Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/108

 Evidence as to the Meaning of the word Nutar.

At first sight, the Egyptian language is less likely to throw light upon the subject than might be expected if it really belonged to the same stage of speech as either the Indo-European or the Semitic languages. In these languages almost every word is closely allied to several others connected together by derivation from a common root, and the primitive notion conveyed by the word in question can be illustrated by the signification of the kindred words and their root. Generally speaking, however, in Egyptian every word is isolated. There is no distinction between word, stem and root. The same Egyptian word may sometimes have different significations; but this, as a rule, only means that the one notion which is expressed by a word in Egyptian has no single word corresponding to it in English, French or German. It seldom happens that we can advance a step beyond such a fact as that the word nutar is rightly translated "god." I am glad, however, to be able to affirm with certainty that in this particular case we can accurately determine the primitive notion attached to the word. None of the explanations hitherto given of it can be considered satisfactory. That which I am about to propose will, I believe, be generally accepted by scholars, because it is arrived at as the result of a special study of all the published passages in which the word occurs. Such a