Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/123

 On the other hand, the moment we understand the nature of a myth, all impossibilities, contradictions and immoralities disappear. If a mythical personage really be nothing more than a name of the sun, his birth may be derived from ever so many different mothers. He may be the son of the Sky or of the Dawn or of the Sea or of Night. He may be identical with other mythical personages which are also names of the sun, and yet be absolutely different from them, as the midday sun differs from the rising and from the setting sun, or the sun of to-day from that of yesterday. He may be the husband of his own mother without the guilt or stain of incest. All myths are strictly true, but they can only be harmonized when translated into the language of physical reality.

All phenomena which attracted sufficient attention furnished matter for myths. It had been remarked, for instance, that certain stars never set, whereas all others, after performing their course, sink below the horizon. The Egyptians expressed this by the myth of the Crocodile of the West which fed upon the Achmu Uretu (the setting stars). Thunder and lightning, storm and wind and cloud and rain, were no doubt duly personified, but they occupy a very small part of the mythology, which is almost exclusively