The euhemerism of the Egyptian priesthood sounded the knell of the old faith. As the centuries passed, purer and higher ideas of the Godhead had grown up, and between the “formless” and eternal Creator of the world and the man who had become a god, the distance was too great to be spanned. On the one side, the gods of the national creed had been resolved one into another, till no distinctive shape or character was left to any one of them; on the other side, they had been transformed into mere human kings who had ruled over Egypt long ago. The pantheistic Creator and the deified Egyptians of vulgar and prosaic history could not be harmonised together. The multitude might be content with its sacred animals and its amulets, but the thinking portion of the nation turned to Greek metaphysics or a despairing scepticism. Already, in the time of the Eleventh [pg 125] Dynasty, the poet who composed the dirge of king Antef gives pathetic expression to his doubts[86]—
“What is fortune? say the wise.
Vanished are the hearths and homes,
What he does or thinks, who dies,
None to tell us comes.
“Have thy heart's desire, be glad,
Use the ointment while you live;
Be in gold and linen clad,
Take what gods may give.
“For the day shall come to each