Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/259

 borrowed any of their ideas from Egypt, It ought, I think, to be a matter of wonder that, after a long time of bondage, the Israelites left Egypt without having even learnt the length of the year. The Hebrew year consisted of twelve lunar months, each of them empirically determined by actual inspection of the new moon, and an entire month was intercalated whenever it was found that the year ended before the natural season. The most remarkable point of contact between Hebrew and Egyptian religion is the identity of meaning between "El Shaddai" and nutar nutra; but the notion which is expressed by these words is common to all religion, and is only alluded to as characterizing the religion of the patriarchs in contrast to the new revelation made to Moses. But even this revelation is said to have been borrowed from Egypt. I have repeatedly seen it asserted that Moses borrowed his concept of God, and the sublime words, ehyeh asher ehyeh ("I am that I am," in the Authorized Version), from the Egyptian nuk pu nuk. I am afraid that some Egyptologist has to bear the responsibility of this illusion. It is quite true that in several places of the Book of the Dead the three words nuk pu nuk are to be found; it is true that nuk is the pronoun I, and that the demonstrative pu often serves to connect the subject and predicate of a sentence. But the context of the words requires to be examined before we can be sure that we have just an entire sentence before us,