Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 12 (Egyptian and Indo-Chinese).djvu/42

 or rock of unusual size or form or for every house and field, such spirits being worshipped in the first case in the form of the sacred object itself in which they abode, and in the latter case being embodied in some striking object in the locality or in some remarkable animal which chanced to frequent the place. Many of these tutelary spirits never developed into real gods, i.e. they never received a regular cult. The transitional stage appears in such instances as when, according to certain Theban wall-paintings, the harvesters working in a field deposited a small part of their food as an offering to a tree which dominated that field, i.e. for the genius inhabiting the tree; or when they fed a serpent discovered on the field, supposing it to be more than an ordinary creature.1 This serpent might disappear and yet be remembered in the place, which might in consequence remain sacred forever; perhaps the picture of its feeding may thus be interpreted as meaning that even then the offering was merely in recollection of the former appearance of a local spirit in serpent form.

Another clear illustration of primitive animism surviving in historic times is furnished by an old fragment of a tale in a papyrus of the museum of Berlin. Shepherds discover "a goddess" hiding herself in a thicket along the river-bank. They flee in fright and call the wise old chief shepherd, who by magic formulae expels her from her lair. Unfortunately the papyrus breaks off when the goddess "came forth with terrible appearance," but we can again see how low the term "god" remained in the Pyramid Age and later.

Such rudimentary gods, however, did not play any part in the religion of the historic age. Only those of them that attracted wider attention than usual and whose worship expanded from the family to the village would later be called gods. We must, nevertheless, bear in mind that a theoretical distinction could scarcely be drawn between such spirits or "souls" (baiu) which enjoyed no formal or regular cult and the gods recognized by regular offerings, just as there Rh