The religions of ancient Egypt and Babylonia

by A. H. Sayce

Norden, a few years later, has a similar tale to relate. He was told that the serpent-saint “never dies,” and that it “cures and grants favours to all those who implore its aid and offer sacrifices to it.” The cures were effected by the mere presence of the snake, which came in person to those who desired its help. The Christians, he adds, admit the miraculous powers of the Shêkh equally with the Mohammedans, only they explain them as due to a demon who clothes himself in a serpent's form.[173]

Saint or demon, however, Shêkh Herîdî is really the lineal descendant of a serpent which has been worshipped in its neighbourhood since the prehistoric days of Egypt. A bronze serpent with the head of Zeus Serapis has been found in the mounds of Benâwît, on the western side of the Nile, which face the entrance to the shrine of the Shêkh; and the nome in which the shrine is situated was that of Du-Hefi, “the mountain of the snake.” The serpent of Shêkh Herîdî, with his miraculous powers of healing, must thus have been already famous in the days when the nomes of Upper Egypt first received their names. The old neolithic population of the desert must have already venerated the snake that dwelt in the cleft of the rock above which now rises the sacred “tomb” of Shêkh Herîdî.[174]

The faith of the people dies hard. The gods and goddesses, the theology and speculations of the official religion of Egypt, have passed away, but the old beliefs and superstitions which were already in possession of the land when the Pharaonic Egyptians first entered it, have survived both Christianity and Mohammedanism. The theological systems of Heliopolis or Thebes are like the sacred trees, which, according to Dr. Schweinfurth,[175] were brought from Southern Arabia along with the deities with whose cult they were associated; when the deities themselves ceased to be worshipped, the trees also ceased to be cultivated, and so disappeared from a soil wherein they had been but exotics. But the religion of the great mass of the people remained rooted as it were in the soil, like the palm or the acacia. It flowed like a strong current under the surface of the theology of the State, contemptuously tolerated by the latter, and in its turn but little affected by it. The theology of the State might incorporate and adapt the beliefs of the multitude; to the multitude the State theology was a “tale of little meaning, though the words were strong.”

If we would know what the bulk of the people thought of those deities whom the higher classes regarded as manifestations of a single ineffable and omnipotent divine power, we must turn to the folk-tales which were taken up and disfigured by the rationalising priests of a later period, when they combined together in a connected story all that had been said about the gods of the local sanctuaries. Each sanctuary came to possess its euhemerising [pg 216] legend of the chief divinity to whom it was consecrated; the divinity was transformed into an earthly king, and his history was concocted partly out of popular tales, associated for the most part with particular relics and charms, partly from forced etymologies of proper names. At how early a date these artificial legends first came into existence we do not know, but we already meet with examples of them in the time of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties. They belong, however, to the age when the rationalistic process of resolving the gods into human princes had already begun,—the counter side of the process that had turned the Pharaoh into a god,—and their artificial character is betrayed by the attempt to extract history from learned but unscientific explanations of the origin of local and other names.

Here, for instance, is one which was compiled for the temple of the sun-god at Heliopolis, and is contained in a Turin papyrus of the age of the Twentieth Dynasty: “Account of the god who created himself, the creator of heaven, of earth, of the gods, of men, of wild beasts, of cattle, of reptiles, of fowls, and of fish; the king of men and gods, to whom centuries are but as years; who possesses numberless names which no man knoweth, no, not even the gods.

“Isis was a woman, more knowing in her malice than millions of men, clever among millions of the gods, equal to millions of spirits, to whom as unto Ra nothing was unknown either in heaven or upon earth.

“The god Ra came each day to sit upon his throne; he had grown old, his mouth trembled, his slaver trickled down to the earth, and his saliva dropped upon the ground. Isis kneaded it with her hand along with the dust that had adhered to it; she moulded therefrom a sacred serpent, to which she gave the form of a spear-shaft. She wound it not about her face, but flung it on [pg 217] the road along which the great god walked, as often as he wished, in his twofold kingdom.

“The venerable god went forth, the (other) gods accompanied him, he walked along as on other days. Then the sacred serpent bit him. The divine god opened his mouth, and his cry rang to heaven. His Ennead of gods called: ‘What is it?’ and the gods cried, ‘Look there!’ He could make no answer, his jaws chattered, his limbs shook, the venom took hold of his flesh as the Nile covers its banks (with water).

“When the heart of the great god was quieted, he called to his followers: ‘Come to me, ye children of my limbs, ye gods who have emanated from me! Something painful hath hurt me; my heart perceiveth it, yet my eyes see it not; my hand hath not wrought it, nothing that I have made knoweth what it is, yet have I never tasted suffering like unto it, and there is no pain which is worse.... I went forth to see what I had created, I was walking in the two lands which I have made, when something stung me which I knew not. Was it fire, was it water? My heart is in flames, my limbs tremble, all my members shiver. Let there be brought unto me the children of the gods of beneficent words, who have understanding mouths, and whose power reaches unto heaven.’

“The children of the gods came, full of woe; Isis came with her magic; with her mouth full of the breath of life, whose recipes destroy pain, whose word gives life to the dead. She said: ‘What is it, what is it, O father of the gods? A serpent hath wrought this suffering in thee, one of thy creatures hath lifted up his head against thee. Surely he shall be overthrown by beneficent incantations; I will make him retreat at the sight of thy rays.’