Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/232

 passages like these are constantly accompanied by others in which the old polytheistic language is used without hesitation. Some phrases, again, are ambiguous, and if their true sense be a good one, the popular interpretation may be a bad one. No words can more distinctly express the notion of "self-existent Being" than chepera cheper t'esef, words which very frequently occur in Egyptian religious texts. But the word chepera signifies scarabaeus as well as being, and the scarabaeus was in fact an object of worship, as a symbol of divinity. How many Egyptians accepted the words in a sense which we ourselves should admit to be correct? Was there really, as is frequently asserted, an esoteric doctrine known to the scribes and priests alone, as distinct from the popular belief? No evidence has yet been produced in favour of this hypothesis.

Henotheism.

The nature of Henotheism as distinct from Monotheism was explained in last year's Lectures as a phase of religious thought in which the individual gods invoked are not conceived as limited by the power of others. "Each god is to the mind of the suppliant as good as all the gods. He is felt at the time as a real divinity, as supreme and absolute, in spite of the necessary limitations which to our mind a plurality of gods must entail on every single god. All the rest