THE RELIGION OF THE ANCIENT

EGYPTIANS.

'Он Egypt! Egypt! Of thy religion fables only will remain, which thy disciples will understand as little as they do thy religion. Words cut into stone will alone remain telling of thy pious deeds. The Scythian, or the dweller by the Indus, or some other barbarian will inhabit thy fair land.'

Such was the prophecy of Hermes Trismegistus, too literally fulfilled concerning the religion of the nation which Herodotus considered to be by far the best instructed people with whom he was acquainted, since they, of all men, store up most for recollection'the people who' of all men were most attentive to the worship of the gods,' and 'most scrupulous in matters of religion'-the people from whose Pantheon he gladly acknowledges that almost all the gods came into Greece.' The crowning glory of the wisdom of King Solomon was that it 'excelled the wisdom of Egypt.'

Of their love of learning and reverence for religion we have abundant proof in their writings on the papyrus of the Nile and the 'fine linen of Egypt;' and in the words cut into stone' on the walls of temples, on the tombs of kings and queens, of priests and priestesses, of noble men and fair women. Every temple had its library attached. On the walls of the library at Dendera is sculptured a catalogue raisonné of manuscripts belonging to the temple. The exhortations to follow learning are unceasing: 'Love letters as thy mother. I make its beauty to appear in thy face. It is a greater possession than all honours.' i

And so we, descendants of the barbarians,' the thought of whose appearance on the banks of the Nile sent such a shiver to the heart of the cultured priest, are able to spell out the religion of the Egyptians; and, unsealing the lips of the dead, bid them speak for us their sermons in stones.'

The interest which attaches to the religion of ancient Egypt is due partly to the proof it gives that our Father-who is, as a Vedic G. Maspero, Le Genre Epistolaire chez les Anciens Egyptiens, p. 48. Paris,

1872.

hymn calls Him, the most fatherly of fathers'-fed the souls and spirits of His children when they hungered and thirsted after righteousness' in the remotest ages of the world; and partly to the light it sheds upon the Mosaic conception and idea of the Divine Being and man's relation to Him.

On this account it may be well to bear in mind the extreme antiquity of the Egyptians and the state of their civilisation during the serfdom of the Israelites. A pyramid at Sakkárah, near Thebes, has a royal title on the inner door to the fourth king of the first dynasty. If this inscription be correct, then the pyramid was built from five to seven hundred years before the great pyramid of Cheops, and was 2,000 years old in the time of Abraham. Of this pyramid we may say, as King Amenemha said of a palace he was building, 'Made for eternity, time shrinks before it.'

During the period of the slavery of the Israelites, Egypt was already in its decadence, and its religion had lost much of its original purity. We possess books of travels, moral treatises, letters, sacred hymns, and novels, some written before and some during this period. Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,' and the influence of this learning is felt in the Pentateuch.

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The dry climate and the sand of Egypt have preserved the monuments, the papyri, and the frescoes, which appear fresh as the day on which they were painted. M. Mariette describes his penetrating into one of the sealed sepulchral chambers at Memphis and finding, on the thin layer of sand which covered the floor, the footprints of the workmen who, 3,700 years before, had laid the Apis mummy in its sarcophagus and closed, as they believed, the door of perfect fitting stone for ever.

We shall consider (1) the idea of God, (2) the effect of this idea upon the life of the people, (3) the conception of the future life.

I. The manifold forms of the Egyptian Pantheon were nothing, says the late E. Deutsch, but religious masks of the sublime doctrine of the unity of the Deity communicated to the initiated in the Mysteries. The gods of the Pantheon were,' says M. Pierrot, only manifestations of the One Being in his various capacities.' Maspero and other scholars have arrived at the same conclusion.

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M.

The following hymn occurs on two papyri in the British Museum. It represents the thought prevalent in Egypt at the time of the Exodus, and is the work of Enna, the well-known author of the Romance of the Two Brothers and other works. The hymn was translated some years ago by Maspero. A translation has also been offered by Canon Cook in Records of the Past. I select portions which express the unity of the Godhead :

2 Lit. Rem. p. 178. 3 Dict. d'Arch. Egypt. art. 'Religion.' Paris, 1875.

Hist. Anc. des Peuples de l'Orient, cap. i. Paris, 1876.

Hymne au Nil. Paris, 1868. Lauth offers a fine transl. in Voses der Ebräer.
Vol. iv. p. 105.

On this hymn Canon Cook makes the note, sufficiently remarkable as coming from the editor of the Speaker's Commentary: The whole of this passage is of extreme importance, showing that, apart from all objects of idolatrous worship, the old Egyptian recognised the existence of a supreme God, unknown and inconceivable; the true source of all power and goodness.'

