Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/264

 Conclusion.

The interest which the history of Egyptian religion inspires must be derived solely from itself, not from any hypothetical connection with other systems.

We have seen Egypt a powerful and highly civilized kingdom not less than two thousand years before the birth of Moses, with religious beliefs and institutions at least externally identical with those which it possessed till the last years of its existence.

This religion, however, was not from the first that mere worship of brutes which strangers imagined in the days of its decline.

The worship of the sacred animals was not a principle, but a consequence; it presupposes the rest of the religion as its foundation, and it acquired its full development and extension only in the declining periods of the Egyptian history.

It is based upon symbols derived from the mythology.