Page:The Mythology of All Races Vol 12 (Egyptian and Indo-Chinese).djvu/97

Rh tion. Near him sit the air-gods Shu and Tefênet as little children. This symbolizes their primeval nature and their precedence of the sun-god, as has been stated on pp. 49-50 (in opposition to the theory set forth in the hymn given on pp. 68-69).

Next the sun-god again appears in an embryonic state, floating in an ornamented box which, the explanation says, represents Nut, the heavenly flood, although we should expect the abyss or ocean as the place of the new-born sun (pp. 49-50); the chest adapts this idea to the Osiris-Horus myth (p. 57). Then comes the cow "Ehet (p. 40), the development of the members of Khepri," with double emblems of Ḥat-ḥôr and with the symbol of the sky, carrying the sun both on her head and on her body. Before her stands Ḥu, the god of wisdom and the divine word (p. 67), holding an egg, a symbol which may be explained as an allusion to the earth-god Qêb, whose name is sometimes written with the sign of the egg (p. 42), or to the solar egg (?), or to the creation in general. At any rate he represents quite a unique cosmogonic symbolism which would seem to be in conflict with all the other pictures. This is not more strange, however, than "the sun-god (in?) members" (p. 28) in the background as the heavenly face and the half-developed flower, growing from a base which the artist made to be midway between an indication of a pool of water and the solar disk. The value of these mystic pictures, claiming to be reproduced according to the earliest traditions, is that they again illustrate the combination of so many different theories about the origin of the sun and of the world; the divergence of these views makes the mystery the more solemn to the Egyptian mind.