Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/24

Rh

Modern Attempts at Investigation.

After all, the religion of the Egyptians was not confined to the worship of the sacred animals. Herodotos, Plato and other classical writers, mention Amon, Osiris, Isis, Thoth, Neith and other divinities; and the belief in the soul's immortality is not only decidedly ascribed to the Egyptians, but is said to have been first taught by them. What relations did the various parts of this religion bear to each other? Was the religion in its later ages identical with the primitive religion of the country? Had there been advance or retrogression? The solution of these and many other obvious questions was quite impossible until very recently. The learned Brücker, in his Critical History of Philosophy, and Jablonski, in his Pantheon Aegyptiacum, have with indefatigable industry put together all the evidence that can be found in Greek and Latin writers. But they had no means of testing this evidence. No history can be learnt with certainty except from evidence contemporaneous with the events recorded; no religion can be studied with profit except in the very words of its own votaries. But the knowledge of the Egyptian language had not only actually perished, but the key to the decipherment of its writings was supposed to be irrecoverably lost. The hieroglyphic characters, consisting of representations of the sun, moon, animals, plants and other objects, either natural or