This one God is moreover the Creator: He has made the world with His hand, its waters, its atmosphere, its vegetation, all its flocks, and birds, and fish, and reptiles, and beasts of the field.' 13 He made all the world contains, and hath given it light when there was as yet no sun.' 14 Glory to Thee who hast begotten all that exists, who hast made man, and made the gods also, and all the beasts of the field. Thou makest men to live. Thou hast no being second to thee. Thou givest the breath of life. Thou art the Light of this world.' 15

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But although God be the Creator, yet He is 'self-created:' 'His commencement is from the beginning. He is the God who has existed from old time. There is no God without Hirn. No mother bore Him, no father hath begotten Him. God-goddess created from Himself. All gods came into existence when He began.' 16

Many of the hymns speak the mystery of His name: 'Unknown is His name in heaven:' Whose name is hidden from His creatures in His name which is Amen' (hidden, secret).17 Therefore

17 The incommunicableness of the name of the Divine Being was the truth at which Jacob arrived after the night's hard wrestling: Why askest thou after my name?'

the Egyptians never spoke the Unknown Name, but used a phrase which expressed the self-existence of the Eternal: 'I am One Being, I am One.' The expression is found in the Ritual of the Dead,' where Lepsius translates it: Ich bin Tum, ein Wesen das ich eines bin;' and he refers to the similarly constructed sentence: I and my Father are One.' 18 E. Deutsch renders it 'I am He who I am.' The original is Nuk-pu-Nuk. Plutarch 19 tells us of the veil which overhung the temple of Neith at Sais: 'I am that was, and is, and is to be; and my veil no mortal hath yet drawn aside.' The name Neith means I came from myself.' 20 In one of the magical texts there is a chapter entitled: "To open the Place of the Shrine of the Seat of Neith.' 'I am the seat of Neith, hidden in the hidden, concealed in the concealed, shut up in the shut up, unknown I am knowledge.' 21

At the town of Pilhom, God was worshipped under the name of "The Living God,' which Brugsch considers to correspond with the meaning of the name Jehovah; and the serpent of brass, called kerch (the polished), was there regarded as the living symbol of God.22

These passages are sufficient to establish the fact stated in the letter of Jamblichus to Porphyry that the Egyptians 'affirm that all things which exist were created, and that He who gave them being is their first Father and Creator.' 23

The Egyptians felt that which we all feel, that no name can express all that God is. Nevertheless, they tried to realise God by taking some natural object which should in itself convey to their minds. some feature in God's nature, so that from the well-known they might grope after if happily they might find the unknown. This became a necessity for the priests in the religious teaching of the people. Therefore in the Sun they saw God manifested as the Light of the world, in the river Nile they saw the likeness of Him whom no temple can contain, whose form cannot be graven in marble, whose abode is unknown. The more fully they felt the infinite nature of God, the more would they seek in nature for symbols, and in flights of inspiration for names, to express the yearnings of their souls after God. Hence they called God Pthah when He speaks, and when by His word He becomes Creator; they called Him Thoth when He writes the Sacred Books, and manifests truth and goodness; they called Him Osiris when He manifests all that is best and noblest in man's nature, and taking upon Him the nature of man becomes the god-man. All the deities were regarded as manifestations of the one great Creator, the Uncreated, the Father of 18 ἐγὼ καὶ ὁ Πατὴρ "ΕΝ ἐσμεν.

19 De Isid. et Os. c. 9.

20 Athene is supposed to have had her origin in the Egyptian Neith. An inscription is said to exist in a temple of Athene: 'I am all and was, and is, and shall be. Monier Williams, Indian Wisdom, p. 145 n.

21 Records of Past, vi. 123.

22 Cong. of Orient. London.

23 De Myst. i. 4.

the universe.24 This is expressed in the hymn: Hail to Thee! Lord of the Lapse of Time, King of Gods! Thou of many names, of holy transformations, of mysterious forms.' 25 This idea of One God expressed in many names is given by Aristotle: God, though He be One, has many names, because He is called according to states into which He is continually entering anew.' The same idea is found in several passages of the Rig-Veda: That which is One the wise call it in divers manners; they call it Agni, Yama, Indra, Varuna:27 Wise poets make the beautiful-winged, though He be One, manifold by words.' 28

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Nevertheless, as in Greece and in India, so also in ancient Egypt, the symbols became in the popular mind actual gods, and the people degenerated into gross idolatry. It is an instance of the descent from the worship of the invisible attributes of God. They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible men, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things . and they changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.' 29 This is unfortunately the aspect in which the Egyptian Pantheon has presented itself to mankind for many centuries.

After these appeared

A crew, who under names of old renown,

Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train,

With monstrous shapes and sorceries abused

Fanatic Egypt and her priests, to seek

Their wandering gods disguised in brutish forms
Rather than human.30

We possess the account of a brilliant effort made by Amenophis the Fourth (1500 B. C.) to abolish all worship except that of the sun. He assumed the name of Glory of the solar disk,' and changed the capital city so that the architecture might not suggest the popular polytheism. Lepsius explored the ruins of the new city, and found the walls decorated with peculiar floral designs, and with hymns to the sun. This reformation, however, lasted only for one generation, and then passed away.31 We find the influence of this religious revolution on the stele of a hymn to Osiris (eighteenth dynasty), for wherever the name of the deity Amen occurs, it has been chiselled out; but it is restored under his successors.

A striking picture is given of King Pianchi Mer-Amon entering the temple of Ra, the sun. 'He purified himself in the heart of the

24 Hymne au Soleil dans le xv. chap. du Rituel, par Lefébre.

25 Chabas, Rev. Arch., O.S. xiv. 80.

26 De Mundo, c. vii. init.

27 R. V. i. 164. 46.

28 R. V. x. 114. 5.

29 Romans i. 23-25. See also Plutarch in De Is. et Osir. c. lxxi.

So Paradise Lost, i. 476–482.

31 Brugsch, Histoire d'Egypte, p. 118.