Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/106

 Certainly not; for they were in existence more than two thousand years before the Christian era. On the other hand, Polytheism, the sources of which we have pointed out, developes itself and progresses without interruption until the time of the Ptolemies. It is, therefore, more than five thousand years since, in the valley of the Nile, the hymn began to the Unity of God and the immortality of the soul, and we find Egypt in the last ages arrived at the most unbridled Polytheism. The belief in the Unity of the Supreme God and in his attributes as Creator and Lawgiver of man, whom he has endowed with an immortal soul—these are the primitive notions, enchased, like indestructible diamonds, in the midst of the mythological superfetations accumulated in the centuries which have passed over that ancient civilization."

Although some of the texts here alluded to have most probably a somewhat different meaning from that which M. de Rougé ascribes to them, the facts upon which he relies are in the main unassailable. It is incontestably true that the sublimer portions of the Egyptian religion are not the comparatively late result of a process of development or elimination from the grosser. The sublimer portions are demonstrably ancient; and the last stage of the Egyptian religion, that known to the Greek and Latin writers, heathen or Christian, was by far the grossest and most corrupt. M. de Rougé is no doubt correct in his assertion that