as in the simple emblems held in their hands. These insignia, in the case of male deities, are generally staves terminating in the