There were almost as many varieties of Amen in Egypt as there are varieties of the Madonna in Italy or Spain. There was an Amen of Thebes, an Amen of Elephantine, an Amen of Coptos, an Amen of Chemmis (Panopolis), an Amen of the Resurrection, Amen of the Dew, Amen of the Sun (Amen-Ra), Amen Self-created, etc. Amen and Khem were doubtless identical. It is an interesting fact that our English words, chemical, chemist, chemistry, etc., which the dictionaries derive from the Arabic al-kimia, may be traced back a step farther to the Panopolitan name of this most ancient god of the Egyptians, Khem (Gr. Pan; Latin, Priapus), the deity of plants and herbs and of the creative principle. A cultivated Egyptian would, doubtless, have regarded all these Amens as merely local or symbolical types of a single deity.
[134] The material of this blue helmet, so frequently depicted on the monuments, may have been the Homeric Kuanos, about which so much doubt and conjecture have gathered, and which Mr. Gladstone supposes to have been a metal. (See “Juventus Mundi,” chap. xv, p. 532.) A paragraph in The Academy (June 8, 1876) gives the following particulars of certain perforated lamps of a “blue metallic substance,” discovered at Hissarlik by Dr. Schliemann, and there found lying under the copper shields to which they had probably been attached. “An analytical examination by Landerer (Berg., Hüttenm. Zeitung, xxxix, 430) has shown them to be sulphide of copper. The art of coloring the metal was known to the coppersmiths of Corinth, who plunged the heated copper into the fountain of Peirene. It appears not impossible that this was a sulphur spring, and that the blue color may have been given to the metal by plunging it in a heated state into the water and converting the surface into copper sulphide.”
It is to be observed that the Pharaohs are almost always represented wearing this blue helmet in the battle pieces and that it is frequently studded with gold rings. It must, therefore, have been of metal. If not of sulphureted copper, it may have been made of steel, which, in the well known instance of the butcher’s sharpener, as well as in representations of certain weapons, is always painted blue upon the monuments.
[135] “This eye, called uta, was extensively used by the Egyptians both as an ornament and amulet during life, and as a sepulchral amulet. They are found in the form of right eyes and left eyes, and they symbolize the eyes of Horus, as he looks to the north and south horizons in his passage from east to west, i. e., from sunrise to sunset.”
M. Grebaut, in his translation of a hymn to Amen-Ra, observes: “Le soleil marchant d’Orient en Occident éclaire de ses deux yeux les deux régions du Nord et du Midi.”—“Révue Arch.,” vol. xxv, 1873; p. 387.
[136] This inscription was translated for the first edition of this book by the late Dr. Birch; for the present translation I am indebted to the courtesy of E. A. Wallis Budge, Esq.
[137] Sesennu—Eshmoon or Hermopolis.
[138] Amenheri—Gebel Addeh.
[139] These jubilees, or festivals of thirty years, were religious jubilees in celebration of each thirtieth anniversary of the accession of the reigning Pharaoh.
[140] There are, in the British Museum, some bottles and vases of this description, dating from the eighteenth dynasty; see Case E, Second Egyptian Room. They are of dark-blue translucent glass, veined with waving lines of opaque white and yellow.