Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/114

 extremely common Egyptian expression nutar nutra exactly corresponds in sense to the Hebrew El Shaddai, the very title by which God tells Moses that He was known to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. "And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, 'I am Jahve: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac and unto Jacob by the name of El Shaddai, but by my name Jahve was I not known to them.'" Nutar nutra amtu heret is "the Almighty Power which is in heaven."

It is very remarkable that "Brahman in Sanskrit meant originally Power, the same as El. It resisted for a long time the mythological contagion, but at last it yielded like all other names of God, and became the name of one God." But the Egyptian nutar never became a proper name. It was indeed restricted in its use, as far back as our knowledge of the language enables us to trace it, but it never ceased to be a common noun, and was applied indifferently to each of the powers which the Egyptian imagination conceived as active in the universe, and to the Power from which all powers proceed. Horus and Rā and Osiris and Set are names of individual finite powers, but a Power