Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/228

 so, "You shall be undone, you cycle of the gods; there shall no longer be any earth; there shall no longer be the five supplementary days of the year; there shall be no more any offerings to the gods, lords of Heliopolis. There shall be a sinking of the southern sky, and disasters shall come from the sky of the north; there shall be cries from the tomb; the midday sun shall no longer shine; the Nile shall not furnish its waters at its wonted time. It is not I who say this; it is not I who repeat it; it is Isis who speaketh; she it is who repeateth it."

The very same kind of threats are spoken of by Porphyry, about 270 A.D., as mentioned by Chaeremon, a sacerdotal scribe in the first century, and affirmed by him to be of potent efficacy. "What a height of madness," says Porphyry, "does it not imply in the man who thus threatens what he neither understands nor is able to perform, and what baseness does it not attribute to the beings who are supposed to be frightened by these vain bugbears and figments, like silly children!" An Egyptian priest of the name of Abammon is introduced in the work of Jamblichos as replying to the objections of Porphyry. He distinguishes between the gods, properly speaking, and the, who are subordinate ministers, and he says that it is to the latter alone that threats are used. And the authority of the theurgist he derives from identification with the divinity. But the days of the Egyptian