Myth, Ritual And Religion, Vol. 2 (of 2)

by Andrew Lang

* Brugsch, History of Egypt, English transl., i. 59, 60.
** Hib. Lect., pp. 237, 238.
*** Op. cit. i. p. 56.
**** For Khunaten, and his heresy of the disk in Thebes, see
Brugsch, op. cit., i. 442. It had little or no effect on
myth. Tiele says (Hist. Egypt. Rel., p. 49), "From the
most remote antiquity Set is one of the Osirian circle, and
is thus a genuine Egyptian deity".

It is impossible here to do more than indicate the kind of modification which Egyptian religion underwent. Throughout it remained constant in certain features, namely, the local character of its gods, their usefulness to the dead (their Chthonian aspect), their tendency to be merged into the sun, Ra, the great type and symbol and source of life, and, finally, their inability to shake off the fur and feathers of the beasts, the earliest form of their own development. Thus life, death, sky, sun, bird, beast and man are all blended in the religious conceptions of Egypt. Here follow two hymns to Osiris, hymns of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties, which illustrate the confusion of lofty and almost savage ideas, the coexistence of notions from every stage of thought, that make the puzzle of Egyptian mythology.

"Hail to thee, Osiris, eldest son of Seb, greatest of the six deities born of Nut, chief favourite of thy father, Ra, the father of fathers; king of time, master of eternity; one in his manifestations, terrible. When he left the womb of his mother he united all the crowns, he fixed the urseus (emblem of sovereignty) on his head. God of many shapes, god of the unknown name, thou who hast many names in many provinces; if Ra rises in the heavens, it is by the will of Osiris; if he sets, it is at the sight of his glory."*

In another hymn** Osiris is thus addressed: "King of eternity, great god, risen from the waters that were in the beginning, strong hawk, king of gods, master of souls, king of terrors, lord of crowns, thou that art great in Hnes, that dost appear at Mendes in the likeness of a ram, monarch of the circle of gods, king of Amenti (Hades), revered of gods and men, who so knoweth humility and reckoneth deeds of righteousness, thereby knows he Osiris."***

* From Abydos, nineteenth dynasty. Maspero, Musee de
Boulaq, pp. 49,50.
** Twentieth dynasty. Op. cit., p. 48.
*** "This phase of religious thought," says Mr. Page Renouf,
speaking of what he calls monotheism, "is chiefly
presented to us in a large number of hymns, beginning with
the earliest days of the eighteenth dynasty. It is certainly
much more ancient, but.... none of the hymns of that time
have come down to us." See a very remarkable pantheistic
hymn to Osiris, "lord of holy transformations," in a passage
cited, Hib. Lect., p. 218, and the hymns to Amnion Ra,
"closely approaching the language of monotheism," pp. 225,
226. Excellent examples of pantheistic litanies of Ra are
translated from originals of the nineteenth dynasty, in
Records of the Past, viii. 105-128. The royal Osiris is
identified with Ra. Here, too, it is told how Ra smote Apap,
the serpent of evil, the Egyptian Ahi.

Here the noblest moral sentiments are blended with Oriental salutations in the worship of a god who, for the moment, is recognised as lord of lords, but who is also a ram at Mendes. This apparent confusion of ideas, and this assertion of supremacy for a god who, in the next hymn, is subjected to another god, mark civilised polytheism; but the confusion was increased by the extreme age of the Egyptian faith, and by the doubt that prevailed as to the meaning of tradition. "The seventeenth chapter of the Book of the Dead" which seems to contain a statement of the system of the universe as understood at Heliopolis under the first dynasties, "is known to us by several examples of the eleventh and twelfth dynasties." Each of the verses had already been interpreted in three or four different ways; so different, that, according to one school, the Creator, Râ-Show, was the solar fire; according to another school, not the fire, but the waters! The Book of the Dead, in fact, is no book, but collections of pamphlets, so to speak, of very different dates. "Plan or unity cannot be expected," and glosses only some four thousand years old have become imbedded in really ancient texts.* Fifteen centuries later the number of interpretations had considerably increased.**

Where the Egyptians themselves were in helpless doubt, it would be vain to offer complete explanations of their opinions and practices in detail; but it is possible, perhaps, to account for certain large elements of their beliefs, and even to untie some of the knots of the Osirian myth.

The strangest feature in the rites of Egypt was animal-worship, which appeared in various phases. There was the local adoration of a beast, a bird, or fish, to which the neighbours of other districts were indifferent or hostile. There was the presence of the animal in the most sacred penetralia of the temple; and there was the god conceived of, on the whole, as anthropomorphic, but often represented in art, after the twelfth dynasty, as a man or woman with the head of a bird or beast.***

* Cf. Tiele, Hist Egypt. Rel., pp. 26-29, and notes.
** Maspero, Musee de Boulaq, p. 149.
*** As to the animals which were sacred and might not be
eaten in various nomes, an account will be found in
Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians, ii. 467. The English reader
will find many beast-headed gods in the illustrations to
vol. iii. The edition referred to is Birch's, London, 1878.
A more scientific authority is Lanzoni, Dizion. Mit.

These points in Egyptian religion have been the great puzzle both of antiquity and of modern mythology. The common priestly explanations varied. Sometimes it was said that the gods had concealed themselves in the guise of beasts during the revolutionary wars of Set against Horus.* Often, again, animal-worship was interpreted as symbolical; it was not the beast, but the qualities which he personified that were adored.** Thus Anubis, really a jackal, is a dog, in the explanations of Plutarch, and is said to be worshipped for his fidelity, or because he can see in the night, or because he is the image of time. "As he brought forth all things out of himself, and contains all things within himself, he gets the title of dog."*** Once more, and by a nearer approach to what is probably the truth, the beast-gods were said to be survivals of the badges (representing animals) of various tribal companies in the forces of Osiris. Such were the ideas current in Graeco-Roman speculation, nor perhaps is there any earlier evidence as to the character of native interpretation of animal-worship. The opinion has also been broached that beast-worship in Egypt is a refraction from the use of hieroglyphs. If the picture of a beast was one of the signs in the writing of a god's name, adoration might be transferred to the beast from the god. It is by no means improbable that this process had its share in producing the results.**** Some of the explanations of animal-worship which were popular of old are still in some favour.