With the decline of the Memphite dynasties and the fall of the Old Empire, the commanding part played by Ptaḥ in the Egyptian pantheon was at an end. The god of the imperial city had been identified with the gods of the provincial nomes; his temple at Memphis had taken precedence of all others, and the local priesthoods were content that their deities should have found a shelter in it as forms of Ptaḥ. He was even identified with Ḥâpi, the Nile, though perhaps the similarity in sound between the sacred name of the river and that of the bull Apis (Ḥapi) may have assisted in the identification.[111]
That the Nile should have been worshipped throughout the land of Egypt is natural. The very land itself was his gift, the crops that grew upon it and the population it supported all depended upon his bounty. When the Nile failed, the people starved; when the Nile was full, Egypt was a land of contentment and plenty. It is only wonderful that the cult of the Nile should not have been more prominent than it was. The temples built in its honour were neither numerous nor important, nor were its priests endowed as the priests of other gods. But the cause of this is explained by history. The neolithic population of the country lived in the desert; the Nile was for them little more than the creator of pestilential swamps and dangerous jungles, where wild beasts and venomous serpents lurked for the intruder. The Pharaonic Egyptians brought their own gods with them, and these naturally became the divinities of the nomes. When the river had been embanked and its waters been made a blessing instead of a curse, the sacred animals and the gods of the nomes were too firmly established to be displaced.[112]
But the backwardness of the State religion was made up for by the piety of individuals. Hymns to the Nile, like those which were engraved on the rocks of Silsilis by Meneptah and Ramses iii., breathe a spirit of gratitude and devotion which can hardly be exceeded—
“Hail to thee, O Nile!
who manifestest thyself over this land,
and comest to give life to Egypt!
Mysterious is thy issuing forth from darkness,
on this day whereon it is celebrated!
Watering the orchards created by Ra
to cause all cattle to drink,